Bondability - An evolution of relationship

     I gravitated towards the attachment theory early on in my counseling program.  I grew out of a Rogerian way of thinking.  Rogerian, because it  naturally aligned with my humanistic and Catholic ways of living.  And to be clear, these were ideal identities not so much how I could be seen.  Karen Horney opened up my understanding to the idea of needs and relationships in a profound way.  She elegantly describe this complicated dynamic from a medical perspective.  This sparked my interest in and induction into the bodies role in relationships.  It also became the junction that helped me leave the counseling professional systems.  

A women, in a world of male dominated ideas, had the courage to label neurosis as complex first before disease.  Again this is my perception and not a statement about  the psychoanalytical world.  Dr. Horney saw the movement and transfer of energy between experiences and encounters, and had the fearlessness to make it shared across all of us versus calling it dysfunction.  Her promotion of directions taught me early on how we have a preference for clarity, or maybe exactness, while functioning in a  realism of unknowns and the infinite.

Dr Horney helped me see the complexity that human relationship creates in the context of existential safety.  This is completely out of the colonial concept of safety.  A safety  that might have been birthed from the idea or mentality known as  civilized.  Safety in the moral sense, maybe.  Regardless it was a safety that has continued and possibly expressed best as the idea we now call dignity.  

Centuries after Dr Horney challenged the likes of Freud and Jung, we still arrive at the necessity of healing.  The torch was passed in several directions and this is what a counseling foundations course will describe.  All the different attitudes towards one destination, wellness. The evolution of  healing might best be described in an anthropology of medicine track.  And we all can't enroll in a program to gain the knowledge that informed me of how we are constantly wounding ourselves while also satisfying our survival needs, trying to unrealistically maximize our pleasures.  This cannot be a sustainable understanding of civilized.  

After reading the works of Dr Dan Siegle and Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk I was pulled into needing to know more about how much our physiology impacted our behavior.  I couldn't undo the rational that the behavioral strategies were suffocating the healing process.  I could see the criticality of propagating the message that our physiology and neurology are profound and dealing with their shortcoomings were counterintuitive to addressing the notion of healing.  The counterintuitive will be the basis of this book because I see the counterintuitive as the pathway into the clarity of paradox.  

The trauma work of Dr. Van der Kolk and the mindfulness neuroscience of Dr. Siegle were layers in my maturity as a counselor, giving me concepts that started to overlap.  Like a venn diagram's layers falling into place, overlapping to create areas of opacity.  Lets call, for simplicities sake, these layers as trauma, brain as part of body, and attachment.  The areas that I was now see standing out, bolded.  These insights in retrospective were most effective in my practice. 

 I think this is where I began to graduate out of the ideas that the child attachment research taught me to think of and categorize myself and my clients as being in a condition.  It may be that the four attachment styles were meant to be seen as loose boundaries, and I feel inspired to take it further.  I want to preach the necessity for the chaotic sojourner and teach the essentials of orientation versus condition.  I began to recognize how the counseling profession either wasn't even looking at the attachment perspective or convincing families that our wellness could be found in a simple willful explosion of better cognitive decisions, choices, or worse morality. 

 Without going too much into what attachment is; there are endless literatures on the foundations of attachment theory.  Attachment has been the evolution of several people's life work and can't be  summarized into a well intention blog on how attachment theory is incomplete.  I see it as the biological perspective to describe how our early neurobiology is informing, constructing, and distributing energies from our environment, genetics, and consumption of numerous natural and artificial resources. These variables are just a summary to hint at the vastness of what goes into our psychology.  And keep in mind I cannot speak with truth about this.  

What I share is through observation first. Observations gathered as an inspired broken man working through my own experiences and my finding opportunities for growth.  Secondly through my work as a counselor and the progress of the families I've witnessed.  These variables mentioned are how I see us generating and sharing energy at a quantum level.  I suggest this because I learned that it is often helpful to see it as as small as a molecule and as significant as a hormone, from something as powerful as a hurtful phrase to a car accident.  It could be the amount of vegetables your mother ate during her pregnancy to the trauma your grandmother experienced in her childhood.  These variables are also well written about and, most importantly, still being written about. 

 Bondability Continued

Bondability - I don't attach, I bond

 This post will be my first attempt at writing about what made me an effective counselor and how my mindset is ineffective in the counseling world.  First it is extremely important to read the following posts with a paradoxical mindset.  If you don't know what a paradoxical mindset is, then step away from this literature and set yourself on a learning path for paradoxical thinking (Hameiri et al., 2014).  Much of my mind over the last several months, possibly last couple of years, has been in the cloud of doubt around our (humanity's) ability to put a dent in the disparity between the civil dysfunction and grow social harmony.   So I've been wrestling with how to put that chaos into words.  

How do I write without authority in a field full of passionate, good intentioned, charlatanistic, wounded, talented, experts, who function out the same legalistic, profit driven, insurance tethered, evangelistic, conservative systems that damaged the people they are wanting to rescue.  This isn't going to be easy.  So I am going to chip away at it. I am no longer a counselor because I was becoming a counselor.

I found my platform.  I found my model of treatment.  I found a diagram that will invite people to orientate versus locate themselves.  I have had to step away from the great teachings of Ainsworth, Bowlby, Harlow, and Siegle. When I say step away it is in a modest non American sense of the phrase.  I say it like a young child might step away from their first 2,000 piece puzzle to take those 2,000 pieces and have the curiosity to draw a new picture from that puzzles box cover image.  I don't have the medical knowledge to fully understand the brain, nervous system, hormone balancing, dietetics, or pharmacology and yet I experience each of these while applying these fore parent's expertise on modern mental healing.  For me it is lifestyle health more than mental health.  As if I found a new way of looking at nature versus nurture; Mindset versus Lifestyle!

I don't attach....I bond.  And my aptitude for building relationships with others is what I call my Bondability...it isn't a collection of patterns it is an inborn instinct, that must develop into a skill, taught through culture and environment, and exercised through lifestyle.   

Bondability Continued

Climbing out or pulled into who's bucket?

 There is fable out there that most less fortunate communities use to describe "making it out".  I am describing this story we teach each other in the streets, the story reinforcing the analogy seen with crabs in a bucket.  I get to write my own version. Who taught you that you are in a bucket?

When I look at who my grandparents were, and for a few remaining, are, I realize the analogy should reflect how who they are coming out of their 1930's-ish New Mexican and South Texas cultures is respectable. I can picture how the bucket came to us.  The industrial revolution, came radioactively.  The bucket arrived infected with Tuberculosis.  The crabs came from the American East bringing this mentality of caste.  I think the crabs that escaped their mediocrity bucket, felt a strong need replicate their bucket mentality here.  

Now we are being labeled as subversive because many of still aren't fully on board with this form of capitalistic or individualistic mindset.  They often call us communist because it is a lazy way of dismissing how important our faith requires us to be communal.  The bucket is so much more like a container we were seduced to see ourselves in.  It makes me think, one consequence of the great American expansion was to persuade our modest ways of sustenance to be undesirable, and how it ought to transition into a more ambitious competition for prosperity.  Did we get pulled into a bucket?

The atomic weapon brought America to New Mexico.  And New Mexico's high desert air seduced the Tuberculosis refugee.  The same Spanish individualism thought that this part of world now know as New Mexico was gold garden.  I am learning and seeing through a different lens that informs me of how fortunate I am to be nestled in this liminal place where we are boring enough to not be desirable, perceived to be inadequate enough to be overlooked, and yet still not subservient enough to be accepted.  As a consequence to this fable we rebel by sabotaging ourselves with delinquencies.
  

We can't be racist

 I learned in my late 20's that race was a construct and not a biological marker.  This expanded my perplexed attitude towards my perception of dominant cultures and my own identifications.  I have to admit that it created a disappointment in me that inspired many life changing principles.  A hatred for my own contributions to the systematic bigotries.  The changes were disorienting.  I had new information that highlighted how I didn't belong to a race, how I have privilege despite having embraced a victim's mentality for so long, and how I learned how tainted my origin story is.  

I was socially indoctrinated to function believing that somehow I was socially ordered into an ethnic layer tied to the color of my skin.  And I had around 3 unspoken layers beneath me, a few complex layers around me and one championship layer above me.  And this system of layers was more about human capital than it was ever about superiority. I now find it impossible to participate in life the same way knowing these layers are dysfunctional.  

Today it seems like the world is coming to these same realization or maybe resistance to seeing it change.  Seems like these layers are being stirred by the complexities of our nations shortcuts, abuses, rule breaking, rule bending, and for sure rule escaping.  The Black Lives Matter movement, the Boogaloo movement, the Federalist Society, ANTIFA, Blue Lives Matter and the QAnon folks are all adjusting to the lower layers being informed and the new voices demanding participation where their views historically could be ignored when rule making.  We may not have equality but that is not suppressing assertion. 

I am as aware as ever of the emotions I still have when thinking about where I land in the eyes of my fellow citizens.  I find it challenging and hard to know that I have this information and the systems or eco-systems I live in are still functioning on the legacy caste like mentalities.  I find the pain that creates anger in me isn't as overwhelming.  I can still feel the injustice while also celebrating the change.  I still feel discriminated and I smile when I can't recognize if it is bigotry or because of me .  

At times I think some dominant cultures conceal their bigotry far easier now that we have a more ambiguous linguistics for prejudice.  I see the opportunities where I might have written off barriers to entry as racist, where earlier in my life I would have felt it wasn't my shortcomings but theirs.  I now take more responsibility for making it harder for the systems to exclude me, sometimes by assertion, more often by trusting the process, and when I fall short I let it motivate me to find a different route.  The system is going to make space, but not until I let it know I want it to make room. 

I am not as surprised or devastated when the Anglo world sees me through fear oriented lenses.  I accept the sadness that my culture has such delinquent parts.  I still get frustrated with how it seems at times I am catching up to all the other layers of people, whether it be in knowledge, lifestyle, or effectiveness.  I am grieving the ways I am not sufficient and can't close the gaps.  I seem to be between layers.  And I am grateful for the anger and tension because it might mean I am not the only one who has to begin the process of revisiting this looming concept called Race and how it has antagonized the darkest parts of our character.

I am proud of my Chicano heritage, my Spanish origins, Mexican adaptation, and New Mexican simplicity.  I am a complicated member of a brave experiment that at times didn't want to include me, found a way to, and is now providing a way to contribute that is safer than other peoples around the world can.  I will slowly eliminate my regard for race or speak to the invalidity of Race as a human trait. I will continue to let it draw out emotions working to orient them in way that helps me be more Christ-like and a spreader of dignity

.  All of this while hoping that I might create safety that rarely creates danger for the other layers.  

Guata....Hell!

    

The right wing mentality is a challenging mentality to tolerate, and I find that left extremity to be frustratingly soft to the point of ineffectual.  As I learn more about important world dilemmas I wonder how we can remedy any of them when there seems to be such a gap between the two polarities.  

    I would describe right wing as the "convenient" way to work with these complexities. The mentality seems to be highly adolescent.  It allows a person to rationalize most inconveniences into a category of threatening or wrong, while also labeling most gratifications as liberties, especially when it comes to profits.  It might be describable with the synopsis such as saying regulations are an injustice to my prosperity and freedom until I find that the scenerio results in pain to those "I" find important, then of course those regulations are needed.  

    Or better yet, when a brown democratic country like Guatemala is reported to be in collaboration with Russians, it conveniently looks threatening.   What it looks like when a brown country puts its country first.  It is surely deviant or threatening, from a right wing perspective.  It is so deviant that we need to remove their democratically elected leader.  And when Michael Flynn wants to collaborate with Russian entities it is a liberty and conveniently in our National Interests.  

    I find that Left Wings extremities function the same way, like regulations are necessary until we have so many that I can't do anything without taking into consideration the inconvenience.  Left wingers will gradually only want to follow the regulations that ensure the safeties that reinforce the safety that seem safe enough for them.  Because when the shoe is on the other foot we get similar results.  Left wingers equally champion the subtle ways of using convenience as a tool for power.  When Bill Clinton appears to get help from a foreign country the same predators appear.  The same privileges are afforded left elites.  Again when a non-anglo country leans into unifying modalities like communism, Anglo America feels inconvenienced.  Just like Guatemala, Vietnam endured a long period of governmental angst that was adolescently approached by America.  United States of America ignored its responsibility to be principled to liberty.  Again when a non-anglo country like Vietnam puts itself first, or tries to "make itself great again", America sees it differently.

Nationalists who often times align with a stereo typical conservative ideology fit the label of "Right Wing", and it becomes more irritating how this ethnocentric bigotry is disguised as patriotism.  Fuck Flynn not because he might have talked with the Russians, but Fuck Flynn for having the privilege of being able to see communist Russia as safe.

Brown angst during COVID

I am struggling to sit in the discomfort around how dis-empowered I feel learning about different policies, decisions, platforms, and attitudes in the American arena.  I think what hit home the hardest was reading an article about how prepared the senate was to fill a supreme court vacancy that has the potential of being vacated because Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was admitted into the hospital.  This access to malevolently driven aggression is not something I am familiar with.  I get quickly worked up over how hypocritical these Republican government officials demonstrate convenient ideals.  Then I listen to how armed Anglo citizens forced their way into government buildings to protest their state's orders to stay home.  I wonder how different it would be if Chicano armed men or Black armed men attempted the same patriotic display.  If that isn't enough I read more about the former National Security Advisor and how his once guilty plea was somehow undone.  All this privilege, looking a lot like Anglo privilege, sinks in and festers in my psyche.  

Then I find myself gripping the anger, looking at a picture of Mitch McConnel, wanting to participate in the adolescences of mocking his interesting appearance.  I let myself ruminate over the apparent prejudice, blatant hypocrisy, and certain impediments to economic justice.  I fortunately haven't stayed in this condition long.  I remind myself that McConnel sees some American value in his seemingly bigoted, and if not bigoted, then surely ethnocentric, vision for America.  And despite not having any immediate or direct control over this person's views, I do have authority to minimize his effect on my joy.  I will likely never know how harmless Michael Flynn's encounters with Russian diplomats are.  And yet my desire to see justice found isn't as important as understanding how to ensure that my greed never masquerades as my principle.  My anger towards a man named Mitch that I've never met, can't be more important than my cultural requirement to understand that Mitch is valuable and precious in some way, and it is my duty to seek it out.  So I have learned to watch the American experiment with humble eyes, a moderated anger, and hopeful sadness.

My Snow Globe Has Chemtrails

I have found a newer sense of love.  My role as a father is shrinking, shifting, and at the same time I know it will never go away or the concern lessen.  And even on the other spectrum of love I find romance also feels more fluid.  I find myself having to spend less and less time with the loves that seem to linger.  It is more like cherishing what remains of those experiences,despite knowing I can't touch them today.  Hopefully, I'm cherishing these apparent memories, tattooed, and hopefully not scarred.  I am appreciative of this reminiscence because it reinforces that when you fully understand loves nature, love tells us that it isn't lost or gone.  Lost lovers are actually gone, friends can leave, people can die, but the love they shared with me is still embedded in my psychology.  Relationships die, perplexingly leaving me without a cadaver to mourn.  We as a culture tend to focus on what is lost mistaking those things for love itself.  What a disservice to think love can die.  Love is! Love is not the plane dusting a blank blue sky.  Love is the chemical reaction waiting, preparing, combusting, cooling, dissipating, and redistributing all the molecules in way that they can love again.  My little snow globe has chemtrails and they very well can be vapor too.