| EQI.org Home | Dangerous to tell the truth - Part 2 After I wrote the first part of this I thought some more. I thought about the homeless boys and how they answer questions. When I asked them what they did during the day they say "nada" - nothing. They have learned it is dangerous to tell the truth. They have learned it is dangerous to give too much information. So they say "nada." And here in Ecuador it is not only the homeless boys who say "nada" when you ask them a question. That is the common response. Everyone here, or nearly everyone, is afraid to give too much information. As I wrote about the other day, a common question here is "Que haces?" This means what are you doing. So the common response is "nada." And when you ask people how they are feeling, or how they are, they will often say "mas o menos" which means so so, or literally, more or less. Or, like many people in the world, the majority I am sure, they will say "fine" when in fact they are not feeling fine. Which leads me to say that perhaps the most dangerous thing to do for children and teenagers in emotionally unsafe homes is to be honest about their feelings. They quickly learn no one really cares how they actually feel, and it is better to lie or keep their feelings to themselves. They learn that their feelings will be invalidated over and over and there is no point whatsoever in being honest about their feelings. They learn they will only feel worse if they are honest about how they feel. In emotionally unsafe homes the parents are emotionally needy, so they will use the children to try to meet their own unmet emotional needs. When you are being used, any information you give, whether it is about what you are doing or how you are feeling, will be used against you. You can pretty much count on that. It is like they say in the USA when they arrest someone: "Anything you say can and will be used against you." This is part of what is called the Miranda rights, if I remember correctly. It gives the person the "right" to remain silent and tells them that anything they say "can and will be used against you." That really makes someone feel safe to speak honestly, doesn't it? Which leads me to the larger problem of the whole use of punishment. And the so called justice system, which I call the "punishment system" because to me that is what it really is. The problem is that when a person knows they will be punished, of course they don't feel safe to tell the truth. It is dangerous to tell the truth when the entire society around the world is still using the punishment system and calling it justice. So we teach children and teenagers and adults that it is dangerous to tell the truth. This is a fundamental problem around the world. Human life will be improved once we stop making it dangerous to tell the truth, whether it is about how we feel or what we do. S. Hein |
Other EQI.org Topics: Emotional
Intelligence | Empathy Search EQI.org | Support EQI.org
|