Springboards

To understand, to forgive, and to reconcile

What leads a woman who has lost her much loved husband to a drunk driver to smile at and give a hug and kiss to the man who took his life, influencing the judge to deliver a lesser sentence?  Twenty years ago Anne Krueger read a book that, translated into English, had the title ‘To understand, to forgive, and to reconcile.’ Those words stayed with her so that she forgave the man who ran down her cyclist husband then drove on, and also forgave for the process she went through afterwards, the people who didn’t understand her grief, and the situations that upset her.  She didn’t want to hate, she forgave the man in the belief that “We all want to have peace in our souls and in our lives, and not always to carry a burden and [be] blaming ourselves and other people” (Weekend Herald 13/02/2010, p A7 ‘Widow offers drunk driver forgiveness’).

I wonder what Anne Krueger said to herself and what picture she had in her mind of the man who was responsible for the death of her husband that she was able to forgive.  It seems she sought to understand him as part of forgiveness. I hope I would have what it takes to understand, then forgive and reconcile if ever I should have the misfortune to be in similar position. On her own survival, Anne Krueger says she has, “a corner of my brain that says ‘you will get there.’”

Phobia – spiders and other things

I was amazed to discover that more than a million New Zealanders are living with a phobia considered severe enough to limit their lives.  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/health/news/article.cfm?c_id=204&objectid=10624648  The phobia could be a fear of spiders, moths or heights, the kind of thing most of us think of as a phobia.  Or it could be a social phobia in the form of extreme shyness, agoraphobia or an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) such as the need to wash hands over and over, or repeatedly checking that the oven is switched off.  

There was a time when I too had a phobia – to spiders. I couldn’t touch a picture of one in a book and found it difficult to look at it. I couldn’t watch a spider on T.V.  If a spider got on me I went crazy to get it off.  Knowing this my (now ex) mother-in-law thought it tremendously funny to throw a big rubbery toy spider at my face.  Unfortunately she chose to do this after a family dinner while I was drying a stack of a dozen of her dinner plates. I dropped the plates and ran.

Then one day I followed along as I watched an NLP  practitioner take someone through a process to overcome a fear of spiders. Since then I have no fear of spiders, though I can’t say I like them and I choose not to see the film Arachnophobia or watch a tarantula on T.V.  Today a small spider running over my arm brings no reaction and I can effectively dispose of a large black spider myself ….. a markedly different reaction.

What surprised me in the Herald article was the number of people affected and the prevalence of social phobia.

The Dentist’s Chair

I was sitting in the dentist’s chair yesterday for a total of 90 minutes.  I realised I could think of it as an unusually ‘intimate’ sort of relationship.  I was lying down with this person’s face only inches from mine and his fingers were in my mouth. From time to time he would mutter reassuring words. 

I realised I could also look at it in another way, as a stressful event where I was vulnerable, exposed, at someone else’s mercy. I could wind it up a step further even and think of a visit to the dentist with horror, bordering on the traumatic. The dentist used to be called ‘the murder house’ or ‘the torture chamber’.  These days of course we have injections to numb the pain and even gel to numb the area of the injection to numb the pain.  Yet for many, a visit to the dentist is still something viewed with fear. 

What makes the difference is how we represent it to ourselves, in other words what we say to ourselves and picture in our head.  Mmmm … how can I use that more effectively for my next visit?