Conceptualización de la violencia de género

Comparing ourselves to others, or trying to live up to someone else’s standards, can lead to an endless degree of useless suffering. Seth points out that no one criticizes a squirrel for being what it is. Can you imagine a squirrel justifying it's existence by bragging that it can carry 31 seeds in its mouth at one time, that its tail is bushier, or that it has climbed higher in the tree than the other squirrels? Do you look at a squirrel scampering across the rocks and think it has no right to act the way it does, to be what it is? You and everyone else have as much right to be here as a squirrel does, because we are all creatures of the Earth. Our behavior, right or wrong, is natural and we do not need to justify our existence to anyone.

If you remember the story about the strawberry and the astronaut, you will recall that one person's values are just as valid as those held by any other. It is simply useless to compare your achievements to the accomplishments of others. It is, in fact, an act of self defeat to do so. The purpose of life is not to win in competition, but to fulfill one’s sense of value. If you compare yourself to others you are forgetting that you alone are responsible

for choosing the values which determine your happiness.

Acknowledge and Release

The following "serenity prayer" originated with the Alcoholics Anonymous organization and is very popular among the 12-Step Programs employed by different rehabilitation organizations. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

If you can't do anything to fix it, forget it.

If you ask yourself if there is anything you can do to change a situation and realize nothing can be done, or what can be done isn't worth the effort, what good can be accomplished by dwelling upon the issue? It only takes a moment to review a situation like this and ask yourself what can be learned from it. Learn it, then drop it. Acknowledge and release.

“Hating someone is allowing a tyrant to live in your head rent free” (anonymous). Long ago when I first heard this phrase I realized how stupid it was to continue “giving power” to people I blamed for hurting me in the past. When we hold resentment towards such people they continue to have power over the way we feel long after they have left our experience. You can finally “win” in regards to such people by simply acknowledging that that part of your life is over and releasing your resentment. Life is much better when hate is no longer part of your experience.

When one dwells upon some past event where nothing can be done to change things, the power to deal with the situation remains in the past -- where the power can not be used. You give your power away and feel like a victim. The same situation is involved when you feel that someone else has to change in order for things to be better. Reclaim your power. If you can't fix it, forget it.

Right and Wrong vs. "Good and Bad"

If you can honestly grasp the significance of the two statements above, you can immediately free yourself from a ton of unnecessary guilt. This definition of right and wrong applies to all situations involving others.

All of us at one time or another have deliberately hurt others, emotionally and/or physically. It is part of the human experience. We generally do this as a form of reaction, to get even for others having hurt us. At some point, however, we realize that inflicting pain upon others is an inefficient form of value fulfillment because it perpetuates a cycle where those we hurt seek to hurt us in return. If harming others is part of our character, even if we manage to avoid the pain of being attacked in some way, we end up being constantly on the defensive, always looking over our shoulder or presenting a defensive wall to everyone we meet. Our interactions with others become strained, we feel insecure. We don't trust others, who in turn don't trust who we are because they can tell there is something uneasy about us.

On the other hand, if you don't harm others deliberately you can be assured you are a good person. You can respect yourself even with all your glaring imperfections. Parents spend decades teaching their children what they think of as the difference between right and wrong, but what they are actually teaching is morality, a subjective value system dealing with what the parents, religion and local society consider “good and bad.” In some societies it is “wrong” for a woman to show her face in public or to be alone with a man who is not a relative. Public nudity is “wrong” in some societies and a natural state of being in others. Something can not be right and wrong at the same time. The truth doesn’t change as a result of where you happen to be standing on the planet.

Right and wrong can be defined as whether or not one's behavior harms others against their will. It's that simple. More harm than good has been done by moral causes that promote standards of behavior which exceed this basic principle. Squirrels do not have to hold their tails just so to be accepted, and people do not have to conform to socially imposed limits if one's behavior does not force others to participate against their will.

media, government and religion are all responsible for making people crazy. All of these institutions continually bombard us with descriptions of expected behavior that few of us squirrels can, or even desire, to emulate. If we don't have impressive possessions and a gorgeous body, or if we feel inclined toward personal behavior that does not conform to some artificially defined standard of acceptance, we have trouble accepting who we are, we feel inferior, that something vague but serious is wrong with us. We develop “hang ups.”

Modern psychotherapy involves countless hours (and dollars) searching our past experience for the source of our psychological problems. Save yourself some time and money. Be here now, in the present, and look through your past with one question in mind: Did I harm others intentionally? Most of the problems you will discover come from situations where others hurt you, so you are not to blame. All of those issues can simply be tossed out like the trash and forgotten. Acknowledge and release. In other situations you may feel guilty for hurting someone else. That brings us to another comment from Seth where he defines two types of guilt, natural and artificial. Natural guilt occurs before a person acts and has the message, "don't do this." Artificial guilt occurs after an event when you are powerless to change things, and thus serves no purpose.