Self-Care Tuesday- The Dangers of Minimizing

If you are an advocate you are more than likely already familiar with power & control wheels.  The power & control wheel (aka the Duluth Model) was the brainchild of the Domestic Abuse

Intervention Project (DAIP) in the 1980's, when they were trying to develop a simple yet effective way to illustrate the dynamics of abusive relationships. It's an excellent tool and a simple websearch will show you the many adaptations of the wheel (the wheel attached to this post is one adapted by the National Center for Deaf Advocacy- NCDA).  One of the spokes on this wheel is Minimizing, Denying and Blaming...which is something that both victim and perpetrator do.  The perpetrator doesn't take responsibility for their actions blaming the victim for the harm they are doing, denying that there is anything wrong in how they are reacting, and downplaying the severity of the abuse.  Likewise, victims will minimize the impact the abuse has on them, accept the blame for their perpetrator's anger, and actively tell others that there is nothing to worry about.  Working through and understanding this particular aspect of abusive relationships can be very difficult, primarily because it requires one to have a perspective of what is normal and acceptable outside of their relationship. 

The human brain likes to rank things into categories: good is better than bad, a hangnail is less painful than a papercut, strawberry jams tastes better than toe jam, and so on.  But sometimes, and especially in cases where we hear of trauma everyday, we start to rank the severity of trauma into categories of what is worthy of attention and what we feel that people should just "deal with".   We see this alot in rape culture, a victim who was coerced by threats of blackmail would be seen as weaker in character and body than a victim who fought off their stranger attacker.  The reality is that both are equally bad, and neither should be compared.  This is where we get into the dangers of minimization.  We know its bad for a victim to do, but as advocates...it is an easy trap to fall into ourselves.

How do you know if you are minimizing the trauma you hear in the workplace or in your life?  Have you ever said to yourself or someone else "You think that's bad? There wasn't even a weapon involved."  Or "well, at least no one died".  Anytime a person makes a statement of "it could have been worse" they are minimizing what happened.  There are multiple reasons for doing this but primarily it is a self-protective measure.  Everything we hear sticks to us and if we don't have healthy ways of letting all of that negativity and trauma wear off of us, we try to limit the amount that we feel.   Laura van Dernoot Lipsky writes "It only takes one extreme situation to get us started on minimizing everything else.  Minimizing is not setting priorities in our work, it is the experience of losing our compassion and ability to empathize because we are comparing others' suffering or putting it into a hierarchy.  We may also begin to minimize when we feel saturated to the point that we can't possibly let any more information in.  Instead of being able to experience the given situation for what it is, we minimize what we are hearing or seeing.  We do so in a desperate attempt to avoid hitting our breaking point.  We are literally at capacity."

The sad thing is, being GOOD at our work is what can bring us TO this point, and being AT this point, makes us BAD at our work.

How do you come back from this point?  As with anything, the first step is always recognition and awareness that a problem exists.  The second step is to seek out ways to address the problem.  This is one of the reasons why we started this Self-Care Tuesday feature and our Yoga for Advocates class, to help others seek out ways for them to address their self-care needs.  We don't intend to be an all-inclusive list of offerings and ideas, just a starting point.

What ideas to you have to help you reconnect with yourself, your life, and your passion for this work?