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Articles By Judith Barr
There’s A Bully in You, A Bully in Me, A Bully in Everyone: What We Need to Do About It
 Do we know what bullying is — breadth and depth?
Once a bully was someone who pulled a girl’s pigtails or called a rival’s mother a name. That is bullying, but what was below the tip of the iceberg is now showing: The Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres occurred in response to bullying, yet both were also extreme bullying.
Intense feelings are triggered in the one bullied and the witnesses. But bullying is also triggered by some of those very same feelings – like hurt, fear, anger, powerlessness. Particularly powerlessness. And a ravenous hunger for power as a way to defend against powerlessness.
A boy, degraded when crying for help, is told “You’re acting like a baby. You’re a little sissy!” He grows up, demeans somebody else who needs help. Perhaps his own son. His aged father. . . the very person who debased him when he was a toddler reaching for daddy’s help.
– Judith Barr
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Reprinted with permission from todaysparentusa.com
THERE IS A BULLY IN ALL OF US
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 "Some time ago, many of us were shocked and saddened at reports of the tragic suicide in Massachusetts of Phoebe Prince, a 15-year old high school student who took her own life in the throes of the emotional torment she was suffering as the result of heartless bullying, in school and online. In response to this event, and an invitation I received to offer some insight into bullying and how we can heal it, I felt called to offer the article below. I hope you will find it inspiring and informative . . . in relation to bullying by anybody in any numbers and in any form."
"Bullying. Do we even know what it is? Or how rampant bullying is in our world?"
"By the end of this article, I hope you will."
"Do we have any real idea what we need to do to heal bullying?"
"By the end of this article, I hope you will."
"Bullying brings up intense feelings for the one who has been bullied, and also for those who witness the bullying and are unable or afraid to do anything to help. Bullying evokes feelings of hurt, fear, anger, and powerlessness, to name just a few. But bullying also comes from such feelings as hurt, fear, anger, and powerlessness . . ."
– Judith Barr
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Reprinted with permission from iammodern.com |
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HARNESS YOUR OWN POWER |
 Every form of power can be used well or misused.
- Law is used to manipulate as well as to serve justice.
- Parenthood can be a means of captivity; and it can nourish a soul, helping it grow into fullness.
- Sexuality can be a weapon to rape and dominate, a substitute for unmet childhood bonding and physical touch, and an exquisite sacred expression of love and union.
- Money can feed, clothe, house, nurture, and fulfill positive potential; or it can be used to grab, hoard, trick, steal, sabotage, and destroy.
- Work has been used to create, engage people’s gifts, experience cooperative ventures, do good in our world; and it has been used to take advantage of people, make slaves of them, suck the life out of people for someone’s personal gain.
- Even God’s name can be used to destroy and to heal.
The misuse and abuse of power is rampant in our world today – sometimes under the guise of goodness, sometimes raw and unmasked. It is right out in the light of day. If we are willing to see it, we can utilize it for healing.
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– *Judith Barr, Power Abused, Power Healed, p. iii, Mysteries of Life, 2007.
WomensBiz.US and WomensBiz.US online is published monthly. |
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HEAL YOUR FEELINGS - USE THEM AS GUIDES TO PROGRESS
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 YOUR FEELINGS ARE NOT
monsters, and yet you
may be afraid of them
because of your early experiences with
feelings as child. You’re afraid because,
even as an adult, you are still trying to
keep that original pain buried—even
though buried feelings feed the misuse
and abuse of power.
You’re afraid because in order to
keep the original pain buried,
you feed the fear by making it
seem like “you’re bad” if you
feel like: demeaning people
who feel (“you’re hysterical”),
attacking people who feel
(“you aren’t strong enough to
protect us”), and threatening
people who feel (telling a
child “I’ll give you something
to cry about”). Such ways of feeding the
fear are forms of abuse.
You’re afraid because so many people
advise and entice you to get rid of
your feelings: medicating them away
with various drugs, alcohol, and activities
like sex, work, shopping, eating;
managing and controlling them; “getting
on with” life without them; and
rising above them into the spiritual. All
of these become addictive. If you try to
get rid of your feelings, they haunt
you, insisting you work with them.
You’re afraid of your feelings
because you don’t yet know how to
utilize them safely as guides to your own healing, to your own becoming,
to your true self.
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ACTION: Use your feelings as guides. |
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HEALING YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH MONEY |
 "Susie sits on the couch, a thousand dollars in hand, touching each bill, one by one. Her hands start trembling. The next thing I know, she is throwing the money across the room, yelling, “You’re never there when I need you! I ask you to come and you go away. I don’t want to need you, but I do. I hate you for that. See if I care! Leave me alone! Go away!”
This is the beginning of a psychotherapy session designed to help Susie find the source of her difficulties with money. (Note: The examples of clients in this article have been carefully written to ensure privacy.)"
"I’ve been doing psychotherapy for over 30 years. I’ve seen many therapists and also professional financial planners help people with money concerns. When they come to the emotional aspect, they usually focus on how clients react to the ways their parents and other members of their family related to money."
– Judith Barr
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A RECESSION REGRESSION |
 "As a psychotherapist and financial
services affiliate of NAPFA, I
have been troubled by the lack of
discussion in the financial world—even in NAPFA—about the effects of our emotional lives on our relationships with money and, as a result, on the economy, our country, and our world. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. I am not bringing to you a message like the one Phil Gramm—John McCain’s advisor— brought when he claimed we were in a mental recession."
"My message is heartfelt and true on a level of our beings that many people don’t know, on a level of our beings that some don’t want to deal with. But it’s a level of being that I live with every day in my personal life, in my life as a therapist, in my life as a teacher. And it is a level of being we all live with every day, even if we aren’t aware of it. So, I share with you about this crucial level of being, from my heart to yours, in an effort to help you help your clients and our world."
– Judith Barr
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WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A THERAPIST, HEALER, OR SPIRITUAL TEACHER
By Judith Barr
“Power is like fire, lightning, wind, ocean – like life itself – a raw, vibrant force of nature. It has the potential for great harm and the possibility for magnificent good. Each of us chooses, whether consciously or unconsciously, how we will use the power of our own life energy.
“Every form of power can be used well or misused.
“The law has been used to manipulate as well as to serve justice.
Parenthood has been used as a means of captivity, and it has been used to nourish a soul, helping it grow into fullness. Sexuality has been used as a weapon to rape and dominate, as a substitute for unmet childhood bonding and physical touch, and as an exquisite sacred expression of love and union.
“Even God’s name has been used both to destroy and to heal. Zealots have committed acts of violence all over the world in the name of religion. In contrast, practitioners world-wide speak different names for God as they lay hands on suffering bodies to touch hearts and souls and restore them to health.” *
Power is abused in every arena of life. Many of those arenas are out in the open for all to see – for example politics, government, school shootings, war. But limitless instances of the misuse of power are hidden behind closed doors – in the nursery, in the bedroom, in the doctor’s office, in the board room. Unfortunately, many of us have become numb to the abuse of power, and many others have simply normalized it.
I originally began writing my book, Power Abused, Power Healed, as a result of my grave concern about the misuse and abuse of power in the healing professions. Part of my intention in writing the book and bringing it out into the world is to help people discern what is a misuse or abuse of power when they experience it – at the hands of someone else, or within themselves – whether in the therapy room, the healing room, or right out in the world at large.
Although we might wish it weren’t true, every day psychotherapists, massage therapists, spiritual teachers and healers violate their clients and students under the pretext of helping them heal and grow. To help inform people how to choose their therapists and spiritual teachers, I offer the following list of crucial characteristics in someone with whom you choose to do your inner work of psyche and soul.
Find a therapist, healer, spiritual teacher who . . .
- does his or her own personal healing work.
- receives ongoing supervision from another professional about the work he or she is doing with clients.
- is not afraid of his/her own feelings or yours.
- knows how to utilize feelings healthily: knows which ones are here and now feelings to follow into right action, and which ones are ancient feelings, from early in life – primal feelings that are calling for healing.
- knows this work is not and cannot be quick fix work; someone who does quick-fix work will only repress the roots of the problem further and delude everyone into a false perception of what is going on.
- honors the shadow – the dark unknown within us that holds our strengths and weaknesses, meanness and lovingness, wounds to be healed and gifts to be birthed into the world.
- holds together light and dark, positive and negative, joy and pain – for the sake of everyone’s wholeness.
- has a passionate, ferocious commitment to his/her own healing and consciousness and to that of his/her clients
- welcomes the Divine, as the client knows it, into the work.
- knows the truth, that as a therapist/healer she/he has a lot of power, and is committed to using that power well.
As healing arts professionals it is our sacred responsibility to be committed to discerning how we are really using our power, and to heal whatever is in us that might lead us to abuse our power. As people looking for someone with whom to work, it is our sacred responsibility to carry out that search with intention, purpose, and great care.
It is my prayer that this article, my book, and the need in our world will help you to choose to use your power now, differently than you would have before you read this.
© 2007 by Judith Barr
*The first part of this article was quoted from Judith Barr’s book Power Abused, Power Healed. Judith is a depth psychotherapist and spiritual midwife in Brookfield, Connecticut. To learn more about Judith’s work with power, you can order her book by clicking this link, and contact her at JudithBarr@PowerAbusedPowerHealed.com.
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LEADER POWER: YOU CAN HEAL AND CORRECT ABUSE
 "Every form of power can be used
well or misused. The law has been
used to manipulate as well as to serve
justice. Parenthood has been a means
of captivity, and it has nourished
souls, helping them grow into fullness.
Sexuality has been a weapon to
rape and dominate, a substitute for
unmet childhood bonding and physical
touch, and an exquisite sacred
expression of love and union.
Money has been used to feed,
clothe, house, nurture, and fulfill positive
potential; and it has been used to
grab, hoard, trick, steal, sabotage, and
destroy. Work has been used to produce,
engage people’s gifts, experience
collaboration, create good in our
world; and it has been used to take
advantage of people, make slaves of
them, and suck the life out of them for
someone’s personal gain.
The misuse and abuse of power is
rampant—sometimes under the guise
of goodness, sometimes raw and
unmasked. It’s right out in the light of
day. If we are willing to see it, we can
utilize it for healing.
Too often we try to change things
and wonder why it doesn’t last. But to
recover, change must occur within us.
It
must take place from the inside out.
In the realm of power, removing an
abusive leader is a temporary fix.
Soon another officer will need to be
removed because of another abuse of
power. But if leaders do their own
inner work with their relationship
with power, the culture will be transformed
from the inside out.
How do people get to the point of
misusing and abusing their power? As
children we have painful or traumatic
experiences which, in our vulnerable state, are too much to bear. To protect
ourselves, we create defenses, and
sometimes these are visibly abusive
despite our protective intention. With
time, our defenses harden, eventually
disconnect from their original intention,
and take on a life of their own.
Then abuse is more serious, unconscious,
and destructive. A little boy is
hurt by his mother’s cold, controlling
nature. He is afraid to strike out, so he
closes his heart to protect himself and
control the pain. He has no idea it may
trigger his mother to be more domineering;
or that it will make him cold
and controlling with other people."
– Judith Barr is the author of Power Abused, Power Healed.
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IMAGINE IF ... WE TRIED.
At this time in our world …
We are busy becoming informed, writing , voting, marching, fighting.
It’s necessary – but it’s not enough.
We are busy worrying, wishing, hoping, meditating, chanting, praying.
It’s necessary – but it’s not enough.
Most of us don’t know the relationship between our own psyches
and what’s happening on the world stage.
Carl Jung calls it the collective unconscious.
Where we are unconscious of our own unresolved experiences of being abused –
we unknowingly contribute to the abuse of power in the world.
Where we are unconscious of our own misuses of power –
we unwittingly contribute to the abuse of power in the world.
When I first began my training as a psychotherapist,
I read a book that taught me there is a terrorist in all of us.
If we deny it ...
if we aren’t conscious of it ...
if we don’t acknowledge it ...
if we don’t own it and take responsibility to heal it ...
then we contribute to terrorism in our world.
This is not a popular concept.
This is not a popular reality.
People have difficulty looking at this.
Edward R. Murrow said …
“We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information.” *
But if we don’t work with this – our unresolved experiences and feelings –
we will feed the abuse of power in our world, despite our most conscious, best intentions.
Our world has come back to this again and again.
It is more visible and accessible for healing now than ever before.
Many spiritual traditions say, “the poison is the medicine.”
The abuse of power out in plain sight is the poison.
If we can look at it, face it, feel it, and heal it … it can also be the medicine.
It is the one thing we haven’t tried yet.
Imagine if … we tried.
*EDWARD R. MURROW, RTNDA (Radio-Television News Directors Association & Foundation) Convention, Chicago, October 15, 1958
© Judith Barr, 2006.
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