Beginnings to a Liberation Psychotherapy Understanding Part II
To read part I:
Beginnings to a Liberation Psychotherapy Understanding
How did this authoritarian abuse affect me? Well I was a very angry kid. I hated all the kids in my neighborhood. Not sure if it was because I was being bullied, as I was severely, or I was just lashing out. But damn I had a lot of anger. I also started running away by the time I was only ten years old. I became a little punk rocker. I lived off and on the streets in punk squats from the age of 10 to 13. I eventually stopped but that’s another story for another time. Started huffing glue and smoking cigarettes by the age of ten. Pack a day smoker by age 11. Doing drugs, drinking, and lost my virginity at 12. My anger was palatable. Everyone around me was fair game. You better know you couldn’t fuck with me. I remember throwing a chair at a teacher who was trying to help me in the seventh grade. I’ve longed wished I could say sorry to her. She didn’t deserve that at all.
By ten I was seriously drowning and no one noticed. I remember writing a notebook full of violent thoughts and vicious actions. Violence against animals. Violence against people. The shame I feel now about this is immense. But I didn’t get help at ten. Nope, when my mom eventually found the notebook she couldn’t believe it was my writing because I was only ten. Instead blamed it on my older, by three years, punk rock brother. He went to therapy for me. The more he denied writing it the more they probably thought he was insane.
Stop being so angry. That’s what they all told me. Drowned that shit out like The Peanuts cartoon adults yapping nonsense. I guess the field of psychology with it’s bible of mental health disorders, the DSM-III at the time, would have labeled me with oppositional defiant disorder. A bad boy with no respect for authority.
It wasn’t until I was in the 9th grade I had this teacher (can’t remember his name) that I had some respect for. He showed me respect. It was mutual. He would talk to me about punk rock music and tell me how his roommate in college was really into it. This was at a time that the punk movement was mainly underage youth. So of course it was a surprise when I heard an adult talk about it without disparaging it. Trust me that was a rare thing in the 1980’s.
One day he had witnessed my anger once again. Instead of telling me to stop with being so angry he actually asked me what was going on. I opened up about my home life with my abusive authoritarian father. I remember to this day what he told me. It was one of those rare moments of what Martin Buber the Jewish mystic called I-Thou. Not talking at someone but with someone. Where you are totally lost in the dialogue. The individual melts away and the conversation is so meaningful that it is the only thing alive for that few spare moments.
He told me that my anger was justified. That it should be used as a force for good. That what I should do was to learn to channel it into a healthy direction. He didn’t tell me what to do with it as that was up to me. I thought about that for some time. Eventually I saw a flyer at my school to get involved with Amnesty International. I knew my dad would hate it. If I got involved in some “humanitarian” effort as he would always say with his sarcastic voice with his fingers bent up in air quotations. So, I joined Amnesty International and learned about prisoners throughout the world being tortured. We would sit after school writing letters to various world governments asking for mercy.
From there I started to study more about societal injustices not just around the world but in our own backyard. Such as racism, sexism, homophobia, the history of US slavery, the history of native genocide, and early neo-liberal organizations such as the I.M.F.
I felt a solidarity with those who were historically and currently abused and oppressed. Mainly because of my own abuse heaped on me. Not to say my abuse was the same thing as that is so far from the truth. It was just easier to have empathy and solidarity. I came to know what I was against. Yet took awhile to fully understand what I was fighting for. At first it was about writing letters or calling congressmen (almost always “men”) to ask them polity to change their stances on issues. I learned of powerful practices of mass boycotts by not drinking Coke as they were a sponsor of South Africa apartheid. At the time I was still fighting against instead of fighting for. I eventually started to read Marx but my eyes would gloss over and I’d fall asleep. It rang hollow for me. My abuse wasn’t just economic but authoritarian patriarchy as well. I eventually landed on the rich history of anarchism and have never look back. Once again that is another story for another time.
Here’s the thing about liberation psychology. I was being liberated from my own individual mental suffering by coming to an understanding of where abuse and oppression originates from. Eventually applying theory to practice I was inadvertently creating my own liberation psychotherapy practices. My anger and lashing out towards those around me subsided. They were going through this life the best way they knew how. They weren’t the main source of my frustrations as they themselves were steeped in cultural/societal/economic oppressions. My anger was still there but I learned to direct it at larger systems of oppression. My healing journey was and still is steeped in mutual aid and solidarity with all those who are mentally, physically, and economically suffering. The golden rule I live by is to always stand in solidarity with the underdog. Trust me there is better sleeping at night knowing you’re on the right side of history.