I’ve been an observer of human behavior my entire life. At one point in high school after taking two psychology classes, I thought I might want to become a psychologist. Thankfully, I was able to shadow an actual psychologist for a day and that experience completely erased that notion from my mind. I couldn’t fathom listening to people’s emotional traumas and mental health issues all day. However, I am extremely grateful for those individuals who feel called to do this important work and who have the training and emotional capacity to do it well. I’ve even visited them on several occasions to help me deal with particularly difficult times in my life. I found that their empathetic probing and great listening skills were life savers. Seeing a good therapist to help navigate difficult life situations can steer us away from our base killer instincts. I’ve recommended therapy to family members and my students over the years. Those who followed my advice were helped and I wonder how many actual lives are saved by investing in therapy as opposed to guns.
I don’t have a chronic mental health struggle like some, but I am human and so strong emotions can be triggered. I believe there are people with chronic anti-social mindsets. Whether their issue stems from nature or nurture or a combination of both is not the issue. The issue is making therapy much more accessible early on to help these individuals curb their own impulses before they self-destruct or destroy others. Our former president, Donald J. Trump was one of those individuals whose mental health issues have caused and continue to cause great damage to our nation and to individual lives. His pathologies were so obviously dangerous that psychologists broke their own code of ethics to warn the public by exposing the anti-social tendencies they saw. His niece, who is a psychologist, wrote a book about his need to win and his sociopathic mindset. Without apology, she announced that he is not only unfit, but dangerous as a president. For the sake of society, parents, family, teachers, pastors, doctors, and friends need to recommend therapy more often when people around them are struggling.
The times when seeing a therapist meant the most to me were during instances when I recognized that my anger at being unfairly treated could lead to destructive behavior if allowed to fester. There are times when talking things out with a friend. pastor, teacher, or family member is enough, but there are other times when the hurt, frustration, and anger are so overwhelming that one could potentially inflict permanent damage on oneself or others. I acknowledge that in those times, a therapist was able to stand between me and my killer instincts. Thankfully, I didn’t have access to a gun to commit murder, but I recognized that my words can be a pretty lethal weapon too.
The first time I went to therapy was to deal with loss. In the span of a few years, I lost both of my parents and then endured a surprise divorce stemming from my ex-husband’s infidelity. I was so hurt by the betrayal that rage was bubbling up inside me. Not only was I a mother bear wanting to protect her cubs from yet another loss, but I was a woman scorned and tossed aside. Therapy helped me connect with my better angels so that I could continue to be a good mother and regain my worth as a woman. I regained my self-esteem and learned that while I cannot control the bad behavior of others, I can control how I respond to that behavior in a way that preserves life, dignity, and healthy boundaries. Therapy gave me the strength not to transfer my anger towards their father onto to my children, but to use it to build an even better life for myself and them. That it what I did. I also came to understand that despite everything, I really wanted my children to retain a good relationship with their father and that I had the power to explicitly give them that permission. The therapist helped me listen to my heart and my rational mind so that I wasn’t so overwhelmed by my killer instincts that I burned the whole house down, destroying all of us in the process.
The second time I spent time in therapy had to do with being falsely accused at work by a superior and suffering the consequences of those false accusations. It was through therapy that I was able to deal with my emotions and develop a course of action that preserved my dignity, integrity, and didn’t get me fired because I loved my job. Therapy helped me come to terms with the reality that the perpetrators might go unpunished and how I could turn my current lemons into lemonade. The skilled therapist pulls the answers out of the client by asking the right questions and actively listening. The answer to overcoming our killer instincts is good therapy. I understand the rage of individuals who take a gun to their former workplace and kill everyone in sight. I truly believe that people around the murderer knew he was struggling but failed to get him to a good therapist.
Too many people in our nation right now are acting on their killer instincts. They are scared, angry, and frustrated by injustice, afraid of change and a fear of losing what they wrongly believe is theirs. Without receiving help from family, friends, teachers, pastors, or a therapist, we will see a continuation of the mass shootings, the riots, and the ridiculously hurtful twitter comments. These days it is more important than ever that we intervene when we start see our family members or friends start to stray from normal levels of fear, outrage, or frustration. Rage is plaguing our nation.
We must be honest with ourselves that our society has a problem with allowing self-promoting, money-grubbing, fear-mongers like Donald Trump, Tucker Carson, and Matt Gaetz to stoke the flames with lies to purposefully enrage otherwise stable people. They encourage greater access to guns as protection from imaginary enemies. They need to be stopped if we are going to have a society where we can live normally and have some degree of certainty that we can go to the store, to work, to church, to school, or the movies without fear of gun violence.
We can stop Tucker Carson and Donald Trump by calling them out, removing their platform, or simply not supporting them. The Capitol insurrection showed us that any human being can be pushed to act violently. There is an instinctual violence built into us for self-preservation. But what if the enemy isn’t even real? Again, our country has a burgeoning violence problem because we have a burgeoning rage problem. If we don’t stop fanning the fames by continue to allow injustice, white supremacy, and the voices of liars to prevail, the killer instincts will overwhelm our rational minds and we’ll all be prisoners in our homes because of new pandemic: violence in the streets.
As I prepare to retire this week, I hope there are many young people with the desire and the capacity to become psychologists and therapists because they are needed more than ever to help calm our rage, channel our passions, and deal with underlying mental health issues where present.