Custody - Is Alec Baldwin Really a Jerk?

Okay, so the entire world knows that Alec Baldwin talked horribly to his little girl. We all know that speaking that way to an 11-year-old girl is rehensible and clearly abusive. All across the country people are jumping on the bandwagon to engage in attacking him for his behavior. He has been villainized in the press, on radio talk shows and, of course by his ex-wife, with a vengeance. The media love this kind of drama. We have a bad father who verbally abuses his child and the public eats it up. We have someone we can publicly ostracize for their outlandish behavior. The courts validate our outrage and his villainy by preventing him access to his child, and we all feel better that justice has been done. What we have done, as a public audience to this drama, is to let ourselves get caught up in the blame game. Oh, how we love to have someone to blame. Alec was a perfect target for our blame. Unfortunately, the process of blame unites us against someone without regard for compassion or full understanding of the situation. (Who released that recording to the media anyway? And, hasn't Kim Bassinger been held in contempt numerous times for not respecting court orders?) It hooks us into a cycle of identifying someone as the Perpetrator and someone else as the Victim, and then of course, someone else as the Rescuer. We lock these individuals into these roles and never mind the reality of anyone else's true accountability. The roles are comfortable to us. We find comfort in the simplicity and can feel justified in our outrage at the Perpetrators behavior. The problem is that these roles help us to make sense of our world and keep us stuck in a cycle that has no room for anything but continued drama and pain. The roles are more accurately understood as: Self-Protector (instead of Perpetrator), Rescuer (or caretaker), and Victim. Why Self-Protector? A Self-Protector is someone who is desperate to protect him (or her) self from continued pain and fear. They sense themselves to be under attack in some real or imagined way and this can result in unpredictably dangerous or abusive behavior simply because the person feels completely powerless. Think of a trapped animal. Trapped, and animals instincts take over and there is no accounting for how they will respond. Humans, as much as we like to think otherwise, are animals too. We will react with the same survival mechanisms as any mammal. Does anyone ever stop to think about how the alleged "perpetrator" was provoked? I am not implying that being provoked justifies an outrageous response (i.e. calling your 11 year old daughter a "pig") but it does force us to have some understanding and not blame him (or her) for the entire situation. I would wager that any of us, at certain times, have behaved in ways that we are not proud. We may have treated our own children, our lovers, or our spouses in ways that we later regret and have to make apologies for later. The people closest to us, simply because they are so important to us, are the most likely to evoke these irrational and rehensible acts. Can you honestly say that you have never been provoked to behave in a way that you later regretted with a family member? The reality is that we, as a culture, and as a nation, must come to a different way of understanding the conflicts that occur in our lives. Conflict is a natural part of living and it is not a "bad" thing. It does however, evoke the worst in us when we are caught up in the roles of Self-Protector, Rescuer and Victim. These roles dictate that we behave in certain set ways and provoke certain set responses from others. This is exactly what occurs in gang warfare. One gang member shoots another gang's member and retaliation is required to regain a position of strength. So the gang goes into Self-Protector mode to protect the reputation of the gang and they shot a member of the other gang to get their "rep" back. But of course this requires the other gang to do the same. The cycle cannot end as long as the survival mechanisms of the cycle are in place. If we continue to engage in the blame game of pointing a finger at the bad guy and saying "Shame on you" then we perpetuate the cycle of pain and misery that the blame game engenders. Jumping on the bandwagon to blame Alec Baldwin for what is publicly a bad situation (that none of us knows all the details of), seduces us into believing there is a "bad-guy" and a "good-guy". And worse, it keeps us caught in the cycle of pain and misery from which there is no escape. Without question, Alec Baldwin needs help, so does Kim Bassinger, and most of all, their poor daughter who is caught in the middle. But we do not help her, or any of them, but identifying one of them as the "bad-guy" and the other as a Victim. These are the automatic mammalian brain responses to perceived threat. Fortunately we are not mindless animals. We are able to consider our behavior and make choices. Many of us don't even realize we have a choice. We think that the automatic reactivity our survival mechanisms dictate is the only way to survive. But we do have a choice and we can learn to respond to conflict differently. We can learn the mechanisms of compassion and choose different reactions. But first we have to understand what the choices are and how to go about the difficult process of learning do respond differently. Compassion is comprised of empathy, respect and ownership. Learning how to apply these concepts to our lives can transform how we feel about ourselves and respond to others. Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT is an author, motivational speaker, workshop presenter and counselor. Melody holds an MA in Counseling and Guidance from Texas Woman's University. She is also a Certified Radix Practitioner, Right Use of Power Teacher and InterPlay Teacher. Melody's 19 years work with individuals, couples and families provides her with a unique approach to solving clients' problems. Her life-altering book, "Cycles of the Heart: A way out of the egocentrism of everyday life", is based on her experience helping people resolve their relationship difficulties with themselves and others. http://www.melodybrooke.com Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melody_Brooke