The experience of pain is common to all human groups. Still, pain can have different degrees of intensity, it can vary in form and different individuals and communities can handle it in different ways. Here we have some aspects of how our Native American Indian community deals with pain.

1.- Denial and pain.-

It is quite common for members of our community to deny the existence of pain in their lives. Their main defense mechanism is the one of denial: pain, as long as I don’t acknowledge it, does not exist.

Pain can be with us for a long time. If we do not deal with it in the open, then it tends to continue its existence in the dark, in our subconscious mind, deep down in our emotional system.

Emotional hurt, the equivalent of a physical injury, can become an emotional wound. Like a physical injury, emotional wounds can become infected. Then, we pollute ourselves with toxic emotions that jeopardize our health and our relation with the world.

The victim of abuse who remains in denial, tends to develop a double block. On one side, they block their inner-sensation of distress. On the other, they block their relation with the external world. They tend to exist in an “emotional limbo.”

In some extreme cases, victims of sexual or physical abuse tend to experience themselves “out-side of their bodies.” They tend to take refuge in their role as an “observer”, and they experience distance within themselves, as if they are viewing another person. They view themselves primarily as a “mind”, and incidentally as a “body.”

Denied pain tends to adopt the form of protection (overweight, protective body-posture), emotional distance or blocking, or by lack of boundaries.

Toxic emotions that unfold from the predicament of denial are toxic shame, toxic blame, and toxic guilt.

2.- Hurt in the way of the self and the world.-

Unresolved pain tends to block the relation of the self with the world. Individuals in this predicament are distancing themselves from an overwhelming pain. This pain can be a product of a loss of a love one or loss of a relation. Then, when new relations tend to unfold, the previous unresolved pain gets in the way and blocks their way into a new bonding.

Emotionally they are still stuck and unable to let go. Still, they are not effectively in touch with their pain, but have turned their pain into a frozen emotion that acts as a coffin between them and the others.

Emotional isolation tends to be the trend of their existence, and it will continue to be so as long as the pain is denied. They have done a regression. They have gone way back into their development and live in the uterus world. But they are not in the womb of their mother. They have made a womb out of the pain that surrounds them, and in such state they go through life like an unborn-adult, like an adult that as not yet taken the challenge of life to be re-born and work their way back through their pain into the world.

3.- The cycle of abuse.-

The person that as suffered abuse and has not overcome it tends to become abusive. This abuse can be directed toward him or herself, others, or both. When this abuse is directed toward oneself, then the person tends to become and play the role of a victim. When the abuse is directed toward others, then the aggressor becomes a physical or emotional batterer, and tends to victimize others. In both cases, a dysfunctional environment of abuse becomes “normal”. This is the paradox: As long has deep seated pain remains unattended, the individual who has not dealt effectively with his or her pain, will cling to this system, because this individual has developed the psychological need either to suffer or to inflict pain. If an individual exposed to abuse has not developed a healthy functional life, then all of his or her skills have to do with coping with pain either by taking it all in or by inflicting it on others. This coping mechanism, tends to become a second nature, and if we refuse to work with this pain and “grow-up,” then we will continue using the skills that we have developed in order to cope with it, we will continue with the frozen character that we built for ourselves in order to survive, and we will continue to be trapped by the fate of this character.

3.- Floating hostility and abuse.-

Unmanaged anger tends to accumulate within us and, eventually it has to go somewhere. Once it reaches our psychological level of containment it spills. Some individuals have learned to manage the overflow of anger by releasing it to their environment. This accumulation of anger gives the individual a low tolerance for frustration, and little room for empathy and compassion. Compassion is the ability of the individual to empathize with others suffering. When we are not in touch with our own suffering, we are trapped in the vicious cycle of tension-accumulation of anger-release, then we become inflexible and merciless with others. We let them have our anger, and we seek their moments of vulnerability to unleash on them the demons that grow within us. Once we have developed this coping mechanism, then we tend to focus on the negative aspects of others, then we need to find a target for our anger.

Unmanaged anger becomes floating hostility, a psychological arrow in search of a target. This target can very well be in the present, but, just in case that it is not there, then we make use of the past, and we relive it in the present as long as it provides us with an outlet for our accumulated anger.

Under the influence of floating hostility, people tend to bring up their shields and become defensive. A closed-character becomes the “social character”, that is, the common character of our community.

With the prevalence of floating hostility, mild forms of hostility become the rule in the way people inter-act with each other.

4.- Pain and development.-

Intense and unresolved pain can have a devastating effect in the development of a person, particularly when this pain takes place during the early years of development.

Children are the most vulnerable members of the community. This vulnerability makes them easy targets for the abuse of others, particularly the adults in their immediate environment.

Trust, an essential need in the development of the child, is greatly determined by the behavior of the adults in the live of the child. Children interact with the wider world through their parents or mentors. When these adults abuse a child, then the whole phenomena of “trust” is affected and filters all subsequent relations.

Neglect, deprivation of attention or affection, can induce severe deformities in the character of a child. A child who has undergone extreme experiences of physical or emotional abuse tends to have difficulties in processing attention and affection. The harshness that they have built around them can lead them to experience anxiety and feelings of inadequacy while dealing with appreciation. Self-doubt, insecurity, and aggressiveness become their character trails. As a way of avoiding floating hostility they develop the mechanism of “invisibility”, their comfort zone is the one of collectivism where trails of singularity (such as individual talents) are avoided or places them in the “discomfort zone.”

Children who don’t experience the active involvement of their significant adults in their well-being tend to have low expectations about themselves. In invisibility, exposed to consistent floating hostility, deprived of attention and affection, children tend to make of failure the main land of their existence.

5.- Pain, anger and health.-

The five leading causes of death in our Indian Country are:

Diabetes

Hypertension

Substance Abuse

Violence

Accidents

The way an individual deals with his or her pain or anger plays a role in these health complications.

In an environment where floating hostility is prevalent, people tend to release their anger without addressing the pain that is underneath it. Pain, being at the root of anger, needs to be addressed in order to eradicate the pattern of dysfunctionality. We need to create the human environment where people can get in touch with their pain and bring it to the open.

An elder Pit River woman told me the following story:

“I remember as a little girl, I saw a medicine man heal a baby. The parents had called on him because the baby would not stop crying. The medicine man said that the baby was pure, given that he had just arrived from being in the presence of the creator. That is why babies don’t speak the way we do, because they are still in the presence of the spiritual world. The baby told him that he was suffering because his father would beat his mother, and because they would not stop shouting to each other. The baby told him that he felt that perhaps if he died they would realize the harm that they were doing to each other and then they would change their ways. The baby loved them and was willing to give up his small life for them. When the medicine man said this, the parents broke down crying and promised to change their ways. Now, I see many babies who cry, but where is the medicine man who will confront the parents? Where is he?”

One of the qualities of alcohol is to sedate both the body and the emotions. At times, when the pain threatens to surface to the consciousness, numbness can be induced by consuming alcohol. Other substances, food included, can have a similar effect and can be used with the same psychological objective: to block the pain from reaching consciousness.

Another phenomena prevalent in our community are what in the past used to be called “neurasthenia”, that is “the tiring of the body due to the intense activity of the mind.”

Repression of pain, and unmanaged anger require energy. Tiredness, reaching at time levels of physical exhaustion (even when their has been little physical activity) is one of the indirect effects of mismanaged anger in our community. Anger turned inward becomes depression. Anger turned outward becomes abuse. Individuals in our community, depending on the role that they play in the community, and depending on characterological factors, are either predisposed to depression or abusiveness.

6.- The levels of anger.-

Anger can have a two-fold effect. It can be rooted in self-preservation, in which case it acts as a healthy anger. But it can also be rooted in unresolved pain and feed our hostility. In this last case it acts as a toxic anger.

One of the dysfunctionalities that the individual afflicted with toxic anger develops, is the inability to recognize the early stages of anger. This individual re-acts to anger, and he or she does so only when anger has reached a high level of intensity.

While a self-inventory and deep understanding of oneself can help us deal with the underlying layer of pain in which our anger unfolds, a general identification of the levels of anger can be helpful in order to control aggressive behavior. Here we have the basic levels of anger, starting with the smallest levels and ending with the highest levels of anger. It is within the first levels of anger that we have most control over our behavior. Once we reach the highest levels of anger, we tend to lose our ability to be aware of ourselves and control our behavior. The principle behind the levels of anger is quite simple. A high level of oxygen is supplied to our brain when we sense small levels of anger. The proportion of oxygen to the brain decreases with anger’s intensity, to the point that when we get “mad” there is hardly any oxygen reaching our brain, in which case, functionally we “loose our head” and our anger goes totally out of control.

Level of anger Identification

Irritated (Skin)

Annoyed (Under the skin)

Resentful (Re-living an unpleasant experience)

Agitated (Unsettled emotions)

Disgusted (Discomfort in the middle part of the body)

Disagreeable (Mental antagonism)

Bitter (Use of hurtful words or actions)

Hostile (Tendency to attack others)

Infuriated (Reach the level of self-control)

Enraged (Anger beyond the level of control)

Mad (Mind disturbance due to intense anger)

Hatred (Permanent anger)

7.- Effective ways to deal with anger.-

Treatment of anger.-

The treatment of anger requires specialists in the fields of behavioral health and substance abuse. The treatment of an individual who’s anger has repeatedly become of high intensity and destructiveness requires a long term treatment approach, often with the intervention of the legal system, to set boundaries to the aggressive behavior.

While the legal system can be helpful referring individuals with abusive behavior for treatment, it is not an effective referral mechanism for individuals who turn anger in-ward. This factor needs to be taken into account and clinics and health organizations must find ways to reach and provide treatment to individuals that cope with anger by internalizing it and repressing it.

Intervention of anger.-

In order to stop the cycle of abuse, it is imperative that we take a pro-active approach with kids and teens that have been exposed to intense anger in their family unit. Talking circles, retreats, and martial art groups can be the “health island” in which individuals expose to anger can learn about the cycle of anger, and how to take action with it before it gets out of control.

Prevention of anger.-

Education and community involvement are the key components to prevent the cycle of anger. Communities that address anger and foster “zero tolerance for violence” create the appropriate social climate to understand the dynamic of anger and the effective ways to deal with it.

8.- The principles of non-violence in the East and in the Native American communities.-

Mahatma Gandhi was a Hindu leader who was able to incorporate the ancestral principles of his culture of non-violence into a social and political force of renewal for his country. Gandhi himself, in order to understand these principles, he had to go into his own process of “Indianization”, that is, re-discovering his Hindu nature within his country and his culture. India, at the beginning, was alien to him; in the same way that “Native American Culture” has become alien to many of our Native American members.

Once Gandhi was able to tap into the stream of knowledge and way of being of his culture, he discovered a set of principles by which he formed his character and fostered strength from within. He re-established himself in the world as an “Indian.” He re-discovered who he was.

He set high standards for himself and he studied the words of wisdom of his ancestors.

He took pride in his traditions and set high standards for his behavior.

He made a personal commitment to follow principles based on well-being.

He upheld the transcendental values of his culture.

He reminded his people of the living treasures of their Spirituality and culture.

He formed communities where these social and Spiritual principles were followed.

He found ways to disseminate information about these principles in newspapers and social gatherings.

He was able to find strategies that involved the whole community in the process of social liberation.

He was able to convey his vision to others by word and example.

Within the Native American community, leaders following similar principles have appeared at one time or another. Native American leaders of today will do well in following their example. Their lives are pages of the book of wisdom that belongs to all Native American Indians and to the best of humanity. Leaders of today have to discover the voice of Quetzalcoatl, the voice of Kukulcan, the voice of Seattle, the voice of Black Elk. Leaders that follow this path will restore purpose in their lives and in the lives of their communities. Leaders that follow this path will bring the best of the past in order to awaken a better future.

Conclusion.-

Native American Indians have endured enormous suffering through out history in a way that has not been able to be understood within the scope of science. Their survival is no mystery for their elders who, beyond their geographical and tribal differences all seem to agree. That it is due to their sense of spirituality that Native American Indians have been able to endure pain for centuries. That it is in their sense of the sacred that they find their way back to their true being, to their sense of purpose, and to their health.