Begin in your own backyard.
It is your civic duty to stop the flagrant disregard for
truth, especially if you are an American NOW!
As a Certified Transactional Analyst with more than forty years experience,
focusing on truth telling as an essential pathway to whatever
ails, personally, and interpersonally; relationship-wise and community wide, I,
personally, am taking up the effort (along with my team of volunteers) to
assist you in doing this.
It is
essential at this time in America that people develop increasing clarity and
skill at speaking truth to power in useful social justice ways. And learn
to effectively navigate areas of denial and discounting. I will be discussing this topic over time from here forth.
‘Here is my introduction!
Also see:
Let’s
start here with three main concepts.
The
three concepts are:
For
starters, let us note the definitions of each: discounting,
denial and lying.
The
term discount is
a term derived from the literature of
Transactional Analysis(TA). The term is generally meant to be the
act of minimizing or ignoring
aspects of reality related to an individual, a situation
or the solving of a problem.Discounting can
be either conscious or unconscious.
In TA literature,
discounting, is discussed as a rather intricate phenomenon
associated with passivity. The subject is well worth investigating,
learning to understand and apply. New Horizons has designed its most
sophisticated program, the Truth or Dare Game, to teach
people how discounting is affecting their lives, how to understand its
destructive effects and how to reverse them.
Conscious discounting: An example of conscious or purposeful discounting of
another person is choosing to tune out the distracting sounds of children at
play in order to keep one’s attention focused on a task.
Unconscious discounting: An example of unconscious discounting occurred in a
couple I was coaching when the husband of the couple kept ignoring the emotions
his wife was expressing of fear over purchases he had made that went beyond the
couple’s budget.
Denial, on
the other hand, is less an ignoring and more of an internalized
defense against unpleasant or uncomfortable truths or
reality.
Although discounting and denial can appear to operate
similarly, I have found it to be valuable to distinguish between the two in
treatment scenarios. This tack has proven itself to be important in attempting
to figure out strategies for managing interactions with people who are using
either discounting or denial interactively with me, or others I am
mentoring/coaching.
Both functions: discounting and denial, are faulty modes of processing reality.
Lying: is a deliberate
withholding of information in order to exact power and/or
control of others.
Many
disruptive behaviors may include all three of these out-of-sync-with-reality
internal functions. For example a person who is bullying is likely to be
ignoring or minimizing (discounting)
the emotions and needs of others. He or she might also not be able to have a
healthy grasp (denial) of the
consequences of this behavior for him or herself or the victim being bullied.
Lying might also play a role in this kind of upset as the
need for power and control in situations of bullying is a major factor.
Where
does Donald Trump’s deceitful behavior lie between these three dysfunctional
modes of dealing with truth and reality?
It is
hard to know for sure what would account for Trump’s repeated deceit without
having his willing agreement to assess his dysfunction. My own professional
analysis from afar is that Donald Trump appears to me to be acting as if he is
a narcissistic sociopath.
The narcissism accounts
for his seeming inability to do other than pay attention to himself as the
center of his world. That would account also for his inability to do other than discount (i.e. minimize or
ignore) the thoughts, feelings, viewpoints and so forth of others.
Obviously, Trump is over-focused on
himself and under-focused on
others.
The sociopathy might
account for his being in denial (i.e. seemingly having little or no compassion
or concern) for others with a significant lack of empathy. Sociopaths have
extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. This could
account for Trump’s racism, sexism and radically disruptive notions about how
to “make America great again.”
Of,
course, Trump lies all over the place; his need for power and control of others
is off the charts!
In lieu
of their being any certainty regarding Trump’s internal psychological
dysfunctioning, it is essential that our American constituency develop increased
skillfulness in assessing their own personal reality and truth telling
behaviors. And,
find ways to cope with our now being subjected to leadership that is
functioning outside the bounds of truth and reality!
Please join our movement to
“Make America Greater” by
“Making America Honest”
Contact: Anastasia Rosen-Jones, Executive Director
New Horizons Support Network, Inc.
Cell: 240.409.5347, Email: SuperSleuthDSW@aol.com
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