I believe that medicine’s potential is much more than the version we see in the world today. A doctor should be an educator with the goal of bringing patients to a place of deeper understanding of who they are in the world. To me, medicine is ultimately about self-empowerment through self-knowledge and growth.
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“There also is a pharmaceutical medication we could use… but… I think it’s safe to wait. We can track your progress while you implement those brave, creativeand super smart lifestyle changes we’ve been discussing…”
If that conversation excerpt resonates with you then you might be part of the LED tribe.
LED here stands for the Least Effective Dose, the lowest dose of medication that is needed to get the desired effect and not a milligram more. These folks don’t take anything they don’t absolutely need to take. Often they take nothing.
Medication contains undesirable effects as well as desirable effects. The LED philosophy places emphasis on brainpowerand willpower to stay healthy and keeps medication to the lowest effective dose, thereby also minimizing risk of undesirable effects.
This is not at all to say that medication is frowned upon by the LED crowd. Rather, it is seen simply as a last resort. There’s sincere gratitude that medication is here to help if needed and further gratitude for the pathway to try to avoid having to take it at all.
In an attempt to demonstrate the LED approach and how thinking itself can be medicine, I’d like to shine a light on a highly relevant topic that causes widespread disease and tremendous misery.
I’m shining a light today on the victim-victimizer complex.
This entails the abuse, trauma, shock, and devastation we endure and store in our foundation and the subsequent damage it causes. We all carry them with us to some degree or another. Take misogyny, for example. All of us suffer because of this, albeit in different ways. It keeps us all separate from the human ideal that is possible.
If you examine the victim-victimizer complex closely, it doesn’t take long for it to reveal itself as filled with false solutions and terrible traps. The suffering that arises out of this complex can only be helped by deliberate thinking and subsequent informed action. It’s good medicine. Let’s look closely.
The victim victimizer complex is full of lies. For example, a common tendency with the victim & abuser cycle is to wish for the victim to rise up, connect to their power, and vanquish the oppressor. The weak becomes the champion and the bully gets a taste of his own modus operandi. This is what I would call false redemption. There is only a role change here, but there is no transformation. This switch does nothing to stop the US vs. THEM trap, which keeps us in bondage.
Beware of trying to overly simplify complex scenarios. Bullies bully for a handful of reasons. Among the most common are that they have been subjected to emotional trauma or they were victimized themselves.
“The victim and offender populations overlap, and the same individual can move successively or even simultaneously from one role to the other.”
— Fattah, Interchangeable Roles of Victim and Victimizer
Decisively aggressive action is not well suited to complex scenarios where roles are not fixed. It’s not our best game to be a judge and jury internally. Something else is needed.
Three Keys to breaking the cycle
There are three tenets I’d like to propose to break the cycle of the victim-victimizer paradigm.
1. Deny identifying with Victimhood. The moment we attach to victim status, becomes the moment we become limited to non-transformative action, whether it be to stagnate in victim identity on one hand or try to switch roles on the other. There is no freedom in identifying as a victim. I’d like to say there are no victims there are only dignified human beings who are divine in their origin who have areas in their timeline where they were subjected to victimization. This orientation expands the options.
2. Be Compassionate. Enter the star of the show. The True Disrupter and Transformational Element is Compassion. Compassion is right for all of the victims on every level. Compassion fits any system, any complexity level. Compassion is never applied wrongly. It strives to see and understand all players. It leads to true redemption. Through our inner work compassion becomes the medicine.
3. Realize where true safety lies.
Could you be safe without a home, good health, healthy relationships or financial footing? Yes, you could. That’s the radical truth. Let me go so far as to say it’s imperative to understand this and why and how!
Our true foundation for safety, feeling grounded, and security is a spiritual condition. It has nothing to do with our material life. Yes, we tend to all these material needs, and it is very important to do so; but, our foundation does lie with them. True protection comes from our inner connection to our highest self. To have the central intention to be in service to our Source is the key to a healthy and harmonious foundation. Being virtuous builds the connection and is freeing. Denial of this through fear, selfishness, ignorance is to be in the dissonance of the shape-shifting victim-victimizer paradigm.
Aurelius Prudential Clemens (early fifth century) is among the hoards of holy men and women across the ages to study the “heavenly” virtues. His list include fides (faith), pudicitia (chastity), paciencia (endurance), mens humilis (humility), spes (hope), sobrietas (sobriety), ratio (reason), operatio (devotion), pax (peace), concordia (harmony), and sapientia (wisdom).
So then it’s simple. Use compassion and the virtues as your medicine. With this type of medicine the rules change. There’s no such thing as irresponsible, reckless usage. High doses are welcome. Dependency is encouraged. US vs. THEM wants to divide and conquer. Compassion leads us to the healing spiritual law of ONENESS: the realization that what happens to one of us happens to all of us.
