Honouring a desperation of cures.
Our prisons are overflowing with cases of outrageous mistaken-self-identity because most crimes are but a “desperation of cures!”
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In truth, most offenders are more scared of what will happen if they don’t commit their crime, than if they do.
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What is more, it can be reasonably said that each of us has an emotional-loyalty toward our coping strategies because they are meant to protect us - even if that strategy (and loyalty) were attached way back in our inexperienced childhood choices (or when a trauma has understandably reduced our choices to that of an inexperienced child).
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Never the less, one of the main reasons why a person can feel so
passionately loyal to any coping strategy - even a dangerous one - is because s/he feels that the coping strategy is a form of self-protection, and therefore - it feels somehow, right.
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Yet, surprisingly, and what may seem like contra-intuitively; it is far better to treat your emotional loyalty/duty towards a dangerous coping strategy, with honour, rather than with disgrace.
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Or, more appropriately, the honour due to a loyal, but shell-shocked (by life) soldier; whose duty to serve and protect you has become like a health and safety decree gone completely insane!
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The Old Soldier Exercise:
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Firstly: Choose an object to be a symbol of your chosen crime or wrongdoing. It can be any every-day thing really; it’s whatever you choose to be a physical symbol of your crime/wrongdoing (or shell-shocked soldier). Now, choose a place; such as a mantle shelf, drawer etc. where you keep things of sentimental or honoured value - and then respectfully place your shell-shocked soldier on or in that chosen place, and leave it there.
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From now on, whenever you get any sort of memory, fantasy or urge about a criminal or wrongful coping strategy, visualize replacing it with the memory of the “shell-shocked soldier” being placed in his or her rightful position - which is alongside the other things in your life that have also earned a place of honour - yet, you no longer feel duty bound to carry around in your everyday life – let alone to obey his or her shell-shocked orders.