The Anti-Trap

It’s a trap, this ANTI thing. Anti-whaling, Anti-abortion, Anti-gays, Anti-homophobes, and the list goes on an on. Competing political parties can score political points and label you without policy of your own, if you are just “anti” too often.

The trouble with being anti something is two-fold. First you become less able to BE something in your own right as your focus is on trying not to be what you hate. Secondly you can fall into what I call the Anti-Trap - actually becoming that which you tried to avoid, despite your best efforts not to.

This is way more than just an encouragement to think positively about a situation. It is a real trap that can catch us out and derail us from our true potential.

The first stage in the Anti-Trap is that there is a point of pain. Someone will cause another person pain, usually a parent, sometimes a teacher, employer or perhaps a trusted friend. From this painful experience the wounded person will respond with words similar to:

“I’ll never be like that!” Another version may be “I’ll never DO that!”

I see it a lot in dealing with alcoholism. I’m sure there are studies and research and boffins very clever people who know it all more than me, who can pull up statistics to prove this or otherwise, but I’ve noticed the Anti-Trap in lots of situations.

It’s typically the challenge that the child of an alcoholic faces. Suffering through abuse, or missed opportunity, or non-existent relationships, there is often so much deep pain with such a messed up understanding of themselves, that their whole life focus is spent on avoiding the evils that their parent(s) got caught up in.

The second stage in the Anti-Trap is that is that the deep determination to be anti, is denied, or suppressed or rationalised. It seems perfectly right or natural to the person suffering the pain, so it becomes an accepted part of life. Normalisation of the anti-[whatever] is the dangerous phase.

The next stage in the Anti-Trap is that the resulting tension within, creates the same set of circumstances that caused the original pain for the person who caused pain to the victim in the first place. This then sets up the victim badly, ready for a repeat performance of the negative or painful behaviour.

The last stage in the Anti-Trap is that despite their own best intentions, they end up (in say the case of alcoholism) drinking to cope with the inner stress they have created for themselves. They may instead take on other behaviour to excess such as work (and becoming an workaholic), or sexual immorality (and moving into prostitution), or using drugs (and forming drug addictions) or indeed any other negative behaviour.

In the case of political movements and social matters, I quite often see a bitterness and anger in lobby groups and social engineers that usually stems from deep pain. Sure, there are always exceptions, but many times I see the loudest anti-protesters caught up in the same excesses that they want to fight against.

Take for a moment the women’s liberation movement a few years ago that screamed out for so-called equality and freedom from oppression. The loudest voices consisted of bitter and angry women out to”get” men. They got caught up in their anger, which they viewed as normal. The Anti-Trap was sprung, and they became the very thing they experienced their own hurt from.

Things are definitely not right in the world. None of us get a good clean whack at life. We’ve all got some issues to deal with and work through, especially with our parents and what they did, or did not do right. It’s rare that I meet people who totally rave about their upbringing, and who their parents were, and I see parenting failures as one of the biggest causes of the Anti-Trap.

The Ten Commandments are really interesting in that while they are basically instructions to us, telling us what to do and how to live, the only one that contains a promise relates to this very subject - dealing with our parents.

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee
Exodus 20:12

There’s a challenge - and a promise.

It’s not easy to deal with pain. Of course it is healthy to avoid repeat performances of the unsavoury stuff, and it is wise to learn from our parents’ mistakes, but when the determination to be ANTI something is out of control, the Anti-Trap catches us, causing more big-time disasters.

It is the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way to deal with pain positively but naturally.