COPING SKILLS 101

Muzzammil Hassan, a Pakastani-born TV exec in NY has been accused of stabbing and then beheading his wife six days after she filed for divorce to gain some control of her own life.  One might drone on about his lacking in anger-management skills,  However, cultures differ and murder is acceptable in some areas of the world.  A sense of honor finds stoning to death acceptable.  After all, a 13 year old girl, raped in Somalia, was stoned to death with no consequences to the barbaric men who carried out the sentence. 

The major reason people violate other's boundaries, bully, abuse, and are so seemingly  unkind to others is that they are unable to identify what emotion they are feeling and lack the inner data bank of choices of behaviors with which to appropriately react..

In order to remedy this lack, a language of feelings has to be taught and recognized.  A mental list of possible coping mechanisms must be developed   For example, you might be very angry and use the expressions, "I could kill you" when you mean your anger is indescribable and you have translated it into an action.  However, rules of society and laws forbid such action.  This is the kind of situation anger-management classes, as with road rage, were set up to teach most effectively.

Teenagers often think they are in love but do not know what to do if that love is not returned.   Their love, in their eyes, is synonymous with possession and their ego cannot tolerate a rejection.  Yet they are too young and inexperienced in knowing how to cope with feelings they can't identify and relate to satisfactory behavioral responses.  .A 48 year old man was stoned to death in Somalia for adultery, buried to his chest, while the villagers were forced to watch.  It is hard to believe that civilization has lagged so far behind in some places while technology has advanced exponentially.

When immigrants from countries where such practices are tolerated or where  growing up was struggling for survival having viewed massacres, rape, and other atrocities to themselves or witnessed love ones., One must wonder what wed do to help such people when they come to live or go to school in the United States.  I recall as a child that my parents and some of their friends talked about becoming citizens.  One had to salute the flag and, in essence, pledge fealty to the laws of our country.  But the laws are so complex, how do we enforce that they are followed since they are so poorly understood.  There is current panic over a threat that Moslems are trying to turn the country over to Sharia law.

We still have African immigrants who want to continue the practice of female genital mutilation, clitorectomies.  The laissez-faire notion of 'when in Rome as the Romans do', or assuming people will learn by example, 'monkey see; monkey do' is sufficient.is inadequate assumption.  It is not a wonder, then, that we are shocked as the court was when a mother admitted to shooting her two daughters when she shot her husband and then turned the gun on herself (unsuccessful in committing suicide as her arms were too short for the shotgun, it only blew out her shoulder)..  Few could believe a mother would kill her children in cold blood and still be sane.  They couldn't wrap their heads around her having done it out of love.  She didn't want to leave them alone as orphans when she shot her husband due to her inability to cope with her own life, with his lack of caring, flagrant flaunting of girlfriends, and having spent her entire inheritance on his own education then refused to help her with hers..

We expect a lot from people who have no way of knowing what path to follow, what tools with which to cope, and somehow know societal expectations.