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  %STUCK DOUBLE BIND ADMIT MISTAKE EMBARRASS CHANGE 921222

     Often we get stuck in double bind situations when  we
do not feel free to admit that we have made a mistake. Our
community may not have given us the security needed for us
to feel free  to acknowledge our mistakes without fear  of
ridicule, punishment,  rejection,  and excommunication. We
may  feel it is safer to pretend no mistake has been  made
(and  so  repeat the mistake as if it was not a  mistake);
than it would be to acknowledge the mistake which has been
made (and so be free to avoid repeating the mistake).

     Communities through their leaders need to  learn  the
cost  to the  communities of NOT giving to members  of the
communities   the  security  (the  freedom  to  be  safely
vulnerable) which is  necessary for the community to learn
and  profit  from  the mistakes  of  the  members  of  the
community.   If  embarrassment,    ridicule,   punishment,
rejection  and excommunication   are  regarded  as  normal
sequels to mistakes; then members of the community and the
community  as a whole are  bound to be trapped  in  double
binds  wherein creative change  is apparently  impossible;
and mistakes and crises become a way of life.

     The  gift of security needs to be given very early in
life,   when  new members of the  community  are  new-born
infants  and  during  their  earliest  months.   Important
lessons   are  learned  for  life  during  those   months.
Attitudes are formed and set for life in response  to  how
we are treated,  handled, ignored, cared for,  used and/or
abused during our early months of life.  Those lessons are
not easily changed through  later teaching and experience,
for the early  lessons  are  to  us the definitions of the
nature  of  reality given to  us  in  powerful  non-verbal
languages.   Later verbal language is not powerful in  the
ways in which the non-verbal messages were delivered to us
as  infants by our parents and  members  of  our  extended
families.

     What  we  can  learn from  our  mistakes  as  adults,
depends  critically  upon  how  well we  were  given   the
gift  of security (the freedom to be safely vulnerable) as
infants.  The  future peace of the  world depends upon how
we  treat our  infants today.  That should be kept in mind
as  we  set  political  and  business  priorities  in  our
communities.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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