THE 8 PATHWAYS: PATHWAY 6
Violence
Violence tears and sometimes destroys the fabric of life, democracy, and family, leaving profound wounds. Those who commit violence are themselves damaged, desperate, ravenous, even vicious, with stories that reveal the path that led to their malice and hatred. Hermes’ Web and its tools illustrate these states of violence, articulate the back stories that need hearing, help delineate a path towards reconciliation regardless of the consequences the perpetrators must endure. Most violent acts are ego-dystonic: out of tune with a person’s professed value system. Work must be done to bring those values to the damaged psychological core and repair the foundation of the soul.
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Successful treatment requires an understanding of “the perpetrator self” – one of our core concepts. The perpetrator self is like the Herpes Virus – it can go dormant but can spring to life under stress with all its ugliness as well.
Domestic Violence
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Quick Overview: This monster represents the cycle where someone's own trauma turns into a need to make others suffer in turn. A stark visual for discussing intergenerational abuse and why some people can't tolerate others' happiness.
What happens when a traumatized person decides to create more trauma and torment anyone who crosses their path, just because life let them down!This monster does exactly that, sewing the heads of his victims onto his own body so he can continue tormenting them.It is a massive culmination of negative energy – powerful, scary, idiotic.But this exists in this world.There are soul-less beings who need to make others suffer to help compensate for their suffering, thereby perpetuating all that is wrong! They're only "happy" when others are as unhappy and miserable as they are.
In my experience, abusive parents often want everyone to be at least as miserable as they are. It bothers them deeply if someone is happier than they are. This can be true of those who abuse children too: seeing the joy in a child only reminds one who dead they are inside and the anger comes up. If you can make the child, the happy one, miserable, get them to cry, you can relax and forget about how dead you are inside. It’s weird, it’s complicated, but it’s about tormentation: how torment lives on and on and on unless someone breaks the cycle. Sometimes I think we have no idea how many people carry this anger gene inside them, how many feel jealous and angry when others are happy or satisfied with life. It’s just all so hidden that we easily miss it, but it can also be at the roots of movements where “brown shirts” start to dominate reality, a constant danger in the world, a virus that never seems to get extinguished.
Bullying
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Sex Offender TX
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Quick Overview: Part of the Silent Screamers set, this piece explores what happens in relationships built on a false, best-foot-forward facade — and the hunger for validation that never quite gets satisfied underneath. Useful for couples or individual work on authenticity and emotional withholding.
AMAZING TOY SETS
This collection of four exquisitely crafted toys, based on German films from 1920, capture the basic dynamics that lead to violence and addiction: the servant mentality, passive-aggressive patterns, trauma bonds, perpetration, ego-level ignorance of core-level pathology, and others!!
THE PERFECT SERVANT: NOSFERATU & RENFIELD
This is an incredible toy. I named it after the movie about a servant with Anthony Hopkins playing the lead role. Most of us humans try to put our best face forward in relationships, hiding the more troubling aspects of ourselves in order to attract others and establish long-term relationships. Unfortunately, when you present a somewhat false face or facade, the love you receive doesn’t fully reach your core as the core was withheld from the relationship. Also, a hunger often remains in people, a hunger for mirroring, which can range from the simple need for recognition to malignant/malevolent methods to meet those needs.
NOSFERATU ALONE
The vampire by itself offers huge possibilities for working with clients, as are outlined in the back-up/training materials you will get when you order this! The concept of mirroring is a huge part of the psychology of this character!! Also, see his description in other Catefories as well!
Quick Overview: A simple game repurposed to show clients how tangled and interdependent their issues really are — and why you can't tackle the biggest one first. Useful for planning treatment sequencing with offenders or clients with multiple, intertwined concerns.
Therapy with offenders and abusers can be very complex. There are a myriad of issues, all intertwined with each other, and all very sensitive and fragile. The wrong approach can generate reactivity, shut down the session, or alienate the client from all further work.
Using pickup stix can help demonstrate to a client how intertwined all the issues are and how you can't just work on all of them at once, or even the most important one first. You have to start with what is accessible, workable, perhaps not as threatening - something that won't bring the house down. Pick one stick or one color - do it before or after you throw the sticks - then notice all you have to move before you can get to that core issue. Going straight for it can bring down the house, so to speak. It has to be a strategy and one has to notice all the issues that come together to make one big issue - all the ingredients in the wicked stew!
Pick Up Stix make the dilemma clear and tangible - you can see it right in front of you. It makes total sense because most people played the game at sometime growing up, or at least watched someone playing it. They know it requires skill and patience, something traumatized people can have in short supply. But explaining it this way gives people an image they can conjure up when they're feeling impatient and wondering why it's taking so damned long!
Utilizing Pick Up Styx also brings to mind the concept Deus Absconditus—-the God hidden in the dung heap! Often, the most essential thing we need to address or figure out is the hardest one to get to, requiring the most work, embarrassment, and/or shame. The key to core-level change is often found where we least want to look!
Quick Overview: This figure represents raw, unfiltered sexual instinct — the "small brain" that can override judgment if left unintegrated. Useful for discussing sexual impulse control and the difference between healthy desire and acting without reflection.
1. THE TONGUE TOAD, TONGUE SNAKE & TONGUE LIZARD: This toy represents instinctual sexuality, devoid of its connection to ethics, morals or to the heart. The Toad is the “small brain” some refer to in men in general, and although small, it appears to take over from the “big brain” at times and leave a mess for the big brain to clean up. Erotic intelligence (EQ2— for connecting the two brains) is like emotional intelligence, but primarily about sexuality. It takes work to get the Toad integrated into one's life vs. a rogue character that can take over under the influence or possess one when one runs into their core whore and fails to resist.
The goal is to feel one's desires but still make an informed decision about human sexuality. Unfortunately, this toy is now illegal to manufacture because it's tongue can be swallowed by children. In addition, given they are made of petroleum, they tend to deteriorate over time, but one can't give Viagra to a toy toad!
Our guide, included with The Tongue Toad, includes many ideas about how to work with this toy in treatment or teaching individuals about responsible and ethical sexuality.
THE TONGUE SNAKE: more reptilian and more manipulative - all those sweet and meaningless words trickling out of an insincere mouth and a deceptively-inclined brain.
THE TONGUE LIZARD: Even more reptilian and primitive - coming out of that oldest part of the brain stem with no cognitive dissonances to worry about because there’s no cognition - only pure instinct. It also doesn’t go trough stages of development like the toad/frog does!
THE TOAD & BRAIN: squeeze the rubber brain and voila (with a little help from you), the tongue comes out of the Toad. They say men can’t run both brains at the same time, at least without some training and relational self-awareness. When a person can run both brains at the same time, they have heart, they have EQ2 (emotional intelligence in the realm of sexuality and the erotic, i.e., erotic intelligence). Their sexuality can ultimately be fun, joyous and ethical, all at the same time!
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