Hi Werner, and welcome!
I found your posts very interesting, and thought your insights into what happens to people (on both end of the conversation) when there is the seduction by a charismatic leader were very powerful. I agree with you -- often, this becomes damaging, even devastating, for both the leaders and the followers, especially when neither one can see the pitfalls that can emerge in that move. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and all that!
I also very much appreciate your compassion about people who are angry and hurting as they emerge from a painful situation like that, and understand that finding their way back to themselves is a process.
But, I think that compassion is here, in a very particular way.
One of the things I love the most about this forum (and there are many things I love about it!) is that we are continually challenged by our founders/moderators and each other to treat one another in the way we are trying to treat our horses --with the same kind of commitment to listening and respect.
With that in mind, I've been thinking about how I might respond to a horse who is angry and hurt. (I have a horse who came to me this way, so this is practical versus hypothetical.) What I found worked with him was to respect and acknowledge his pain, but to use my energy try to show him a different way, one of love and mutual respect and opening. Has he forgotten the part of his life that was miserable? I don't think so, and I doubt he ever will. But he is learning that isn't the reality he's in now, and is accordingly learning that he can respond to me and the world around him differently.
I think the same is true for people. Of course we need to process our hurt when we are injured emotionally, but healing starts when we can begin to understand that while that hurt won't be erased from our experience, we can enfold it into how we move forward and use it to help us understand ourselves and the world around us. I have a doctorate in cultural mythology and depth psychology (working from the ideas of Jung, Hillman, Frohm, and others), and this is very much in line with a soul-based approach to psychology.
I've seen a number of people here challenged, gently and respectfully, towards making this move (and I'd include myself in that group!)
. I've never seen anyone's pain dismissed, ever!, but the message is consistently to do a few things.
First, as Bianca and our other moderators have done here in this thread, to say "if you have a truth to share, understand it's your truth, not necessarily truth for everyone." This is a very important move, psychologically, for it frees us up to grapple with our hurts personally, rather than, like a horse with a strong fight response, lash out at those around us, and thereby continuing the cycle of hurting. So -- when I, for example, have complained about what other people have said and done with respect to me and my horses, I have been challenged to first think about it in terms of how that's impacted me, and then challenged to think about how I can move past it. Blanket "this is wrong or bad" statements about anything aren't what is being worked towards here -- it ultimately doesn't feel helpful.
The second message is to challenge (again, gently) people to start to think about what they can do differently -- again, this is very much in line with how, in my understanding, people interact with their horses here. It is not about dominating someone other than ourselves, ever, and telling them what to do -- but instead is a move into co-creation. Anger may spur creativity, but if we stay in anger, there is no creativity, if that makes sense.
I think that our moderators are very clear about this dynamic for several reasons. First, there is a deep philosophical belief and praxis here that we are all on our own paths -- and we while can learn from one another in a whole variety of ways, no one owns our path but ourselves. What is right for one person and her/his horses may not be right for someone else.
This is, to me, as revolutionary as anything this forum is doing, because it is so dramatically different from most of the horse community, where dominance in training ideology is as common as dominance over horses.
Second, after watching and being a part of the dynamics of this group for six months now, I feel that our moderators have made a very personal and passionate commitment to this forum teaching this sense of nonjudgmental openness through how the forum itself operates. How can any of us talk with honor about building a relationship that isn't based on dominance and/or judgment with our horses if we don't do our best to echo that here?
Third, I think that our moderators are very aware that what AND is working for is something that a lot of people in the horse community globally have a lot of suspicion/uncertainty about. One of the ways that AND can protect itself from attack is by never attacking anyone else. We can look carefully, and make our own assessments, but we don't condemn others, particularly in broad sweeping statements -- and ultimately, our energies are mostly spent investing in our own journeys and supporting others here on theirs. (You'll see as you read here that it's very rare for someone to say "do it this way." Instead, you'll almost always see people say, "here's something that worked for me." A subtle difference in language, but a huge difference in approach.)
I've found that this approach is valid in my own life, working with my horses at a commercial boarding facility where I am definitely the odd woman out in terms of approaches to horses! The work I'm doing with my horses flies in the face of most of the conventional wisdom of other riders and trainers in my community. I could either spend my time trying to convince them that they are wrong and I am right and/or worrying about defending my "rightness", or I can spend my time working with my horses in the way that I believe and see is working for us. While it was a struggle for me at first, I've chosen to do the latter.
I'm finding that by doing this, three interesting things happen: first, the opinions of others have become much less important to me as I step with more confidence onto my own path for my own journey; second, by not casting myself in a contentious, argumentative position with people who do things differently than I do, the negative comments have dissipated -- in part because people don't have anything to push against; and third, because there isn't a lot of combative energy around this, many of the people who are watching us have become intrigued with what we're doing, and have felt it safe to come and ask questions and learn about this approach.
I love this! As I work to be as soft and open with the people at my barn as I am trying to be with my horses, people respond in the same way -- by being curious and interested and willing to think about and try new things.
Lastly, as others have acknowledged, a community is a fragile thing -- I think this is especially true of online communities, because of the strange combination of intimacy and anonymity that they afford. Many of us come here in part because this is a haven from the harshness of much of the rest of the world, and I deeply admire our moderators' unflagging work to ensure that it doesn't dissolve into the kind of "hit and run" dynamic of many online fora. They've got a particular challenge with that currently, as it is growing so fast!
Werner, I hope that you'll stick around and post more -- I'm very intrigued by how you think!
And Donald, I hope you will stick around as well -- I'd love to hear more about how you work and play with your horses.
All the best,
Leigh