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According to my thesaurus,
injunctions
are orders, commands, mandates, demands, dictates, prohibitions,
instructions, guidelines, prescriptions. Although
you’ve
probably not thought about it very much, if at all, much of our
valuing,
feeling, thinking, and doing is based directly upon the myriad
injunctions
we’ve heard, mostly while we were growing up. We’ve learned the
supposed
"rules of the road" regarding, among other things, what we should be
wanting,
feeling, appreciating, believing, thinking, and doing, who we should be
associating with, and how we should be dealing with our pain and
pleasure.
A small sample of these
injunctions
include:
-
Stop crying
or
I’ll give you something to cry about!
-
Don’t
be a sissy!
-
Stop acting
like a child!
-
Don’t
be such a coward!
-
Be a man!
Act like a man!
-
Respect
your elders!
-
No point
getting out the crying towel.
-
Conquer
your fear!
-
Stop feeling
sorry for yourself!
-
Don’t
dwell on what you don’t have.
-
Snap out
of it!
-
Grow up!
-
Dream
when you’re feeling blue.
-
When you
walk through a storm, keep your head up high and don’t be afraid of the
storm.
-
"... I whistle a happy tune / And ev'ry single time / The
happiness in the tune / Convinces me that I'm not afraid...."
(The King and I)
-
Keep your
chin up!
-
What good
would it do to get angry!
-
Get over
it!
-
Relax!
-
Put a
lid on it!
-
Keep your
hat on!
-
It takes
fewer muscles to smile than to frown.
-
Losers
let it happen; winners make it happen.
-
There’s
no such thing as failure.
-
You can
do whatever you want, if you just set your mind to it. "Anybody can be
free–all you have to do is want it bad enough."
(Andrew Cohen)
- It’s all
in your mind! It’s all in your head!
-
She broke
down and cried.
-
He was
out of control. He lost control.
-
"You only
make things worse by whining and grumbling."
(Hansel and Gretel, by Humperdinck)
- Hold your
tongue.
-
"Be cool!
-
Don’t
let them see you sweat.
-
Don’t
brag.
-
Be humble.
-
What are
little girls made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice...
-
What are
little boys made of? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
-
A stitch
in time saves nine.
-
If it’s
not broken, don’t fix it.
-
If you
can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
-
A spoonful
of sugar helps the medicine go down.
(Mary Poppins)
These constitute just the
tip of the
iceberg. We have thousands more well-known, oft-repeated, rarely
examined
injunctions which we’ve learned from everyone: parents, grandparents,
siblings
and other relatives, as well as neighbors, playmates, teachers and
clerics.
And, just as significantly, we’ve learned them from songs, movies,
books,
magazines, radio and television. (I’ve long believed that one of the
reasons
that so many people watch soap operas is to learn what’s "permissible."
Unfortunately, the soap operas are for the most part simply "carriers"
of injunctions.)
Sometimes, the injunctions
have been
directed towards us (Don’t talk with your mouth full!).
Sometimes,
they’ve been directed towards someone else–such as a sibling or a
playmate–but
we got the message. Sometimes they’ve been direct, but often
were
indirect,
delivered, for instance, via a disgusted look or a critical tone of
voice.
Sometimes they’ve been concrete (Say thank you.),
sometimes
vague
(Act like a lady!), and sometimes
metaphorical (Let sleeping
dogs lie! Don’t cry over spilt milk!).
Many of them warn us not
to do
certain things (Don’t say anything hurtful. Don’t talk with your
mouth
full.) Still others required that we do certain things (Cheer
up! Always look on the bright side. Be thankful for what you have. Be
polite.
Be nice! Be strong! Put your best foot forward. Get a grip on yourself!
Control yourself!)
Many injunctions are useful (Measure
twice, cut once), and may even be life-saving (Always wear your
seatbelt!). But it seems that more often they are disturbing. They
present "distorted maps" (A grown man shouldn‘t cry!)
and/or
make impossible demands (Don’t be afraid! Don’t be so
sensitive!)
and/or give disturbing advice (Control yourself! Turn
the other cheek)–which make our individual and collective journeys
considerably more difficult. For instance, obeying the injunction, "Don’t
wash your dirty linen in public" keeps me from reaching out to
others
for empathy, reassurance, and direction in dealing with what’s
distressing
me.
Injunctions given as though
it was more
important to obey them than to feel good about who we were, and those
given
as absolutes–as having no exceptions, were and are particularly
disturbing. (For most of us, for example, it’s probably not pleasant to
look at someone who’s talking with his or her mouth full. But is that
person’s
being obedient--that is, doing what I want--really more
important
than his or her comfort and self-esteem? And aren’t there exceptions?
For
instance, would I want my kid to swallow everything before warning me
that
something was on fire or that someone was about to attack me?)
The problem with absolute
injunctions,
beyond the fact that they can’t be appropriate for every situation, is
that I can never rest. The threat that love will be removed is ever
present
and I must always be on the alert, lest I fail to obey the injunction
and
be found to be unworthy of love.
Also disturbing are
injunctions that
encourage
disturbing acts (All’s fair in love and war!) and
injunctions
that contradict themselves (Rules are made to be broken),
as well as those that contradict other injunctions. (Fools
rush
in where angels fear to tread calls for caution, whereas
God helps
those who help themselves calls for forwardness.)
Injunctions often include a
further,
ulterior
injunction–a disturbing "between the lines" message that the
injunctions
are self-evident and are not to be questioned. The big problem here is
that even though the injunctions were frequently bad advice (or good
advice
in one setting, but bad in others), or impossible to follow, we were
given
them as demands rather than suggestions or guidelines, and our failure
to obey them was then often punishable by harm or disapproval. We were
thereby caught in a double-bind. To follow inappropriate injunctions
would
do us harm; not to obey them would risk the loss of others’ care.
Such disapprovals generally
left us
believing that it was we who were difficult,
disappointing,
and deficient and that therefore everyone else was going to judge us
the
same way. This rendered us unable to realize, for instance, that others
can and do find us worthy of love even though some (e.g., our parents)
seemed to have found us lacking.
A particularly disturbing
aspect of
metaphorical injunctions is the unexamined acceptance of the underlying
metaphor as reality. If, for example, someone is described as "having"
"feelings," what is implied–and rarely questioned–is that "feelings"
are
"things" which we "have" and which, if unpleasant, ought to be gotten
rid
of. Similarly, if we are described as being "too sensitive" (a
pejorative
description--nobody says this about us when we’re feeling good), the
implicit
injunction is that we ought to get rid of intensely
distressing
feeling lest–again (inaccurately) implied–we will break down and lose
control.
The inference is that being emotional is losing control and
that
it is bad to lose control. Beyond the inference that not "breaking
down,"
(or being "out of control," or "losing control) would be a good thing
is
the inference that we actually can accomplish this.
This point of view is
reinforced by
numerous song lyrics, such as "I whistle a happy tune and the happiness
in the tune convinces me that I’m not afraid," "Smile though your heart
is aching, smile even though it’ breaking." "Let a smile be your
umbrella
on a rainy, rainy day," Bing Crosby singing, "The future’s brighter
when
hearts are lighter, " Anna (Anna and the King of Siam) singing
"Don’t
cry young lovers, wherever you are" or, more recently, the Academy
Award
winning "Don’t Worry, Be Happy." How well we have accepted these
impossible
injunctions. (Lest you deny that you are influenced by injunctions, I
suggest
that it’s worth your while to take the time to check it out before you
dismiss it out of hand.)
It seems to me that as
clearly labeled
guidelines, injunctions are useful and even necessary tools; but as
demands
or prohibitions (which essentially conceal the self of the demander),
they
are destructive. Such attempts to control--to get someone to do or say
or not do or say something--ultimately exacts quite a large price. We
resent
such coercions, which inevitably damage our self-esteem, inhibit our
ability
to act assertively and creatively in dealing with life’s exigencies,
and
disturb our relationships.
By the way, all’s not
fair in love and war.
©1998
Stephen
E. Linn, Ph.D. • Empowering People
 
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