Tag: psychology of killers

November 19, 2024- While it is true that many persons are happy and relieved to be divorced when the love and caring have ended with their spouse or partner. With that said, often forgotten in the equation are the children and their future relationships not only with both parents but with important and loved family members. Divorced parents need to never forget they divorced each other but the children have not divorced anyone and want a loving relationship with all family members. Partners who put the needs of their children ahead of themselves work together to make sure the children are able to have good loving relationships with both sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and other extended members of the family. Partners that do not do this too often do it out of anger at the ex, and use it as a form of punishment for them. When this occurs, the feelings and any trauma and sadness the children are experiencing due to the divorce is not being considered, and that is very inappropriate. In a divorce, part of the process needs to be not just how to settle their legal affairs but also what will happen to the children. The following are things couples need to do to best help the children adapt to the divorce and allow all family members the opportunity to give love and receive love from the children: 1. Accept your marriage did not work and is going to end. 2. Make every effort to try to at least get along with each other for the sake of the children. This may initially be very difficult, at least during the initial period of the divorce because of raw nerves and possible feelings of abandonment, betrayal and poor treatment. 3. Even if you have these bad feelings, it is important to try to get over them to the level you realize your children belong to both of you and it is best that they have loving and caring relatives that are available and desire to have a good relationship with them. 4. What is mentally healthy interaction with the two families needs to be worked out with appropriate rules and boundaries that are set up and everyone agrees. 5.I firmly believe each parent in the divorce needs to do all they can do to make the children’s lives be as stable as possible. This is certainly helped by allowing them to have all the love, affection and caring they can have from grandparents and other members of the extended family. 6. If the two of you find your anger and hurt are so strong you cannot effectively interact with each other and reset interactions your children have with your ex- partners’ family members, this is a time to recognize this is inappropriate behavior. 7. Seek the support of a therapist experienced in divorce and the aftermath trauma and anger who can help find ways to allow healthy interactions with the family members of the ex-spouse could be very helpful to both you and your children…The ability of children of divorce to have good relationships with families of both spouses is clearly a major area of concern in divorces that too often is not discussed before and after divorce or relationship breakup. For emphasis, we need to make sure our children have the opportunity to interact with all family members with the goal of having them be able to love who they choose to love and be loved by important family people in their lives.

October 22, 2024-

When it is right to feel bad about your behaviors

For those of you who know me or have followed my podcasts and writings over the years, you will know I strongly am opposed to persons having inappropriate guilt in the sense that it totally destroys a person’s ability to live effectively in the present, and thus there is no future. On the other hand, I strongly believe that if a person has behaved poorly to someone or a group, then it is the right thing to have legitimate

guilt, to accept responsibility, feel badly and make amends as best we can. If someone has done wrong, then feeling bad is appropriate. In this age of of what I call “feel gooditis”,people too often do not want to accept responsibility and would prefer to just overlook inappropriate behaviors,minimize them and let them go. It is important to deal with our feelings after we recognize that we behaved inappropriately and work this out in our mind that we are not going to do it again. it is often overlooked that when we do something inappropriate that we ought to feel bad about it and even more important than that, we must try to resolve the problem and let the person or group know we feel bad about what we did. it also is very important to not endlessly ruminate about these behaviors and cause ongoing negative guilt and even depression and poor self-esteem. The purpose is not to allow our inner critic to beat us up every day and ruin it. No,the goal is to honestly reflect on our inappropriate behaviors and try to understand why we did them and determine to not do them again. Obvious examples would be hurting someone’s feelings, lying , stealing, cheating others, slandering persons and their reputations, being dishonest and dishonorable in a relationship, putting people down with the goal of helping yourself or making yourself feel more powerful, and slowing down the progress of others for fear they will compete with us or we enjoy them in a subservient position. Something important not to overlook when we try to make things right is not to end up gaslighting the person and not being totally honest about how inappropriate our behaviors were when admitting that our intentions were not good. To be honest with yourself and the other person is critical to our making changes to self as we improve our character. It also is true that we may have hurt someone inappropriately but had no intention of doing it. Then it is worthwhile to indicate we feel bad for what happened, but had no intentions of doing it. When we do this, we do run the risk of the person not being willing to accept our honest apology. That is a risk we must take and something that needs to be done to in effect right the ship of our sense of right and wrong. Advice succinctly stated would be when making right when we have behaved inappropriately would include accepting the behavior was inappropriate,having appropriate guilt, determining not to do it again and making amends for what was done as best as possible. This is how to deal with appropriate guilt.

September 17, 2024- Having perspective on life as we live it is critical for our happiness. Many persons are overwhelmed with life as it occurs and never feel in control as they see it coming at them in a hundred different directions at a hundred miles an hour. The result is they cannot keep pace with their lives which produces anxiety and often depression. Simply defined, perspective is a way to look at your life to be able to cope with it and recognize our attitude has a lot to do with the level of happiness we will experience in our one time trip through it. We must learn how to deal with what life dishes up and cope with it to be as happy as possible. A person with a strong sense of spirituality often has perspective from the fact they realize they are leading a life that will end with eternity if their behaviors are consistent with their beliefs. For example, a Christian who believes in Christ has a roadmap to joyous eternity. Other religions offer similar beliefs. Secular humanists gain perspective by trying to figure out why they are on earth and what is their purpose. Many have the perspective that their purpose is to make the world a better place than the one they came into. Others gain perspective from failure.They are able to use it as a starting point and not an ending point for how their lives will proceed. As I have often stated before, great success can only be achieved when one has learned from failure how to be successful. Perspective also can be gained from the loss of loved ones who we had counted on during our lives. This would include parents, grandparents, mentors, or friends we have fortunately encountered along the road of life. Perspective can also come when we have gratitude for the period we had to share with these persons as we try to live consistent with the advice they gave us when they were alive and with us. Perspective can also be gained when a person tries in their mind to understand what advice these deceased significant persons would be giving them now with the problems and struggles in life that occur as they walk their road of life. Gratitude also gives perspective when one realizes how other persons have harder lives but live their lives with a positive attitude. When all is said and done,one’s perspective on life has much to do with whether a person will have a happy or unhappy life. Choosing a happy life is my advice!

September 6, 2024- Dr Braccio & Mike Austin discuss the recent school shooting in Georgia.