Hi Again Ellie,

> the primal (which is a detoxification crisis) .......
> When OJ killed his wife (if he did), it was
> a vicarious detox crisis and while it was somewhat healing, if he had
> gotten his anger out at his mother instead, it would have been more
> healing.

I think what you're talking about here is habitual, addictive behaviors,
that get "stuck" repeating themselves over and over, because the person is
attempting to set up a situation where, if the circumstances were right
they would, in fact, have a "detox crisis," or get rid of all the pent-up
emotional tensions that are clogging up the gears, and they would then be
able to resume life functioning properly. What do I mean by the
circumstances being right?

I picture an early hunter-gatherer tribe, where, for whatever reason, one
member got scared out of their whit in an encounter with a gigantic
creature, and went a little nutso. Now he always acts nuts when certain
circumstances of life resemble a little too closely his frightening
experience - he seems to lose his mind and starts attacking members of his
own tribe - people he obviously loves and usually lives with cooperatively.

But the tribe knows what to do with this kind of problem. The next time
they can forsee an episode like this coming on, they surround him,
protecting him from either hurting himself or any other person, and they
chant a special chant that both encourages him to remember in clear detail
the horror of his encounter, face his demons head on; and yet at the same
time remind him that they are his brethren, and they live side-by-side with
him, love him, protect him, that he's most definately not AT ALL alone, and
that this is just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill scary encounter with a large
stinky gigantic creature, that happens every day, and that he is definately
totally capable of recovering from the fear of it and resuming functioning
as a responsible member of the tribe.

So he has a fit, a "detox crisis," shakes like a leaf, shakes his fist at
various members of his tribe pretending they're the beast (they laugh,
they've played this game many tiimes before and they're happy to oblige),
sweats up a storm, raises hell, cries a lot, storms around, and then after
a couple of hours of this just starts telling the story over and over and
yawning and looking sleepy, and gets bored, and then goes home to his wife
and bed.

He never mentions it again, except as an interesting thing that happened to
him once a long time ago.

He never tries to hurt anyone in his tribe again.

Love,  Liza


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[log in to unmask] (Liza May)