By Patricia Jones, Alliance Poverty Task Force
The mass shootings that are happening on a regular basis in America are a clear sign that there are mental health issues in our nation. Why would 18-year-olds use guns to shoot up school classrooms and grocery stores? Why do we have so much violence now?
I have been studying the book Emotional Poverty by Ruby Payne, whose company aha! Process created the Bridges Out of Poverty programs, and I have written about emotional poverty previously. Emotional poverty occurs when the brain is not regulated, the inner self is underdeveloped, there are no secure emotional attachments, and the environment reinforces the idea that a person is "less than" or "separate from" others.
Emotional poverty is not based on financial poverty. Certainly the tyranny of the moment, where a household cannot pay bills so must make difficult choices, creates a great deal of stress on adults and children. What else creates problems?
How about addiction - of anyone in the family? This might be a drug addiction or alcoholism. But it also might be a fixation on something else. How about addiction to porn? or video games? or other screen addictions? Screen addictions can happen to people of any age, and they affect everyone in the household.
Physical or mental illness in the family creates stress. The illness may be caused by an injury, bacteria or virus, or a biochemical imbalance, like diabetes. Biochemical issues may have more than physical components. They often affect thinking, emotions, and behaviors. Mental illness creates problems in a household. Someone in the family may have depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), or any of several disorders. Or there may be a personality disorder.
In her book, Payne says, "People with borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder often have these identifiers: very intelligent, very charming, but can change in a second to rage, anger, and alienation. Often there is an addiction involved. Individuals with borderline and/or narcissistic personality disorder are especially deficient in genuine feelings of sadness and mournful longing. The deficiency emerges as anger and resentment loaded with revengeful wishes rather than real sadness."
Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) can have a tremendous impact on future violence, both as victim and perpetrator. We'll talk more about these in a future column.
Parenting issues can create dysfunctional families. Family function is the extent to which the following five needs are met for children under the age of 18: material necessities, learning, self-respect, peer relationships, and harmony and stability. Family function is heavily impacted by two things: low income and high violence. When the family is not functioning, then
emotional damage is greater. It is critical for parents to set boundaries, limit choices, and have consequences for a child to learn internal self-regulation, necessary for adulthood.
Children who are not connected to a strong adult often experience emotional abuse or neglect. The child might constantly be criticized, humiliated, or unfavorably compared to others. Sometimes parents divorce and work hard to alienate a child from the other parent. Sometimes children have to take on the role of the parent in the household; maybe the parent has to hold down two jobs, is incarcerated, has physical or mental illness, or has an addiction problem. Emotional development is then subverted.
We see these problems, and many more, when we look at homes where there is emotional poverty. And there are many other causes of emotional poverty. We have been ignoring these problems for far too long, and now we are paying terrible consequences.