KEY TERMS DEFINED:
- DEFENSE: A useful way to think of a defense is that it is a psychic callous that people grow, or a shield that they unconsciously construct, to protect themselves from pain of being hurt again.
- Dynamics: A dynamic is a motivating or controlling force that operates in a person's life at an unconscious level.
- System: Through systems, people learn how to develop a predictable way of relating over time.
- Symptoms: A symptom is the observable manifestation of a defense (anxiety). This defense arises out of the fear that the pain generated from the exposure of the underlying problems of their intimate lives will leave them unprotected.
DEFENSIVE STYLES AND FEELING RESPONSES:
- Pervasive Denial: This style keeps the loss where it has always been: out of sight and out of mind. So whatever the specific manifestation, the message is, "I don't want to feel what I truly feel."
- Ambivalent Connection: People who experience poor or nonexistent relationships with their fathers are hungry for the affirmation, support, and affection they were not given.
- Displaced Anger: After sadness, anger is the most common and natural emotional response.
- Flat or Florid Feelings: This flatness has become a defensive style adopted as a hedge against feeling anything, for fear that any emotion will result in the old, raw wound resurfacing.
- Feeling Undeserving: People who don't feel worthy enough for their fathers to stay often develop calcified feelings of being undeserving. It is natural for children to blame themselves when deprived of a parent, particulary if it is a parent's choice and happens during the individual's egocentric years of childhood.
- Feeling Shame: Some children feel ashamed that their love was so inadequate that they were unable to keep their father's attention.
Having a heart for families, Faith Talk Ministries has implimented this program as a part of the Ministry. This will challenge incarcerated men to build a relationship with their children and families.
