Bullying: Yes, it’s real, and yes, you have ultimate power over bullies.

In the past couple days, in the course of my reading on Professional Nursing Development & other healthcare related topics, I’ve also read about forgiveness.

Nurse bullying is a real thing. It’s tragic, of course, that it exists, but it does exist, and is probably more common than some imagine.

So we’ve moved from forgiveness to bullying, eh?

No… not really.

Here’s why not.

Bullying is never acceptable behavior.

Bullying, of course, is threatening and intimidating behavior used as a manipulative technique by someone who wants to force themselves, their ways, or opinions, on another person. And because Nursing is an exceedingly Female-dominated profession, that means that for the most part, Females are the ones doing bullying in Nurse bullying cases & scenarios.

And to be certain, bullying can occur in any human relationship, personal or business-to-business – it isn’t limited to the schoolyard.

Here’s where the forgiveness part comes in handy.

Our internal response to bullying is

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How can you know if you’re in an Emotionally Abusive Relationship?

Just because there’s no physical violence, does that mean a relationship isn’t abusive?

No.

The adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees” is particularly true in emotionally abusive relationships, and it’s not uncommon for men and women in them to be unable to identify the relationship as being abusive.

Why is that?

It goes back to 1973 and an unsuccessful bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden in which two perpetrators – both repeat offender prisoners – took four hostages, three women and one man. Over the six days they were held, the hostages began to identify and sympathize with their captors.

Hostages in the Norrmalmstorg Kreditbanken bank vault, Stockholm, Sweden. The 1973 robbery gave rise to the term “Stockholm Syndrome” which characterized a scenario in which captives sympathized with their captors.

As the standoff was ending, police called for the hostages to come out first, but the four captives – who protected their abductors to the very end – refused. One female hostage, 23-year old Kristin Enmark, called out, “No, Jan and Clark go first—you’ll gun them down if we do! We want to leave with the robber!”

When police seized the gunmen, two female hostages cried sympathetically, “Don’t hurt them – they didn’t harm us!”

When interviewed by investigators and others following the crisis’ conclusion, the hostages reported fearing Law Enforcement Officers’ rescue effort attempts, and felt their captors were protecting them from harm. The bonds formed during that stand-off had become so strong that there were reports of one female hostage who had been engaged to be married to one of the kidnappers – which was later discovered to be false, though it is true that one hostage developed a Legal Defense Fund to help pay the perpetrators’ criminal defense costs.

Researcher Ian K.Mackenzie wrote
in “Journal For Police Crisis Negotiations”
that Stockholm Syndrome consisted of:
“strong emotional ties that develop between two persons
where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.”

Psychological researchers utilizing the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System (HOBAS) – the only entity that compiles national statistics on crisis incidents (hostage, barricade, and/or suicide) which are used in research and decision making – found that

Is Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore Sexually Repressed?

“…it’s about sexual preference.”

In an interview  broadcast Thursday morning, February 12, 2015, with CNN’s “New Day” co-host Chris Cuomo, Alabama State Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore FINALLY told the truth.

In his view, Marriage Equality under the law in Alabama is NOT the issue under discussion.

When pressed by host Cuomo, Moore said, “It’s about sexual preference overcoming an institution which has existed in our state, in our United States, for centuries, and I think it’s wrong.”

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Jester Roy Moore

Clearly, Chief Jester Moore doesn’t “prefer” those with Same Sex Attraction, and by his own confession, seeks to intrude upon their private lives. That is, he seeks to tell others what they should (or should not) do in their own privacy. Why he has such an excessive interest in them is indeed quizzical, if not outright disturbing.

There continues to be a disturbing dichotomy in Alabama law, which,

On the Importance of Human Dignity (wherein I attempt an explanation of why we’re in this mess)

It’s 2011 – very nearly 2012 – and the world seems in an uproar.

The Greek/Euro banking/debt crisis looms. The American banking/debt crisis looms larger yet.

Unemployment is at an all-time high in the United States and abroad. The Arab Spring uprising has deposed dictators in Egypt, Libya and the Middle East. Terror and anti-terror wars in Pakistan, Afghanistan & Iraq have gone on for very nearly a decade.

And the stateside Occupy Wall Street movement has become an international phenomenon with sit-ins/camp-outs/protests/demonstrations in Canada, and other nations, while general labor strikes in London have been, or will be ongoing amidst riotous demonstrations and worldwide unrest which have the potential to destroy any nation’s status quo.

Climatological changes never before witnessed have the scientific community hotly debating whether such changes are cyclical, or whether they’re induced. All the while, the polar ice caps continue a highly-documented and steady erosion by melting directly underneath an ever-increasing hole in the ozone layer – which layer protects the Earth from harmful solar radiation.

Earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan and Southeast Asia – brought about by deep sub-oceanic earthquakes – have destroyed nations’ shore lines and cities in the Far East and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and droughts have wreaked havoc at home in the U.S. and abroad.

And fracking – the geological practice of rupturing the Earth very deeply to force out petroleum – is rapidly becoming a commonplace practice in oil exploration efforts in the United States – which practice will doubtlessly spread worldwide.

The increasing democratization of the world enabled by the Internet and social networking tools – among them the almost ubiquitous smartphone – have brought

On the interpretation of a dream

For many years, I have studied dreams. And, as a part of that ongoing study, I have recorded my own dreams and “worked” them. That is, I have pondered the symbolic elements of the dream to use as a guide to my understanding of the events in my waking life.

To be certain, dreams are a fantastical world, where the realities of life are surreal, where the laws of physics, of cause and effect, are not merely suspended, but are often elastic or even absent.

As a Christian, I remain fully convinced that