The Four Agreements for Advocates

Back in 1997 a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz was published that one would normally pass by as another piece of pop psychology written by a supposed Toltec to litter the “self-help” section of bookstores for a short period of time.  It would then disappear into the dusty back room of used book stores.  However, the wisdom between its pages was so simple and yet so profound that it continues to endure and influence lives eighteen years later.  Whatever the origins of the wisdom, it is hard to dispute the value of applying the Four Agreements in one’s personal and professional life.  I am going to attempt to take these agreements and apply them to the work that we do as advocates for domestic and sexual assault victims.

The Four Agreements are:

Be impeccable with your word;

Don’t take anything personally;

Don’t make assumptions; and

Always do your best.

The 1^st Agreement:  Be impeccable with your word

Ruiz defines the word impeccability as meaning “’without sin.  And sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself.  You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything.  When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.”  In addition we don’t use our words against others in the same way.  Criticizing, blaming, or gossiping about the people with whom we work (other advocates and/or survivors) is not honoring the agreement to be impeccable. 

Honoring our commitments is also considered to be a part of being impeccable in our word.  When we make a commitment to a survivor or a co-worker we must make sure that we are able to follow through on that commitment.  We should not make promises we can’t keep.  It is more honorable to say “no” that to make a promise that we eventually will have to break.  It is important that we be aware of our limitations and the scope of our services so that we do not make empty promises. 

The 2^nd Agreement: Don’t take anything personally

This seems to be one of the most difficult agreements for advocates, especially when they feel they are doing everything they can for someone and then the person becomes angry and seemingly ungrateful for what has been done for them.  Don Miguel Ruiz puts it very succinctly, “Nothing other people do is because of you.  It is because of them.”  So when someone is angry at you or if someone is talking bad about your agency recognize that it has more to do with them and how they are feeling than it does to do with you.  Especially if you have been keeping the 1^st agreement!  The agreements build on each other. 

The other side of this is that even when someone is saying wonderful things about you and telling you that you are the best advocate in the whole world and they could never have done it without you – well, don’t take it personally.  It is still about them and how they feel about themselves.  They feel great and the whole world feels wonderful.  Just reflect back to them what an awesome job they did and let it go.  We don’t need to fill our heads with a scrapbook of all the good things that people said about us.  It is about them. 

The 3^rd Agreement: Don’t make assumptions (or if you do, assume everyone is following the 4^th Agreement!)

Ruiz says “the way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions.  Make sure communication is clear.  If you don’t understand, ask.  Have the courage to ask questions until you are as clear as you can be.”  Often I find advocates making assumptions about how institutions should respond to domestic violence and how survivors should be responding to their circumstances.  This creates more drama and angst.  By asking questions of other service providers we can find out what their limitations are and maybe open communication enough to be able to find out what can be done within their system or create a relationship in which change can be created.  Assumptions build walls of misunderstanding.  By communicating we can tear down those walls.

When we work with survivors we often make assumptions about how they are feeling or what they are doing based on how we would feel or what we would do.  By asking questions we learn more, we find out with what barriers they are fighting, and we learn more about their inner strengths and capabilities.  We become more victim-center when we do not make assumptions.

The 4^th Agreement: Always do your best

Doing our best is what maintains our commitment to the first three agreements and keeps us focused.  Don Miguel Ruiz states:  Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less.  But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next (italics mine).  Everything is alive and change all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good.”  As I said above, it if we are going to assume anything about someone else, it is that they are also doing their best.

The level of our best is going to rely on self-care.  If we don’t take care of ourselves our best will not be very good and our ability to follow any of these agreements will be less than optimal.  When we find ourselves unable to follow through on our commitments, gossiping or blaming, taking things personally, or making assumptions, there is a good chance that our personal well of compassion has run dry because we haven’t maintained good positive self-care.  And, on the other hand, following the Four Agreements is a means of self-care that doesn’t require taking a day off or backing off on commitments.  Once we stop and take a breath, focus back on where we may not be keeping the agreements, we can then move forward with integrity and focus on victim-centered services.

Reflecting on Who We Are and How It Impacts Survivors

When providing trauma- informed services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence it important we ensure that we are doing whatever we can to keep from re-victimizing the survivor or engaging in behaviors that may be reminiscent of past abuse.  Through actively engaging in a reflective practice on our own and during supervision we may be able to recognize those conditions within ourselves that get in the way of being able to provide safe, empathetic, and empowering assistance.

We often talk about the experiences of survivors in a way that takes into account the trauma in their lives.  We ask “how do the effects of trauma get in the way or impact the person’s ability to be able to move forward?”  This practice of reflecting on the experience of the survivor can move an advocate from focusing on what is “wrong” with a person to recognizing the impact of trauma and finding ways to reduce the impact and/or engaging with the person in a way that empowers them to be able to move beyond the trauma.

Terri Pease, Ph.D., of the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma and Mental Health talks about reflective practice.  She quotes Jeree Pawl, past board president of Zero to Three, to remind us that “who we are is as important as what we do” in our relationships with survivors.  She stresses the importance of reflecting on the impact that survivors have on our lives and the history that we bring into our relationships with them. 

I am often called to provide insight into the actions of a woman in shelter or a woman who is seeking services from a court advocate.  The advocate wants me to explain what is happening with the woman from a trauma-informed standpoint and help her find something different to do to help.  Another step I like to take, though, is to ask “how is this interaction affecting you?”  In other words, can you take a moment to reflect on what may be coming up for you as you work with this survivor?  Many times the challenges of working with survivors can stir up some emotions that we may find difficult to keep from being reflected in our actions.

If the victim is particularly challenging and expresses herself with anger, an advocate may find that she resists working with the victim.  The victim may be engaging in some survival skills that are often labeled as lying, manipulating or attention seeking.  If an advocate can take a few moments on her own or in supervision to reflect on what this is bringing up for the advocate, then it may help to improve the relationship with the survivor.  For example, I know that due to my own past I have difficulty when I am in the presence of extreme anger that feels like it may be directed toward me.  Over the years I have learned to recognize when my own history is starting to blur my interactions and I, hopefully, am able to breathe my way through and not take the survivor’s anger personally.  Additionally, many advocates, including myself, feel helpless when they are unable to meet all the needs of the survivors.  This may feel like frustration with the survivor and it will be reflected in our interactions with her unless we realize that our helplessness has to do with the greater picture and our own fear of not being able to do enough. 

Advocates, in the face of tapped out services within their communities, often feel overwhelmed by the needs of the survivors and feel if they cannot meet them all then they are not good advocates.  Yes, it is hard when the needed services are not available, but we cannot do it all.  We do all that we can and at the end of the day we need to be able to take care of ourselves so that we don’t burn out and become frustrated with the women who are reaching out to us.  An awareness of who we are and what we bring to our work is critical to being able to sustain our relationships with survivors and to being able to be trauma-responsive.    

Painting by Richard Edward Miller

As Long As You Are Mobilized You Can’t Shut Down

I went to the 25^th Annual Psychological Trauma conference put on by the Trauma Justice Institute in Boston two weeks ago.  I wish I could report on everything that was presented but that would be impossible.  There were a lot of neuroscientists and chemists showing graphs and reading statistics and by the end of the second day of the three day conference a number of us were shuffling around looking brain dead.  It is a good thing we were still walking, though, because one of the important points I wrote down was “as long as you are mobilized, you can’t shut down.”

Stephen Porges said this when he was talking about the polyvagal response ( you can go here for a fairly clear explanation) and I was really struck by the statement.  He was trying to make clear the imperative for movement in times of stress in order to decrease the risk of dissociation (from zoning out to full blown shut down).  Biologically, our bodies need to move in order to regulate.  According to Dr. Porges, our system is constantly monitoring the environment to determine whether or not it is safe (more so for trauma survivors) and when the system is overwhelmed it shuts down.  Movement helps keep the system regulated.

As someone who has been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and who has developed an understanding of the effects of trauma on the body, I had developed a theory that the nervous system’s response to trauma was the cause of the fibromyalgia.  This theory was validated at the conference by Dr. Porges and there seems to now be more evidence being published.

According to Richard Boyd at http://www.energeticsinstitute.com.au/page/fibromyalgia.html “ Pain studies have shown that incomplete pain signals in the body can cause them to be re-sent and even amplified. Fibromyalgia sufferers appear to have a pain signaling problem that is of this nature. The Vagus nerves have been shown to have “communication problems” when traumatised. This is conjecture but a possible framework under which Fibromyalgia exists without showing causes and origins. It may turn out to be a nervous system “network” problem.”

So why am I bringing this to your attention?  As advocates we meet a lot of survivors who complain of pain issues and who also dissociate at various levels.  They are often highly medicated  and/or finding ways to retreat from the psychological and emotional pain that are non-productive and reduce physical movement.  The findings that I mention above bring home the point that any opportunity we can provide as domestic violence shelter advocates or as facilitators of support groups to get people up and moving can only increase survivors ability to manage their own trauma responses.  Yoga, tai chi, walking, bicycling, dancing, and swimming are just a few of the ways to help reduce the effects of stress.  If someone is in a lot of physical pain they may need to do gentle yoga or slow walking, but it is still movement. 

I would also, if you are able, take the opportunity to provide support while on a walk.  Is there someplace safe and quiet where you can meet a survivor where you can walk and talk at the same time?  When trying to help someone do an emotional safety plan for the weekend or after a court hearing, recommend movement even if it is just going home where it is safe and putting on some loud music and dancing around the house.

And finally, as advocates we are under a lot of stress.  We don’t even have to be meeting with survivors in order to be influenced by the trauma that they experience.  After attending sessions on child abuse and neglect and human trafficking at last week’s Attorney General’s conference, I needed to be outdoors and moving in order to rid myself of the after effects.  A walk in the woods or bicycling usually helps.  Movement has to be a part of our self care plan as well.

Practicing Non-Violence Toward Self - an excerpt from a piece by Phillip Moffitt

I read this  over the weekend and thought I would share portions of it with you as part of my short series on self-care.  The full piece can be found at http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/practicing-nonviolence-toward-self

Understanding Violence

Whenever I introduce the topic of violence against self in a Dharma talk, almost everyone squirms. No one wants to hear it. I will directly ask the question: Are you, in an obvious manner or in a series of subtle, covert actions, being violent with yourself? Usually people want to assure me that while they may work too hard at times, stay in an unhealthy relationship, eat too much, or sleep too little, they would not characterize their behavior as violent toward themselves. Yet, person after person, once they've closely examined their lives, experiences a moment of self-recognition that at first can be painful and embarrassing. This initial discomfort is often followed by a sense of liberation as new possibilities arise in their imaginations for how to live more peacefully.

Most people perpetrate this violence against self through mistakenly identifying with various thoughts that arise due to impersonal conditions coming together. The body and mind's well-being are the innocent victims. Each individual has a unique pattern, but the common ground is that you relate to yourself in a manner that results in your life being more emotionally or physically violent than it need be.

You may have limited your understanding of self-violence to physical abuse or other blatant self-destructive behavior that calls for a 12-step program. The word "violence" may sound too harsh to you, but its dictionary meaning is "an exertion of extreme force to cause injury or abuse in the form of distortion or infringement." The extreme force can be a mental act that then shows up in the body or an act that is done repeatedly to an extreme.

You can think of violence as any highly energetic form of relating to a person, including yourself, that is jarring, turbulent, and distorting. Can you identify any times in the last few days in which you treated yourself in a discordant, abrupt, or distorting manner?

The Trappist monk and spiritual author Thomas Merton once said, "To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times." Obviously Merton wasn't speaking about pathologically self-destructive behavior. Instead he was drawing our attention to the shadow side of normative, even seemingly positive, culturally approved behavior. He was referring to how we do great violence to ourselves simply in the manner in which we go about arranging our lives.

Gradually I've come to realize that violence against oneself is one of the great denials of our time. People are very willing to talk about the violence that the world does to them, but they're much less willing to own the violence that they do to themselves. Violence against self can most easily be recognized in your experience of the body in daily life. You already know the general health problems that come about because of stress, sleep deprivation, and constant strain. You may not identify them as examples of violence to self, but anytime you make yourself sick or dysfunctional, it is an act of violence for which you need to take responsibility. We all know people who are overworked or have too much stress, which causes problems with the digestive system, heart, or other parts of the body, but who never label their behavior as violence to the self. But is there any description that is more apt?

One of the yamas, or moral restraints, in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is ahimsa, the practice of nonviolence, and this includes nonviolence toward yourself. Of course, you may well want something in your life so much that you are willing to take a chance of hurting your body by driving it too hard. But usually a conscious, short-term exertion to reach a goal is not what causes violence to self. More often it is a matter of long-term disregard of the signals of imbalance. This disregard comes from repeatedly getting so caught in wanting or fearful mind-states that you're unable to reflect on your own behavior. You may have a surface-level awareness of the distress you are feeling in your body, but you don't sincerely respond to the discomfort. In such instances you are in a driven state, controlled by your mind's imaginary creations rather than your inner values.

Inner development and maturity come from acknowledging to yourself that you are being violent with a human being; the fact that you happen to be the human being who is being hurt does not change the truth of the violence. From a spiritual perspective, it is never right to hurt any human being; including yourself; for selfish reasons or because of sloppy attention to the consequences of your actions. Understanding this is your first step in practicing ahimsa toward yourself.

Taking Time Out

As the Thomas Merton quote points out, if you abuse your time, you are participating in violence against self. This may be in the form of overscheduling to the point that you rob yourself of the experience of being alive. Or it may be in the form of allocating your time in a manner that doesn't reflect your inner priorities. Both create a distortion or infringement of self through strain and turbulence. When you treat your time as though you are a machine; a doing machine; you are committing violence against the sacredness of life itself. Whenever I do Life Balance work with organizational leaders, I have them make a list of their values and prioritize them, then compare their priorities with how they actually spend their time. The disparity is usually shocking.

Another abuse of time that disturbs your well-being occurs if you succumb to the modern-day compulsion to avoid boredom at all costs. In our stimulation-based culture, there is near hysteria around constantly seeking fulfillment through activity, which leaves no time for the quietness of simply being present with yourself. Do you allow yourself time each day, or even weekly, to exist without an external purpose and without even background music or television? Empty time is vital to your well-being, and to deny yourself this nourishment is an act of violence.

You may ask why you continue to abuse your time and your body when you have the option to live more peacefully. Or you may say that you feel as though you have no choice but to be harsh toward yourself because your life situation is such a struggle. Under either circumstance you push the body and strain the mind violently because you are filled with the tension that comes with the feeling that there's not enough of something in your life, whether it's money, love, adventure, or confidence.

Feelings of inadequacy, vulnerability, longing, or not having enough are an inevitable part of the human experience. If you, like most people, have not found spiritual freedom, you cannot stop them from arising. But you can stop such feelings from controlling your life by changing how you perceive them. If you refuse to identify with these feelings, disown them as being neither you nor yours, thus seeing them simply as emotional states of mind that come and go, you will discover there is the possibility for some inner harmony even under difficult circumstances.

For instance, let's assume you cannot change your work schedule, and it seems so overwhelming to you that you regularly get very tense and anxious about it. You can experience the schedule as much less violent by not thinking about it in its entirety except when you are in planning mode. The rest of the time you just do what the plan calls for, concentrating on the task in front of you without adding the thought, "Here I am with all this work and so much more to do this week."

Said another way, don't make a panoramic movie out of your difficult schedule such that you are constantly seeing yourself doing all that has to be done, as if it were going to be done all at once. Instead just do what has to be done right now, for that's all you can do. It may sound like a simple thing to do, but it is very subtle and difficult, yet so liberating!

Another method you can use to cope with overscheduling is to notice each time you experience fear or wanting while thinking about all you have to do. Consciously label these feelings as fear and wanting in your mind and then see for yourself that they originate as impersonal mind-states, the way a storm forms due to weather conditions. The land that receives the storm does not own it, and the storm is not the land; it's just a storm, which due to its own characteristics can cause damage. So it is with the stormy situations in your life where there is a tendency to both deny and take ownership of fear or wanting. This misperception leads you to believe you should be able to control them, which in turn causes the physical contractions and the mental anguish that constitute violence to self.

Stopping the Violence

In seeking freedom from violence to self, practice noticing over and over again that you are constantly, and usually unconsciously, wanting things to be different than the way they are. You become a little dictator to yourself, sitting on a throne, arms crossed, pouting and demanding that things you like should stay the way they are forever and what you do not like should disappear immediately. This craving to hold on to what you like and to get rid of what you find difficult is considered the source of suffering in life and the origin of violence against self. By practicing living with things as they are, you will discover that while life may not be less painful, your experience of it is immeasurably better. Also, fully accepting what is true in the moment is the only firm place to begin to make changes in your life. Living in the moment is not a one-time commitment but something that has to be done again and again.

Nonviolence to self is a lifetime practice of which there are ever more subtle levels to discover. The more you are able to be with yourself in a nonviolent way, the less harm you will do to another. Be gentle with the body and mind; refuse to get caught in believing that things have to be a certain way in order for you to be happy.