History is repeating itself,
Because only the people are dying...
Not the conflicts and the pain!

Thank You for Loving Me!
The Psychology of Abandonment, Healing, and Loving
© By: J. Ray Rice, M.S.W., A.C.S.W.

We continue to ignore the root of our social problems
Only reacting to the symptoms,
Thus, the problems continue until they destroy us
And if we wait long enough they can destroy all of us.

In May of 1997, I was an invited presenter to the 5th Annual International Conference on Conflict Resolution in St. Petersburg, Russia. The title of my seminar...Please Let the People Live and Let the Conflicts Die, is the ending words of Thank You for Loving Me.

Think about it! When we have conflicts they don't die, because the issues remain unresolved or short-sighted. We must always remember that when you resolve one problem you create another. The only way we are going to let the people live and the conflicts die is to stop killing people and resolving the issues we are fighting about.

All communications, interactions, policies, laws, and relationships produce abandonment issues and events. Abandonment issues and events have been present since the beginning of mankind and will always be present, because humankind operate off of abandonment issues. Even our pets, animals in the wild or those that live on the ice experience abandonment. Our planet is going though it now and we will follow with abandonment events from the planet changing climates.

We, as individuals, families, communities, and nations of the world, are failing to recognize the gravity and effects that unresolved abandonment issues cause. Unless we have a paradigm shift in our thinking and understanding of human behavior and take responsibility for the way we conduct our personal affairs and actions, we will continue to: 1) reject our children for selfish and misconceived notions of human behavior; 2) destroy our families; 3) kill each other; and 4) ourselves. Doing so only blocks our knowledge and our ability to resolve issues of abandonment that are destroying us as individuals, families, communities, and nations.

Acknowledge The Effects of Unresolved Abandonment Issues

• Wars
• Conflicts
• Ethnic Cleansing
• Prejudice
• Leaders of nations killing their own citizens
• People killing each other
• The hurting of innocent children
• Failed relationships
• Failed marriages
• Failed businesses
• A increase in the divorce rate
• More children coming from broken home
• More children in foster-care
• More children in detention
• More teenagers running away
• Crime
• Gangs
• Murders
• Serial Killers
• Mental Illness
• Rapes
• Child abuse
• Sex abuse
• Spouse abuse
• The break-up of the family
• An increase in teenage pregnancy
• An increase of teens being preyed on by adult males
• An increase of teens being preyed on by adult females
• Stealing
• Personality disorders
• Offset of disease and illness
• People fighting
• People going to prison, again and again
• Cheating on our mates
• Having children and not paying child support
• Having children without the benefit of marriage
• Abortions
• The spread of STD's
• Having multi-partners in relationships
• Having multi-sexual partners
• Suicides
• Self-mutilation behaviors
• Over-eating
• Starvation
• Inhumane treatment of humans
• Inhumane treatment of animals

Address The Causes of Unresolved Abandonment Issues

• Not knowing
• Not caring, because no one cared for you
• Lack of financial resources to address the ills of society
• Not wanting to do the right thing because you do not want to held accountable
• Not wanting to do the right thing because you will have to care about others
• Not wanting to invest the time and money in people
• All of the behaviors listed in...Acknowledge The Effects of Unresolved Abandonment Issues
  

Unless We Have A Paradigm Shift

• We face a nuclear nightmare
  • We will continue to kill one another
  • We will continue to kill ourselves
  • We continue to destroy our most valuable resources...our people and our environment

What We Need to Do!

• Assist people to understand the effects of unresolved abandonment issues
• Provide "corrective learning experience" so people can heal and relate corrective to one another
• Train professionals to understand the symptoms of unresolved abandonment issues and to stop reacting to them
• Require that all treatment team members under-go therapy themselves to resolve their own unresolved abandonment issues
• Provide and encourage people to seek therapy for their unresolved abandonment issues
• Teach teachers group work methodology so we reduce the failure rate (drop-out rate) in our education systems
• Place a Social Worker in all schools (K-College) at a ratio of one Social Work to every 40 student so they can address the mental health needs of the students in these learning environments
• Increase the number of Mental Health Professionals to treat society
• Open up more Mental Health Centers in every community
• Provide the funds for the treatment of individuals, families, and groups

In the summer of 1989 I was an exchange Social Work to Sweden. I went there for the purpose of understanding how the Swedes treated their youth without a juvenile justice system. What I found out made sense. The Swedes developed with the mind set that it is in everyone best interest if they looked out for everyone. If you child got in trouble with the law you would receive a phone call telling you of the offense and the scheduling of the whole family going into the hospital to understand what was going wrong within your family. They treated the family and resolved the issues that one member was acting-out in the community. The outcome was that there was no need for a juvenile justice system to address the symptoms of the problem.