Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D. is author of the New York Times best-seller When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, and 7 other books on animals and their emotions. On this fabulous show we explore the incredible world of animal emotions and what animals have to teach us humans about emotions! Hear stories of animals appreciating beauty, showing compassion and exhibiting joy–and why it is that scientists have over the years preferred to believe that animals don’t have emotions. You’ll want to get your own copies of Dr. Masson’s books, if only to read the stories to the children and adults you love.

Dr. Janelle Barlow  President of Time Management International-US, author and Professional Speaker Dr. Janelle Barlow revisits the concept of A Complaint is a Gift, her book in which she utilizes the (usually negative!) emotions of customers as material for improving businesses!  Janelle has studied the most successful large businesses in the world, finding those that use Complaints to improve their service and business, and those that fail miserably.  Weaving research studies, practical experience and business acumen together, Dr. Barlow leads you to a fuller understanding (and use) of complaints–a practice that can be used on the job and at home!

Imagine being able to find purpose and meaning when you are confronted with a life-threatening illness. Bolen affirms that the price of going into the scary places…is high, but worth it. We will all face health crises (our own and those of others). We have a choice: bury our heads in the sand or travel to the underworld by probing, listening and connecting to what we know in our bones. This is the “stuff” of this remarkable program.Awe Regarding Matters That Are Greater Than We Can Know!
The most ancient myth of Inanna and Eriskigal form the backdrop for the split many of us feel when we begin to deal with the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. The superficial things important in regular life give way to the questions of “what am I here for?” and “what really matters?” The myth of Inanna and Eriskigal gets repeated in us, and between us, which is what Dr. Bolen describes for us.

Is It True That Suffering Should Not Happen To Me?
How we respond, emotionally and psychologically, to a threat to our human existence, can open us up to great growth–perhaps to healing–or close us down. Opening your emotions opens you. Dr. Bolen describes anger, rage, pain and hostility as “blocks,” that keep us from healing unless we open to them and move through them. Listen as she describes us as “spiritual beings on a human path.” Hear her description of what happened to people who experienced unconditional love as they were taken in by Mother Teresa’s clinic in Calcutta.

Altruism Can Boost Our Long-Term Survival!
Dr. Bolen shares a study done at Stanford which revealed that working in Sacred Circles (which have a sacred center and where people “share the journey”) can extend life, in fact allow the “hopeless” to recover. “At our core, we humans have a generous spirit of service to others,” she tells us. Dr. Bolen shares what motivated her to re-release Close to the Bone.

Segment 1: Ancient Myths Repeated In Us Dr. Bolen cites ancient myths of descent (through abduction) into the underworld as being symbolic of life-threatening illness. She talks about the opportunity this provides for us to connect to our own soul, and how to use this opportunity to our greatest advantage.

Segment 2: Suffering Should Not Happen To Me We’re diagnosed with cancer or are in a terrible accident. We suffer. Should this suffering be happening to us? How we respond makes all the difference regarding survival, growth and peace in our hearts, says Dr. Bolen. Listen to her explanation.

Segment 3: Long-term Survival and Altruism Whenever we encounter life-threatening illness, we become pilgrims, exploring new territory. At our core, says Dr. Bolen, we humans have a spirit of service to others. We can take advantage of this spirit, both for our world, among people, and for ourselves. She has ideas for how this can be done.

Why did I want my child to have her father? Because I knew how important both parents are to a child. My own father was absent for the first three years of my life, due to the Second World War. When he returned, he took me away from my birth mother (the conditions were horrible and unworkable for me there). I never saw her again in my life. To my knowledge, both are now deceased.

So, while I was angry with my first husband for his abandonment of us, I still worked hard for him and our daughter to have every opportunity to have a relationship together. It worked. She’s in her mid-thirties; and they have a relationship. She also has a good relationship with her husband, which is part of that same issue.

I remember being upset with her father about the time our daughter was 10 years old. She looked me sternly in the eye and said: “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told my Dad. I know you feel angry toward him, but he’s my Dad. I love him. When you say not-nice things about this person I love, it hurts me. Please stop doing that!” It was a powerful lesson, for which I am most grateful.

In recent years there has been a strong emphasis during divorce of one parent being the “custodial parent,” and the other the “non-custodial.” In a great majority of cases, mothers have been the “custodials” and father’s the “non-custodials,” usually meaning that fathers are given “visitation” on weekends and dinner dates once during the week. In the words of our daughter, “not having fathers has hurt” the children involved.

Now PBS has come out with a program we all need to watch. It had its first showing in Boston this week. Kids & Divorce: For Better or Worse was created and aired in response to a strong campaign mounted by the so-called “Father’s Rights” groups. It was created to “balance” a film aired by PBS last October, Breaking the Silence: Children of Divorce, it placed strong emphasis on the issues of domestic violence. The Father’s groups complained because the mother most focused on in the film herself had convictions for child abuse, yet was portrayed in the film as beleagured and deserving as a custodial parent. With Kids and Divorce, PBS made good on its promise to present the views “opposing” those of the first film.

This is a big step for fathers in this country, who are too often portrayed as “deadbeat,” “absent,” and “uninvolved.” Most fathers want to be none of those things; most do whatever they can to stay involved and love their children, now knowing what our daughter knew 25 years ago: “When you are not-nice to someone I love, it hurts me.”

A frequent repeat guest on Sally, Geraldo, Gordon, Montel, Maury, Ricki, and on radio and in print, Randy has been a family counselor since 1985. Married over 30 years, and with two adult children, she is also a lawyer, world traveler, and Mrs. Pennsylvania America 1993, 2nd Runner-Up. Randy’s common-sense, loving and comprehensive approach for raising children through all their “stages” has earned her this praise: “The best book we’ve ever seen on parent-child interactons.” (Denise Breton & Christopher Largent, authors of The Paradigm Conspirancy).

Segment 1: Success for Parents and Children
What IS success when it comes to parenting? Randy talks about the tasks of the parent-child relationship, in addition to talking about helping children settle in productively for the new school year. She lists the 7 “secrets” and shares what new parents need to know to start off on the right foot, and what established parents need to know if they got off onto the wrong foot!

Segment 2: Listening Supports Emotional Development
Outside of basic care, most of what parents do with their children involves communication. Listening is a vital part of that communication, and can lead to non-harmonious or harmonious relating, depending upon how effectively parents listen. Randy asserts that due to the hurry, guilt and other “interferences” of modern life, parents usually don’t listen “all the way,” leading children to act out, because they don’t have a safe place to feel. Hear her explain how to use the basic emotions in your listening: bad, mad, sad and glad!

Segment 3: Health and Nutrition in Families
Randy contends that nutrition and basic needs may be more important in parenting than they were 30 years ago, when she first became interested. Modern children don’t get enough sleep, creating a number of other “spinoff” problems. She says that modeling is the key to helping our children learn. Don’t miss her ideas on working with television, internet, and other boundary-setting issues as she discusses the parents’ “job to protect.”

Everything in life offers a lesson, you say? What’s the possible lesson of “happy slapping?”

For me, it has to do with empathy, and how much of it people don’t have today. This no doubt varies from one group to another, and from one country to another, but our news media has for quite some time been reporting on heinous and senseless murders, torture, kidnapping, various forms of “rage,” etc. that reflect a lack of empathy. In my observation, there has been a marked decrease in our “empathy quotient;” any my Energy Sapping theory points to the reason why. Lifestyle manipulators are incapable of empathy.

“Happy Slapping,” and other reports of lack of empathy from one human toward another, directs our attention to what we are not teaching our children. Empathy has room to grow and expand when we help children leave childish, manipulative ways behind and move into responsible maturity. In my observation, huge numbers of parents are not doing that. “Energy Sapping” (manipulation) is normal. Every child who is born must “use” others as its “energy broker” in order to survive, not having the body or brain development to do so on his or her own. The infant needs the “energy broker;” without one, she or he will die. Yet, we define maturity as being able to “stand on one’s own two feet,” i.e., taking responsibility. The mature person has “wants,” but doe not “need” others to be or behave certain ways in order to survive. Clearly, a changeover must occur, wherein a child begins to take increasing amounts of responsibility, developing less and less “need” that “energy brokers” must fill. As part of that process, people lose their need to control others. They also develop their ability to see others as separate from themselves, something that is vital for empathy. The changeover begins at 3-4 years of age. If it isn’t completed, the person grows an adult body, but emotionally stays below age 3-4. Look around you!

If this “natural” process is thwarted or not completed, these “grown up bodies containing infantile emotional selves” people become what I term “Lifestyle Energy Sappers.” These are individuals whose primary way of relating in the world is manipulative. Such individuals are incapable of empathy, cannot see others separate from themselves, are afraid to be alone (even using cell phones, televisions, radio, iPods, etc. to keep in constant contact with something outside of themselves so they don’t feel alone at all), are controlling, see others as “bad, wrong or crazy,” need things to be done the way they need them done, etc. Such an individual is a shell of who s/he could be in life. Look around you. Our world is chock full of such people. When we, ourselves, are Energy Sappers, we tend to attract others who are also Energy Vampires.

How bleak and depressing is this? Not at all if you understand that the world is a giant school, that developing such individuals and having them devise such clear examples of their lack of empathy as “Happy Slapping” shows us draws our attention to what needs to be changed, AND we work to change it, then the situation is not bleak or depressing at all. Challenging, instead. Yet, we must develop the habit of asking ourselves: “What could [I] possibly learn from this?” Once we get a glimpse of the lesson, we can step up and learn it. After all, in this Giant School of life, the MINUTE we learn the lesson, we are finished with it. “Happy Slapping” could end as quickly as it has begun.

This is a curious, but exceptionally helpful, feature of learning life lessons. It does several things: 1) it allows you to see the lesson and the “syndrome” in “living color,” 2) it gives perspective on the issue; 3) it affirms that you have learned the lesson (you can’t see it like this if you haven’t completed your learning); 4) it allows you be empathetic with the other person, perhaps even to help them out in learning that same lesson, and 5) it allows you to feel gratitude for having been able to learn that lesson. (Do remember the principle that Help that isn’t asked for, never works, which means don’t help unless you’ve been asked or gotten agreement for the help.)

When my daughter was younger, she had a lot of difficulty speaking up on her own behalf. Her big concern was that in speaking up, she would inadvertently or directly hurt someone else. She was most willing to “do without” than to take the risk of hurting others, of taking up too much space on this earth. As she and some friends negotiated a new living arrangement this week, she watched a friend go through the entire “scene” as she struggled to let the others know which room she’d prefer to have in the house they were renting together. The friend indicated that others would think she was “bitchy” because she asserted which room she wanted. Hooray for learning! My daughter was able to reassure her that “taking up space” in the world was something to which her friend was entitled, and that she, for one, was not thinking of her as “bitchy,” merely assertive! And the nicest part was that my daughter contacted me to tell me about what she had seen and said, thanking me for what I have taught her over the years, and giving me permission to use the story in my quest to teach this information to the world!

But that’s the way it works. “After the lesson,” we have an opportunity to view that lesson, in its entirety, in the life of someone else. And we can see it because we have finished it and are separated enough to have perspective, like viewing a vase of flowers where we have set it on a table. Over there. I see the entire picture. Wow, am I glad to be finished with that! And now I can see the struggle and what needs to be done to end the struggle! I see what needs to be learned. I feel the struggle, yet I can see it separate from me. And I can help that individual, if they wish it. And finally, I am so GRATEFUL to have had the lesson and, more importantly, to have learned it!

This “earth as giant school” plan is miraculous. It never ceases to amaze me.

Later, as he drove home, we continued our cell-phone conversation. I realized, as present and interested a single mother as I thought I was, how much I still never knew about my son’s experiences, even when he was in high school. I knew that in the sixth and seventh grade he had a nemesis, a boy in his class, who actually one day pushed him down while playing a game even though he was wearing a cast on one arm, breaking his other arm! They had finally worked it out, with a between-school-and-basketball fight that left my son with 8 bloody fingernail scrapes down the middle of his face and the other boy making a visit to the hospital to check out his damaged privates. I had talked with the headmaster of the school, asking for advice. Fighting, of course, wasn’t permitted. My son said to me “You know I am not a fighter. But I figured out that if I didn’t stand up for myself, he was going to keep coming after me.” I could make no argument to this. “Then, once I hit him, I realized that I had never expected him to fight back. That’s when he dug his fingernails into me. Once that happened, I thought I better really stand up for myself, otherwise he’d come back at me with a vengeance. That’s when I went after him and kicked him where it hurt.” That was such a fascinating incident, which happened the year following the broken arms, when both boys were 13. The assistant headmaster called the boys in for a meeting. My son took responsibility, saying that he had been in a fight, that he is not the “fighting type” and that he had no intention of fighting again, and was willing to take his consequences. The other boy took no responsibility, saying my son was the total culprit. To my surprise, the other boy received a rather severe consequence. They gave my son no consequence at all. Clearly, honesty and responsibility were being rewarded. It was a powerful lesson for him.

But to get back to last night, it brought us to the conversation about why so many crazy things are happening, such as his experience of last night. He said: “It seems like people have no empathy! They don’t seem to get or care about what is happening for the other person.” To which I responded, “It’s been my experience that when people are what I call ‘lifestyle manipulators,’ they are incapable of empathy! I believe we have an epidemic of manipulation in our world today, hence also an epidemic of people without empathy.” “Precisely!” he responded. “How do we get rid of manipulation?”

“More to the point,” I told him, “is how do we help people to grow up! Lifestyle manipulators are stuck, emotionally, at age 4 or less. It isn’t that we get rid of manipulation, we must allow people to grow past the need for it. We’re all born manipulative. We’re supposed to grow out of it! Few seem to.” My son knows a lot about my manipulation theory, which I have taught to thousands of people and about which I have written a booklet (for sale on this web site in downloadable form!). He started using it, consciously, when he was six, when he realized another 6 year old who lived in our neighborhood was highly manipulative. I always felt like a swarm of locusts had come to our house when this child arrived! One day my son said to me, at age 6, “I’ve decided not to play with him any more. I don’t like it when he manipulates me.” And he stuck to his decision.

The two key ingredients about manipulation we discussed last night are these: need versus want and facing aloneness. The lifestyle manipulator, not being grown up, “needs” others to bend to his will, do what s/he wants. The mature person wants things and behaviors from others, but realizes s/he will be all right if s/he doesn’t get what is requested, and moves on to create his/her life instead of attempting to control others to get what is perceived as “needed.” The other thing about manipulation is that lifestyle manipulators are terrified, deep down, to be alone. For most, even being alone an hour is too much. You can tell what an epidemic of manipulation we have by the number of people who listen to music, television, computer, do on-line chat and talk on the telephone, rather than take the risk of spending any time alone! Until we have the courage to face our own aloneness (and survive, which everyone I’ve known who tried it, did!), we continue to live as lifestyle manipulators. It is my fervent hope, as I work to go for the Quantum Leap in my work, that I can influence many people to free themselves of the need to manipulate (and in turn, be manipulated–it takes one to know one!). I don’t need it. But I do want it!