When we live in the prison of judgment, we don’t just victimize others. We victimize ourselves.
Alex was on a journey toward self-compassion when we met. She showed me the tattoo on her arm. RAGE, it said. And then below, LOVE.
“That’s how I grew up,” she said. “My dad was rage. My mom was love.”
Her father was a police officer who raised her and her brother in a climate of wipe that look off your face; don’t be a burden; show no emotion; act like you’re fine; mistakes aren’t allowed. He often came home charged up about work, and Alex learned early to retreat to her room when his anger started to boil.
“I always thought it was my fault,” she told me. “I didn’t know what he was so upset about. No one ever told me, ‘This isn’t about you. You didn’t do anything wrong.’ I grew up thinking I was the one who made him angry, that there was something wrong with me.”
This sense of blame and judgment became so internalized that as an adult she was afraid to ask a store clerk to retrieve an item from a high shelf.
“I was sure they’d think, ‘What an idiot.’ ”
Alcohol provided temporary relief from her inhibitions, worry, and fear. Until she ended up in rehab.
When I spoke to Alex, she’d been sober for thirteen years and had recently left the strenuous emergency dispatcher job she’d worked at for more than twenty years, which was difficult to balance with the needs of her disabled daughter. This is a new theme in her life: to respond to herself with kindness.
And it’s a goal she feels is thwarted every time she is with her family. While her mom embodies warmth, safety, kindness, and love, serving as the family peacekeeper, able to go with the flow, dropping everything to be there for her kids and grandkids, making even a routine family dinner feel as special as a holiday, Alex’s dad is still angry and brooding. She monitors him with a watchful eye, reading his behavior so she can protect herself.
On a recent camping trip with her parents, she noticed all the negative comments her dad made about other people.
“The people next door were packing up their campsite and my dad said, ‘This is my favorite part—when I watch the idiots try to figure out what they’re doing.’ That’s how I grew up. My father watching and laughing when people make mistakes. No wonder I used to assume people were thinking terrible things about me! No wonder I used to watch him for any sign of a twitch or grimace—a clue to do whatever I could to keep him from getting angry. He scared me my whole life.”
“The most obnoxious person is your best teacher,” I told her. “He teaches you what you don’t like in him, to examine in yourself. So how much time do you spend judging yourself? Scaring yourself?”
We looked at the ways she shut herself down. The Spanish class she wanted to take but didn’t dare sign up for, the gym she was afraid to join.
We’re all victims of victims. How far back do you want to go, searching for the source? It’s better to start with yourself.
A few months later, Alex shared that she’d worked up the courage and self-acceptance to register for the Spanish class and join the gym. “I’ve been welcomed with open arms,” she said. “They’ve even recruited me to compete with the women’s powerlifting team.”
When we relinquish our inner Nazi, we disarm the internal and external forces that have been holding us back.
“Half of you is your father,” I told Alex. “Throw white light his way. Wrap him up in white light.”
It’s what I learned in Auschwitz. If I tried to fight the guards, I’d be shot. If I tried to flee, I’d run into the barbed wire and be electrocuted. So I turned my hatred into pity. I chose to feel sorry for the guards. They’d been brainwashed. They’d had their innocence stolen. They came to Auschwitz to throw children into a gas chamber, thinking they were ridding the world from a cancer. They’d lost their freedom. I still had mine.
A few months after our visit to Lausanne, Audrey returned to the International Institute of Management Development to give a workshop with Andreas at the High Performance Leadership program.
“We grew up on opposite sides of the transmission line of secrets and horror,” Andreas said. Now they’re collaborating to help today’s business leaders focus on inner healing—to face the past and chart the course toward a better reality.
Among their students are Europeans, primarily from Germany and neighboring countries, who are in their thirties, forties, and fifties—a generation or two removed from WWII, curious about what happened in their families during the war. Other students are from places in Africa and southeastern Europe that have been ravaged by violence, who are figuring out how to face and release the tragedies their families have experienced—or inflicted. This workshop on inner healing, led by the daughter of a survivor and the grandson of a Nazi, is such a beautiful example of not only how to heal but why. For ourselves, and also for what our healing gives the world. For the new legacy we pass on.
“I used to participate in the silence about the past,” Audrey said. “I was afraid of the pain.” But she realized that in avoiding learning more she was
