Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

Fear of intimacy

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They are wounded.

Keep this in mind when you see or experience people — or yourself — hiding or running from real intimacy in a relationship.

I am not talking solely about physical intimacy or love-making intimacy. I say love-making intimacy because people have been having sex for years without an iota of emotional and spiritual intimacy to be seen for miles. Physical intimacy, holding hands, holding each other, cuddling, simply touching, can be a steep climb for the badly wounded. Love-making intimacy, even steeper.

Avoiding intimacy takes many forms. One of the more common is when people enter into relationships with partners who are either unable or unwilling to be intimate. At times, this allows the partner seeking intimacy to both bemoan the absence of intimacy on the one hand without ever having to  be intimate on the other. Choosing to be with someone who can’t be intimate can be a way of avoiding intimacy in and of itself. This does not mean either person is aware of the intimacy-avoiding pattern they’re trapped in.

If emotional and spiritual intimacy were physical beings the amount of intimacy being lost could fill the Grand Canyon on a daily basis.

There are real reasons deserving of the deepest respect people fear intimacy. Almost without exception the fear revolves around the following truth. At some point in time, usually in childhood, but not exclusively so, you were in some way taught that being who really really are was dangerous. Emotionally, physically, or sexually dangerous. Someone you loved with all your heart died. You were abused physically, emotionally, spiritually, sexually. Somehow, through no fault of your own (even if you are still making the mistake of holding yourself responsible (You’re not!)), you came to believe truly being yourself with someone else was dangerous.

For an array of reasons, I believed it was dangerous for me to be myself with someone for years. For me, getting free of this fear began with two understandings. First, getting free of this fear meant getting free of my history. Second, who deserves to be in control of my decision making? Me or my history?  I pick me.

Talking about the fear with someone is not only an immense help, it is necessary. Talk to someone: a psychotherapist, a member of clergy, a close friend. Now, for those who believe asking for help is an act of weakness, let me ask you something. If it is an act of weakness to ask for help, then why is it so hard to do? After all, if it was an act of weakness, asking for help would be easy. And, it’s not so much that I think each of us need the help. I think we damn well deserve it. Why? Because you deserve to get free of your history’s decision-making power. Promise.

Open doors

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You can open the door to your life to someone with the genuine hope they will enter your life. But, while the instinct to urge someone to explore the offer of friendship, the chance to fall in love chance, the chance to reconnect by, say, healing a wounded bond, can be a muscular one to say the least, it is an instinct better left untouched.

In the first place, if someone enters your life, you’re better off – and so are they – knowing they’ve done so because they really wanted to. Not because you’ve offered up an effective sales pitch of some kind. You want someone to come into your life under their own steam.  

When you’ve opened the door to someone you want to be able to say: I’ve done my part. Your part is all you can do and all you should do. There are a plethora of reasons people don’t walk through an open door: fear of intimacy, guilt, fear of getting hurt, they simply don’t like you, difficulty trusting you are who you say you are,  dishonest lifestyles (some people are not who you think they are), and so on.

For the door to be open to my life one is wise not to enter unless honesty and kindness and two of their tenets. Also, my private life must be a peaceful place. Ain’t no room for emotional or physical violence. This is not to say one can’t angry. Anger is emotion. Violence is behavior. Two vastly different things. The thing is, I do enough battling on the advocacy front, dealing with people (I used the word loosely in this instance) who see people with disabilities as little more than revenue streams. These people are able to sleep well at night knowing they either author, co-author and or carry out positions that will destroy peoples lives and sometimes put those lives at risk. Evil people, in my book.

After all this you might wonder what on earth would possess you to open a door to someone in the first place. Good news. If you do, and if you stay loyal to self, the relationships that can and at times do blossom as a result make all the effort, and, yes, risk taking, worth it. At least that’s my opinion. If I have to walk away, disengage as it were, or in some instances, close the door, as long as I can say and believe I’ve done my part, all is well.


If you love…

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I had an ocean-wide crush on Julie Andrews when I was a boy and it was all for naught. You don’t get to choose who you fall in love with and, sadly dammit,  you don’t get to choose who falls in love with you. You do, however, get to choose how you respond to either reality. When two people realize they have  fallen in love with each other, the choices are relatively clear, if they are honest.

When one person falls in love with someone who has not responded in kind, the choices are again relatively clear, if honesty is the guide, though not always easy. But, perhaps, easier, though not pain free, if the love you feel is in fact, genuine. You cannot and and should not look to impose your will, to manipulate the other person into feeling the same way you do. The results of such an effort are never healthy. This last is not my instinct in the least.  I want and deserve to know someone loves me freely and truly.  Period. End of story.

There is another element to love, real love, as far as I’m concerned, that doesn’t seem to get the notice it deserves. Kindness. I don’t know how on earth you can love anyone without kindness being present. You don’t have to abandon loyalty to self to be kind. And, part of kindness, part of being kind, is supporting the other person’s right to be who they are safely and happily in life, regardless of your specific role in the person’s life.

The task is to find a way to love the person that is healthy for them and for you. There are times when the healthiest choice is to disengage from them. However, there are times when loving human connections find ways of flourishing, if they are given honest emotional soil from which to grow. Love can cause many beautiful relationships to bloom into beautiful “flowers.” Any angst you may feel at not always being able to choose the “flower” fades over time, if you really loved the person in the first place.

 

 

NY State Dept. of Health’s manipulation and deceit

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Manipulative and deceitful behavior by New York State Department of Health officials Mark Kissinger and David Hoffman will help you understand why the Center for Public Integrity recently gave New York a D-minus in a recent ranking of states and corruption.

I’ll get to the above referenced behavior in just a second. First, some background.

Governor Cuomo’s DOH seems determined to destroy the lives of thousands by ending the state’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver – established by the governor’s father, Mario Cuomo – and the Nursing Home Transition and Diversion Waiver by forcing waiver recipients into managed care.

Waivers provide services that both allow residents to remain in or return to the community as well as grow their independence as much as they can.

Now, Hoffman and Kissinger have been hosting a series of workshops they say are designed to make the transition run smoothly.  With only a few exceptions, the DOH workshop membership largely made of those who, whether they’ll admit it on the record or not,  are all for the DOH’s brutal transition plan.

That waiver recipients and their families and along with honest waiver providers have made it clear the waivers need to be protected has, so far, had little effect. That nearly all the witnesses at a an October 8 public hearing hosted by the Assembly Health Committee, Mental Health & Developmental Disability Committee, and Task Force on People with Disabilities warned the state’s plan would have catastrophic results, has not dissuaded the governor, or the DOH, or the many pawns in the DOH work group in the least.

Manipulation and deceit

I recently attended one of the DOH work group meetings. They are public meetings and members of the public, like me, can attend. When the public was asked to comment, some of us did.  A couple of weeks ago I sent Kissinger an email asking him to please send me a listing of who was on the DOH Workgroup. He forwarded the request to Hoffman, and then, Hoffman emailed me the list.

To my surprise, I and other members of the public were listed as members of the work group! Wrong. I emailed Hoffman and asked him of the mistake, pointing out that you can’t list members of the public as being members of the work group because it’s not true. And, they did it without asking permission.

I figured Hoffman (the DOH) would recognize the mistake and correct it. Wrong again.

When Hoffman responded he wrote. “Everyone in attendance is welcome to participate in comments and questions (as you saw) and so are included in the listing.” In other words, if you are a member of the public, and during the public comment portion of the agenda, say something, we’re going to list you as a member of the work group and we are going to do it without your permission.

Subsequent emails to Hoffman and Kissinger asking them to stop this deceit have resulted in a response the DOH has honed to perfection. Silence.

Now that I think of it, the Center for Public Integrity was generous when it gave New York a D-minus. Hell, I think giving  New York an F would be generous.

 

 

 

 

My days filled with tears

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I’ve done more crying over the last week or two than I have in many years, a reality that doesn’t worry me in the least, but, until very recently, it confused me because I couldn’t figure out why they hell I was crying. I don’t mind my emotional life experience. I do like to understand it. Especially since this recent stint of tearfalls began right after getting great news.

Watch, I’ll show you.

  • The Kahrmann Advocacy Coalition application for pro bono legal services filed with a group that will wed us to a top law firm has been accepted.  Good news. As a result, KAC is on its way to becoming a 501c3 nonprofit company. Very good news.
    • This means KAC will be able to file legal actions against some who are denying the rights of people with brain injury disabilities in New York State. Good news
    • It means we will be even more adept at uncovering and exposing various forms of corruption (which includes exposing those whose allegiance to the rights of individuals with brain injuries is lip service and lip service only). More good news.
    • It means we will be able to advocate for more people and in doing so, hopefully, make their lives a better place to be.  Really good news.
    • It means the waters will become more treacherous for those who oppress the rights of brain injury survivors, often by treating them as if they are nothing but revenue streams.  Very good news.

With all this good news, why the crying?

Let me again assure you I have no problems with the fact I’ve been crying a lot. No embarrassment and no worries that it means something has gone wrong with me. I know some have been convinced or have convinced themselves crying is an act of weakness. I would say to them, if crying is an act of weakness, why is it so hard for you to do it?

I want to understand, not avoid my my emotional experience in life. So, I reached out to my old therapist, an extraordinary man, Bill Buse. If anyone could help me track down the reason for my tears, he could. He did. I can’t tell my father and my mother. I can’t tell my family because I’ve not had an active family life since I was 16. That I can’t tell them drenches me in sadness.

And so, the tears. Now that I understand them, I am very grateful for them. Every one of them is testimony to the depth of my love for my parents, my sister, my family. Every single one of reflects how great it is that KAC will soon be a more powerful advocate than it already is. This would make my parents and my family very happy, and, if you’ll allow the “little boy” to peek out from behind his history, proud of me.