Therapy or Court?

Therapy or therapeutic settings can also heal flaws in our judicial system.

The judicial system largely does not allow survivors of abuse who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to actually suffer it in public during trials concerning abuse.  Church leaders and lawyers for churches in clergy abuse lawsuits as well as lawyers for abusive spouses in contested divorces often portray survivors as unstable people making false accusations.

But abuse makes one unstable.  Even people not suffering from symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder tend to feel angry when they hear themselves being lied about in court.  Add in a little PTSD and you get an angry and upset witness who does a lousy job by court standards of explaining their experiences.

This is the reason I prefer working with therapists.  Judges only see us for short periods of time, and a good attorney can be really skilled at confusing the truth in two or three hours.  Therapists see us over the long run and are more able to understand long terms trends and circumstances of behaviors.  Abusers can hide their bad behavior in an afternoon or two in court, but over the long run their conflict oriented behavior becomes obvious.

My dream of the future is to replace the courtroom with a system of Restorative Justice in which the focus is on healing wounds -- a system in which everyone plays a part in healing -- a system in which lawyers play only peripheral roles, a system in which judges to automatically rely on therapists and therapy to guide their decisions.  Until then you can resort to therapy yourself to guide your actions and coping strategies without a court order from a judge.