I made my decision last night watching the debates. I have been pro Edwards and continue to be.  But one thing I know for sure now, is that I am not going to vote for Obama. Obama is talented, smart and I think a wonderful fresh voice for america. I think he should be president one day.  I am so glad that he is running and that we have him on our side.

That said, I am very concerned about his approach to be a "uniter" at a time, when I have never been more certain that we need a "fighter".  First let me say, that I am not a "fighter". In general and most of the time Obama's style would be exactly what I would want to see in a candidate.

I work as a therapist with survivors of child hood trauma who have personality disorders.  I love these folks. In my work we do a type of therapy meant to counter cognitive distortions, emotional disregulation and something called hostile attribution bias.

Cognitive distortions are the negative things we tell ourselves about the world that create misery and pain.(sometimes they make us happy for awhile) Emotional disregulation, is getting disregulated in such a way that we make our decisions based on feelings and sometimes ignore facts. Hostile attribution bias (HAB) happens when we have been traumatized and have a negative view of people and the world. So we think that when the neighbor says "wow, you look like an eskimo in that big coat", "my neighbor just called me a fat eskimo".  ARGH.

I grew up in a white collar home.  My mom was the daughter of a wealthy doctor.  There were no blue collar uncles or aunts.  I took this type of work for granted for most of my life.  In my family you were to grow up and go to college. I always thought that was the "hardest path".  Today I have two master's degree's, but a whole new appreciation for blue collar professions, the unions, and construction. Follow me over the fold to read observations from a white collar girl marrying into a blue collar world.

Here's some stuff I didn't know about:

I think the world is seperated by those who think that changes in life should come from kicking ass and those of us who face reality by recognizing what we can control and what we cannot. It seems to me that this is what seperates the liberal from the right winger.  My neighbor is an evangelical, we walk together every day, and she hates her inlaws and she hates her husband. She if full of judgement and recrimination and she wants badly to make these folks see their sinful ways.  She believes she is right, thinks she can control the behavior of others, and will punish them with judgment and recrimination to make the changes come.  Me, the sinful liberal. I just love her. I also love my inlaws and my husband. Follow me over the fold for a discussion about power over, and the lesson that Jesus, Mahatma Ghandi, Buddha, and Martin Luther King demonstrated so courageously for us.  

Okay, I am a therapist.  I work with abused and invalidated people who have become grown ups with personality disorders and mental illness.  The majority of my clients were both physically and sexually abused as children. When I work with these people the one thing that works is to validate the truth. All mental illness has some distortion of truth.  All violence is about distortions of truth, except where the violence is used to save lives that are in imminent danger. Imminence is the concept that makes the use of violence valid and distinguishes wars that are based on fears instead of reality.