February 17, 2018
Note: The complete letter I
sent to ITAA officials, referred to in this article, is now added today at the
end of this piece.
Today marks two weeks, plus one day, since I responded, by email, to the Ethics Committee of the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), the professional credentialing association to which I made my ethics complaint.
I am feeling disheartened.Our exchanges to date include the following ..
January 9, 2018
Email post forwarded to me from ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs via San Francisco-based official of my initial contact.
Please tell the person to email us both directly BEFORE sending ANYTHING anywhere. This is primarily because before we receive or send details of potential complaints, we need to explain about needing assurances that any electronic correspondence will be treated with the utmost confidentially. Once we have a clear contract about this we will advise the person about the formal procedures to be followed.My response
J,
Thank you for getting this information to me.
Before I respond to this request, however, on how to proceed, please tell me who these people are. I have built up a degree of trust and safety with you as a result of how you have been so caring of me and supportive.
I am feeling very vulnerable regarding my Ethics complaint. It has taken a good bit of emotional fortitude for me to face what this is all about for me and to get all the pieces together for my documentation. They are all parts of my heart and soul as well as my many decades of professional training and experience.
Now you are forwarding this to me from totally unknown people. Additionally they are men. So I do not feel safe to just up and email them, especially about an issue having to so with male dominance and harm to me.
Even their request to you of what I should do next felt only lawyerly. Not one iota of care for the person who is me and almost adversarial; not at all what I NEED to do my part here.
All of a sudden, with this request\missive I feel my heart and soul and all I hold dear to be treated coldly like I am object. I am not able to proceed in this manner.
Please advise me, from your heart and soul as a woman along with your innate practicality and wisdom.
Right now I am feeling a bit like a rape victim that needs to "state her case" to a panel of police officers and judges, all male.
With gratitude,No more was heard from these officials other than “J” assuring me that they were fine men and that it was, now appropriate for her to “get out of the loop.”
Anastasia
Feeling blocked in my efforts to pursue my ethics complaint, I consulted my lawyer for guidance, informing “J” of my intent. On my end I am hoping that, even in this day and age of digitized everything there might be some small space for more of a touch of human connection here, especially in a delicate situation as this one.
Looking for options and win-win solutions, on January 11, I emailed the following, copied to the two ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs. (Complete text of my letter to follow, added on February 17. Scroll down to end of this article)
J,
I did consult with my lawyer as I indicated I would. The advice I received has led me to suggest that since I am not readily able to comply, as I will explain below, to the direct request made by the ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs, a reasonable counter suggestion might be agreeable and allow us to move forward on the matter at hand. I do hope this will be so!"J" acknowledged receipt of this missive. Nothing was heard from the ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs.
What is going on here?
I am asking an official ethics committee of a mental health-based organization to allow me to tell my story of sexual harassment by one of their top, long term credentialed therapists and trainers who retaliated against me for rebuffing him. I seek truth and reconciliation regarding the issue.
I enter the situation, anticipating caring, compassion, support and guidance to manage a long-buried occurrence of harassment, believing that this organization, the International Transactional Analysis Association, based on the I'm O.K., You're O.K. principles of TA architect, Eric Berne, M.D. must truly be one of the most amenable associations for that win-win way of interacting to be our outcome.
I have built my life and relationship principles and practices on these.
Might I be mistaken?
From the Ethics Committee I receive none of this, so far. Rather, what I receive feels adversarial. What to do? What to do?
Am I being rebuffed?
In the value system upon which I base my life, the notion that telling one’s story is an act of healing is included. And, is often the first important step in the process of truth and reconciliation.
Listening to such stories is an act of love, I believe. After a decades long career based on these principles, I don't know how to think differently, nor do I wish to, even in this age of the internet.
What is going on here?
Is my story to be disrespected/disregarded?
Am I worth that little? And, my well being, as well?
In the meantime, feeling disoriented by these occurrences added to the overwhelm of my recent surgery, I pledged to myself that I would lighten my load by not being attached to any particular outcome from these actions of mine. It is important, at least for another week or so, that I limit my heavy lifting. Instead, do my best to maintain serenity while I stay true to the values I cherish most.
I am including in this "no heavy lifting" practice, allowing myself to be easy about this ethics issue that is STRESSING ME OUT!
In this I am challenged.
More to come.
February 17, below added.
To: J, IBOC
CC. ...
Re: Ethics Complaint
Date: January 11, 2018
Dear J et al,
I did consult with my lawyer as I indicated I would. The advice I received has led me to suggest that since I am not readily able to comply, as I will explain below, to the direct request made by the ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs, a reasonable counter suggestion might be agreeable and allow us to move forward on the matter at hand. I do hope this will be so!
First allow me to stress that once I can feel safe and trusting of your Ethics Committee’s representatives -- and -- better informed, I will be available and eager to comply with your set procedures and standards. I am sure they are quite reasonable and will be amenable which we can confirm once we are able to get pass this initial impasse.
The stumbling block we seem to have here, which actually baffles me that it should exist, especially among trained mental health professionals, as I am assuming the Ethics Committee is made up of, is that I am unable to feel safe and trusting in the way I have been approached by your co-chairs.
There is nothing wrong or inappropriate in what anyone did. And I am quite sure there is nothing intended here of that nature; certainly nothing personal regarding the Ethics Co-Chairs. I feel quite certain all are of the highest integrity and intention and truly beautiful men.
Rather this is a circumstance that is situational, based solely in me, I believe, born of the PTSD with which my Ethics complaint is associated. Also, the fact that I have experienced other significant discounting over the years from ITAA males regarding respect of emotions and other sexual harassments, not to me but witnessed by me, probably adds to my heightened sensitivity here.
Beyond the situational, the difficulty may be as simple as the fact that I am not a person who ever makes relationship connections by the internet. Since both G and A are totally unknown to me; my not even knowing anything about them, their professional background or even where they live, for me it is as if you are demanding I communicate by email with strangers on a traumatic situation I have even kept hidden from myself for twenty-five years!
For me here, without facial expressions and voice tones, among other human cues, I might as well be relating to a robot. However, a robot is not one I would approach about the healing and reconciliation of a trauma.
Then, perhaps, my sensitivity is amplified by the fact that, given the neurological disability my eight years of blindness left me with (1998 – 2006), I become easily overwhelmed by incoming data, especially from the internet. To accommodate this limitation in me, I have a wonderful team of supporters who take up challenges for me when needed and transmit information to me in a modified way that I can manage at a relatively slower pace than most in today’s high tech world. As it stands now, after twelve years back to work after blindness, I can rarely even fill out everyday forms without assistance.
Added to these strictures is the fact that I am bringing to the Ethics Committee a serious sexual harassment and power abuse issue that, I believe, resulted in my leaving ITAA and losing out on my close to twenty-five years of training and supervision, on the way to becoming credentialed as a Teaching Member, in retaliation for my not succumbing to this harassment. All of which I had buried until last month. And, it gets worse beyond that with incidents of power abuse by male ITAA mentors, as far back as the mid-1970s, reinforcing a culture of dismissing male sexual aggression.
How much more charged could the situation be for me?
Out of all of this, I am most grateful that the recent Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood/Matt Lauer scandals and the #MeToo movement have made it possible for me, along with countless others, to come forward and give voice to these long held traumas that have robbed each of us of rights and pleasures innately ours.
The fact that I had buried and hidden the trauma of all of this for close to twenty-five years and more, up until last month, finding the documentation I wish to send quite by accident, has, quite naturally, surfaced forgotten traumatic memories and emotions for me. In this regard I am no different from countless other women, now coming forward. And, I am truly feeling the effects of this.
Thus I believe that the fact that I feel a need, perhaps even an exaggerated one, related to my Ethics complaint here, is not surprising. So my alternative is to request that I have some kind of initial reassuring personal contact, as I did have with Janet, at least by phone, to get me started with your Ethics process. In this way I believe I can connect with a person’s voice, if not the person themselves, so I can feel safe and trusting which should not be too much of a stretch.
People who are blind, or in my case have been blind for an extended time, often rely on voice sounds to manage their navigation through life.
To discount this level of PTSD response in me, as it stands now, is as if we are in some kind of massive “Why Don’t You, Yes But” game. Your team is saying “Why don’t you just be a good girl and do what we tell you?” while I keep saying “Yes but I don’t feel safe and trusting to do that.” Then we go on to get the expected outcome – “no win” and negative emotions. Not the best way to begin a a working relationship!
So the main issue here is that, exaggerated as it may seem, I “feel” unable at this time to begin our connections with email, especially on this issue. Being pressured to go against that evokes feelings in me of throwing up and being paralyzed with fear; typical PTSD responses. I need reassurance, instead, to trust and feel safe to address a delicate issue, stored trauma, let go of a huge secret, burdening me and bringing me to walking around what I could not even look at or speak until now.
My alternative suggestion is that someone on your Ethics Committee call me, preferably a female but not essential. I will likely get one of my staff/volunteers on the line also to hear what you are requesting of me and why it is required. No big deal, I would imagine. Then we can proceed on to email.
Beyond this I do not see other options although I am open to them if you do.
With appreciation for your time and attention.
Anastasia Rosen-Jones
Executive Director
New Horizons Small "Zones of Peace" Project
Cell: 240.409.5347
.
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