I want to extend a thank you to Dunkirk High School, Andrew Burnside and to the parents and school board of Dunkirk High for setting new guidelines for student athletes. As the term states, they are students first and athletes second. Unfortunately, the kids playing sports in high school today have to deal with terms like “one and done,” transfer portals and such.

During my 30 years of coaching, I checked their grades in high school, and the years of college were done by myself and admissions. Failing classes by not attending them or not handing in the work often led to suspensions until grades were brought up and assignments completed, were simply holding student athletes accountable. Your school in the long run will end up with better students, better athletes, because this is just not about winning football, basketball or baseball games, but about getting them ready for future endeavors when people will depend on them for their self-discipline and work issues. Good job, this ex-coach is proud of your decision. Good luck to Marauder football!

Now to mistrust and abuse. Last month I detailed entitlement issues. Abuse issues are not treated the same as entitlement. Clients with entitlement have high regards for themselves, usually are spoiled and do not accept discipline easily. Clients with abuse issues have a complex mixture of feelings such as pain, fear, rage and grief. When I would sit for one on ones with these clients, they would appear calm, but I could feel like they were ready to burst like water through a dam. It is hard for them to trust, even those closest to them. In fact, it may be particularly the people closest to them that they are unable to trust.

They assume people are secretly out to harm them. When someone does something nice for them, their mind searches for an ulterior motive. People with mistrust and abuse issues have painful relationships, because they are dangerous and unpredictable. They feel that people hurt you, betray you and use you. They are guarded 90% of the time. As one can easily conclude, alcohol and other drugs play a key role in their addiction to chemicals because of low self-worth or no self-worth. Anxiety and depression are common.

They have a deep sense of despair about their life and feel defective much of the time.

The origins of mistrust and abuse go back to family whereby someone in your family physically abused you as a child. This could have been sexually, verbally or physically repeatedly. Obviously, this created trust issues with people that were supposed to nurture and care for you. Also, someone in your family got pleasure from watching you suffer, and you were made to do things as a child by the threat of severe punishment, because they were against you. Make no mistake about this idea that there is a vast difference between discipline, to help someone grow mentally, physically and spiritually, and abuse to destroy their self-worth. You were repeatedly told to trust no one outside of your family and one of your parents turned to you for physical affection in a way that was inappropriate or made you uncomfortable. Later in treatment, shame, guilt and rage are key issues that keep people in addiction. Almost in every instance of abuse, as a counselor over the years, the abuser makes the child feel worthless and blames the child and the child accepts the abuse and, in many cases, actually protects the abuser.

As we stated earlier, relationships are often disasters. They usually start out OK and then the following begins to happen. He/she has an explosive temper that scares you. He/she loses control when they drink too much. He/she puts you down in front of friends or family. He/she criticizes you repeatedly and makes you feel worthless. He/she has no respect for your needs. He/she gets pleasure when you or other people suffer. He/she hits you or threatens you when you do not do what they want. He/she forces you to have sex even when you do not want to. He/she checks on you and has other lovers behind your back and he/she is very unreliable and takes advantage of your generosity.

One of the most puzzling facts of being a chemical dependency counselor over the years is that these clients keep repeating the same destructive patterns over and over. In psychology, this is called the “repetition compulsion complex.” Why would someone who was abused as a child willingly become involved in another abusive relationship? It doesn’t make sense and yet I can cite many examples as a counselor that kept people in anxiety and depression. Unless people get treatment, they will keep repeating this cycle as adults over and over.

If you are attracted to abusive partners, people who hit, rape, insult or demean you, are the lovers that generate the most chemistry tapping into the most devastating consequences of your childhood abuse? It turned you into a person who is drawn to abusive relationships in adulthood. If you, as a reader of this column, never thought these were issues that keep people from self-actualizing and getting better, think again. The great counselors go after these issues through many sessions, up and down, threats to quit treatment, insults to the counselor, and guess what? Those that have the spiritual fortitude to watch people grow mentally, physically and spiritually and choose abstinence from all chemical use, get and stay sober. Remember in this society, harm reduction is doing more harm than reduction. Try 100,000 deaths a month.

Mike Tramuta is a Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy counselor. He can be reached at 716-983-1592.