Three Recent Cases in Indonesia

Three recent cases happened in Indonesia during one last year:
1. A mother—identified as suffering from terribly psychologically depressed—killed her three children, by putting pillows on their faces so that they couldn’t breathe.
2. A mother tried committing suicide by burning herself and her two children.
3. A mother killed her four children. After that, she killed herself.
One article in the local newspaper stated that those murders were the result from the heavy burden put on women’s shoulders. The burden can be in the form of economy, household, social, environment, and health. When someone feels that he/she is not strong enough to face that burden, it will form toxic anxiety in someone’s life. Toxic anxiety is poisonous, because it poisons the way of thinking, feeling, attitude, behavior, etc. When this poison is not neutralized or eliminated, the poison will spur someone to do cruel things. The poison exists as conflict and dilemma in life that can happen to anybody. From this conflict and dilemma, natural anxiety is engendered. This natural anxiety must be analyzed and faced wisely, not to be feared of, nor avoided.
The article ended with suggestion that government must carry out some counseling, health examination, and psychological guidance.
It reminds me of one article I wrote entitled “Mental Depression” I posted in my blog around a year ago. Why should women be more vulnerable to get depressed? If I relate it to woman’s madness phenomenon, patriarchal society’s demand from women to be good women (read  good wife, good mother, also good women that contradicts to ‘bitch’) is still very high in Indonesia. Instead of proposing suggestion that government must carry out some counseling, etc, I would rather suggest open communication between the husband and the wife and the husband’s appreciation to women as equal with them. Open communication will make the husband and the wife know what obstacles they face in their marriage life and try to find the way out together. (The background of the three cases mentioned in the beginning of this article shows the not good communication between the victims and their husbands, the husbands did not really understand what bothered their wives, etc.) High appreciation from society—especially from the husbands—will boost women’s confidence, to talk about anything. I am convinced that feeling appreciated will make women appreciate themselves, and that hopefully will result in women value their lives better.
Instead of suggesting government to do some counseling, etc, I believe it is better that patriarchal society reduces the burden they put on women’s shoulders to be good women. When a woman thinks that her burden can be shared with her husband, it will lighten her steps to undergo her life.
One case happened to my mother’s friend. One day in December 2006—still very early in the morning—my mother got a call from her friend. A man who is around sixties asked her whether his wife was in my mother’s house. She was gone. She left the house without saying anything. She said she would do some shopping and never returned. They have been married for many years. When my mother asked that man whether they had big quarrel, he said nothing. Their relationship was very good during their marriage life, he said.
Several days later, a neighbor of that man told him that she saw his wife in the railway station. She said she would go out of town (Surabaya) to visit a relative. She looked troubled at that time.
Three months have passed. That man cannot find where his wife is yet until now.
I saw this case as another case of woman’s madness phenomenon. Unconsciously, she has tried to bury all negative feelings coming to her, to be considered as a good wife and a good mother. When she thought that she could no longer cope up with that, she left her home. Her husband said that everything was fine in their marriage life. Nah lo!
By the way, patriarchal society’s burden put on women’s shoulders have existed since time immemorial. Why did those three cases happen just lately? Didn’t similar cases happen a decade, two decades ago, or longer than that? Perhaps the cases were not recorded by media now that media has developed tremendously everywhere around the world. The high competition has made media and their journalists get interesting news to be published. The more pathetic one case is, the more it sells.
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Mental Depression

A friend of mine has been involved in PRANIC healing for some years.

If you want to know what PRANIC healing is all about, you can visit the following website.

www.pranichealing.com/about.html

At first, she joined one workshop held by it for her own medication coz she has been suffering from poor eyesight since she was in elementary school (she is in her mid thirties now). Wearing glasses only is not enough for her. And she has tried some other alternative medication (e.g. drinking herbs, consuming lots of carrots, nerve massages around her eyes, acupuncture, etc), but they didn’t work on her.

In fact, after joining the workshop, and sometimes attending the clinic for medication and practicing, she involved herself to that clinic, not for her own medication though. She became one volunteer to try healing patients suffering from any kind of illness. One interesting thing she told me is that many women coming to that clinic told her that they were suffering from splitting headache. Those women have consulted their doctors but they couldn’t find out the causes of the headache. The medicine given to them didn’t work well. They also have consulted a sinshe (a sort of traditional physician popularly known in China) and consumed traditional medicine given by the sinshe, and still it didn’t work either.

My friend, trying to find out what caused the headache, asked those women about their daily life. Her suspicion was that they were suffering from mental depression, therefore a general practitioner couldn’t find anything wrong with their body coz they needed to consult a psychiatrist. However, they didn’t want to admit that in fact they were depressed coz in Indonesia when someone consults a psychiatrist, people will easily judge him or her as insane or lunatic. Insanity is believed as a curse illness and someone cannot be healed back like before. Well, this is in Indonesia.

Why women?

I relate it to this male-dominated world with its patriarchal culture. The belief that women are only the Second Sex as Beauvoir stated is still strong so that men feel deserved to oppress women, by saying e.g. “I know this case better than you do. Leave it up to me. You don’t need to do anything in it.” or, “This is man’s stuff. You don’t need to involve yourself in this case.” “I do this because I love you, so you’ve got to understand me. This is for your own sake.”

People are different from one another. Some women perhaps will agree that their husbands love them very dearly when those men say so to them. However, it is also possible that many other women feel forced to understand it. Nevertheless, they cannot do anything because patriarchal culture, and oftentimes legitimated by religion’s teaching, says that women must obey their husbands, must submit themselves to their husbands, must agree when their husbands opine something.

One example happened to my old friend. Some years ago, she visited me and told me about one case that happened between her husband and her, relating to where (in what school) their first child would continue the study. My friend had different idea from her husband. She kept trying to convince him that her choice was better for their son’s future while her husband didn’t agree with her. After some days arguing, my friend at last gave in, when her husband said to her, “You don’t consider me as a man? Why don’t you listen to me?”

What a foolish statement it was. To me it was. YOU ARE A MAN ONLY IF YOUR WIFE LISTENS TO YOU, OBEYS YOU, SUBMIT TO YOU. But, abracadabra … it worked well to silence this old friend of mine!!! “I cannot argue anymore after he said such a thing to me.” she went on telling me.

If this phenomenon happens now and again, it is not impossible if then it will engender the feeling of being oppressed to women. For some women who think that they are indeed the second sex, must give priority to their husband, it will be just okay. For some other women, they will feel differently. However, coz they think that MEN ARE CREATED TO BE SUPERIOR, they cannot do much. They just keep what they think inside their heart/mind and think, “My happiness is not important. What I think is not important.” But in fact, without their awareness it bothers their mind, this case can trigger mental depression, although they don’t want to admit it.

The education given by their parents that the happiness of their husband and children is more important than their own also takes part in increasing the tendency of women to suffer from mental depression. Feeling that they are not important before their husbands and children will make many women underestimate themselves. The feeling being underestimated is similar to the feeling not important. When doing anything for the family, they must put the husband in the first priority, then the children. They are the last. Sometimes those women even don’t have time to comfort or satisfy themselves coz they have to take care of their husband and children. And this is taken for granted.

I want to refer to what Virginia Woolf said in her book A Room of One’s Own that everybody needs some time and some place to be alone, to be themselves, apart from their role as a mother and wife and do anything they want. People indeed need it.

Going back to my friend’s experience in the PRANIC clinic, she told me that she couldn’t convince those female patients that they probably suffered from mental depression. In Indonesia with still very strong gender-biased culture, it is still difficult to tell those (I call it conventional) women that it is okay for them to do anything to comfort themselves, that they need some time to be apart from their daily responsibilities. They also deserve to take some days off to be homemakers.

21.26 13042006