Beyond Broken

Self Exploration

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it” Richard Rohr

or, “The Doom Loop of Righteous Indignation”

I have been having a lot of encounters with people lately who have very strong opinions about our political and humanitarian situations and global issues threatening our planet.

The thing is, I usually agree with whatever they are saying, since we all typically surround ourselves with those who think like us and agree with our point of view.  But I hate the conversations.  The energy between us feels negative before I have said a word and I begin looking for distractions or ways to change the subject.

As the conversation progresses (mostly one sided) I get more and more desperate to escape. Then, if it is a good day,  I am able to find my curiosity and wonder what pain is driving this negativity.  I look into the eyes of the person talking and they look angry and somewhat vacant.  They are not really connecting with me, they are spewing rhetoric or perhaps well reasoned thoughts. But why the rant?

If I ask, (or they may tell me anyway), they say “We have to take a stand, we have to make a difference.”  And I wonder how more righteous indignation and pain will make a difference in our world.

I listened to an inspiring dialogue yesterday between Russell Brand and Brene Brown.  Their conversation spanned many topics, but inevitable led into politics and planetary concerns.  They discussed how politics can never be separated from spirituality (Brene defines spirituality as love, compassion, kindness and oneness.)  They conclude that since our politics are about humanity they must include these very human qualities.

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“I know I am imperfect, but I make believe I am not”

A collaboration of various authors on the subject of the Idealized Self Image, the damage it does and the promise of recovery  – into our sacred humanness.  Our true nature.  Thank you to all you brave souls who contributed. 

Image Above – The Idealized Self Image as Constructed by Susan G. — variegated cardboard is material she visualized, flimsy and inadequate for supporting all the structures she puts on top.  She adorns it with various ornamentation – random, without coherence.  This is a beautiful portrayal of the idealized self.  Individually each piece representing a belief about life and ourselves, makes sense but the overall construction … well draw your own conclusions!

A Pathwork Lecture says, “As a child, regardless of what your particular circumstances were, you were indoctrinated with admonitions on the importance of being good, holy, perfect.  When you were not, you were often punished in one way or another.  Perhaps the worst punishment was that your parents withdrew their affection from you; they were angry, and you had the impression you were no longer loved.  No wonder “badness” associated itself with punishment and unhappiness, “goodness” with reward and happiness.  Hence to be “good” and “perfect” became an absolute must; it became a question of life or death for you.  Still you knew perfectly well that you were not as good and as perfect as the world seemed to expect you to be.  This truth had to be hidden; it became a guilty secret, and you started to build a false self.” PWL #83

I am working with several people who are doing the sacred work of deconstructing the mask of the Idealized Self that they have constructed over so many years.  The Idealized Self Image is what the Pathwork calls the perfectionist standards that we hold ourselves to and present to the world.  The ISI is made of many images  (beliefs about the world and ourselves that we formed during our sorting and categorizing stage of our brain development.  My four year old grandchild is doing this now.  “I have a penis, Daddy has a penis  – you and Mommy do not have penises”.  The conclusions he will draw about men and women will form a lasting image that will become unconscious because of his young age.  Many images also contain conclusions about cause and effect.  The young one trying to make order and sense out of the world.  If I do this _______ then that ________ will always happen.  We have a myth in our family – if you wear your pajamas inside out it will snow when you wake up the next morning.  Some of our unconscious images can be just as magical or erroneous as this one and make little sense in the light of day of our grown up psyches.

Here is one example.  It begins with her belief  that, “I am  special and therefore inoculated against anything bad happening to me.”  (We can smile at the magical thinking of her little one). “Next, something bad does happen.  Then I decides I better hide and make myself  small.” (This plays out in adulthood with eating disorders and other issues). ” But then I am hungry, and so lonely and so afraid.  If I keep making myself a better (special) person maybe that will help. But then I fail at my expectations and bad things keep happening and I hide and get small again.  The world feels like a very unsafe place.”  This is something that all Idealized Self Images have in common.  The world does not feel safe….

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Attachment Hell

What is Attachment and why is it Hell when things go wrong?

attachment

If you had an ideal childhood where your consistent parents celebrated your uniqueness and each of your achievements as you moved through your developmental stages, then this blog does not apply to you.

“However, most of us had a childhood that was far from this ideal. Our young, vulnerable nervous systems were not protected and regulated by ideal parents. We often felt overwhelmed and alone, and to buffer ourselves from these recurring feelings of overwhelm, we developed survival patterns”, says Steven Kessler in The 5 Personality Patterns.

These survival patterns can stay with us our whole lives and we identify them as ‘us’.  However they are a series of defensive postures that help us regulate energy and events from the outside world. The real ‘us’ of us — our essence — is lost, since it was not activated by attunement when were were young. The good news is we can recover our truest selves, but it takes work.  We have to begin the process of attuning to ourselves, attending to those overwhelmed and lonely parts within.

If your parent or parents were there, but not consistently, you will believe that if you ramp up your nervous system and attention to others, maybe that will make them stay with you longer.  You live a very vigilant, anxious life in a terrible quandary: your need for others is so large, but your capacity to take it in is so small (since it was not there sufficiently when you were young). To heal and find your way back to your real self you will need to practice receiving and containing.  You have what you need now to fill up your system and regulate yourself but you will have to work at it.  You also have to pay special attention to letting in the goodness that comes your way, letting it land in you. You will have to reverse your focus from outward to inward. You will feel whole and settled as if you have finally come home.

A testimony to this work –

“So first, I would say I am healing from my attachment wound.  Part of this process is knowing my vulnerability to the story/feelings of being left, especially in my closest relationships.  When I am getting pulled to the old pattern of relating, I know I need to slow down and hold myself with love and compassion so I don’t abandon me.  This allows me to be intimate with myself and my real needs while creating opportunity for intimacy with the other. I risk asking for what I need.  I am clear about what is a true request versus a whiny demand or manipulation.  If I’m feeling whiny energy, this needs to be held and explored. And surprise to my younger self:  My requests are usually met with a yes!  And when they are not, it allows me to open to other paths to getting my desires met.”  Anonymous

If your parents were not available especially emotionally, you will stop expecting anything from others. You will live life in your own bubble. You will overrate your opinions and views of the world and discredit others. You will not allow yourself to have any needs since they will not be met, but your quandary is that, to do this, you must make yourself numb. This numbness helps you regulate difficult, overwhelming experiences but you will also be numb to joy and much of the pleasure that life offers. To heal you will need to take the risk to slowly step our of your bubble and notice that there is nourishment for you there. You will have to slowly let your body feel again and risk having your needs. You will feel more of everything: love, joy, pain and your old drab life will take on unbelievable colors.

A testimony to this work –

“Understanding my attachment style has allowed me to accept actions and beliefs that I previously thought were an unchangeable part of ‘who I was’. Not accepting them kept these patterns of behavior in place and created a profound sense of isolation and personal failure. As I have grown to accept these patterns as legitimate outcomes of my childhood experiences, new possibilities are opening up to choose differently; choosing connection rather than isolation and hopelessness. I now have a loving partner who both understands me and yet is available for a deep intimacy that I have never previously known. An inner gate has opened and although my old responses and patterns occasionally show themselves, I recognize them for what they are: ghosts that no longer have power to bind me to past vows. I have a real choice now and I choose love more and more often. True and justified hope is now mine. ” Jack Bodger

If your parents, who you needed to love you, also hurt you — well then you are really in trouble.  Your quandary is the belief that love = harm or hurt. This will make it very challenging for you to form healthy lasting relationships as an adult. You will be drawn to the love and repelled by the harm. You are like a magnet turning towards the attraction of love and then flipping over and repelling that connection out of fear. Unfortunately, some of us in this category experienced child abuse in the form of physical and emotional harm. Others of us experienced neglect which creates tremendous hurt in a young child.

This is what happened to one dear little one who was subjected to treatment by heartless immigration tactics, separated from his parents with no warning for 73 days. He experiences this as extreme neglect. His mother is there one moment and then gone the next. His master regulator of all those overwhelming and lonely feelings is suddenly gone. He becomes extremely dis-regulated, and this may last throughout his life. You see this dramatically in the news video of his reunion with his mother. He will repeat this in every relationship for the rest of his life. This clip, from the CBS New “60 Minutes” program, includes commentary from two psychiatrists.

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YOUNG LOVE

“We sail and we sail together.
The name of our ship is the new beginning
and our sails are a hopeful color.
Filled with the winds of changing times.
We sail and sea around us waves.
And it swells as a great heart beating.
All the storms of night are passing.
How can we sink when we can fly?”

From the cover of my leadership camp’s handbook 1971

“When you are 15, or thereabouts, you love the art you love more passionately than you will ever love art again.  Around that time your sense of taste has only just recently come into being. ….. You have been transformed from a kid… to a young adult with an ‘aesthetic’.”

—From Jonah Weiner Rage Against the Machine, New York Times Magazine

In the summers when I was 16 and 17 I was sent, by scholarship, to a leadership camp in Upstate New York.  By day, we did social action, building a playground for migrant worker children and by night we discussed the deep questions of religion and spirituality.  On weekends we would clean up and dress in all white and sing and dance our hearts out.  This was my art, my aesthetic.  I fell in love.  Looking back 49 years later, I am sure that my fellow campers and what we created together saved my life.

Recently one of my best friends from camp found me on Facebook.  She then posted this picture from 1972 of the two of us sitting on the grass near our beloved pond – my head in her lap.  As I gaze at that photo, I know that is still me.  I love intimate contact, and thrive on the meaningful conversation.  We had many that summer about love, life and God…..

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Are You Resilient?

What is Resilience?

It has been called the great puzzle of human nature.

Is it something some people have and others do not?  Is it something you can learn?  Some research on resilience talks about genetics and a predisposition towards resilience.  Here are diagrams of a seesaw with a fulcrum to illustrate this.   Your life experiences and genetic predispositions sets this fulcrum to make your seesaw go up or down more easily.  Adverse childhood experiences make moving the fulcrum more challenging.  It can even make resilience out of reach for some people.

However, it is people who have had the most adverse life experiences and somehow have overcome them that inspire us the most.  Who are these people and what did they do?  The answer to these questions can help us understand resilience.

Resilient people possess three characteristics: a staunch acceptance of reality; a deep belief  that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to improvise. You can bounce back from hardship with just one or two of these qualities, but you will only be truly resilient with all three.

Viktor Frankl was preoccupied with survivorship/resilience during his dehumanizing, life threatening experiences in concentration camps in Nazi Germany.  He later traced the roots of his resilience to a sense of purpose and the acquisition of meaning.  He then expanded meaning into three dimensions: purpose, mastery and autonomy. He wrote about in his famous book, “Man’s Search For Meaning”.

Other core characteristics of resilient people include the ability to form strong attachments to others and the possession of an inner psychological space that protects them from intrusion or abuse.

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom,” says Dean Becker, the president and CEO of Adaptiv Learning Systems, quoting from Diane Coutu in her Harvard Review Article, “How Resilience Works.”

So how can we train ourselves to become more resilient?…

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