Twice this week somebody, who wanted something from me, has rung up and asked, ‘How are you?’ Then, when I was telling them, they didn’t seem to be listening. Eventually they attacked me. ‘You didn’t ask how I was.’ They hadn’t given me a chance. One said she felt ‘crap’ but refused to discuss it. In both cases I felt attacked. I also had a call from a friend whose partner is going through a rough time. Her complaint – he keeps attacking and blaming her.
So what happens?
This is narcissistic rage: the rage of a baby. An adult would say what they wanted, why they are calling. A baby can’t articulate. If they can’t ask for what you want or create it as an appropriate response to their crying, they rage. It may not be safe for the baby to express this rage, so they turn it inwards and feel attacked by their own feelings. These become paranoid fantasies because a child lives in a world of fantasy. When you grow up, you carry this unexpressed rage with you. You feel attacked and you attack.
Narcissistic behaviour lacks empathy and therefore compassion. So asking someone how they are doesn’t mean you can empathise, or that you really want to know. All you want is relief from your own pain and frustration. And if you don’t get this, you attack. You blame the other person. If your cries were not heard and responded to appropriately, when you were a baby, then you were not contained. It is hard now for you to contain your own emotions because you still feel like that baby. You have not grown up and learned to manage pain and frustration. You have not learned to respect time, to wait. For a baby, time is endless and they cannot wait. As an adult you know that change comes slowly, over time. Nothing lasts for ever. You learn this from experience, if you are patient.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Challenges and Control
If only you could plan your days, life, wake up in the morning and it would go just that way. If only. You live with the illusion that you can control your life. You can’t. There are too many external influences, and also unconscious internal influences, for you to be able to control them all.
However, you can take control of your life, as it presents itself to you. You can accept life’s challenges, accept every day and everything that comes to you, as a challenge and respond to it. Or you can react against it.
If you respond, you will learn and grow. Your potential will be stretched. This is constructive. If you react, rage against what you cannot control or change, you regress, become a helpless victim. You do not learn or grow. This is destructive, especially to yourself.
You have a choice to accept life’s challenges, on a daily basis, and work with them. You have a choice to use your resources and stretch yourself. This also means talking risks, feeling the fear and not always getting it right.
However, you can take control of your life, as it presents itself to you. You can accept life’s challenges, accept every day and everything that comes to you, as a challenge and respond to it. Or you can react against it.
If you respond, you will learn and grow. Your potential will be stretched. This is constructive. If you react, rage against what you cannot control or change, you regress, become a helpless victim. You do not learn or grow. This is destructive, especially to yourself.
You have a choice to accept life’s challenges, on a daily basis, and work with them. You have a choice to use your resources and stretch yourself. This also means talking risks, feeling the fear and not always getting it right.
Rejection
This is a painful one. Probably the most painful experience I know. That’s why you avoid it and deny it. You set up all sorts of defences to pretend it hasn’t happened.
Behaviour can be rejected as undesirable, inappropriate. When this happens to you as a child, and depending how it happens, when you have offered that behaviour with love, you feel like all of you is being rejected. Because we are all born to love, it’s hard to separate that love from your ‘self’. It’s who you are. If you don’t know why your love isn’t received, or your behaviour isn’t appropriate, if you’re not told, you lose your sense of that self. After all, children can be awkward, naive. So you blame yourself. You believe you are intrinsically flawed. We are all born to love, albeit in different ways.
The love of a child is so delicate; it needs to be handled with care. Children are easily hurt and rejected – by the insensitive. If you don’t know how much you were hurt as a child, how much you felt rejected, you will go on to hurt others in relationships. You may damage young and vulnerable lives, still in the process of developing, as you were damaged. The same applies to relationships. These also need to develop and grow in a healthy way.
Rejection, including shaming, causes deep pain that is hard to face and therefore hard to heal. Children who have been rejected clamour for love as adults, often from rejecting people and especially in codependent relationships. (Don’t forget that withdrawing, counter-dependency, is also a form of codependency. If you are proud and aloof, you are likely to have been rejected too. You reject other people by not being emotionally available now). Children who have been rejected grow up learning to reject themselves, and to reject others, not letting them in. They then feel lost and empty and turn to codependency and other addictions as adults to fill themselves up. This doesn’t heal the pain or fill the emptiness.
Behaviour can be rejected as undesirable, inappropriate. When this happens to you as a child, and depending how it happens, when you have offered that behaviour with love, you feel like all of you is being rejected. Because we are all born to love, it’s hard to separate that love from your ‘self’. It’s who you are. If you don’t know why your love isn’t received, or your behaviour isn’t appropriate, if you’re not told, you lose your sense of that self. After all, children can be awkward, naive. So you blame yourself. You believe you are intrinsically flawed. We are all born to love, albeit in different ways.
The love of a child is so delicate; it needs to be handled with care. Children are easily hurt and rejected – by the insensitive. If you don’t know how much you were hurt as a child, how much you felt rejected, you will go on to hurt others in relationships. You may damage young and vulnerable lives, still in the process of developing, as you were damaged. The same applies to relationships. These also need to develop and grow in a healthy way.
Rejection, including shaming, causes deep pain that is hard to face and therefore hard to heal. Children who have been rejected clamour for love as adults, often from rejecting people and especially in codependent relationships. (Don’t forget that withdrawing, counter-dependency, is also a form of codependency. If you are proud and aloof, you are likely to have been rejected too. You reject other people by not being emotionally available now). Children who have been rejected grow up learning to reject themselves, and to reject others, not letting them in. They then feel lost and empty and turn to codependency and other addictions as adults to fill themselves up. This doesn’t heal the pain or fill the emptiness.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Change
Sorry I haven’t been around for a while. I’ve been in retreat, going through a period of intense personal transformation – and change.
What occurs to me is how paradoxical it is that strategies that saved our lives and our sanity as children, so ingeniously devised, have exactly the opposite effect when we are adults.
What worked in your family, the coping mechanisms you adopted then, will work against you now you are not living in that family; they will not get your adult needs met in a functional way. Those coping mechanisms, being dysfunctional behaviours, will only work in dysfunctional relationships, which means there will always be a price to pay.
So the process of change, of getting your realistic needs realistically met now, requires examining the dysfunctional methods you learned, used and assumed as a child and transforming them into their opposites, turning them on their heads and exchanging them for functional strategies that work in the present and are appropriate for you as a capable and independent adult, not as a helpless and dependent child.
What occurs to me is how paradoxical it is that strategies that saved our lives and our sanity as children, so ingeniously devised, have exactly the opposite effect when we are adults.
What worked in your family, the coping mechanisms you adopted then, will work against you now you are not living in that family; they will not get your adult needs met in a functional way. Those coping mechanisms, being dysfunctional behaviours, will only work in dysfunctional relationships, which means there will always be a price to pay.
So the process of change, of getting your realistic needs realistically met now, requires examining the dysfunctional methods you learned, used and assumed as a child and transforming them into their opposites, turning them on their heads and exchanging them for functional strategies that work in the present and are appropriate for you as a capable and independent adult, not as a helpless and dependent child.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Healing the Planet
What’s this got to do with relationships? Firstly, to heal the planet, we all need to heal ourselves. Otherwise we will go on being driven by the same old motives and practising the same old strategies that got us to where we are today. First and foremost is greed, which is an offshoot of fear and insecurity. Greed is the belief there isn’t enough to go round. It’s also an attempt to substitute acquisitions, belongings, and the illusion of security, control and power they bring, for love.
There is enough love to go round, if you change your self-defeating behaviours; ie confront your fears.
So you need to start by healing your relationship with yourself. This will heal your relationships with others. And relationships are so important if we are to heal the planet because, as we let go of greed, we will need each other to cooperate and collaborate. We will need joint resources, joint ventures, partnerships, social and working groups and communities. We will need to find our common ground as human beings. This may be our only way to survive.
So it’s essential we heal ourselves and improve our relationships. It’s important that we ditch behaviour that works against us and learn how to make healthy, functional relationships. These relationships could save our lives or at least make them more manageable in a future that is currently unpredictable.
There is enough love to go round, if you change your self-defeating behaviours; ie confront your fears.
So you need to start by healing your relationship with yourself. This will heal your relationships with others. And relationships are so important if we are to heal the planet because, as we let go of greed, we will need each other to cooperate and collaborate. We will need joint resources, joint ventures, partnerships, social and working groups and communities. We will need to find our common ground as human beings. This may be our only way to survive.
So it’s essential we heal ourselves and improve our relationships. It’s important that we ditch behaviour that works against us and learn how to make healthy, functional relationships. These relationships could save our lives or at least make them more manageable in a future that is currently unpredictable.
Positive Thinking
Negative thinking is a symptom of fear. It also breeds fear and leads to a downward spiral. You can choose to see the glass as half empty or half full. You can choose to dwell on your troubles or count your blessings – with gratitude. You can choose to see setbacks as challenges and to rise to meet them, knowing you will grow through them. You have choices.
So maybe 2009 could be your year for turning around negative thinking. With the recession setting in, bringing about so many changes, this year will be a year of challenges. You can choose to see these challenges as gifts, bonuses, opportunities for change, which is inevitable anyway.
Positive thinking leads you to embrace change. It allows change to happen. Obstacles in your path are gifts. You can choose to approach those obstacles with fear – or with love, as friends and teachers. You can thank them for being there so you can learn from them.
Part of this positive thinking is to look fear in the face and see it for what it is – one side of the picture. Caution is fine but fear is debilitating. Try to see the positive side of your fears. It’s better if you admit these fears in the first place though. If you try to pretend they don’t exist, you won’t have the opportunity to turn them into something positive. Denial will rob you of the opportunity for understanding and growth.
So maybe 2009 could be your year for turning around negative thinking. With the recession setting in, bringing about so many changes, this year will be a year of challenges. You can choose to see these challenges as gifts, bonuses, opportunities for change, which is inevitable anyway.
Positive thinking leads you to embrace change. It allows change to happen. Obstacles in your path are gifts. You can choose to approach those obstacles with fear – or with love, as friends and teachers. You can thank them for being there so you can learn from them.
Part of this positive thinking is to look fear in the face and see it for what it is – one side of the picture. Caution is fine but fear is debilitating. Try to see the positive side of your fears. It’s better if you admit these fears in the first place though. If you try to pretend they don’t exist, you won’t have the opportunity to turn them into something positive. Denial will rob you of the opportunity for understanding and growth.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Christmas Message
Christmas is a time for relationships, with yourself and others. Socially, it is a time for sharing with family and friends. And, for some, it can be lonely and spent alone. Others may feel lonely, even if they are in the company of family and friends.
For many, Christmas is also a time of consumption and consumerism – for attempting to fill up the emptiness inside in a way that is meaningless, so perpetuates feelings of emptiness.
Christmas can be a time for choices, for not doing what you don’t want to do, for choosing what you do and who you want to do it with. It can be a time of solitude, retreat, being with yourself; a time for meditation, going inwards, taking stock. You can choose.
This is a good time for examining expectations; yours of others and others’ of you. It is also a good time for asking yourself what Christmas means to you and celebrating it, or not, appropriately, in a way that is true to you, whatever others choose to do.
Maybe Christmas is a time for serenity.
For many, Christmas is also a time of consumption and consumerism – for attempting to fill up the emptiness inside in a way that is meaningless, so perpetuates feelings of emptiness.
Christmas can be a time for choices, for not doing what you don’t want to do, for choosing what you do and who you want to do it with. It can be a time of solitude, retreat, being with yourself; a time for meditation, going inwards, taking stock. You can choose.
This is a good time for examining expectations; yours of others and others’ of you. It is also a good time for asking yourself what Christmas means to you and celebrating it, or not, appropriately, in a way that is true to you, whatever others choose to do.
Maybe Christmas is a time for serenity.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Fear
I wrote about God, good and love. Fear is the opposite of, the absence of, love – and therefore absence of meaning. When you are afraid you are separated not only from love, but also from connection with your self, your truth, your reality. This is ungrounding and therefore frightening in itself. It is fear that shuts love out – and then your feel fearful without that love.
You learn to fear as a child when you are undermined by negativity: judgements, criticisms, jealousy, guilt, humiliation and rejection – all abusive. When what you experience as good, as love, as all children naturally do, is negated, then your self is negated and you are separated from your truth, which is goodness and love. You believe you are bad and experience the world around you as bad and therefore frightening.
When your self is negated, you cease to be. You cannot make sense of or find meaning in your existence. This is known as existential fear. It is important to know this fear is inherited. It is not your own truth. It may have been passed down through generations, through fearful parenting. You may have been born in fear, traumatised by frightening experience in the womb and the birth process, but this can be healed through positive parenting. Negative parenting does not allow this to happen.
It is also important to know that, unless you confront this fear, you will pass it on, to your children and in your relationships, through a process called projection. This becomes self-defeating because you eventually create what you fear most – fear itself: insecurity, negativity, dissatisfaction, disappointment and bitterness. If you don’t address this bitterness, you attack other people with it and perpetuate the cycle of fear.
You learn to fear as a child when you are undermined by negativity: judgements, criticisms, jealousy, guilt, humiliation and rejection – all abusive. When what you experience as good, as love, as all children naturally do, is negated, then your self is negated and you are separated from your truth, which is goodness and love. You believe you are bad and experience the world around you as bad and therefore frightening.
When your self is negated, you cease to be. You cannot make sense of or find meaning in your existence. This is known as existential fear. It is important to know this fear is inherited. It is not your own truth. It may have been passed down through generations, through fearful parenting. You may have been born in fear, traumatised by frightening experience in the womb and the birth process, but this can be healed through positive parenting. Negative parenting does not allow this to happen.
It is also important to know that, unless you confront this fear, you will pass it on, to your children and in your relationships, through a process called projection. This becomes self-defeating because you eventually create what you fear most – fear itself: insecurity, negativity, dissatisfaction, disappointment and bitterness. If you don’t address this bitterness, you attack other people with it and perpetuate the cycle of fear.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Emptiness and Meaning
This follows from what I just said about God. If you have no meaning in you life, you feel empty. You try to fill yourself up with all sorts of things: eating, shopping, drugs, other people. I believe we need to fill ourselves up from within.
What does this mean? It means filling yourself up with love, self love, God’s love if you like, your own bit of that love – divinity. This is the meaning of your life.
We talk about children being full of themselves. That is their natural state. You need to be full of yourself, full of love for yourself, full of the love that is your birthright. You need to know the meaning of your life, which is love. Then you will not feel empty and your life will be full with meaning.
Without that love, with that emptiness, you feel anxious and fearful. You are facing a void. You are full of longing and sadness, of a sense of loss, and you don’t even know what you are longing for. Without meaning in your life, you don’t feel safe. You are not grounded or centred in your self. You have no inner peace. And you are in danger of looking to others to comfort the pain of your longing and to fill you up, to give you meaning, which no one can do for you. You are headed for dissatisfaction in your relationships.
What does this mean? It means filling yourself up with love, self love, God’s love if you like, your own bit of that love – divinity. This is the meaning of your life.
We talk about children being full of themselves. That is their natural state. You need to be full of yourself, full of love for yourself, full of the love that is your birthright. You need to know the meaning of your life, which is love. Then you will not feel empty and your life will be full with meaning.
Without that love, with that emptiness, you feel anxious and fearful. You are facing a void. You are full of longing and sadness, of a sense of loss, and you don’t even know what you are longing for. Without meaning in your life, you don’t feel safe. You are not grounded or centred in your self. You have no inner peace. And you are in danger of looking to others to comfort the pain of your longing and to fill you up, to give you meaning, which no one can do for you. You are headed for dissatisfaction in your relationships.
Some Thought on God
I am a spiritual but not a religious person, nor a Christian, but God is a word that has meaning for me. For me, God means good. God means love. I believe in God, not as an entity, but as a concept, a manifestation of love; and I believe in love.
I used to fight for love. That’s strange, because love is free. I also used to look for love in other people, not only wanting them to love me, but also wanting them to let me love them, and often they didn’t. If you don’t feel loveable, if you don’t love yourself, then no amount of love will get in. You might accept adoration, but that won’t FEEL like love. You will go on craving.
So all healthy relationships start with loving yourself, letting God in, letting yourself in. For we all have a spark of divinity in us and when we accept and love our own divinity, we will be able to relate with the divinity in others.
I used to fight for love. That’s strange, because love is free. I also used to look for love in other people, not only wanting them to love me, but also wanting them to let me love them, and often they didn’t. If you don’t feel loveable, if you don’t love yourself, then no amount of love will get in. You might accept adoration, but that won’t FEEL like love. You will go on craving.
So all healthy relationships start with loving yourself, letting God in, letting yourself in. For we all have a spark of divinity in us and when we accept and love our own divinity, we will be able to relate with the divinity in others.
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