On the theme of containment, I’ve been thinking how misery can be a habit – a life long habit. If you were born into, and lived with, depression, that’s what you will be used to. Misery became familiar to you. Joy, being unfamiliar, will be more threatening. It is unknown and you are less likely to trust it. That's why fear comes along with excitement. You don't know how to contain your excitement.
“Change is always for the worse,” someone said to me recently. What a negative attitude! This was a person who shunned change, never grew and reached her eighties with a whole lot of unfulfilled potential and regrets. Have a look at your negativity. What do you feel more comfortable with? What have you got used to?
If your family was miserable they would not have been able to cope with a healthy, joyful, vivacious, spontaneous and powerful child. They could have been miserable for any number of reasons, depression, bereavement, general unhappiness with their situation. Their negativity could be understandable, but the effect on you, the child, was devastating. You grew up believing your happiness would inconvenience other people. You probably learned to keep quiet, dumb yourself down, minimise your power. You became limited by the limitations of your environment. You will have grown up being less than who you really are and can be – not fulfilling your potential. Children are ingenious at adapting to their environment. Think how you have adapted to your early environment and how you still use those same coping mechanisms habitually, even though you no longer need to. Think about how you coped with the limitations of your early environment. What have you adapted to and what do you put up with now that is less than you could really have.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Containment
If you weren’t held as a child, you won’t know how to hold yourself now. If your emotions and your physical energy were not contained, you will feel overwhelmed by them, even now. If you were not allowed, or it wasn’t safe, for you to express love and joy, anger and fear, as a child, you will not know how to contain and express these emotions appropriately now. Consequently, you will not be able to feel, contain and express the full extent of your power and potential. You will have grown up stunted and underachieving in so many ways – and fearful.
If you did not have the opportunity to experience the full extent of your emotions and energy, as a child, you would have imagined all sorts of things; that your power was destructive, to yourself and others; that your rage could kill; even that you might suffer punishment and retribution if you dared to be happy. That’s why you feel fear when you feel excited now. Probably nobody ever explained to you why things were the way they were, why your environment felt limiting or restrictive; and you probably blamed yourself for that too, and even do now. You probably thought there was something wrong with you. Nor were you taught how to contain your own energy and emotions without necessarily acting out on them; how to get what you wanted without emoting, by articulating; and, most importantly, how to delay gratification and make choices from probably limited possibilities. All of this would add to your sense of not being OK.
In this way you may have gown up being afraid to fully feel, to be fully alive, to live your life fully and spontaneously. You may have a nagging doubt that there is more but not know how to reach it. I’ll write some more specifically on how to contain various emotions and what choices you have now that you didn’t have as a child.
If you did not have the opportunity to experience the full extent of your emotions and energy, as a child, you would have imagined all sorts of things; that your power was destructive, to yourself and others; that your rage could kill; even that you might suffer punishment and retribution if you dared to be happy. That’s why you feel fear when you feel excited now. Probably nobody ever explained to you why things were the way they were, why your environment felt limiting or restrictive; and you probably blamed yourself for that too, and even do now. You probably thought there was something wrong with you. Nor were you taught how to contain your own energy and emotions without necessarily acting out on them; how to get what you wanted without emoting, by articulating; and, most importantly, how to delay gratification and make choices from probably limited possibilities. All of this would add to your sense of not being OK.
In this way you may have gown up being afraid to fully feel, to be fully alive, to live your life fully and spontaneously. You may have a nagging doubt that there is more but not know how to reach it. I’ll write some more specifically on how to contain various emotions and what choices you have now that you didn’t have as a child.
Monday, October 26, 2009
I’m Back
Sorry folks, I’ve been away for a long time doing some personal research. I’m back, armed with some more ideas to share with you.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Attack and Blame
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.
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.
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.
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