In my last post I outlined some of the problems that my client, Paul, dealt with in trying to establish a good relationship. He was obsessively jealous, using the slightest pretext as a basis for accusations that questioned his girl friend, Jane’s, fidelity. Needless to say, their relationship was tempestuous, mirroring in many ways the climate of stress, blow-ups, recriminations, unhappiness, and ultimate reconciliation that he had played out with his mother prior to leaving home. Early in our sessions much of this terrain became fairly clear to both Paul and me as we talked. As I have written earlier, however, intellectual knowledge and understanding do not necessarily allow a person to resolve at an emotional level the patterns that have been in operation for many years. The connection of my behaviour or feelings in the present with antecedents from early childhood might make perfect sense to me, but do little or nothing to prevent me from feeling and reacting in an identical manner when under stress.
A significant barrier to connecting what we feel and experience today with our early histories lies in a method that we all necessarily use to defend ourselves from otherwise completely debilitating depression and unhappiness. If I have been badly frightened or physically hurt by a parent, one that I must look to for safety and nurture, I have complicated processes to complete in order to make this experience manageable psychologically and emotionally. I cannot keep the reality of what at that moment I experience as betrayal and abuse at the forefront of my consciousness. If I was to do so how could I carry on with the relationship of trust and dependency with my parent that I absolutely need for survival? On the other hand I can’t totally ignore the fact that my parent can be dangerous and that I must find ways of keeping him or her under some surveillance in order to be ready if the bad moment is likely to recur. In that way I can prepare myself for an attack which will be less severe if I am not completely at ease and am thus more vulnerable. This does not occur at a conscious level for the very young child. It is simply the development of wariness found in any mammal that has experienced fear or abuse.
As well as wariness I have to adjust myself in a manner that allows me to continue my sense of my parent as a kind of god – the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful one. If there is fault it must be mine. To view it as that of the parent is to take her from the pinnacle where I need her to be as my place of safety and security. In adolescence or later in adulthood my relative independence will allow me a different location from which to view and to criticize her behaviour. But as a young child my only location is that of dependency. I learn how to please even as I develop my own degree and form of wariness.
At the same time I have been modeled behaviours that I can adapt and shape to suit my own needs. My parent has been unable to calmly deal with her feelings and has used her physical strength to overpower me. In extreme cases of abuse a child may be so entirely overtaken that she loses all sense of herself and becomes profoundly bonded with the abusive adult, following even into adulthood the beliefs and activities that she has witnessed and experienced. More commonly, however, the child will adapt various parts of the parent’s repertoire as a way of gaining psychological and emotional solace. She hits and yells at me but I can do the same – maybe not to her if I am too afraid of her, but possibly to others. Younger siblings, pets, fellow students might feel the power that like my parent I know how to exert. I have learned how to bully. As an adult I am likely to continue patterns of this kind, being “good” or appropriate among people whom I respect (or am intimidated by) and less than kind, “bad” with those whom I sense that I can intimidate in turn. I reside along a ladder of ascending and descending rungs of a power hierarchy.
The wariness that I have perforce developed creates in me a sensitivity for the actions and feelings of others. But because it stems more from fear than from interest it contains much that will compromise my establishing intimacies that are the grounding of a healthy and happy social and sexual life. To the degree that I have had to spend energy as a child monitoring the behaviour of others and in general the world around me, to that degree I have been robbed of an essential formative period in which to discover my own self, my own inner world, the things that are of acute interest to me, the feelings that I must master in order to better live well with adults and other kids. I grow up more attuned to the nuances of other’s behaviours and feelings than my own and am affected by these in ways that I can only understand within the framework of my early experiences.
The deepest challenge of therapy then is to alter these patterns, to re-frame one's understandings, and more importantly, to learn to connect the reactions which are tied to present circumstances and people with the origins more deeply lodged within – not at an intellectual level but within the core of one's emotional formation. For some this task is not possible. The hurts are such that they can never be approached directly but only approximated in the day-to-day manner to which the person is accustomed. In some instances a client is very ready to make these connections, perhaps after certain life experiences or therapies have brought her to this point. Especially in hypnotherapy she is gradually able to link painful feelings to actual circumstances or people who have occasioned them. In the supportive climate of the therapy sessions and with her adult strength and capacity for absorbing and dealing with pain, she is able to feel and remember on an emotional level trauma that as a small child she had been unable to bear. No longer completely overwhelmed by the hidden locus of pain, she absorbs it into the whole of her personality, able to connect with it in ways that allow her deeper self-knowledge and compassion as well as an increased understanding of others.
For most though this process is quite gradual. Paul, for example, despite his awareness that his behavior with Jane was often unjustified, had little control over his emotions and the ways that he acted upon them. Early in his therapy I worked to help him develop a conscience about the way that he treated her. Because his parents had acted out of frustration with him, he felt an entitlement to behave similarly with an intimate. It is true that after a hurtful outburst with Jane he would be remorseful and contrite, making up with her and promising not to do it again. But this did not come from a well-formed conscience. It was merely another phase of the circle of emotional exchange honed through the years with a succession of other intimates. His remorse didn’t have the legs to persist into the phase when his jealousy and anger were building to their inevitable climax. If we genuinely repent of behavior we will work hard not to repeat it. This was something Paul needed to understand and to learn to do. He needed strategies to intervene before he reached the stage of blowing up.
Talking with someone who did not condone his behavior began to undercut his sense of entitlement and self-justification. He experimented with the practice of taking a time-out when his feelings began to spiral toward rage and recrimination, struggling not to take his reactions to Jane but to contain them, sometimes working off some of their intensity by going for a long walk. This period was marked by successes and at least as many failures but it was an important on-going process in which Paul began to take more responsibility for his actions,developing greater self-control and hence more adult strength. Becoming an adult is much more complex than simply physical, intellectual, and social role progressions. Emotionally and psychologically we become adults by learning to deal with people and issues in an adult manner – never a simple or easy process to be sure, but one that is essential for a satisfying life.
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