Relationshipscentral

Patriarchy – You Are Wonderful

2011-11-13T19:59:00.000Z

Patriarchy isn’t a word we hear much these days. But many of us grew up with the effects of it. Men and especially fathers were ‘given’ authority that they did not necessarily possess; ‘given’ authority, rather than ‘inner’ authority. Along with ‘authority’ they were given the right to control, bully and abuse – because bullying is abusive.

If you grew up in a patriarchal family and a patriarchal society, you were probably never told how wonderful you are. This is so important, because we are all wonderful. It’s important to know that and to see the wonder in everybody else, each person you know and meet.

If you relate with what is wonderful in yourself and others, your world becomes not only a wonderful place, but also a safer place. When you relate with wonder, you live with wonder, which is fresh and new and ‘awesome’ every day.

If you were put down by so-called authority, controlled and bullied, you will live with fear. You need to remember just how wonderful you are in order to combat this fear and to create a reality that is based on your inner being, your belief in yourself, as well as that of others, which is, indeed, good and wonderful. You will then have a lot more peace in your world and there will be peace in the world at large.

Remember, it is patriarchy that creates wars and always has done. It is the fear it has engendered that makes us frightened today. If we have peace in our selves, if we have that sense of wonder, we will not want to go to war with each other. We will not want to spoil and destroy it – we will not be fighting with ourselves.

Loneliness and Abandonment

2011-02-14T11:57:00.000Z

Loneliness and abandonment are not the same. Abandonment implies helplessness and even annihilation. An abandoned child will eventually die if they are not rescued, so will an adult who is abandoned, perhaps, in a desert or on a deserted island. But a child can ‘cease to be’ if it feels emotionally abandoned, even if its physical needs are met. This child grows up searching for itself, often in others (see Codependency), or holding other people at bay because he/she doesn’t know who they are and fears losing an already weak identity; fears being taken over or overwhelmed by someone else’s.

It’s natural to be lonely if you don’t have enough social interaction. After all, we are social beings. It’s possible to spend long periods in solitude, especially if you have a need to do this. If you are strong enough emotionally, if you have a strong enough sense of self, you can enjoy this experience. But, for most of us in ‘normal’ or ‘general’ circumstances, we do need other people; we need relationships.

Although periods of solitude can be highly creative, and may even be necessary for creativity, loneliness can be debilitating and restrict your creativity. Loneliness isn’t something to be feared, but maybe to be remedied. This is within your power. It is the fear of abandonment, coming from your childhood experience, which makes you feel powerless. This fear can make you cling to unsuitable relationships that restrict your creativity because they drain, or at least, demand your energy. Or you can attempt to control the fear by withdrawing and withholding from relationships. This ultimately makes you lonelier – as does does the compulsive and addictive behaviours you may adopt to kill the pain of legitimate loneliness.

If you can balance the fear you still carry from childhood abandonment with the very genuine need for human interaction in the present, you will be able to let go of your addictive, and destructive, behaviours. The paradox is, if you let go of these behaviours, even though you create a vacuum for a short while, you will love yourself more and therefore attract the relationships you crave – as well as feeling less lonely because you are enjoying your own company. If you forgive your childhood abandonment, you will no longer be raging against it, retaliating with destructive behaviours towards yourself and be able to move out of you adult loneliness into fulfilling relationships.

To an English Friend in Africa by Ben Okri

2010-07-13T21:56:00.001+01:00

This has such insight:

To an English Friend in Africa

Be grateful for freedom
To see other dreams.
Bless your loneliness as much as you drank
Of your former companionships.
All that you are experiencing now
Will become moods of future joys
So bless it all.
Do not think your ways superior
To another's
Do not venture to judge
But see things with fresh and open eyes
Do not condemn
But praise what you can
And when you can't be silent.

Time is now a gift for you
A gift of freedom
To think and remember and understand
The ever perplexing past
And to re-create yourself anew
In order to transform time.

Live while you are alive.
Learn the ways of silence and wisdom
Learn to act, learn a new speech
Learn to be what you are in the seed of your spirit
Learn to free yourself from all things that have moulded you
And which limit your secret and undiscovered road.

Remember that all things which happen
To you are raw materials
Endlessly fertile

Endlessly yielding of thoughts that could change
Your life and go on doing for ever.

Never forget to pray and be thankful
For all the things good or bad on the rich road;
For everything is changeable
So long as you live while you are alive.

Fear not, but be full of light and love;
Fear not but be alert and receptive;
Fear not but act decisively when you should;
Fear not, but know when to stop;
Fear not for you are loved by me;
Fear not, for death is not the real terror,
But life -magically - is.

Be joyful in your silence
Be strong in your patience
Do not try to wrestle with the universe
But be sometimes like water or air
Sometimes like fire

Live slowly, think slowly, for time is a mystery.
Never forget that love
Requires that you be
The greatest person you are capable of being,
Self-generating and strong and gentle-
Your own hero and star.

Love demands the best in us
To always and in time overcome the worst
And lowest in our souls.
Love the world wisely.

It is love alone that is the greatest weapon
And the deepest and hardest secret.

So fear not, my friend.
The darkness is gentler than you think.
Be grateful for the manifold
Dreams of creation
And the many ways of unnumbered peoples.

Be grateful for life as you live it.
And may a wonderful light
Always guide you on the unfolding road.

March 1991

The Magical Child

2010-06-30T18:49:00.002+01:00

I had a magical experience on Sunday night. My two companions saw the magic in me. They saw me smile and cheered for me, told me I looked beautiful. My bitter friend rejected me when I tried to share my experience with her, like a grumpy parent rejecting an excited and enthusiastic child. I’m sure that was done to her as a child, as it was to me. The result is to compromise in trying to be accepted and lose your magic in the process. You become what you think you are wanted to be and not who you are.

My image for this is a child presenting a dandelion to their mother as a beautiful flower and being brushed away and told, ‘It’s only a wee-the-bed.’ How easily you can get discouraged by someone else’s jaundiced view, especially if they are someone you want to accept and love you. How easily you lose the magic in your heart. How easily you devalue magical experiences, debase them and turn them into something gross and mundane. How easily you deny the worth of your reality.

But, to meet a fellow traveller, (if you believe you are on a path), and share one insight, or more, for a moment, an hour, or maybe longer – it doesn’t matter how short or how long – is pure magic. This is the stuff that healthy relationship is made of.

When we are honest with one another, when we meet with open hearts to share our truths and receive each other, listen, take each other in, that’s when the magic happens because we are nurturing the magic, the divinity in each other. How many of you can claim you had that nurtured in you as a child? Some children do.

Appropriateness and Cross Gender Fertilisation

2010-06-29T17:55:00.000+01:00

I met a man on Sunday who opened his heart to me. He was the most real person I have heard for a long time, speaking his truth with passion. I just know my pot/kettle friend would have attacked him. I stood up and cheered for him. I don’t think his truth gets heard very often.

If you’ve not been listened to as children, you often share inappropriately. It’s been said that adult children of dysfunctional families tell their life story to the lady at the supermarket checkout but keep their truth secret from their friends. They haven’t learned appropriateness.

My friend (new friend) on Sunday knew he was safe with me and another mutual friend present. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he said. But I listened and thought about it – for half the night, actually. He gave me plenty of food for thought. It’s good to hear another point of view, especially a man’s, if you’re a woman, even if it does challenge you. I believe women with women can collude with one another in gender based biases. Maybe men do that too. There’s something refreshing and fertilising about cross gender conversations and revelations, not to mention surprising.

We used to use an exercise in groups called the Fish Bowl. The men would sit in a tight circle and the women would sit close behind them in another circle. The men were given various subjects to discuss, relating to relationships with women. The women were not allowed to comment. Then they changed places for their discussions. At the end there would be sharing. Both genders were surprised and pleased by what they heard.

The Pot, The Kettle And Denial

2010-06-29T17:03:00.002+01:00

This morning a friend rang, in a hurry as usual. She wanted to go to the cinema. It calms her. I said it wasn’t open and that I’d been trying to ring her, to share something important, insights into a common problem we have that I’d got from another person. She didn’t want to talk about that and I didn’t get a chance to ask about her weekend. She hung up, leaving me feeling breathless. Not long after, I got an email from her attacking me and telling me I talk ninety percent about me, don’t have listening skills and don’t ask questions about her.

My reply: ‘I think this is a case of pot and kettle.’

It’s my own fault. I left myself open. I tried to share something that’s painful to her. Well, it’s a shared problem. It’s painful for me too. Maybe it comes to ladies of a certain age -:) But I was grateful to the man who opened his heart to me on Sunday and shared his insights, however painful and challenging they were for me to listen to and look at – some bits of myself I’d rather not deal with; but I’m willing to. He reminded me about a few things I’d forgotten about relationships. I tend to rise to challenges. My friend didn’t want to. She prefers to blame other people, circumstances, and go to the cinema to escape her pain instead. But that’s after she delivered a dose of it to me by attacking me.

OK, I shared something important with someone I now know it’s not safe to share with. (I’ll write about appropriateness). I won’t be doing that again. For me, if it’s not possible to share with a friend, then there is no friendship. If a friend says, ‘I don’t want to go there,’ I respect that, and friends do at times. But if they attack or blame or accuse me, that’s not on, especially when they’re accusing me of exactly what they’re doing – in this case not listening. And, if you don’t listen to yourself, how can you listen to others. If you don’t admit you’re in pain, avoid it by running away (to the pictures, or the beach, or wherever), you will hurt others.

Pot and kettle: as it happens, she did me a favour. She enabled me to see where I am hurting myself – certainly by giving my power away, and then becoming a victim of someone else’s pain. The only problem is, I won’t be able to discuss this with her now. Her next email said, let’s move on. She was obviously not open for further discussion. But we can’t move on, because it will happen again, and I’m not up for that. That’s the sad part. If you deny your pain, you’re likely to push other people away from you. Your defences will stop them approaching. You deny yourself intimacy. That’s what the man on Sunday taught me.

Community

2010-06-22T17:18:00.002+01:00

I’m no prophet, but I’ve been saying for years that the only way we’re going to survive things like the recession, global warming, diminishing resources and other unavoidable changes is through sharing resources and facilities by coming together in communities. This means co-operating and caring; looking out for one another, not just for number one. It also means facing the challenges of forming functional relationships.

That’s not so easy. It means learning to get along with one another. It also means finding like-minded people to ‘commune’ with. Not easy if you don’t first know your own mind. You need to be an individual in your own right before you can be ‘part of’ a community. That means moving from dependence to independence so you can interdepend. It also means letting go of your pseudo-independent position, where you appear not to need anybody. We do need each other, and that’s why we need communities.

You need clear personal boundaries before you can safely enter community. And you need your heart open so you can be honest and allow intimacy, when it’s appropriate. In any group of people it won’t necessarily be appropriate to be intimate with everybody. You will need discrimination and discernment in order to choose. The more necessary it becomes for us to build and live in communities, the more we will have to grow up.

Joy and Sorrow

2010-06-21T07:10:00.001+01:00

In my heart, where I find that bit of what I understand as God in me, my divinity, I find both joy and sorrow. I wonder if that’s what God is. I wonder if joy and sorrow always go together.

My mother used to say she didn’t believe there could be a God because, if there was, he wouldn’t let people suffer and there would be no death; a bit simplistic and naïve. But life isn’t simple – it’s complex. Maybe God doesn’t let us suffer – we do.

In my book, The Joy of Growing Up, I talk about learning to accept disappointments as part of the process of growing up. Maybe, as we move out of childhood fantasy, where everything is idealised and perfect, into accepting reality and into adulthood, we also learn to accept sorrow. We gain and we lose. That’s the cycle of life.

What’s important is not to let sorrow overwhelm joy. As you accept it, you also let it go. If you try to deny it, it will stay with you.

Cherish Yourself

2010-06-19T15:25:00.003+01:00

Remember, you have a bit of God, or what you know as God, in you – your divinity. When your self-esteem is low, or any time, remember to cherish this divinity. Whatever your circumstances, struggles, woes, that divinity is always there; a light shining, even in the darkest times. It is your essential self and needs to be valued.

I have an affirmation today that helps me nourish myself and reminds me of my divinity. When my environment enrages me because it does not suit my needs, does not resonate with me, I remind myself, “I am worth more than this.” I’ve written it on sheets of paper and pinned them to the too thin walls of my home where intrusive, inharmonious, often abusive noise comes through from my neighbours. This may sound arrogant or inflated but it feels true for me. It’s my way of reminding myself, and protecting myself from psychic pollution.

Why don’t I move? There are lots of reasons but maybe I have to discover/recover my true worth, all of it, before I can know just what I deserve and then materialise it.

Self-Respect, Self-Disgust and Self-Esteem

2010-06-18T15:21:00.001+01:00

Self-disgust is a product of growing up in an abusive culture. I say culture because abuse is the culture in some societies, which leads to a culture of abusive families. Abusive behaviour, which is also immature behaviour, is considered normal and excused.

Abusive behaviour is disgusting. Abuse is an expression of disgust and it engenders disgust in those who witness it. Children who grow up in a disgusting environment, learn self-disgust. They learn to hate themselves. This is because they can’t express, often not even articulate, their anger and loathing of what they experience around them. This turns into self-loathing because they can’t be true to themselves. They cannot speak up or be honest about what they are feeling. Anger turns inwards as rage, which becomes self-hatred. Even if the abuse is not directed at them, if they experience adults’ abusive behaviour towards one another, they are still being abused. They are experiencing some form of violence, which violates them. Adults who do not respect one another are openly disrespecting the feelings of the children who live in the environment they create.

Children who grow up in abusive families learn and adopt the models they see around them, especially as they are given no others. Because these are models of rage, they don’t learn how to express anger or articulate discomfort, disrespect and disgust potently. They grow up frustrated, raging and impotent. Then they feel disgust and loathing for themselves. They do not respect themselves because they feel bad with all these feelings inside them, unexpressed. They have low self-esteem.

So, think before you yell. You don’t know who may be listening, and suffering.

Becoming Friends

2010-06-15T20:21:00.003+01:00

You meet someone you have something in common with and you discover meeting points. Maybe you get excited about this person. Friendships grow over time. They grow through sharing vulnerability, through opening up and revealing yourselves, when it is safe and appropriate to do so. Shared experiences bring you closer together, deepen the relationship. Friendships grow through compassion, through shared passions and through suffering together – through being real, through shared emotions and through sharing, warts and all.

True friendship grows through acceptance of the other person’s humanness, their frailties and weaknesses. If your expectations and excitement are high at the beginning, you may feel disappointed and let down by the other person’s limitations. Then you have choices. You can reject the friendship as unsuitable or inadequate for your personal needs. You can accept their limitations, weighing them up against the benefits of the friendship, allowing for the ups and downs of any relationship.

Or you can deny these limitations in true codependent style and then resent the other person, that is, continue to use them to meet what needs they can, even when you don’t like them. So you cling to a friendship that is not genuine. This is not true friendship. It will not grow and deepen if you are not honest and open – with yourself and the other person. You will not be able to be your real self in this relationship. You will never feel completely comfortable. You will not taste the magic of true intimacy in friendship.

Some people you meet may never become true friends. They may remain acquaintances, and that’s OK. It takes time and energy and ‘bothering’ to nurture true friendship. In reality, more than a handful of true friends is probably unrealistic and unmanageable.

The Shadow

2010-06-11T18:04:00.001+01:00

If you put your shadow behind you, it will creep up on you, jump on you unexpectedly. If you put it in front of you, face up to it, you can transform it, integrate it and make it your friend. You have more choices that way. If you throw light on shadow it is no longer shadow.

You may find a psychopath in your shadow, but if you’re aware you have that capability, in certain circumstances, then you can choose whether to use it or not. If you deny that ability, it might just pop out when you’re provoked, before you have a choice. If you are aware of your shadow, then you can choose not to react if you’re provoked.

OK, a psychopath is a bit extreme, but not impossible. I have an inner bitch. I have to watch her. And an inner critic, judge, pedant, you name it. Get the picture? But I can choose whether to use those or not. And I don’t blame anyone else for provoking me if I do choose to – even if they did ask for it.

Off to befriend my inner brat now.

The Magic of Childhood

2010-06-10T19:14:00.000+01:00

The other day someone was talking about the magic of childhood. At first I couldn’t remember any in mine. Someone else said those magical places were where a child could go for safety. I felt there must be something wrong with me because I never felt safe as a child. After all, not all children have safe childhoods.

Discussing this with a friend, she said she escaped into fantasy as a child because she didn’t feel safe anywhere else. I realised I did that too; fantasy and imagination and creativity. I do that now, but not necessarily for safety. I do it now for the magic of it. At first I couldn’t identify that magic in my childhood, but I can identify the magic in my life now, all around me, in nature, in relationships, in happenings in my life and the things I do. I am so grateful for that. And it’s maybe that magic that makes my life safe today, that gives me something to believe in and that makes me believe in me, because I am part of it. But it also makes me believe in something bigger than me that I am a part of – and in the interrelatedness of everyone and everything.

That magic is the child in me, my inner child if you like. And it’s that child that I want to integrate into my life today – and live it through my adult. I couldn’t do that as a child because I had no adult of my own and those around me, not being in touch with their inner child, being too burdened with responsibility and immaturity, couldn’t support it and live it with me. But I have always felt, as an adult at least, there were elements of magic in my life.

I think it’s essential to keep that childlike quality, which is essentially positive and optimistic but, with the experience of adulthood and maturity, no longer naïve. It’s sad if we lose that as we get older. There is playfulness and freshness and youthfulness in that magic that you can have however old you are and how ever responsible. So it’s important to keep your life simple, as I said in my previous post, so that you don’t become burdened and miss out on it.

Having Your Heart’s Desires

2010-06-10T19:08:00.002+01:00

What would you give up to be all that you could be? What would you sacrifice? Would you give up superficiality, surface appearances, dross? Would you give up false pride – often known as ego? And would you give up wilfulness, your ‘I want now’? Are you willing to delay gratification in order to reach a deeper fulfilment and satisfaction?

If you ask yourself what you really want most, if you dare to do that, what of the things you think you want, always thought you wanted, or even that society tells you, you want, would you be willing to give up?

So maybe fulfilling your heart’s desires is more about what you don’t want, what you don’t need, in the first instance. What is superfluous, time and energy consuming in your life? How could you simplify? The path to your heart’s desires could also start with humility.

I like to ask myself not ‘what do I want’ but ‘what is God’s will for me?’ This means listening to my heart. Then I know what I want most for myself. When I align my will with God’s will, or that higher power, my life becomes fulfilled. But it can’t if it’s already filled with unnecessary clutter that I’ve used to fill up my feelings of meaninglessness and emptiness. Usually something has to go. And usually I don’t miss it. In fact, it’s a relief to be without it. Having my heart’s desires is simple. But it takes simplicity in my life to be open to receiving them.

Being All of Who You Can Be

2010-05-19T18:23:00.002+01:00

For me this is about God – that bit of God in me, my divinity. My divinity, that spark of God in me, is also my authenticity, what is REAL about me, my self, my soul; and my joy. It’s what makes me happy.

When I am in touch with this reality, I can be who I was born to be, my unique and separate self, but also part of: healthy, appropriate relationships, like minded community and wider humanity. I feel tuned in and plugged in. I move freely and easily, in harmony in my daily life. I dance.

I no longer look for substances, behaviours or people to fill the emptiness, that hole inside me, which I call the God hole. I fill myself up from my own, abundant resources – and then share myself with other people. I also enjoy and value my own company. Solitude is precious to me.

When I am at one with God and with God’s will for me, which is my own will, (not my wilfulness), then I am at one with myself and at one in my relationships too.

Responsibility

2010-04-14T21:38:00.003+01:00

So what do you do if you’re in a competitive relationship? Like any adolescent, you need to grow up and take responsibility – for yourself. So it makes no difference how weak or strong your partner is. Sooner of later you need to stop projecting and take a look at yourself. If you’re not getting what you want in your relationship, then you need to stop blaming and take responsibility for getting it for yourself. If you don’t like the situation you’re in, then you need to change it. And if your partner won’t, or can’t, co-operate and negotiate with you, then it’s time to rethink that partnership, because it isn’t really a partnership; it’s a collusion. You are colluding in keeping each other weak, down, adolescent and preventing each other from growing. If you don’t both have the same aims for the relationship or want the same things from life, then you may need to go your separate ways. And you need to take responsibility for that too.

Adolescence, leaving home, stepping out into the world, can be seen as a great adventure. If you have been in a dependent relationship, then stepping out alone can be exhilarating, exciting, and, yes, scary too. But it’s less likely to be destructive or undermining. What’s important is that you take care of yourself, you own needs and your self esteem. If the way you are relating with someone is bringing you ‘down’ then you need to look at how you can change that, with or without them and by taking responsibility for yourself, rather than expecting them to.

You will find there is an enormous amount of satisfaction to be gained from taking up your own power, rather than attempting to get it at the expense of someone else, who is also bringing you down by getting theirs at your expense. You cannot afford to pay that price – which is ongoing.

Competitive Relationships

2010-04-14T21:21:00.001+01:00

Competitive relationships, possibly the most common kind of dependent relationships, are like adolescent relationships. You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. You are caught in a power struggle and you only feel good when you believe you are on top.

These relationships are about scoring points at the other person’s expense – one-upmanship. So you are dependent on the other person for your sense of power. But you can’t leave because you feel weak and dependent without them. You are caught in a vicious cycle of competing, blaming, bickering, nagging and putting each other down. This is abusive and undermines your self esteem. There may be love in this relationship, but it doesn’t show and doesn’t get much chance to blossom. There seems to be more hatred than love because you are projecting your weakness onto the other person and then despising them for it. You make it clear you don’t like them the way they are. You are rejecting them.

So you reject each other but you don’t leave. You pretend to be independent but are assured by the other person’s need for you, while denying your own need, which traps you. This is not a constructive relationship. There is little hope of growth or moving forward because all your energy is going into maintaining the one-up, one-down pattern, in which you alternate. You need the other person to make you feel powerful through their weakness.

The danger lies in one of you changing, growing up, becoming truly independent, because that will mark the end of the relationship; but you will also be freed from it’s destructiveness and be able to move on in your life. However, the real danger is holding yourself back, restricting your own growth and resisting necessary change – ie refusing to grow up.

Adolescence and Dependency

2010-04-10T20:16:00.000+01:00

Adolescence is the time when you are no longer a child but you’re not really an adult yet. You want to cling to the comfort and familiarity of being a child but you also want the benefits of being an adult, preferably without having to work or wait for them or take responsibility for yourself.

You have tantrums – not childish ones but nonetheless immature, adolescent rages. You rebel against authority without using your own, such as it is. And you get into power struggles with your parents.

Does this ring any bells in your current partnership? Is there a similarity?

I’ll write next about competitive relationships.

Mature Sexuality and Assertiveness

2010-03-31T11:25:00.003+01:00

Maturing sexually is the last part of the developmental process. After that you just go on growing in potential. Mature sexuality comes with growing up and separating from your parents, but particularly your parent of the opposite sex. This happens at a time when you take up your power and assert yourself and move out into the world as an independent person, capable of interdependence. If your parent of the opposite sex is immature sexually, you will not be able to separate, take up your power and assertiveness or mature sexually. What you will do instead is rebel. This is not mature but adolescent – and eventually self-destructive. You will achieve only pseudo-independence.

If your parent of the opposite sex is not mature sexually, they will be seductive. This is immature and will not allow you to safely become sexually mature yourself. You will have to steer clear of them to an extent that prevents you from developing the ability for intimacy. So you may grow up being able to act out sexually, but this does not mean you are achieving intimacy, or mature sexual relationships. If this is so, there will always be an element of dependency in your relationships.

If your contra sexual parent is immature sexually, then so will your same sex parent be, otherwise they wouldn’t be with that partner. If this is so, your same sex parent will also be jealous of you, another undermining factor in your mature sexual and assertive development. You will be looking to your partner for the recognition of your sexuality that you didn't get from your parents, while being afraid to own it for yourself.

So how does this dependency work in your relationships? It’s the pattern of strong man and weak woman. The man has to be strong to play the role the woman needs him to play so that she can play her role, of weak woman, needing the strong man. In other words, he has to play her father (who was weak) and she had to play his mother (who didn’t take up her power). That means he has to stifle his vulnerable, receptive qualities, as he had to do with his seductive mother and his jealous father. And she has to stifle her strong, assertive qualities, as she had to do with her jealous mother and her seductive father. In this way neither of you can achieve intimacy in the relationship, nor mature sexuality. You are both dependent on one another to maintain the roles you play in order not to expose the weakness of the man and the repressed power of the woman. More so, the man has adopted the weak, probably ‘macho’ model of his father and the woman the ‘seductive’ model of her mother.

You are, in fact, both weak and unassertive and neither owning the full power of your sexuality and assertiveness, nor your vulnerability and receptiveness. You cannot open your hearts to love or passion, although you may experience rage. I call this rage oedipal rage, as opposed to the narcissistic rage that babies feel. The situation ends up with the man becoming impotent and the woman bossy and neither is happy in the relationship or with the other person, who fails to be what they want them to be and what they are unwilling to be for themselves. Their oedipal rage, their adolescent rebellion, becomes self destructive and destructive to the relationship.

Home and the Self

2010-03-30T18:44:00.003+01:00

Home is a state of being. It is not fixed in space or time. It is inside you. So you can take it wherever you go. This inner home is not concerned with details. It is your essence and, even though your material home, even your material body, will come to an end, because all material things are impermanent, your essence is indestructible. It exists, even in emptiness. In fact, the emptier you are, the closer you will be to your essence. You will come home to yourself – your own source.

When you are dependent on someone else for your sense of being, as you were as a baby, emptiness feels like the void. In that place you cease to be. However, you do exist in that void (which is not a void) and, if you can allow yourself that emptiness to feel and be, you will find your self and not have to project it onto someone else as you do in codependent relationship. You will no longer be dependent on anyone else for your sense of self. And you will not fear losing it.

When you depend on someone else for your sense of self, you abdicate; you vacate your own self and live through the other person. You get your sense of self from them and not from the stable source inside you. The sense of self you get from someone else is impermanent, shaky, but the sense of self you get from your own essence is permanent and reliable.

Aging, Maturing and ‘Growing’ Up

2010-03-18T07:47:00.003Z

I’ve talked about aging without maturing, somewhere in my book, The Joy of Growing Up; or was it in my Concise Advice? If you don’t move from dependency, through independence to interdependence, then you will age, but you will not mature.

But then what? I don’t believe you ever stop growing. Even death can be seen as a stage of growth, of attainment – even of returning to yourself, coming home. At each stage of life, including the very end of it, you ‘grow’ into that stage. At each stage there is something new to learn – or even to unlearn. Conditioning goes deep. There always seems to be more to throw off, more assumptions to question, more childhood to relive and reshape. It’s a lot like peeling the skins off an onion. At the same time, there is always more to come to terms with; you grow through this acceptance of what is.

And if you don’t mature, you regress instead. That’s why some older people become childish, regressed, dependent and feeble in their bodies and minds too. However, some become childlike because they manage to retain or reclaim the freshness and spontaneity that is natural to a child, but that often gets stifled by the limitations of upbringing, schooling and conditioning. At the same time they also become wise.

So, rather than something to be dreaded, you can see ‘growing’ old as an adventure, a journey of discovering even more than you thought you were, or maybe always knew you were but had forgotten or given up on in despair. It’s a bit like coming home to yourself.

And, by the way, you won’t find this in someone else. You’ll have to do it for yourself.

Being a Victim – The Habit of Low Self Esteem

2010-01-30T20:36:00.000Z

I was thinking about being a victim. The pattern that emerges is helplessness, impotence and raging. It is so easy to fall into helplessness, especially when you have low self esteem. You rage because you feel impotent and helpless, but, in fact, raging makes you feel impotent and helpless. You rage BECAUSE you feel powerless, but you give your power away when you rage. You become a victim. You WERE once helpless and powerless, but you’re not now. This pattern of impotence has become a habit. You assume you are still helpless and fall into it. Raging lowers your self esteem. Feeling impotent lowers your self worth. It’s important not to rage. It makes you feel BAD.

Instead of raging, you could take control of your helpless situation. Then you won’t FEEL controlled, or see yourself as a victim. But you don’t believe you have the right to assert yourself; and you also fear retribution. This links up with dependency. Once you were dependent on someone who could withdraw what you needed if you asserted yourself – in whichever way you knew how. So you settled for less than you could have, less than you had the right to and less than was adequate. You shut up and put up. You became a victim. You stifled your rage and frustration. You felt powerless. Because this made you feel bad, you believed you were bad and grew up with low self esteem. Then you felt threatened by the power of your own rage, projected this onto other people and became fearful of attack, paranoid. This made you feel more of a victim.

It’s important you learn to ask for what you need and what you feel is right for you – without demanding, without rage and indignation and without arrogance. And it’s vital to your self esteem and wellbeing that you do not feel like or perceive yourself as a victim. Then you will instinctively know how best to act, how best to help yourself by doing the best that you can do for you without hurting anyone else – or yourself.

Fight and Flight

2010-01-25T21:39:00.001Z

When I wrote about freezing, I said I’d write about fight and flight.

You spend a lot of your life defending yourself and/or running away. Have you ever thought about how you deal with threat – and also what you find threatening, and if this is realistic?

What was a threat to you as a child may not be threatening now. But the fight/flight response to threat has become programmed into your memory. You react automatically, often inappropriately.

As a child you either fought perceived threat by raging, having tantrums. Or, if it wasn’t safe to express that rage, you turned it inwards. You raged against yourself. If this is how you are still dealing with perceived threat, you are either acting out, throwing your weight about or bullying, and thus giving your power away, rather than taking up your power and asserting yourself – or you are acting in, withholding your power and energy and punishing yourself. Either way you are feeling impotent and frustrated. And either way you are divorced from your true self.

Flight would have been more difficult as a child, especially as a baby. In the face of perceived threat your only option would have been to withdraw into yourself, to disappear, to cease to be; another loss of self. You may still be doing this by spacing out, minimising and denying yourself, shrinking, creating tensions in your body, reducing your breathing. This is not only frustrating but also paralysing.

Denial is another form of flight – avoiding what you find threatening, including the truth. Often the first step is identifying what the problem is. The next is your reaction; and then finding a response instead – one that is more appropriate to the present situation and more true to your self, because both sets of behaviours cause you to feel empty and split you off from your authentic self. They do not make you feel good about yourself. It may take time to find the answers but they are usually there if you are willing to change something in your life.

Addictions, Pain and Emptiness

2010-01-25T21:15:00.003Z

Addictions are an attempt to fill up the emptiness you feel and kill the pain of that emptiness. When you are connected to your self, you don’t feel empty. So the pain you are trying to kill is the pain of being separated from your self. You attempt to find yourself through your addictions. But addictions cause you pain. Ultimately, they make you feel empty.

You may well find yourself in something you like doing and which gives you pleasure – for instance: sport, work, creative expression. But, if you feel empty and don’t have a sense of self, you will overdo those activities. You will become obsessive about them. This is the nature of addiction. The substance or behaviour, including thought patterns, must be repeated in increasing quantities because it loses its effectiveness; it is not a permanent solution.

Addictions are a spiritual disease. The emptiness you feel has been described as the ‘god hole’. You are trying to find your self, your good, your divinity, from where you can relate to the divinity in others. If you feel empty inside it is hard to relate to other people – and easier to form a relationship with a substance, activity or behaviour.

Codependency is an addictive behaviour where you don’t relate with the other person’s divinity, with their self. You relate to them as an object and USE that object to try to fill up your emptiness. You try to live your life through them. This is a compromise because you have also to comply with them. In doing this you sacrifice the self you so long for. So much of the life you live is a compromise of your self.

Christmas Message 2009

2009-12-19T20:48:00.001Z

Christmas is a time for dreams and fantasies, fairy dust and glitter. When the hype, and creativity, of the preparation is over and the ‘big day’ arrives, or even before that, you might come down to earth with a crash. Reality may be a different matter.

One of the myths of Christmas is the happy family. This is strange because Christmas, and family gatherings, have the habit of bringing out the dysfunction in those families. Often you are expected to be merry and loving with people you usually don’t get on with.

Christmas can also bring up reminders of previous Christmases – good and bad. It can be a time of grieving losses, or reliving traumas.

Christmas can be a bit like a big wedding. All the time, expense and creativity that go into making it a perfect day – and then the waking up to reality; the imperfection this is life and relating and the necessity to do the latter functionally. A wedding doesn’t make a marriage any more than a Christmas gathering makes a happy family.

All the more reason not to beat yourself up this Christmas if you are not in a family or you’re spending it alone. What’s most important is that you do what you need to do for you on Christmas Day and that you are gentle and compassionate with yourself, in the true spirit of Christmas giving. Give yourself the gift of doing what you want to do for you. (see my 2008 Christmas message).