If It's Hard to Finish Things, Consider:

I know this sounds neurotic, and it is, but I believe sometimes people don’t finish things because they don’t want childhood to be over.

If it’s over, you can never get the love you needed. Any love you get today –– adult love –– isn’t sacrificial. Whereas the love of a good parent is balanced near 95-5, the best adult relationship will hover around 50-50.

Of course, you accomplish nothing by not-finishing something. It’s a poor, symbolic surrogate. Not organising your desk has no relationship to your childhood. But if you can’t object in the relevant area, the objection has to express itself somewhere else.

Actually, it’s more than an objection. If you didn’t have the love you needed, it’s a scream of pain, hurt, resentment, and fury. And fear. You won’t make it. You have to have it, and the door cannot be closed. Your chance for that love cannot be over. So you do things that mark you as still child-ish, and not finishing things can be among them. See? It’s not over. There’s still a chance, and you’re okay.

Logically, the way out of this dead end is to admit it’s over and face reality. You’re okay; you got through it; here you are. You’ve been kidding yourself –– no one else thinks you’re still a child. It’s been delusional.

But knowledge doesn’t change a determined unconscious. You may need to spend some time listening to the misery and fear, or even the tantrum. Maybe you were that scared. Maybe you would have panicked without the hope for more love.

Treat yourself like a rescue animal you’re adopting. Be patient and steady. If magical hope was all you had to hold onto in childhood, then it’s your (parental) job now to provide real support, Even a wounded creature will give up useless symbols when they have the real thing.

Healing an Old Insult within a Relationship

When Edgar was thinking about retirement, his wife Sarah freaked out in a way that surprised them both.

“Remember when we left Chicago and moved to Pocatello?’ Sarah asked, “and you didn’t have a job for about six months? I don’t regret the move, but you were so angry at me, shouting and breaking things –– I had to look at the ruined furniture every day . . . . It was awful.”

“But I’ve apologised,” Edgar broke in, contrite. “I haven’t done anything like that since. I’ve told you how much I regret it. I’m so sorry”

That didn’t help Sarah, who kept crying and fidgeting.

“Try this,” I said. “Edgar, don’t talk about yourself anymore, about how sorry you are and why you were struggling at the time, and how you’ve cleaned up your act, and so forth. Talk about Sarah. Express your understanding of how she felt during those six months. Do you know how she felt?”

“Well,” he said, “I think she was terrified. The person she lived with had turned into her tormenter. She was scared; our baby boy was scared. We were in a new town and had no friends yet, no place in the community. It was a nightmare for her, and she didn’t know how or when it would end. I think it was awful for her.”

Sarah was amazed. “I didn’t know you understood,” she said. “I feel so, so much better.”

“Are we going to have a terrible day,” Edgar asked. He looked worried.

“Not at all!” she said, smiling at him. “I feel so much better. I never knew you understood what it was like for me.”

She turned to me. “I had no idea I was thinking about this today. It just flew up out of my memories. Is it related to him retiring?”

I didn’t know, but I guessed, “Maybe because during those six months he’d stopped working, and you worry he could go into that kind of collapse again when he leaves his current job.

That brought us to the topics ahead –– what structure Edgar could create to replace in retirement the structure of the job he was leaving, and how each of them thought or felt about money. But, for the moment, the big deal was that Sarah’s pain of twenty-some years had been eased.

The primary insult (let’s call it abuse) hadn’t been Edgar’s screaming at Sarah and breaking furniture; it had been his indifference to her experience of it. When she finally felt seen and heard by him, her fear subsided and trust returned. We cannot trust people who don’t see us or don’t care how we feel. But even an egregious insult can start to heal when they do.

You're the big person now

As a child, especially a child in distress, you focus on the people around you. They are your lifeline. You notice what they like or dislike, what gets their attention, what makes you safe.

There’s a little “You” inside, but she is dependent on them, not conscious of herself, merged. Only later do you become defined as a self, at which point they, too, gradually become separate people. You begin to differentiate, become your own person. Your internal self may or may not come along with you.

For example, if your parents are good administrators but not very good at attachment, you’ll become a performer in their world –– how you look, behave, succeed, etc. That’s the world they ‘re defining, so that’s your world, too. They aren’t looking at your internal self, how you really feel, what you need, so you don’t, either.

Your clue is whether you’ve been pushing yourself hard, setting high, unforgiving standards. If so, you’ve been trying to fill in your empty spaces, feel more loved.. You can’t just be, not-perfect, quirky, good at some things but not others, relaxing into a feeling of acceptance. That would be selfish, or no one would like you.

If you’re angry or sad, “for no reason,” it’s time to look at the relationship between you-in-the-world and your internal self. Don’t bother with them –– you’ve tried for years to improve their attachment, and nothing changes. They are who they are.

Instead, look at your own relationship with your internal self. Have you carried forward the family tradition, not seeing yourself, or not caring what you see? Are you still pushing, beating up on yourself, hoping to prove you’re good enough?

If so, your challenge is to shift into a new paradigm. You may not have a model for how to relate differently to yourself (or others). In fact, you almost certainly don’t have that model; if you did, you wouldn’t carry so much anger or sorrow. You wouldn’t feel so lonely.

Maybe you really love(d) your dog, or your children, or your garden, or cooking, model trains, movies, drawing . . . anything. Use that as a model for how to relate more fully to yourself. Relate to yourself the way you relate to your dog. How is that? You pay attention; you’re all there; you listen with your body to how he’s feeling; you give love without reservation. Can you accept yourself that way? You’re just as deserving, and always were.

Sadness . . . . but no complaints

Keith came to see me at 16. He seemed unusually bright and self-contained. He’d just ended a relationship with a disturbed young woman, felt he had been overwhelmed by her needs but also felt guilty about abandoning her.

As it turned out, the relationship and its ambivalence echoed his relationship with his sensitive, artistic mother. He said he tried to have a “professional” relationship with both his parents. He watched. He asked for help only if he had to. Yet he felt loved, enjoyed his family, had nothing to complain about. He just had periodic bouts of sadness. And anger. He wondered if he had bad character.

I asked if it was possible his mother (for example) cared too much, that is, got too involved. Since she was sensitive and loving, did an expression of his feelings generate an excess of response from her? Yes. She reacted too strongly, got too involved, made a bigger deal of it than he felt it to be. Whatever it was became a “thing” every time. He pulled back into his “professional” distance.

But where did this pattern leave him? He couldn’t just be, express his feelings spontaneously, relax. The floods of concern, love, and engagement threatened to drown him. So he held back –– and felt the sorrow of having to maintain more distance than he really wanted. He wasn’t fee to love. He was sad.

And he was angry, because he had to protect himself (he didn’t want to merge). It wasn’t fair. He didn’t want this much separation, he didn’t want to be on guard, at “professional” distance. It was hard work, and it was lonely.

We don’t notice out loud the quality of someone’s love for us. How flexible is it? How much autonomy is granted us? Does it require something from us (are we taking care of them)? Keith was still just a kid; he couldn’t be expected to understand that his genuinely loving, responsive mother was invading his emotional (energetic) space. But he felt it. He responded self-protectively. And he was sad, and angry, at the loneliness that self-protection required.

Someone being overly responsive is only one variant on the problem of poor boundaries. Someone can also take whatever you feel and convert it into whatever they feel –– which often isn’t what you meant. You’ll stop confiding in that person, too. We’re safe only if the other person hears whatever we intend and remembers always that what we feel is what we feel, not theirs to run with.

If the other person is “too loving,” we’re baffled. We have nothing to complain about; no one is “doing” anything to us. But we feel the sadness, the loneliness, of having to hold back, control our love for them, in order to honor our own equilibrium. It hurts the other person, too: they love us; they wonder why we’re always so reserved around them . . . . It’s sad.

Dig for What You Really Need

People “need” food, pornography, movies, busy-busy activities, service to others, extra sleep, video games, etc.

We usually try to control any excess.  It works for a while, but the need never gets tired, while you do. 

If you’re doing something that isn’t good for you, repeatedly or over time, stop that focus and look behind the behavior: what do you really need?

For example, I need compensation and calming.  Starting very early, I’ve been around too much that has scared me, or that has invaded and degraded my sense of self.  I want consolation, repose, safety. 

My placebo has been food, especially carbs (with flour, maybe butter, not just sugar), and the freedom to eat whatever I want, because, in childhood, that was the only possible assist.  Clients of mine have used secret sex; or evading any sincere commitment (meeting any expectations); or following every rule to the letter of the law in order to have “margin,” a safe distance from judgment by others; or serving others non-stop in an effort to be loved.  We come up with whatever is available to us in childhood –– which ain’t much.  Kids are stuck wherever we are, and we can’t change the system one whit. 

We believe the chosen behavior will keep us safe.  That belief is the placebo function.  Okay, you made it.  Now you’re being harmed by that behavior.  You forego sleep to have extra credit at work (“margin”).  You get fat from eating carbs of consolation.  You alienate and disappoint a sequence of spouses because you can’t commit to any marriage.  You have to maintain a secret sex life to claim autonomy.  You aren’t allowed to know what you need if it contradicts someone else’s needs.  Whatever.  It’s harming you today. 

It never objectively did any good, but you believed it made you safe, so it did do you (subjectively) a lot of good. Fine.  Not true today. 

Step One is to identify that you have a placebo, and what it is. 

Step Two is to identify what you were trying to help (with that placebo).  I was fighting off loneliness and fear, a sense of futility and chaos in human relations.  The fellow who avoids commitment was fighting off an invasive quasi-sexual mother.  The man who wants margin, to owe no one anything, is defending against others taking credit for his achievements. The woman who cheerfully responds to everyone else is defending herself against despair. 

Step Three is to strategize: how can you meet your real need in current –– and more effective, less damaging –– terms?  What else can you do to reassure that little self in there, who still feels frightened, or invaded, or used by everyone? 

Regardless of the answer, the very fact that you’re asking begins to heal you.  No one saw your distress or really understood your exaggerated behavior (your effort to take care of yourself in some convoluted, indirect way).  If you see it, and you see the deep need behind it, you’re already on a different footing.  You exist, you matter, someone wants to help. 

The urgency of attachment to your placebo behavior will ease, as will your tension and anxiety.  It’s worth a try . . . .     

Leave Jail? Too Scary?

Patricia, 26, has had only a few boyfriends.  When Larry messages her, she responds: her colleagues know and like him, they share interests, and he sounds nice.  But when he suggests they meet, she is overcome by her anxiety.  She "ghosts" him -- gone.

Why?  Because her experience of intimacy is horrible.  She is different from everyone else in her family.  They call her "weird," and she knows she's alone.  She's always been alone.  They want her to be more involved in the family events, and no one has abused her, but she doesn't trust any of them to understand her, so she declines.

School was fine; work is fine; but dating?  No.

Patricia is at a crossroads: if she gives in to her anxiety (which feels more like terror), she continues to make her family the reference point for her life.  She lives in relation to them, not to herself.  That doesn't sit well.

But if she becomes her own reference point, it's all new.  (And the terror is telling her this is unsafe!)  

I reminded her of the film, "The Shawshank Redemption."  Remember how hard it was to leave the institution?  In prison, the routines were stable, the rules were stable, and none of the inmates had to think.  Just obey.  Leave the prison?  You no longer know how to live "on the outside."  Red hanged himself; the Morgan Freeman character came close.

Patricia's prison door has been open for about four years (she moved out at 22).  She's given her family four years of her adult life.  Is that enough?  Can she take a big chance, walk out the door, and learn how to live in her own life? 

Post-Traumatic Rage

I just published "Anger Is Your Ally," but today I realize i left something out.  I exemplify the rage I'm talking about, and it doesn't fit into any of the book's categories.

Two days ago I wrote about Saundra, and what her miserable childhood cost her, including the distortion that 80%-90% of her energies were absorbed by having to deal with her family craziness.

Well, that's the one.  I had the same problem, only it feels slightly different: as if 80%-90% of my energies have been spent on the "Trauma Movie."  Re-living, trying to solve ... just as I did during the time it was happening. 

Those energies have been squandered on tension, fear, tolerating the limbo of no-resolution, isolation (including massive distrust and a need to hide), and overcoming a sense of helplessness.  Gee, what a great place to put most of my energies, right?  No wonder life has felt so difficult.  I've been playing with 20% of the deck, or less.  I think I started out with 2%.  Yes, I'm exhausted.

But the point today is that this injustice is probably the source my most massive and pervasive rage.  Of course, I'm angry at being invisible to my family, at being sexually abused by my stepfather and ignored when I spoke up about it, etc.  Bad things happened, which were demeaning to my sense of self (hence, anger's warning to me).

But this is the biggie: that my sense of my own life was de-railed.  I've been living in their movie, and I'm now 73.  Time to shift more fully into my own -- and no one else can do this for me.  It's my work.  

The rewards should be terrific.  A. Recognize how much I've accomplished with a reduced deck of cards (not bad!).  B. Be more present, relaxed, safe, and free to do whatever looks right for me.  C. Drain the anger, because I'll be (finally) taking the better care of myself it demands: leave their movie and live in my own.

If I ever do a second edition of the book, I'll put this in.  

Re-Orienting Toward Trauma

My client Saundra had a child-mother, a younger sister, and a revolving cast of stepfathers.  She was the grown-up –– trying to teach her mom, to protect her sister, and to run her own life.  She knew she was on her own.

What she avoided knowing was how terrified and lonely she was. This was the slow-drip kind of trauma, day after day, minute after minute, in the Forever of childhood. 

Today, as she's trying to figure out how to take better care of herself (instead of living in tension and rage), we considered two questions, and the second was better.

The first was: "How bad was it?" Answering that question would at least respect how hard all those years had been for her.  But it ran the risk of throwing her back into the energy field and re-traumatizing her.

The second was: "What did it cost me?"  This respected what she'd been through but also implied the trauma was over, which kept her grounded and safe today.

Her answer to "What did it cost me?" wasn't unusual for trauma survivors.  She was exhausted.  Eighty-to-90% of her attention had been applied to surviving, which meant she'd had only 10-20% of her powers available for herself.  She'd been spending Herculean efforts to figure things out, and to not go under from terror and loneliness.  She could see the huge hole where safety and fun should have been.

Respecting what she'd been through, and how she'd coped, was crucial.  Trauma involves isolation as well as helplessness.  Her acknowledgment was the first, in her entire life.  If her suffering mattered (historically), then SHE mattered.  And she felt better.

I'm a failure, but not a personal failure

Even today, at 72, I cry about not having been able to "reach" my (long-gone) mother.  Today I realized that, although I failed to reach her, heal her, make a better connection with her, or obtain the nourishment I needed from her, it wasn't a personal failure.  It couldn't be done.

For some reason, that helps me grieve more cleanly.  I can see the possibility of moving through the grief to the other side.  Something like, "It wasn't my fault, so I don't have to keep trying to fix it."

I hope this will be the case.  At least it's a start.

Where Does the Flow Go?

I've been watching a lot of professional tennis.  This morning (Shanghai Open, final between Nadal and Federer -- again), I realized they access and guide their energy.

They didn't create their energy; I didn't create mine.  But I suspect my high blood pressure is a measure of how much I've dammed up the energy within me.  I know that, as a child, I had to control it, modulate it, try to minimize it, because it didn't fit in my family.  Even today, my powerful energy can scare some people.  I'm "angry" because so much has been imprisoned.  (It isn't a specific kind of anger.  It's "pent-up-ness.")

Which made me realize, okay, my family didn't see me, and I derived an awkward sense of myself. It was an image, not related to how I feel.  So the important question is: if that's not correct, what is?  I can't just fight against the image of myself in a distorted mirror.  I have to find the images of me in an accurate mirror.

That sounds like a lot more fun, too.

Capitalist Sex?

Reading Edward Hoffman's 1981 book "The Way of Splendor: Jewish Mysticism and Modern Psychology," in which he writes that the Kabbalah argues for the interplay of spirit and body.  The body is sacred ground; good health is an active condition (not just the absence of disease), and sex is a profound connection of spirits through bodies.

For those of us who were sexually abused, the objectification of sex is particularly repellent.  We were used, as the means of someone else's gratification.  We know, in the flesh, how it feels.  

Sex is a huge money-maker.  It sells cars, billions of dollars in cosmetics and clothes (mostly for women), food and sodas, alcohol . . . you name it, sex sells it.  In a capitalist context, any object -- including other people -- is a potential source of one's own aggrandizement.     

These are not new ideas.  But I was struck by the contrast between sex-as-commodity and the Kabbalah's alternative option.  We are a sad culture, lonely, angry, and baffled, are we not?  No one likes being diminished into an object -- and we do this to ourselves and others in so many ways.    

It isn't Wrong. It's just not Now.

Laurie still and always feels like a lost little girl.  She knows she's almost 60, but she recognizes her pattern of trying to get her parents to "see" her, of choosing narcissistic lovers and crashing when the relationships end.

When I asked her what drew her to the narcissistic men, she said, "Connection."  She craved the ecstasy of new love. 

She didn't fault her family, yet when she described the family friends who were so much more alive, engaged, and warm toward her, I asked her to compare how she felt when they were around with how she felt without them in her family.  That was disturbing.

No blame, however.  No one suggested her parents weren't well intended and, in many ways, wonderful.  This was a separate reality: how she had felt in her family.  I could tell she feared talking about it, as if she were betraying her parents or maybe even reducing her chances of being loved by them.  But it wasn't a criticism.  It wasn't about them at all.  It was about her, and how she experienced life in her family.  Her experience, nothing else.  A description.

I also suggested that, when the love affair(s) ended, she landed back in that childhood energy field: lonely, unable to reach people, living in a gray and foggy world.

I did not try to talk Laurie out of feeling that way.  ("But look at all the wonderful things you have in your life," "It's just a habit," etc.)  Instead, I suggested she take herself more seriously -- realize that's the way she felt as a  girl.

We all decide who "we are" in our childhoods.  If she looked unimportant, like a beggar (behind all the just-fine behaviors), lonesome and invisible, well, that must be who she was.  Or so says childhood logic. That sense of self comes back today when her escape hatch (the new lover, the job, whatever) closes.  There it is again -- there she is again.

And yes, it is correct.  But it's correct only in its own time zone: her childhood, within her family.  It isn't wrong.  It just isn't Now.

I'm guilty of transactional "love"

I saw the naturalist with the mule deer on PBS ("Nature," from 2014).  Beautiful relationships, quiet, like Bud Branigan and horses.

Compared to them, my giving of love (as I understood it) has always been transactional: doing, being done for.  I know it's because that's all I received in my sadly underdeveloped family.  We didn't have the real thing, so I hardened my heart (or tried to).  "That's all I can expect, so get used to it."

I feel like apologizing to my dogs and to anyone else who ever tried to love me.  

Perhaps I can learn to expect -- or hope for -- better.  At least I can feel the difference.  If I want to set this new standard, I have to name my family's (and my previous) "love" as not-love, something responsible, well intended, and lonely.  I can do that.

It Isn't the Trauma . . . It's what you learned from it . . . .

When I was sexually abused by my stepfather, finally confessed (guilt-ridden, ashamed, scared) to my mother, and he denied it -- and she preferred his lies to my truth -- I learned some lessons, deeply:

— I don’t matter.  People can do what they want with me.

— My body doesn’t really belong to me.

— No one can be trusted, not men, not the person whom I most loved, my mother.  (She stayed married to him, and the abuse continued until he died a few years later.)

— When you’re in trouble, you’re on your own.

And so I went into my adulthood, a solitary, brave performer, a watcher of other people and of life.  It wasn’t for me to belong; I was an outsider, marked forever.

You can see that the trauma itself — his co-option of my body and its sensibilities — was horrible, but it was temporary, and not lethal.  What haunted me were the lessons.

“Why not move on?” you might have asked.  “Events are over, and they can’t be changed, so why grip them so fiercely?”  I held on because the lessons were unacceptable.  I had to disprove them.  Of course I “knew” that his spirit was deformed — the sexual events weren’t my idea! — but now my body was contaminated.  I had to eject this poison.  It was actually healthy of me to keep worrying over it, fighting, trying to reclaim myself.  Events ccouldn't be changed, but my skewed lessons could.

I figured out I could shift the focus from “what he did” to “what I believe.”  I learned to identify with my spirit and return his lies, his poison, to him.  I got the facts right (it did happen, repeatedly), and I also got the lessons right.  My error (every child's error) was in generalizing, transferring the lessons to Everywhere.  Yes, I was helpless, powerless, terrified, alone and worthless -- but only in that situation.   In fact, those choices were entirely his; I just happened to be there.  Ick, but "not mine," and not everywhere.

Now I had a new challenge.  When I returned his deformity to him, I was vulnerable to my own truth.  Would I be able to withstand the reality of my experience, how it all felt to me?  As long as I blamed and fixated on him (or my mother), I wasn't up close to my own reality.  He was a creep; he was sick; he should be chopped slowly into little pieces, she was weak and neurotic . . . .  Everything was about them, and I could avoid what the whole thing felt like to me.  In that sense, continuing to obsess was protective, even while it kept me trapped "inside" those awful events.  

But I didn’t have my life, and that wasn't okay.  I didn't want him, or them, to keep on dominating my internal world.  So I stopped fighting them and turned to my own emotional reality, one truth at a time.  Now I was the important person.  How did I feel the first time he approached me?  How was my life different afterwards?  Why did I wait two years to tell my mother?  What happened when I told her, and how did I feel?  What happened inside of me when I realized she wasn't going to rescue me?  What other misunderstandings grew out of my having felt I was responsible for any of it?  

Each bit of my truth made me more vivid to myself.  Now I was the one who mattered; they were bits of temporary dirt.  Disgusting, but not central to my identity.

I'm still working on it, but those events have become something that happened to me -- not who I am.      

The Spirit Is Screaming . . . Ouch!

 

I watched a program on PBS documenting the work of female doctors (MD’s) on a few Native American reservations.  They did whatever they could with limited resources, and they coordinated with native healers.  One of the women referred to the presence of someone’s spirit in his health.

So for the last few days I’ve been asking myself, and some of my clients, what the spirit seems to be saying.   This is more than Louise Hayes’ idea that any symptom has a direct meaning.  This is the kind of metaphor we meet in dreams.

I’ve been suffering from vertigo, and a very thick feeling in my head.  What if that’s my spirit trying to get my attention, because I haven’t been listening?  I’ll give the idea a try.

Umm, my life is cluttered with duties, people, and activities I don’t really care about.  I’m “clogged.”  I need to simplify, shed what isn’t important to me.

I’ve “filled my head” with concerns that never stop — repetitive thoughts, worries about whether I look good enough, whether I’ll get everything done, whether I’ll matter enough in the world.  I’m too easily distracted.  I hide out in food, reading mysteries, watching television shows (good ones, but . . .), etc.  In these activities, I can avoid my own spirit and its demands — which, I have to say, are severe.  (My mother called me “the Jewish nun.”)  I’m tired of human suffering, mine and others’ -- can’t I just zone out some more?

I’ve noticed that spirits are not very forgiving.  If someone dodges it, the spirit will call out, then scream, then hit hard with pain. illness, or depression.  It definitely has a Mind of its own, and it isn’t going away.  Ah, well, I tried to evade, but I’m tired of “being thick-headed,” so I give.  I’ll work on the book(s), on music, and on my physical health.  And if I don’t get it right, I can count on my spirit to let me know, one way or another . . . . 

"I have to matter!"

Freud thought sex was at the heart of psychological activity.  Adler voted for power.  I'd like to suggest the search for autonomy.

Yesterday I spoke with a couple and learned that he had been "a picky eater" since early childhood.  He teethed for 18 months (they told him), and, to this day, he's highly selective and even rigid about what he eats.  The same cereal (the only one he likes), at pretty much the same time, eaten dry, every morning.  And so forth.

It seemed very determined, very much in control, and maybe a bit like being on strike.  "I will not eat," or, at least, "I will not eat that."  Very quiet, simple, clear, and absolutely in charge.

I think of my issues with food.  At their core was (is?) control.  I can forage for extra food they know nothing about.  I can console myself with these treats.  And rebellion: fuck you; this is mine.

For many years, the wife had held herself responsible for her mother's unexpected pregnancy (with her) at 16, and "having" to marry.  The mother told her daughters, "Don't ever have kids.  It'll ruin your life."  She tried to fix her mother's unhappiness.

She worked incredibly hard, with no chance of success and a lot of self-loathing, to make the family healthier.  Of course she failed, and today she still hears every comment as a criticism.

But look at the autonomy.  Long after she knew better, she kept feeling responsible -- for her mother's misery, for her sisters' safety, etc.  With responsibility came autonomy.  She was responsible.  She was the problem.  She had to fix it.  She mattered!

I know that feeling, a desperation to be seen, to be loved, to be reassured that I exist and that I matter.

None of us does, really.  We're born, we flail the best we can, and we die.  After another century, nobody remembers us; we seep back into the universe.  (Even famous people are remembered as an idea -- no one living knows them.)  What's our chance for autonomy?  And yet, it matters so much to all of us.  We'll do pretty much anything -- including driving ourselves into cruel self-denigration -- to feel it.

The Relationship Axis

In looking at relationships, we think about comparisons: do we match in education, socio-economic background and expectations, ethnicity or culture, interests, etc.?  But there are so many other ways in which we could look at compatibility.  One of them is quality of attachment.

My worst match, in that regard, was with my mother.  I came from my heart, all-in, open, and devoted.  I think of it now as giving gold.  I take no special credit for the depths of my feelings; I think children, like dogs and other little animals, are wide open, as I was.

My mother, alas, couldn’t respond in kind.  From her, I got back what I call “nice-nice” manipulation.  She was responsible, wanted to be a good mother, did her best, and was lousy at relating from the heart.

So I spent the first decades of my life enraged that I couldn’t reach her.  Now I can take less personally what I understood even then: this was never going to come out even; she didn’t have it in her.  I always knew it wasn’t personal (she couldn’t), but I still felt the hurt.  If she’d been just anyone, I’d have moved on, but she was my Mother (one of the panoply of gods).  So I stayed in the game, even after she was dead.  My own self-worth depended on it.

I’ve finally learned to evaluate her from my perspective, rather than the other way around.  I’m the center of my world, and I look through my lens.  That only took 70 years.

So before you commit to a relationship (assuming you’re grown up, and know you have a choice), check out the other person’s ability to attach.  Check out your own, too, because what’s going to matter in the long run is whether and how they match.

Unrequited Love, Age 2

So I’m still in love with my mother, and I still suffer because I gave everything.  I was open-hearted, devoted, attentive, responsive, forever.  She, alas, was quite limited.  Even today, I feel we were looking at such disparate parts of the elephant that I’ll never be able to grasp how she related.

I did see that she cared most of all about “having a man.”  And she cared a lot about appearances, relative levels of power, whether or not she was respected, and her ability to charm (or, perhaps, manipulate).

Whereas I cared about her.

I was at a huge disadvantage.  Deep inside, I still feel wounded, a failure, lost, abandoned, and infinitely sad.  So where does that leave me today, in matters of the heart?  Is that my model forever?  Me lonely devoted and begging?  I’ve tried everything I know to “move on,” and this is still the default, the substrate.

Today I’m thinking I will never get over it and shouldn’t try.  I will sleep and awaken with this sadness and defeat always.

But perhaps if I leave that pillar in place I can add another, so at least it won’t be the only constant in my identity.  I’m thinking yes, that is still what “relationship” feels like to me.  On the other hand, I tell clients a failed relationship can teach them about themselves: what they liked, what they didn’t, what role they played in how they chose, whether they ignored red flags, what level of tolerance they thought they had for the other person’s flaws, what level of tolerance they really had (or didn’t), and what dream sustained them even when things started to sour.  That way they can learn about their part, and do things differently the next round.

Maybe I can apply this kind of review to the ever-hurting wound of relationship with my mother.  That was my original relationship (which I didn’t choose); I can learn from it and evolve.  Maybe?

As I write this, I realize it doesn’t matter whether I’m in a relationship of the heart or not.  Just the fact that I didn’t choose that relationship might relieve some of my sense of responsibility for being in it, for fixing it, for reaching the unreachable Mother.

I think I’ll do both.  I’ll duck out of responsibility for that primary relationship, and I’ll look at the way I saw myself in that relationship, with an eye toward revising all those terrible misunderstandings.  How I “was” in that damaging relationship isn’t necessarily who I “am.”

Control, anyone?

Your heart beats, the blood flows, capillaries repair themselves. Your lungs breathe. Your digestion performs the entire complex of digestive demands from start to finish. The cut on your skin heals itself. Your nerves communicate.  Your senses hear, taste, touch, smell, and see.  Your sexual apparatus does its thing in response to hormones which you don’t generate. Your muscles do the walking, the lifting, the stirring.

Where did we ever get the idea that we are in control? We do almost nothing except observe, and decide some of our actions. I wouldn’t know how to tell muscles to lift something, and I certainly couldn’t choreograph the action. I think it; it happens. Wow.

And those are just the basics. Refined activities are even more impressive. When I play the violin or viola, I tell my body to create some effects, and it does (after I practice enough to help it figure out what’s required). I imagine the sound of the next note; I imagine the shift; my brain hears the tone and feels the distance, and there it is. Who’s in there doing this??

I like emphasizing how little I control, because I grew up feeling more responsible than I ever could have been. My mother’s mental health was my job (I believed). Pleasing people, getting them to “see” me and “love” me, were on me.

I’m very tired, so it’s a relief to realize I never had to do any of those things (or the myriad others I imagined were mine to accomplish). I breathed and slept and moved; my heart kept beating and nourished my brain; the nerves communicated throughout my body. Everything else is dessert. Fun, but not necessary to survival.

Yes, I worked, to use my abilities and to earn money. Gotta eat, stay out of the rain, wear clothing, and keep me and the rest of things clean enough, and it all costs money, or effort, or both. But I didn’t have to endow work with all that extra meaning about my worth. I have as much or as little worth as the next person — I’m alive, and trying to stay that way for as long as I can (comfortably).

If I have some talents, I’m pleased, but I didn’t create them. No credit due me. “You don’t decide the cards you’re dealt; you do decide how to play them.” I hope I’ve played mine well, and I’m hereby giving up trying to control anything else.

A Woman’s Limits

I keep seeing relationships in which women have worked hard to support their marriage and family. They uproot and move, they listen to their partners, they put up with behaviors they really don’t respect, they deal with their own loneliness. It’s part of a committed relationship — you have to give, compromise, do your part.

What I’m noticing, though, is that these women don’t know themselves or their own limits. They think they can make room for something and, over time, they actually can’t.