Parenting and Reparenting

My step-daughter was visiting recently over the holidays.   She is in her mid-twenties and has recently launched into her full-fledged professional career.   She is an amazing human being.  Sure, I'm biased but I am also far from being alone in holding her in high regard.   Along with my enjoyment in hanging out with her over the holidays  I have also felt some wistfulness.   Actually,  quite a bit.

What I feel wistful about is seeing the platform she is working from and comparing it to the one I had as a young adult.   The two are very different.   

 I had, in many ways,  poor parenting as a child.   I always knew my mom loved me.   I still know today that she loves me very much.   But her capacity to be a good parent was very low.   She had received poor parenting herself.   She was a single mom working a professional job.   She had an untreated mental illness of which she was unaware.  In fact,  one of the symptoms of bipolar is being  unaware of even having an illness,  no matter what kinds of strange behaviors pop out.  

Not exactly a recipe for parenting success.

I happen to be married to a woman who is way above average as a parent.   We have been a couple for more than a decade now and so I have had a front row seat as she has parented her two daughters.   It's both wonderful and painful.  On the one hand I am part (and important contributing member) of a successful family.   I define success in that we are all doing well,  we get along well with each other,  and we all are at least reasonably happy.   The painful side,  naturally,  is that I am all-too aware of all the gaps in my own upbringing.    Gaps which continually shake my confidence and sense of self-worth.

Before I go any farther I will answer a question that some of you are likely thinking of right now:  "Has my wife re-parented me?"   That is to say,  has she provided the family context that I never had growing up,  and am I able to fill in some of those gaps?   The answer is yes.   

And what are those gaps?   First of all,  it's really hard to get a handle on it because it pertains to countless experiences I had as a child.   Experiences which gradually formed significant parts of my personality,  basic behavior and thinking patterns which I carry with me today.     This blog continues to help me become aware of said patterns,  allowing me to change some of those which clearly don't serve me.

But the patterning goes back into early childhood and spans all the years I lived at home.    A primary theme is that there was never anyone who was tuned into my feeling life.   My mom provided for my physical needs and she wanted to be a parent who provided for emotional needs.  She just didn't know how.   And the illness meant that she was not aware of the deficit.    Without the mental illness I think she would have at least  been more aware of which of my needs were being met and which were not.

So from the get-go my mom was not really tuned into my inner life at all.   And because she tended strongly towards the manic side of life she could talk.  A lot.  If being narcissistic means always bringing the topic of conversation back to you,  then my mother is narcissistic.

In my blog I have talked about how I created a survival mechanism from the time I was about six years old.   Its name could be "Support mom at all costs".   What this meant was that I was emotionally supporting her from an early age.   Good parenting means that the adult is supporting the child and is tuned into the child's inner life.   She knows if the child is having a good or bad day.  She knows when to give advice,  when to ask questions until the truth of something comes forth.    When to talk and when to listen.  She knows how important it is to spend time with the child and to always be inwardly looking for the spark of who the child is essentially;  the part which has nothing to do with the experiences the child has had since birth.

These basic mental habits of a good parent I have seen up close and personal as I watch my wife parent her kids.   I have seen what good parenting looks like when the child is four and she is twenty-four.    I have seen the daily conversations,  the step-by-step support and care that produces the results we all love to see.   Good parenting requires a very deep level of empathy.   

As a child I would have greatly benefited from someone "seeing" me.  Someone who was tuned in to my needs and feelings.    I could have brought problems I had at school,  with friends, in the neighborhood and gotten help solving or at least understanding them.   A parent could have explained things to me in a way that I could understand.   They could have listened to me.   And when I spoke they could have listened deeply and asked questions to try and understand what I was saying and what the meta-message might have been behind what I was saying.

As a teenager someone could have empathized with my experience of adolescence,  the joys,  the storms,  the conundrums.   Again,  the person could have explained things to me to help me orient to how things work in the world.   They could have shared their personal experiences insofar as they could be helpful and instructive to me.   They could have comforted me and reminded me that the teen-age years don't last forever.

As I came into adulthood they could have shared with me what it means to be an adult.     What the workplace is like.  What are some of the options,  the lay of the land,   in figuring out one's career.     What's it like to fall in love and have a successful relationship.   What are the elements of being a good friend and being a good partner.

The parent could have seen how I was becoming an adult and given me the space to grow into that while maintaining a loving and supportive connection.   As that process developed,  we could have found a mature,  adult relationship as parent and child.   We could have depended on each other like good friends,  respecting boundaries and enjoying the simple pleasure of being in the other's presence.   As the parent aged I could have been there to support knowing that there was no unfinished business,  no deeply held resentments,   that all of the painful experiences had been talked about and worked through.   All that is left is pure connection and appreciation.

To be a good parent is very, very difficult.   People don't realize how difficult it is.     To be a great parent is really a high art.   Few people are able to achieve that level.   In my opinion,  my wife is a great parent.  What I have described above is something she has been and continues to create with her two children.  It is a massive amount of work,  something to which a person must devote a significant part of their life to in order to be successful.   

I have seen how such a level of parenting creates a platform on which the child stands as she steps into the wider world.   That's when I sometimes feel a bit wistful.     I wonder who I might have become if I had had strong parenting.   But that's a different life.   It's not my life.  And it's really pretty pointless to dwell on it.   So I won't.

Here's where I get to say how lucky I am.   I really am quite lucky.    Given the facts of my childhood,   my adult life could have been a lot bumpier than it's been so far.     My path of healing has been relatively  steady and fruitful.    My life has been been much easier than for either of my parents.   I count my blessings regularly.   And I also give myself a break.   When my internal voice comes up critical and points to my shortcomings I just tell myself "relax, kid--you're doing pretty well all things considered."   

 We need,  as ACMIs,  to be able to see our progress from the perspective of the platform we were given.     It is not an excuse to engage in self or other-destructive behaviors.   It's just that we need to be gentle with ourselves,  and remind ourselves of our successes (even small ones),   as we work to create a positive outlook on life. Forgiving myself allows me to keep my head up and see how I can further transform my pain.   As I do so I will be increasingly able to help others.   And that is what makes me really happy.

I have decided to apply to social work school.   It is clear to me that  part of my path is to develop the issues I talk about in the blog;  to place them near the center of my life rather than at the periphery.    Working as a social worker I hope to find a work-place where I can reference my family history and not be seen as a freak.    I hope to help others who have dealt with similar kinds of issues as I have.   Given the healing work that I have already done,   I think I'll be able to empathize with and help others who have been touched by mental illness.   This feels like the right move.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Healing The Child Within

I have recently come across a book called "Healing the Child Within" by Charles Whitfield.   I think it's a great book.   It sold a whole bunch of copies back in the 80s.   Whitfield started in the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) movement and has written extensively about various kinds of recovery and overcoming co-dependence.     He is an M.D. and works as a therapist in addition to being a prolific writer.

Whitfield's premise with this book is that we are born into this world as a spiritual being.   We are each a beautiful child filled with goodness.   As the world impresses  itself on us,  however,  we can learn different ways.  Traumas of all kinds can have the tendency to bury that beautiful child.   What comes up instead is a survival or coping mechanism which is a way we deal with experiences that might otherwise overwhelm us.   Those coping mechanisms can become personality traits, mental habits and ways in which we perceive ourselves and our place in the world.     Often these coping mechanisms,  and all their permutations,   end up blocking us from experiencing ourselves as the beautiful and radiant being we have always been and always will be.

One thing I like about the book is that it carries a spiritual picture of the human being, and one which seems fairly similar to how I try to perceive myself and others.   Another attraction is that Whitfield speaks very clearly and gets right to the point.   It's pretty easy to understand his concepts and to see ways they can be applied.   I find him to be a very good communicator of ideas.   I also think it's cool that his book was a best-seller back in the day.    That tells me that perhaps my own ideas about spirituality are not as wacky and fringe as I sometimes tell myself.

Whitfield speaks very eloquently about how we can heal ourselves.   I am looking forward to taking up many of his ideas and seeing how they may help me in my process.   

As Christmas arrives in a few days it seems like a good time to reflect on the possibility that each of us has a holy child within us;  and that,  no matter how buried it might seem to us,  this child may very well be the truth of who we are.   

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Group

For about three months I have been in group counseling.   The therapist I have been seeing over the past few years has a group he facilitates with his wife,  also a therapist.   The group has four men (including me)  and three women,  in addition to the two facilitators,  both of them licensed social workers.   We meet once a week for two hours.   

The group has been very helpful for me so far.   I had stopped the individual counseling last spring and expressed interest in group work.   The reason I stopped is that I felt like I wasn't moving forward in my recovery work and the sessions are expensive.   I told my therapist that "I wanted to rub the stone from another direction."   The issues that I am working with are embedded very deeply.   They are about some very basic themes in how I imprinted on this world as a child.      

The group therapy allows me to process my own issues while also witnessing and assisting in the process of others.   We are each trying to allow our essential self to take hold of the "stories" we tell ourselves.   The stories are related to our early experiences and are ways that we shoot ourselves in the foot over and over (and over).   We each try to reach through our pain and suffering into our higher self while seeing and encouraging each other in striving to achieve the same thing.   

The witness in ourselves,  the being which is us,  and which is much higher than any of the worldly stories,  is always there.   It is always us.   But we get buried.   Buried in our experiences of shame,  pain,  anger,   confusion,  feeling unloved,  feeling unlovable,  feelings of deep loss and sadness.     And these stories do everything in their power to make us believe that they represent what we are essentially.     They are very, very wrong but can be awfully convincing.   

The idea about the group I am in has to do with experiencing the extremely unpleasant emotions which we carry quietly around with us and which try to torpedo our well-being at every turn.   If we can experience the deep feelings of shame and anger inside of us in a supportive group,  the witness who is us is strengthened.   Our pain is rendered less powerful in our experience.   We experience our growth.   So far I have experienced this as a gradual process.   The members of the group, me included,  make gradual progress and build on it over time.   After a year or so one can,  I imagine,   see significant growth among each of the group members.

We are going to have a retreat in a month or so.   We'll spend a weekend a few hours drive away.   The theme of the workshop is "What are the stories we are telling ourselves?"   We are supposed to think about stories which come out of our survival mechanisms,   the mental structures we developed as children in order to survive traumatic events.     Some of the structures we created back then,   now hold us back in becoming the person we want to be.   

So my homework is to decide which part of my mask,  my lower-self,  my double,  my doppelganger,  I wish to bring to the group.   There are some very painful and shameful aspects of my lower self which readily come to mind.   The group feels safe to me.   I think I am ready to share.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Birthday

It was my birthday this past week.   I turned forty two.   Every year I experience my birthday in a fairly similar way.   I feel anxious.

I am guessing that under my feelings of anxiety I just feel really, really sad.   Birthdays have often been that way for me since I was a little boy.

After my dad exited my life when I was six,  he moved to a place which was about 3,000 miles away.   My mom and I occasionally would travel that kind of distance from where we lived but we never talked about visiting him.   

As a child I always dreamed that I would grow up and maybe go to college near where he lived.   I dreamed that he and I would get to know each other.   It was like he had the key to some important part of me.   And that he was the only one who could help me manifest whatever that important part of me was.

For a few years after he left  he wrote letters;  often they were funny and involved characters he made up.   He had a rich and kind of goofy imagination.   I loved to read them.  But it was very painful because I missed him so terribly.   I would laugh at the stories while my heart-space was clenched tightly like a fist.

After a few years the letters became less frequent.   The one thing I continued to actively anticipate was the call he made to me on my birthday.    Starting a few weeks before my birthday my insides told me that I was going to have my yearly conversation with my dad.   By the time I was eight or nine my body would start to tighten up in that time leading up to my birthday.

It was usually a fairly perfunctory conversation.   I was often sort of in shock and so he would do the talking.    He asked me questions that I could offer a short answer to.      He would reference the imaginative stories from the letters.   The whole conversation usually lasted about fifteen minutes.    Then wait for next year to talk to him.

On my thirteenth birthday he asked me if I had been laid yet.   I told him no even though I actually had.   Four months later he took his own life.

After he died,  It didn't really occur to me that part of my birthday experience was waiting for his call,  and making damn sure I was near the phone in the afternoon and evening on my actual birthday.    I think I was in my thirties when I started realizing that my experience of my birthday was often sad and wondering why that was so.

The other part of my birthdays which has left a definite signature is related to my mom.   

My mom always took me out for a special dinner on my birthday.   She took us to a nice restaurant,  one we would only go to on special occasions.   She'd get the staff there to bring me a nice cake and to sing me Happy Birthday.    Those are happy memories.

Sometimes my mom has gotten me really thoughtful gifts too.   Stuff I was really interested in and about which I was thrilled as soon as I opened a tear in the wrapping paper.    A number of other times,  however,  she was in a more manic state and could get me gifts which were odd and which did not match my tastes or interests in any way.    Usually they were things that she liked but that I couldn't care less about.   I have forgotten most of those gifts I received from her but now,  whenever I open a package from her I inwardly flinch just the slightest bit.     

My wife and family are very sweet and thoughtful to me on my birthday.   They are helping me to gradually transform the sadness which every year comes over me at this time.

What a wonderful gift.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Stigma

Stigma:  An invisible mark of disgrace or dishonor

I probably don't look like someone who has been deeply touched by stigma.   I am white,  straight,  middle class,  raised protestant;   I dress in a fairly casual fashion,  but not too sloppy;   I am reasonably good looking,  and though I could drop a few pounds without doing myself any harm,   I am not particularly over-weight.   

And yet stigma has had,  by my reckoning, a massive influence,  negative I might add,  on my life.   See,  when you're a kid,  you can't really tell people that your mom has a  mental illness and that dad did too,  and that his was bad enough that he ended up shooting himself.  You just can't say stuff like that without expecting people to move away from you as fast as their manners will let them.   Actually,  come to think of it,  you can't say that as an adult either.    Unless you're in a group like the ones forming around the work NAMI is doing.

NAMI has a refinement of the stigma definition which relates to mental illness:  

Stigma in mental illness:  "The banishment and scapegoating of people with mental illness whose conditions are considered so fearful,  and so repugnant,  that they are judged to deserve their fate"  (from Family to Family materials)

In one important way I am very lucky.   Though mental illness has touched my life very deeply,  I do not suffer from a biologically based brain disorder myself.     And considering the fact that both of my parents did,   that makes me particularly fortunate.   Statistically speaking,  because of my genes I was more likely to get mental illness than not.   

One of things that is so horrible about mental illness is that a person not only has a terrible disorder,  but they are also shunned by others because they didn't have the good graces to come down with a disease that people are more comfortable with.

My mom has suffered way more than I ever will.

Between her bipolar and the high wall of protective denial she's built,  it's pretty hard to see her essential being.   She carries a lot of baggage around with her every day.   To help her cope with some of the challenges of her life,  she comes up with fantasies which help her keep her head up.   

I have no doubt that if stigma hadn't been such a force in her life,  her psyche would not need such a high number of protective structures.     I can't help but think that without stigma she would be able to bring forth much more of her self,  mentally ill warts and all.   

Until I was fifteen she did not know she had a mental illness.    We were on our own wavelength and somewhat in our own world.   No one told me "your mom is crazy" or anything like that.   I knew my family was different than others.   Pretty much all of my friends had two parents at home while I was in a single parent household.   I knew my mom was wacky and a bit off the wall at times.   And that she could be very irritable.

After her diagnosis I was in shock.   No one told me about her illness or what it meant.  When she was in the mental hospital she's the one who told me her diagnosis--first it was schizophrenia and after several days the doctors changed it to bipolar.   She told me that the doctors had determined that she had another personality,  a little girl,  inside of her.   That's why they originally made the diagnosis of schizophrenia.   

I was already having a pretty tough adolescence.   My dad had died just over a year before that.   I seriously disliked my mom's new husband.   And she became psychotic just a month or so after she and he were married.   He was way freaked out.

All of a sudden I had a mom who was "crazy".   I previously had thought of her as "quirky",  "difficult",  "impulsive" but now she she was determined to be f***ing nuts.   I tried not to think about it.   She tried not to think about it too.   And there was no way in hell we were going to actually talk about it.   In our minds we were running from it as fast our little mental legs could take us.

Stigma:  An invisible mark of disgrace or dishonor

I tried to carry on in life as if nothing was different.     I worked hard in school and on the weekends drank beer, did drugs and tried to maneuver myself into situations where I might get laid.    As a high school junior I was looking at colleges and such but,  in retrospect,  my focus was really just on survival.   

But to look at me you probably would not have guessed that.   The same protective denial my mom used seem to work pretty darn well for me too.   Just pretend this giant,  terrifying monstrosity called mental illness in your family is  not there.   

The fact that no one ever talked to me about it made it easy for me to keep it in the closet.    Just ignore it and it will go away.   Yeah,  right.

If my parents had died or been maimed in a car crash my friends and extended family would have all rallied around me.   If my mom had contracted cancer or some other terrible, but socially acceptable,  disease I could have talked to people about it.     They would have come in to support me.   "Does he understand the condition?"   "Is he in counseling to help process the feelings he must be having?"   None of that came toward me.   The silence was deafening.

 This shameful silence is something I took deeply into my soul.   It is something that I carry with me every day of my life.   It is always with me.   If you read my previous post you know that it has powerfully impacted my speech,  my ability to express myself,  my throat chakra.

I need to gradually transform this shameful silence;  to find the radiant and beautiful parts of me which have been buried in the mudslide that stigma let loose on me.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben