I have been thinking lately about alternate realities. It has to do with my parents' patterns I imprinted on when I was a kid. It has to do with what could have happened if certain crucial support had not come through for our family. First, a little history.
When I was in high school there were several shocks that hit our family. We made it through them relatively well because of critical support that came towards us from my grandparents. Without the support things could have gone very differently.
When I was fourteen my dad, who I had not seen for eight years, killed himself. This was a tremendous shock to me and to my mom. About a year later my mom had a psychotic break in which she saw "guns going off" (my dad used a gun to kill himself). That was when she went into the hospital, received her diagnosis within a few weeks, and started taking lithium. About a year after that she was told by her supervisor that she was going to be fired from her professional job and gave her the option of resigning, which she took.
My grandmother had already been giving my mom some financial support before this time. When my mom lost her job she was "taken under the family wing". She was given a job managing the small family business with grandma watching over her at every step. My mom's picture of these events runs contrary to what I have explained. She sees it that she went to help grandma. My take on it was that it was grandma helping mom. I have never shared my opinion with mom because I don't see what good it would do. She would get very defensive and very angry. I have to be careful when I choose to challenge my mom's fantasy thinking. When I do it had better be for a good reason.
Without the support grandma provided, my mom would have been out of a job and wondering what she was going to do for money. She would have had to do something fairly different than what she'd been doing. It would have been hard for her to get the same level of work when she'd been fired for incompetence at her previous job.
My point in bringing this has to do with the inner gesture of my family, the one I imprinted on. That inner gesture, coming from both parents, was one of spiraling down towards possible calamity. Of reaching a certain level of professional status but not being able to sustain it for more than several years. My father carried this gesture. In his late twenties he had a PhD, a great job and seemed like one of the "best and brightest" to quote a moniker of the time. Alcohol and depression took him down to being penniless and alone, and to taking his own life.
My mom also had great ambition and promise. She had a Master's degree and was holding down a demanding professional job. But her mental illness was digging away at her ability to maintain the life she so desperately wanted to live. She was not able to look squarely at her issues and work to remediate them. That appears to be a common symptom of the illness. Instead, she created fantasies about what was happening to protect her fragile psyche from the slings and arrows of what life was bringing her. Her protective denial has cost her dearly as it has kept her from seeing things as they are. As she looks back at the main themes of her life, many of them are wrapped in fantasy. She is a very smart and perceptive person and, at the same time, her thinking can be very skewed.
So both of my parents had the pattern of not being able to sustain a professional life. My dad did not have a safety net to swoop in and save him. My mom had the safety net.
I have also had a safety net. My grandparents and mom paid for my college. I have had help and support along the way. When I resigned from my teaching job one year ago there was some buffer that is helping me to make the transition to a new career without severe financial stress.
Guess what, kiddo? You're doing the pattern!
What I am doing is not all that different from what my mom did when she left her professional job. In both cases it was family support which made the difference. One difference is that I am trying to be honest with myself. My mom built up fantasy structures around her psyche which have been there ever since. She has such structures about a number of things, including what my childhood was like. The difference between how we see things is a major obstacle to being able to really enjoy being together. We lived much of the same history but we see it very differently.
There are two sets of alternate realities to which I allude in the title.
The first is how differently I see our family history from how my mom sees it. This affects mom's and my relationship significantly because we are looking at a two very different sets of "facts". There is an enormous number of opinions and thoughts I have in her presence which are never spoken. I just let her have "her way" of seeing things a lot of the time because for many issues, to share my view would be upsetting to her and not all that important to me. So I pick my battles carefully.
The second, and more important to my process, has to do with what might have happened to mom and me had my grandmother not bailed us out. Without that significant family support I can easily imagine that life for us would have been much harder. Poverty makes everything much harder. And at a fairly basic level I imprinted on my parents' gesture of "sinking towards likely calamity" without realizing it. Some part of me inside was expecting that I would reach a certain level of professional status and then start to spiral downwards. I have had a visceral experience that what I am saying here is true. I am getting at a whole new level how powerful family patterns can be.
So all of this is fairly sobering to me. I have to admit that it all makes me look pretty weak. Yes, and it is a fact that I am also a strong person. To be the strong person I can be I'm going to need to further understand the pattern, then actively and consciously work to undo it in myself. This is probably going to take some time. The fact that I am aware of the pattern, however, is huge.
The first is how differently I see our family history from how my mom sees it. This affects mom's and my relationship significantly because we are looking at a two very different sets of "facts". There is an enormous number of opinions and thoughts I have in her presence which are never spoken. I just let her have "her way" of seeing things a lot of the time because for many issues, to share my view would be upsetting to her and not all that important to me. So I pick my battles carefully.
The second, and more important to my process, has to do with what might have happened to mom and me had my grandmother not bailed us out. Without that significant family support I can easily imagine that life for us would have been much harder. Poverty makes everything much harder. And at a fairly basic level I imprinted on my parents' gesture of "sinking towards likely calamity" without realizing it. Some part of me inside was expecting that I would reach a certain level of professional status and then start to spiral downwards. I have had a visceral experience that what I am saying here is true. I am getting at a whole new level how powerful family patterns can be.
So all of this is fairly sobering to me. I have to admit that it all makes me look pretty weak. Yes, and it is a fact that I am also a strong person. To be the strong person I can be I'm going to need to further understand the pattern, then actively and consciously work to undo it in myself. This is probably going to take some time. The fact that I am aware of the pattern, however, is huge.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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