Me and Newt

Wow--it has been a long time (over three months)  since I last posted!   I guess I just needed a break.   I am going to try and post twice a month now.   Every week is a bit ambitious for me.   Thank you for reading my posts.   This has been a wonderful place for me to share my process and continue to heal.   I hope my writing in this blog has been helpful in some way to you too.

Have you ever wondered why it is that Newt Gingrich acts a little odd?   Why he is considered by many political observers on both sides of the aisle as reckless and a loose cannon?   Could it be that Newt's oddities are related to the fact that his mom had bipolar?

"I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I'm doing it...Oh, this is just the beginning of a 20-or-30-year movement. I'll get credit for it...As a historian, I understand how histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two generations or three from now, some serious, sober historian will write a history that sort of implies I was whoever I was."

I do not have that level of grandiosity,  but I can relate to Newt.   Not his politics,  but the fact that he can say and do things that other people find odd,  strange,  bizarre.   Granted,  I do not do and say strange things at anywhere near the rate he indulges in.   But I have said and done oddities over the years at which I now look back on and shake my head.   

Like the time I led several of my friends into a place dense with grizzly bears.   It was one of those ideas that might get a person's name in the paper the next day:   "Stupid Person Mauled--What Was He Thinking?"   When I think back on that episode I realize that the thinking that led me to think,  "This will be fun"  was a form of grandiosity that I observed not infrequently from my mom over the years.   I did not have bipolar,  nor do I now.   But in that moment my thinking was soaring into flights of grandiosity.   Reflecting on the "bear episode" still freaks me out today because my poor judgement put my friends at risk.   It makes me question,  to some degree,   my ability to make good decisions,  especially when I am under stress.   

My mom was always looking for signs that she was a "person of destiny".   For example she sent in some money to the publisher of "Who's Who in America" or some such book.   One day she gravely showed me where her name and brief bio was inside the heavy tome.   At age ten I understood from her that this was a clear sign that she was an important person in the world and that it was very important I recognized that fact.   

I later found that the book was simply a money-making idea that appeals to people's desire to be noticed as being special or important.   I don't know how big the check was she sent to them,  but I am guessing she would have been willing to cough up a pretty penny to get her name in the book of important people.   My mom often talked to me about the importance of her work,  and harshly criticized her sister for not being as ambitious in the professional world.   

My saying this about my mom does not in any way negate what she's done in her life.   I am simply pointing out that her thinking has often incorporate grandiosity.   And this kind of thinking does no favors to anyone,  including the person herself.   It's not connected with a true picture of reality,  and so it gets in the way of a person becoming more integrated,  more grounded.   

Naturally,  my mom's thinking turned to me as well.   Even though I was quite neglected as a child,  it was important for me to "show well" and reflect my mom's importance in the world.  And she always blew right by the fact that I was spending huge numbers of hours by myself as  a child.   

As an adult a "wobble" has come for me,  I believe,  in those times when I am inwardly motivated by wanting to please my mom rather than do what is right for me.   Because of her deep narcissism,  she was not able to see what my needs were.   Rather,  she expected me to serve her agenda.   Without her illness I think she would have behaved differently and been more tuned into my needs when I was a kid.  

 Because I saw serving her agenda as my best ticket to survival,  that's exactly what I did.   In my twenties I was able to pick up the thread of my own life and have since followed it.   But my process of individuation has been much slower than a person who is not enmeshed with his mother.   I am still working on being an adult,  even though I am in my forties.   My enmeshment with my mom still holds me,  to some degree,   in a childlike place,  though I have made steady progress in overcoming that fact.

I wonder if Newt's  experience was similar.  He likely saw grandiosity in his mom as he was growing up.  And narcissism.   And rather than seeing the behavior as something to become conscious of and work to reduce,  he appears to have embraced it.   It's too bad for him,  I suppose,  because he has gotten himself into a number of pickles because of it.    

But hey,  he's the one that a bunch of people are voting for for president.   Who's to say that his approach is less reasoned than mine?   Well,  I guess I am.  Because even though he has more power,  money and prestige than I do,  I have to say I cannot see as successful a person who embraces the grandiosity they learned from a mentally ill parent,  even it they become rich and famous.    

For myself,  I cannot do other than try to weed out the unhealthy thinking in my own head whenever I see it.   It is not my fault that I have strange thoughts or impulsive ideas at times.   But it is my responsibility to work with myself and have clearer thinking next year than I do now.   No one else is going to do it for me.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben