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

My Feelings

I have been building on a theme the past few posts.   The theme has to do with my experience of being abandoned by both of my parents.   My father abandoned me literally,  forming a close bond with me when I was a young child and then disappearing when I was six years old.   My mom was there in the flesh,  and in many ways worked hard to do well by me.   However,  she too abandoned me in at least two important ways. 

First,   I perceive that my mom is not able to empathize with others' feelings.  She sees everything from her own perspective,  and does not change her behavior relative to other people's feelings.   She is not able to have much of an experience about what it's like to be in another's shoes.    She did not listen to or try to see into my feelings when I was a child.    She often would project what she thought about a situation and act on her projection.   Empathy for my feelings was not part of the data she acquired.  

As anyone knows who has seen the "Dog Whisperer" on TV,   when you ignore a behavior it tends to extinguish.     When Cesar Millan walks up to an angry dog barking and snarling on the other side of a fence,   he gets right up close to it and then ignores it.   Soon enough,  the dog calms down and the behavior goes away.     My mom and my dad didn't mean to,  but they used the same principle to extinguish my feeling-life.

So, am I saying that I have no feelings whatsoever?   Not exactly.   My insight here has to do with the fact  that our feelings are the means through which we can connect with our authentic life.   Feelings are the compass we use to navigate the high-seas adventures of interacting with our fellow human beings and the world around us.   If our feeling-life is stunted it's like we are trying to find our way over the wide ocean with a broken compass.

I have to admit that my compass,  if not broken,  is pretty banged up.   Or rather,  it never had an opportunity to develop in a healthy way when it was supposed to.     My parents ignored my feelings.   So I had the experience that my feelings did not matter,   that they did not have any influence whatever relative to my environment.   So,  in essence,  I learned that my feelings are useless.

So here I was in my therapy group last night and they were asking me about what I felt about what I've been blogging about the past few weeks.   About how I felt "betrayal" at my mom taking sides with her boyfriend over me when I was thirteen.   The group members were trying to get at what I meant by "betrayal",   what were some of the feelings behind that word?   I couldn't tell them.

I couldn't tell them because I don't know.   I didn't know because I was told very early in my life that my feelings were useless.   They did not matter.   When I try to find my feelings,  it seems to me like I could search high and low,   scour the landscape from top to bottom,  side to side,  and that I might very well not find them.   It's as if they don't exist.

I am pretty sure they exist.   But they're buried so deep inside of me,  so far away from my conscious mind,  that they might as well not be there at all.

I need my feelings.   I need my compass.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Betrayal

I have realized over the past week or so that my experience of betrayal is looking more and more like one of my core issues.    Last week I wrote about how in my therapy group we were asked to do an exercise.   We were to bring to mind a painful experience from our past and meditate on it for a few minutes.  Then,  we were to say the following phrase,  "I felt ______." and fill in the blank with the feeling surrounding the experience.    What's more,  we were asked to verbalize that sentence in such a way that the group would understand deeply how you felt about the experience.   It was a way to get away from all the verbiage and "story" and just get to the raw emotion connected to the trauma.

The experience I went to was one that occurred when I was thirteen years old.   My mom and I had been just the two of us since my folks split when I was five years old.   For eight years our family was just us two.   We were the only players on a team.   That team was called,  "we're going to survive."    Mom had had boyfriends,  but they had never moved in.   Now one was moving in.   That felt VERY different.   I had had a lot of space to myself and even though mom did not have a lot of time or attention for me,  at least I didn't have to share her with another person.

One evening,  a few weeks after boyfriend had moved in,  we three were at the dinner table and had just finished dinner.   I remember my mom lecturing me about something and telling me that I couldn't do something I wanted to do.   I totally forget what it was about.   I was mad at being told no,  and went over to the fridge.   At that point the boyfriend reiterated the lecture my mom had been giving me.   I thought to myself,  "who the hell is HE to be lecturing me like he's my parent"  and under my breath I said,  "F*** you".   He jumped up,  ran over to me and started slapping me down to the floor.   "Don't you EVER say that to me!" he said,  red faced with anger coiled and ready to explode at a much higher level.   I am pretty sure he said something about kicking my ass if he needed to,  but I was in such shock,  my head was spinning.

I looked to my mom for some smidgeon of support.   She gave me none.   She supported him completely.   If she ever brought it up again I don't remember it.   For me,   it was a shattering experience.   I had been doing my part to help our family-of-two survive for all these years and taken some pretty good lumps in the process.   Having my mom switch her loyalty so quickly to this guy felt like the world was slipping out from under my feet.   My dad had betrayed me.   Now mom was betraying me.  She was  looking at all that I had done in service of our family,  all that I'd sacrificed,  and decided that it wasn't worth anything.   The deed I had done was deemed worthless.

Just to put the icing on the cake,  about five months later we received word that my dad had killed himself.   He betrayed me a second time.   The hope that I would some day be able to get to know him,  to spend time with him,  that was gone.   He was gone.   

My mom's betrayal stands between us all the time.   I hold it against her.   I do not trust her to treat me well.   There have been other issues over the years,  but nothing that compares to the betrayal I felt that day.    I built a wall between her and me.   I built a wall between me and any feelings I might have for my dad.    That same wall stands between me and pretty much every person I meet.  Between me and my family,  my friends,  everyone.   Stay back!  my gesture says.   I am a nice guy.   I am a friendly guy.   But my inner gesture says "Stay back!"

At some level I do not trust other people to do right by me.   I expect them to betray me.   Somehow,  my wife has gotten around this high wall,  by deeply reassuring me that she will not betray me.   She has done that for years,  and I profoundly believe her.   Everyone else gets my wall to one degree or another.   They get my inner "talk to the hand!"

I know that my parents were not trying to harm me.    I know that they were not plotting to betray me.   But my experience was of being betrayed.   And it was an experience which has deeply influenced how I interact with all people.   

If I were not to work on this issue,  I am pretty sure that I'd become more like a hermit as time goes on.   I don't want to be a hermit.   I want to overcome this and be able to have friends that I don't act all strange around.   I'm going to have to work on this one.   But at least I am learning about its nature and how it affects me.   

It feels pretty crappy to sit with these feelings.   But it's better than being mired in confusion,  and that's where the feelings around this experience have been up to now.  This is an insight I can build on.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

A Bracing Insight

In my therapy group the other night we did an exercise.   The exercise was to remember a painful experience from our past and try to enter into the feeling space of it.   We closed our eyes for a few minutes and focused on the experience.   Then we were to share the experience with the group in a certain way.   We were to express our  experience in a phrase,   "I felt _______"   and communicate,  as best we could,  the full emotional content of the experience in our uttering of the single phrase.

The reason for the exercise was that we often,  in our telling of our "story",  have the words actually block our access to the feelings which relate to the story.   Here,  we were to focus simply on the feeling associated with the experience,  and not in sharing all of our thoughts.

The phrase I spoke was "I felt betrayal".   I will go into what that meant to me later,  but first I want to talk about the gesture I made while I was saying it,  and what the group mirrored back to me about that gesture.   I was clenching my fists and thrusting them downward.   It was a fight-or-flight kind of gesture.   It was me "bracing for impact".   The impact of betrayal.

What the group communicated to me also had to do with one of the primary  reasons I am there:   I have challenges in forming and maintaining friendships.    I have talked about this in group fairly often.   Group members shared with me how they saw this gesture of mine as a shield I hold up around me.   It is a shield of protection,  and a shield that keep others at a distance.   

So what is the nature of this shield?   What is it made of?   One thing for sure is anger.  Deep down I am very angry.    It is also about fear.   I am deeply afraid of being attacked or abandoned.    There have multiple episodes in my adult life when I have felt a sense of betrayal.   When I feel this I have a very strong reaction.   I want to get away as fast as possible from what I determine is the source of the betrayal.   My reaction is often irrational and can overwhelm my higher intention for myself.

This sense of betrayal lives so strongly for me that I think I must project it out to people I am meeting and getting to know.    "Don't get too close"  is the message I am likely sending to others under the surface.   I am a basically likable person,  but clearly send people mixed messages at a subtle level.   I don't want to be sending those messages for the rest of my life.   I really want to overcome this challenge of mine.    

One thing I have learned is that as one ages,  our unexamined and/or untransformed "stuff" can either become stronger or weaker.   Its influence becomes greater or lessens,  but not so likely to stay the same.   Our stuff becomes stronger if we don't cop to it and work on it.   Our stuff becomes weaker if we really set ourselves to understand and transform it.   It takes a lot of honesty and work.   And it takes time.    

Standing where I am today (with loads of issues still left to work on),  I can easily say that my own striving to transform my "stuff" is well worth the effort.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Higher Self/Lower self

One way to trace my path of healing can be to look at the dynamic between my higher self and my lower self.   I firmly believe that I,  and all people,   are spiritual beings on an earthly journey.    Part of that earthly journey is facing the dynamic between our higher self and our lower self. 

Definitions.   I see my higher self as being the part of me which exists beyond this lifetime.   Its voice is my conscience,   my highest ideals are its aims;   it is that part of me which represents what is most noble and good about me.

My lower self is,  I think,  deeply connected to painful experiences which became formative for me.   People treated me in certain ways,  things happened,  and I began to build up an identity based on those perceptions and events.   

I believe that what we call the "soul" is the space in which the higher self and lower self dynamic plays out.   

Obviously,  these definitions are very inadequate descriptions;  what I am alluding to is extremely difficult to describe with any kind of certainty or accuracy.

I had glimpses of my higher self throughout my early years.   But often there were not people there around me who could see my essential self and help me to attach my higher self firmly to my general self image.    I became fairly unaware of what my higher self was like.   It was always there,  but I was only dimly aware of it.   By the time I got into high school,  my lower self was doing stuff that was painful to me and to others.   

Sometimes we see a person who operates effectively on the earthly plane while maintaining a clear connection to their higher self.  It is beautiful to see and probably not that common.    

Though my path to such a place of "integration"  has had its fair share of bumps,  I see tremendous value in continuing that way.     This blog is very helpful to me,   in this way,   because it is a place to cop to elements of my lower self,  share insights about what's happening in my soul,  and to try and clarify which parts of me are more "lower self" and which are more "higher self".   It is clear to me that when I shine the light on my own lower self,  its power over me tends to lessen.  It can be a fearful step to shine the light on something I'd rather keep hidden.   But once I have done it,   the fear subsides and I am more free than I was before.    I have engaged this process enough times now that I KNOW it to be true.

In my early twenties I began following a spiritual path.   I lived in a spiritual community for two years and worked in a context that helped me to focus on building my higher self.   My wife,  who I've known since my later twenties,   has been the person who has most consistently helped me to see aspects of my higher self.    Her gift to me in this way (not to mention many other ways) is of immense importance to my life.    The rest of my life will be very different than it might have been,  because of her.

So,  starting in my mid twenties,  I was having more experiences of my higher self.     At the same time,  my lower self,  filled with anger and sadness and pain and despair,   was angling to "win out" in defining who I am.

Being increasingly identified with my higher self while feeling my lower self rising up to try and dominate how I identify myself has been,  shall we say,   uncomfortable.    It's been like treading through a viscous,  soupy swamp,  with moist warm arms trying to wrap around me and control me.    The arms try to pull me down.   They try to pull me away from others.     They try to pull me away from myself.    

They're like the cobwebs in Shelob's lair,  for all you "Lord of the Rings"  enthusiasts.   They stick to me and try to hold me from what my higher self would have me do.   I suppose one could see Shelob herself as a representation of the lower self.   Only,  it is a picture of the lower self at the moment when we are closest to hearing the call of the higher self and doing something important for ourselves.   That's the moment when the lower self can seem to have the greatest power over us.  Naturally,  it wants us to believe that its power is greater than what our higher self can bring to bear.    Pernicious illusion!

Frodo is given the "Phial of Galadrial" to take on his journey.   It contains the "Light of Earendil".   In the movie script Galadrial says to Frodo:  "I give you the light of Eärendil, our most beloved star. May it be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out."    So at the moment when Frodo was being overwhelmed by the forces of darkness,  there is the piece of light which leads him back to his higher self,  and enables him to continue on his mission.   Of course, "trusty Sam" is a key helper to Frodo,  helping him to survive and continue on their journey.

I think Mr Tolkien might have been on to something.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

I Can Hear

The platform I was given from childhood was a bit wobbly.  By platform,  I mean the skills,  understandings,  and grounded-ness needed to navigate the world successfully.    I have been working for a while now to strengthen that platform,  a basis on which my happy and productive life can continue to emerge and develop.   I have done many things,  over time,  to add rebar where there wasn't much (or any) before.    One place I have recently strengthened is my ability to hear the world around me.

About a year ago I went to get a hearing test.   My family had been telling me that I was saying "what?" an awful lot so I started tuning into the possibility that my hearing was a bit off.     I started to notice that I did say "what?"  more than average and questions I've asked myself like "Why do others learn song lyrics faster than I do?"  might have an answer in my ability to hear at a normal level.

I went to an audiologist friend of mine and she informed me that I had "mild hearing-loss in the mid-range and moderate hearing-loss for high tones."   She told me it was not crucial to get hearing aids but that my life would likely be enhanced if I did.

So a few weeks ago I did.

 Trying out two different kinds of hearing aids,   I can now hear things that were not audible to me before.   Or at least not for a long,  long time.   I had a lot of ear infections when I was a kid,  especially between the ages of 4 and 7.   I probably listened to some loud music when I was in high school….  I am guessing I may have had hearing loss since high school age and have not since been screened for it.   That's pretty amazing to me.   I have had loads of physicals since that time and I don't ever remember a hearing test.

In one way,   I can see that as "water over the dam".   In another way,  I have to ask myself how mild/moderate hearing loss has affected my life over the years.   It's not really a question of IF it has affected my life;  it's HOW.

One way that seems pretty clear:   without the hearing aids,  when I am in a group,  and sometimes one-on-one conversations,     I tend to miss things that people say.   When I do miss something,  I am often shy to ask them to repeat more than a few times,  and so I begin to withdraw subtly from the conversation.   I am not able to track the conversation because I simply am not able to hear everything the person is saying.   

There is part of me which is fairly sociable,  and another part which withdraws.   How much of my withdrawing has been due to my ability to hear?  

I have been thinking about the phenomenon that people who have hearing loss sometimes are perceived by others as being "slow" or a little "dim-witted".   How often has that happened to me just because I was not able to hear all that someone was saying.

My family is already telling me they see a difference in me.

This is a good reminder that my progress in life is not always related to my "overcoming my psychological issues".   Sometimes life can be very much enhanced in other ways.

Hearing aids are not perfect.   They can be a bit a of a pain.   But I can hear a lot more of what's going on around me.   And that makes me feel more confident about my social interactions.

Sounds good to me!

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Overcoming my Shame

Last week I wrote about what I perceived as being at the root of my shame.   Namely,  that I was often not treated as if I mattered during formative periods of my life.   

Now that I am an adult,   I can see into the lives of the people who made these deep impressions on me and realize that it was not personal.   They were not trying to screw me up and scar me.   They had their own issues and I can try to have compassion for them.   Nevertheless,  a child takes in the messages from those around him,   and he uses those messages to understand his place in the world.    

Here is how I received some of the messages I've been talking about,  and how they relate to my shame.

1)  When I was six,  my dad left my life.   Message from him to me:   "You don't matter to me.   You are not important enough to me to stick around."

2)  During much of my childhood,  my mom was a workaholic,  gone most of the time and stressed out and exhausted when she was with me.    Message from her to me:   "You're not worth spending time with.   I could spend more time with you and care for you but I've got better things to do."

3)  When I was six, my babysitter molested me after school frequently over the course of several months.  Her message to me:   "My sexual urges are far more important than your basic sense of safety and well-being. You're about as valuable as a dildo."

As a child,  I tried to take in these messages and still function in my world.   What made it all the more challenging was that no one was all that aware of my deep suffering.    My mom took me to a psychologist for a few months after my dad left,   so she had some sense of the pain I might be in.   But she was completely oblivious to numbers two and three listed above.   She was oblivious to number three because she simply did not know the abuse had happened.   She was oblivious to number two because she was invested in not learning anything about that one.

So,  I had to deal with all three traumas largely on my own.   What I integrated from these messages built up my shameful self,  my sense of not being good,  or good enough.   Of being less-than.   I integrated into my self-image an underlying sense that I was unworthy and unlovable.   These aspects of my self-image went under the surface while what I projected on the outside was relatively steady and cautiously friendly.   

Over time,  other parts of my life went well enough and I started to receive messages from others that "maybe I was a good person,  maybe I was a worthy person."      I started having friends and developing relationships.   I got into sports.   I did well enough in school.   

The chronic issues were there:    One was that dad lived out of state and rarely communicated with me.   The other was that  mom worked all the time,  had very little time for me,  and did not communicate to me that she was interested in my feelings.

But the traumatic parts of life subsided.   Everyone moves on and development continues.     My shame was a part of me now.   Its key parts were abandonment,  neglect,  and sexual assault.   

When I came into middle school I caught pneumonia and lost twenty-five pounds.   All of a sudden girls started to notice me and I became sexually attractive.    My shame took this up and translated it back to me as:   "Your worth is based on your being sexually desirable to others.  No one would want to be with you for any reason other than to have sex with you."   

By the time I was seventeen I was at the end of my rope.   Life seemed like a confusing,  jumbled and dangerous thing to do.   

Since then,   I have led a path of trying to make healthy choices to the best of my ability.   I have tried to find a way out of my shame.     And I have been very lucky.

Each year I have tried to do good and to become a better person than I was the year before.  And,  since today my life is pretty stable and wonderful in many ways,  I think I have done well.

I have,   thanks to my own efforts and the care and love of my wife and others,  created a space for myself from where I can look at my shame from an objective point of view.   I can try to look at the scope of my shame,   its depth,  its regular influence over my thoughts.   And,  I know that my shame is not me.   I did not do anything to deserve my shame.   I was a kid.   The real me is a beautiful child of God,  just like everyone is.

I see you,  shame,   and I've got your number!

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben