i am brutally honest with myself, which has its good points and its not so good points.
brutal honesty cases me to have too high expectations for both myself and others, which causes me to keep arms length away from them. i have no problem feeling compassion and empathy for others who are suffering, but when i see them living in a state of denial, lying to themselves and others with whom they 'should' be forthright, i avoid intimacy because, frankly, i don't see the point of investing time in a relationship that for all intents and purposes is going to remain shallow.
i avoid sticking my neck out when i don't see any tangible rewards for getting involved. the result of anything i invest in has got to be concrete and in my mind worthwhile.
and today, seeing that, i feel diminished for confessing my vulnerability.
is this 'selfish' stupid, or wise? come to think of it, this type of behavior could be a 'whistling in the dark' kind of isolation. i am involved in my spiritual community, and that is the only place where i take risks. they are the only people that i feel comfortable testing my own boundaries, and that i think is primarily because they are the only people who have shown them selves not to judge me on some level, whether morally, physically, spiritually, etc.
these people are very good people, they'd never hurt a fly, and some of them are incredibly broken people; dying from aids, mental health challenged, depressed. they are the marginalized, the cast-off from the larger social network, but they are so alive in the beauty of such an affirming community. they smile and they laugh, and they hug and they love. their life is a dance.
why is it so easy to love from a position of power? why is it so difficult to love from a position of vulnerability?
is it because my brain never got that lesson in my family of origin? is it because all the people who had ever been in power over me never loved me, but only wanted to rule me, and therefore reactively i vowed myself to construct myself in such a way as to be the mirror opposite of them? i spent so much of my life constructing it in counterpoint to many of the earlier shaping factor of my life.
i feel that my doing so is disingenuous, and that this induced character trait is not pure, and therefore is a lie.
see what i mean, i just did it again.
oh, the onion of self........does it ever get smaller????
i,i,i,i,i,...... i need a break from my 'i',
HeeeeeeEEEEELLPP!
================================
appendix: the disappointing liars in my life:
+ my mother, who had an affair with her boss when i was in the throes of a sexually abusive relationship with my older brother
+ the ex-partners who rejected me after i poured my heart and soul out to them in disclosure, naively hoping they would not hold it against me, which they did
+ my older brother [same one] who eventually rejected our relationship after deciding that 'it was all just kids playin around'
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
More on Attachment
i have been reading and thinking about attachment issues a lot these days, so of course everything for me is all about attachment issues. crazy it is what i am currently using to resolve some of the the questions that have arisen for me lately. but it makes sense to me at least that some of my deepest pain is activated when my matriarchal connections are felt to be under attack.
what is my matrix? it is the breast that i suckle for providing my fundamental nourishment. take that breast away from me and yes i begin to question my safety. attack my belief systems and you attack my foundation, which is firmly rooted in my relationship to my matrix. take away my matrix and i revert to an earlier stage of existence, back to the womb where i hide in a cloistered world where no one can touch me.
i think that no matter what stage of life i find myself in, i am eternally bound to live out of the patterns that shaped the paradigm of my earliest matriarchal relationship. that is until and unless i do something to recreate a better model. my own relationship with my birth mother did not provide a good pattern foundation. but all my life i was cursed to keep replicating them in every relationship that i encountered. it never dawned on me before recently that my unrequited relationship with my mother was the root of a major defect in terms of how i failed to connect with others, including myself. she was emotionally and physically unavailable, and the earliest attachment imprints never got wired, leaving a deep hole in me, which got filled when my older brother started using me as his sexual outlet. and in doing so he became my surrogate mother, loving and affirming my entire psychic and physical being.
when he later rejected the relationship i was devastated because it was as if my own mother had disowned me. so after that breast was denied me i was destined to find another matrix to take his place. so, i got married. it wasn't as if i wanted to get married, but, implicitly i knew that since i could not have neither my birth mother nor my surrogate brother/mother it was an easy life to chose because my ex-wife was someone i had known all my life and since we were both single at the time and both 'available' we latched on to each other. in this relationship i would attempt to connect to that larger matriarchal paradigm that society holds out as the relationship par excellence: marriage.
well that was not going to work, those years of 'marriage' were like trying to kick start a motorcycle without spark plugs. after we split up my new matriarch became recovery, and that kept me going even though i still did not understand what deep hole i was expecting it to fill. the other larger matriarchal forms of my life became my 20 year educational journey, my nearly 35 year career in church music, and in both of those things i can see that what i was merely trying to do, was to win the approval and engage a connection to that original person who carried me for those first 9 months of my existence.
so for today, i have two mothers: male survivor, and my spiritual community, mcc. and they are the most nurturing matriarchal forms ever encountered in my entire life. my relationship with both of these is very easeful and natural, and in them, i do not have to earn the love and acceptance. it is built in to the relationship. it is causing new wiring to happen for me, helping me to shuck off previous desperate and dysfunctional attempts at inducing nurturing connections.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New Depth of Understanding
get ready for a book! 
possibly conjecture? i doubt it, because it 'feels' so right for me in the head, the heart, and the belly.
since exploring the topic of attachment in depth recently from greater heights of understanding, i am noticing an incredible new sense of resolution resulting in a magnitude of balance and overall expansiveness becoming apparent inside of 'me'.
One of the sources of my recent enlightenment comes from a new publication titled: "Being a Brain-wise Therapist: A Practical Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology" by Bonnie Badenoch , forward by Daniel J. Siegel.
Here is an excerpt from Bonnie's book, published by Norton, pg. 106 - 108:
Primed for Shame
In the earliest burst of attachment in the first few months of life, we are genetically hard-wired to seek closeness and security with our caregivers. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which acts like an accelerator in a car, fuels this outward reaching. Whether we are met with disregard, anger, or anxiety, or have the opposite experience, our limbic regions encode the energy (arousal) and information (representations) offered by our caregivers in amygdala-centered, implicit-only memory where meaning is also initially formed. With enough consistent experience, this region encodes a mental model, a generalized anticipation, about whether relationships are trustworthy or no, already creating the inner community that embodies these expectations. These mental models stay in place below the level of consciousness as we mature, continually influencing our perceptions, kept alive by the painful interactions between the parent and child that continue internally without end [ron comment: she refers to this earlier in the text as dyadic pairs, which function as a modulatory mechanism that serves to restore balance by regulatory movement between the two opposing states, until synchronicity is achieved, dissolving the disambiguity between the state of the internal parent and that of the internal child], We can see then how consistent anger or rejection by parents can engrain a fear of relationships in this primary meaning-making center even before the mind has enough developmental maturity to experience shame.
At just about the time a little one learns to walk, with great excitement into his new-found freedom, his brain begins to function at a level of complexity that allows the experience of shame to emerge. The necessary ingredients include a developing parasympathetic branch of the automatic nervous system, functioning as the arousal brakes, and a maturing orbitofrontal cortex in the prefrontal region, which allows this boy to represent himself in his mind. Both a braking system and a capacity for self-consciousness are necessary for shame. The outcome of integration is to move the mind toward greater complexity and attendant well-being, so it is not surprising that shame potentially has a positive function for this toddler.
As a child becomes mobile, with a sympathetic system capable of hurtling him toward danger, the parasympathetic system can be activated by the parental "No", causing a necessary modulation of arousal. While the child experiences this no as a missed opportunity for synchrony, an empathetic parent will immediately rejoin this toddler, bringing the sympathetic and parasympathetic into balance by acknowledging the child's wish to do the forbidden, and providing redirection toward a different joy. Over time, through this interpersonal modulating dance between outward-reaching and indrawn states, between rupture and repair, self-regulation is deeply patterned in the developing child, from nervous system to cortex. As a result, a wide window of tolerance for feelings emerges at both ends of the spectrum [ron: of dyadic pairs]
However, at the sad end of the scale, the child who is already primed for shame is probably living with the same parents who engrained a mental model of fear in relationship. So when "No" comes, it is unlikely that repair will follow immediately, if at all. So now the parasympathetic system slams into action while the parents' anger continues to accelerate the sympathetic system-a situation kin to pushing the accelerator and brakes to the floor at the same moment. Or the unmodulated parasympathetic system pulls the child into painful and isolating stillness as the parents turn away. This young one is simply left. Inwardly, the terrifying picture of an enraged and denigrating parent grows larger, while the shamed inner child cringes in the shadows. [ron sez: hence authority figure issues]
If this dynamic is repeated often enough, the synaptic strength of the neural nets comprising the state of shame increases to the point that it becomes a trait, and accepted and expected part of this person's self-perceived identity. These neural nets are also so strong and so isolated from integration with the rest of the brain (because the empathetic interpersonal relationships needed to foster further integration have not been available) that this person is a sitting duck for any perceived slight or criticism, literally at the mercy of engrained implicit mental models.
possibly conjecture? i doubt it, because it 'feels' so right for me in the head, the heart, and the belly.
since exploring the topic of attachment in depth recently from greater heights of understanding, i am noticing an incredible new sense of resolution resulting in a magnitude of balance and overall expansiveness becoming apparent inside of 'me'.
One of the sources of my recent enlightenment comes from a new publication titled: "Being a Brain-wise Therapist: A Practical Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology" by Bonnie Badenoch , forward by Daniel J. Siegel.
Here is an excerpt from Bonnie's book, published by Norton, pg. 106 - 108:
Primed for Shame
In the earliest burst of attachment in the first few months of life, we are genetically hard-wired to seek closeness and security with our caregivers. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which acts like an accelerator in a car, fuels this outward reaching. Whether we are met with disregard, anger, or anxiety, or have the opposite experience, our limbic regions encode the energy (arousal) and information (representations) offered by our caregivers in amygdala-centered, implicit-only memory where meaning is also initially formed. With enough consistent experience, this region encodes a mental model, a generalized anticipation, about whether relationships are trustworthy or no, already creating the inner community that embodies these expectations. These mental models stay in place below the level of consciousness as we mature, continually influencing our perceptions, kept alive by the painful interactions between the parent and child that continue internally without end [ron comment: she refers to this earlier in the text as dyadic pairs, which function as a modulatory mechanism that serves to restore balance by regulatory movement between the two opposing states, until synchronicity is achieved, dissolving the disambiguity between the state of the internal parent and that of the internal child], We can see then how consistent anger or rejection by parents can engrain a fear of relationships in this primary meaning-making center even before the mind has enough developmental maturity to experience shame.
At just about the time a little one learns to walk, with great excitement into his new-found freedom, his brain begins to function at a level of complexity that allows the experience of shame to emerge. The necessary ingredients include a developing parasympathetic branch of the automatic nervous system, functioning as the arousal brakes, and a maturing orbitofrontal cortex in the prefrontal region, which allows this boy to represent himself in his mind. Both a braking system and a capacity for self-consciousness are necessary for shame. The outcome of integration is to move the mind toward greater complexity and attendant well-being, so it is not surprising that shame potentially has a positive function for this toddler.
As a child becomes mobile, with a sympathetic system capable of hurtling him toward danger, the parasympathetic system can be activated by the parental "No", causing a necessary modulation of arousal. While the child experiences this no as a missed opportunity for synchrony, an empathetic parent will immediately rejoin this toddler, bringing the sympathetic and parasympathetic into balance by acknowledging the child's wish to do the forbidden, and providing redirection toward a different joy. Over time, through this interpersonal modulating dance between outward-reaching and indrawn states, between rupture and repair, self-regulation is deeply patterned in the developing child, from nervous system to cortex. As a result, a wide window of tolerance for feelings emerges at both ends of the spectrum [ron: of dyadic pairs]
However, at the sad end of the scale, the child who is already primed for shame is probably living with the same parents who engrained a mental model of fear in relationship. So when "No" comes, it is unlikely that repair will follow immediately, if at all. So now the parasympathetic system slams into action while the parents' anger continues to accelerate the sympathetic system-a situation kin to pushing the accelerator and brakes to the floor at the same moment. Or the unmodulated parasympathetic system pulls the child into painful and isolating stillness as the parents turn away. This young one is simply left. Inwardly, the terrifying picture of an enraged and denigrating parent grows larger, while the shamed inner child cringes in the shadows. [ron sez: hence authority figure issues]
If this dynamic is repeated often enough, the synaptic strength of the neural nets comprising the state of shame increases to the point that it becomes a trait, and accepted and expected part of this person's self-perceived identity. These neural nets are also so strong and so isolated from integration with the rest of the brain (because the empathetic interpersonal relationships needed to foster further integration have not been available) that this person is a sitting duck for any perceived slight or criticism, literally at the mercy of engrained implicit mental models.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Father Hunger?
i just finished reading a thought provoking post dan made [thanks dan!] in response to another thread, and rather than hijack that thread to comment on dan's i thought i would present the topic here for discussion.
what is your take on the whole 'father hunger' thing'?
i confess that anytime i have come across this idea, i have always felt that i somehow missed something, because father hunger is something i have never 'felt' applies to my world of feeling.
my father experience was always one of fear and domination, unapproachability, lacking in either warmth or welcome. as father figures go, regarding church, police, institutions and other authoritarian institutions, they all seem to me to align to the same dynamic exhibited by my own father. this goes as far back as i remember. it is notable that i mention my place in a pack of 6 brothers, none of whom got any more preferential treatment than any of the others. my father did try to become involved in our lives peripherally signing us up for baseball teams, boy scouts, but other than going on a few canoe and camping trips, there was no real exchange of emotion, other than punitive measures taken when any of us got 'out of line'. beyond the perfunctory kiss on the check he applied to mother upon arriving home for dinner, there was no other indication that he had any emotional depth beyond his anger responses.
he himself only had one brother, and his parents began to succumb to alcoholic patterns as they advanced in age, and became increasingly verbally and physically abusive toward each other, which was very apparent when i would be left in their care occasionally, for a summer visit.
i never felt a lack of anything. maybe i just adjusted? but at any rate my brain never became wired for for any connection to him, and i just don't feel as if i am missing anything because of that. i am not sure what it is exactly that guys who claim 'father hunger' are talking about.
i can certainly understand and appreciate the idea of the archetype of 'fatherliness' per se, and i feel that my relationship with the god of my understanding far surpasses the fulfillment of any need a human figure could ever come close to. also, my relationships to educational institutions have mentored and parented in far more complete and effective ways than any mere human model could. maybe the disconnect has happened in his failure to communicate his humanity to me. but then again, as a father myself, i never impressed upon my son the idea that there existed a chasm of any sort between us, and beyond his formative years, i have striven to relate with him as much as possible in a peer to peer dynamic, so as not to give him any kind of indication that i am any more or less than he, a person in need of a guide. i never wanted nor needed to make myself an idol for him to emulate. and while today he admires me for certain qualities that define me as unique, he exhibits no need for anything beyond the healthful exchange of mutual love and respect.
how have you learned to eclipse the idea of father need? do you even think it possible? have i failed to romanticize my father?
are there some axiomatic truths behind all this, or is relative to each person's unique system and situation?
what is your take on the whole 'father hunger' thing'?
i confess that anytime i have come across this idea, i have always felt that i somehow missed something, because father hunger is something i have never 'felt' applies to my world of feeling.
my father experience was always one of fear and domination, unapproachability, lacking in either warmth or welcome. as father figures go, regarding church, police, institutions and other authoritarian institutions, they all seem to me to align to the same dynamic exhibited by my own father. this goes as far back as i remember. it is notable that i mention my place in a pack of 6 brothers, none of whom got any more preferential treatment than any of the others. my father did try to become involved in our lives peripherally signing us up for baseball teams, boy scouts, but other than going on a few canoe and camping trips, there was no real exchange of emotion, other than punitive measures taken when any of us got 'out of line'. beyond the perfunctory kiss on the check he applied to mother upon arriving home for dinner, there was no other indication that he had any emotional depth beyond his anger responses.
he himself only had one brother, and his parents began to succumb to alcoholic patterns as they advanced in age, and became increasingly verbally and physically abusive toward each other, which was very apparent when i would be left in their care occasionally, for a summer visit.
i never felt a lack of anything. maybe i just adjusted? but at any rate my brain never became wired for for any connection to him, and i just don't feel as if i am missing anything because of that. i am not sure what it is exactly that guys who claim 'father hunger' are talking about.
i can certainly understand and appreciate the idea of the archetype of 'fatherliness' per se, and i feel that my relationship with the god of my understanding far surpasses the fulfillment of any need a human figure could ever come close to. also, my relationships to educational institutions have mentored and parented in far more complete and effective ways than any mere human model could. maybe the disconnect has happened in his failure to communicate his humanity to me. but then again, as a father myself, i never impressed upon my son the idea that there existed a chasm of any sort between us, and beyond his formative years, i have striven to relate with him as much as possible in a peer to peer dynamic, so as not to give him any kind of indication that i am any more or less than he, a person in need of a guide. i never wanted nor needed to make myself an idol for him to emulate. and while today he admires me for certain qualities that define me as unique, he exhibits no need for anything beyond the healthful exchange of mutual love and respect.
how have you learned to eclipse the idea of father need? do you even think it possible? have i failed to romanticize my father?
are there some axiomatic truths behind all this, or is relative to each person's unique system and situation?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)