Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
William Butler Yates, The Second Coming
Every day, passion speaks to us through our feelings. That’s why when you allow yourself to become anesthetized by what others think, you literally block yourself from living the life you were called to live. I promise you that if you make a choice that doesn’t please your mate, your friends, your mother, or whoever, the world will not fall apart. The people who truly love you want you to love yourself.
Oprah Winfrey
Some of us tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result was nil, until we let go absolutely.
Big Book of AA
The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.
Paulo Coelho
I recently engaged a therapist who specialises in trauma, to help me navigate some inner work on my early childhood experiences. This exploration, which has been intense, has brought me face to face with the scope, gravity, and the consequences of what my younger self experienced as extreme adversity. Both sobering and painful, it has prompted me to ask and sit with some challenging questions.
To what degree was my childhood influenced by the inability, on the part of my parents, to deal with their own emotional issues? Had they not done the best they could possibly do with the resources they had to hand (and to heart)? What role does forgiveness and compassion play in my current inner work? What coping mechanisms did I develop in childhood which, in turn, have impaired my own emotional sensibility in adult life? What keeps me trapped in old patterns today? What healing work can be undertaken to break free of these `old ideas´?
Further grief emerges when I address my own parenting shortcomings. How did I show up, and not show up, for my children in their younger years? Could I have done any better, under the prevailing circumstances? How can I now be a better parent, – to my adult children, – as they make their own way in the world?
Amid the commotion caused by these and other questions, I had an epiphany. In the past, people had noted my difficulty in remaining present and supportive when my interlocutors showed that they were struggling to keep the show on the road; when they felt overwhelmed, in despair, or incapacitated by grief. The assumption was that this was a carry-over from my childhood experiences with my mother, who, to my mind, was often trapped in such a state.
This explanation made sense, cognitively, but the insights never brough about any real improvement in my capacity for intimacy and empathetic communication under stressful conditions. Instead, I would continue to head for the hills.
I am blessed to be able to gain some insights into these topics in an on-going dialogue with one of my adult children. We have each embarked on our respective healing path of moving on from feelings of childhood loneliness and abandonment towards finding, in adulthood, healthy ways to meet our own emotional needs.
Prompted by these recent conversations to do some more research into the topic of parenting and childhood attachment patterns, I have just read `Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents´, by the American psychologist, Lindsay C. Gibson, published in 2015.
While the text at times appears to contain traces and even suggestions of unresolved blame towards parents, my own approach to this topic is characterised by detached observation and blameless discernment. In fact, I read this book from two vantage points simultaneously; both as the child of my parents, growing up as one of ten children in Ireland in the 60’s and 70’s, and the father of now adult children who were born in the late 80’s.
They grew up in Germany with both parents, one of whom (me) faced considerable on-going emotional and existential challenges at the time. I left our family home in 2003 after the breakup of my marriage. Though I continued to live nearby, I was no longer a member of the family household in the final years before our children left home to go to college.
In her book, Gibson describes four main types of emotionally immature (I would prefer the term impaired) parents:
- Emotionally volatile parents, who may vacillate between over-involvement and abandonment, leading to frightening instability and unpredictability.
- Driven parents, who are often compulsively busy and can’t stop trying to perfect everything, including other people.
- Passive parents, who may have a laissez-faire mindset and avoid dealing with anything upsetting.
- Rejecting parents, who may withdraw from any relationship with their child, showing detachment or proximate anger as primary responses, sometimes alternating between the two.
The parents in all four categories have one defining characteristic in common, even if they differ in style ― none of them are capable of putting their child’s needs first.
Gibson goes on to point out that the behaviour of people who suffered from a troubled parent/child dynamic may, much later in life, still be shaped by the scars of childhood, when their emotional needs were not met, when their feelings were discounted, dismissed, or even mocked.
Moreover, in an effort to `compensate´ for our parents’ shortcomings, we may have manifested adult levels of maturity far too early in life. While I certainly cultivated strengths such as organisational skills, self-reliance, and independence along the way ― strengths that have served me well in many situations as an adult, ― having to be the emotionally mature person in my relationship with my parent was confusing and has left wounds in its wake.
The author refers to a phenomenon she calls `healing fantasies´. A healing fantasy is a story of hope. As children caught up in dysfunction, we tell ourselves such a story because we believe it will, one day, make us truly happy. We tend to think that the cure for our unhappiness, loneliness, and pain lies in changing ourselves, those around us, and our circumstances into something other than they really are. The title of the story could read: `I’ll be happy when….´ As the goalposts keep moving, it is, of course, a loser’s game.
In addition, our adaptive response to our dilemma leads us to develop what Gibson calls a `role self´. C. G. Jung would have referred to this as `persona´, a word which finds its roots in the Latin for `actor’s mask´. Since the parent does not, perhaps cannot, see the `true and authentic self´ within the child, we often take on and play out a role to gain her or his attention, approval, and affection. This is often the only way we can develop the much yearned for and necessary relationship connection with our ― emotionally impaired ― carer(s).
These roles may be co-created within the family group dynamic based on both the child’s unconscious beliefs and the unmet needs of the parent. For example, a child who believes that their needy parent would be lonely without them, takes on a care-giving role.
In my specific case, I concluded that the whole family entity was constantly under threat of falling apart. My role was to hold it all together, by whatever means necessary. This helped me become a very good fixer or `project manager´ long before I had ever encountered that term. Further typical `role self´ examples include; mediator, pleaser, white knight, controller, clown, troublemaker, black sheep, and hyper achiever.
Which brings me back to the topic of my lack of empathy and the inability to be present and vulnerable with loved ones in situations where they showed they were struggling. As described above, I assumed this to be the result of transference from my early mother-child relationship.
However, by simply doing the inner work and allowing the pain, grief, and sorrow to emerge and tarry in the light of day, without yielding to the default reflex to supress them, I have discovered that the crux of the problem lies even deeper.
What has become apparent is that my own `healing fantasy´ was the adoption of the `Fixer´ persona, whereby I convinced myself that it was not only my responsibility but also my duty to surmount and eradicate these unpleasant feelings, by whatever means necessary, because they stood in direct contradiction to my `chosen´ role of the Fixer.
The flip side, in terms of attracting and being attracted to a potential partner, is that people who had no need for fixing used to be uninteresting, or even dull. As the old wound begins to heal, that, too, will hopefully change.
The good news is that the potential and the necessary ingredients for healing are all available to me, on the inside. No need to search elsewhere. In addition to my daily PQ Mental Fitness regime and other self-care resources I have adopted and cultivated over the years, it is invaluable to have friends, peers, and, at times, professional support to help me navigate new territory as it unfolds.
