Parentification
With parentification comes self-abandonment. The child who experiences parentification is asked to make countless sacrifices for others – the sacrifice of her own mental health, innocence, and physical well-being, just to ensure the adults in the family stayed afloat. In this process, boundaries are constantly eroded. We children in such circumstances never develop a sense of our own welfare as we are forced to abandon ourselves and our own needs just to survive and prioritize others, especially those on whom we still very much depend…
Depression
These Saboteurs, located in the left-brain hemisphere, generate all fear-driven variations of the 4F reactivity (fight, flight, freeze, and fawn).
In addition to the fear-driven Saboteurs, we have recourse to another set of resources which are situated in the right-hand side of the brain. These are the life-affirming, love-fueled Sage Powers of Empathize, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate.
As Mohandas Gandhi said: Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment…
Alexithymia
An aside worthy of mention here was his intervention to help delineate between feelings and beliefs. When at one point I said `I feel neglected´, he feigned astonishment and asked me to show him where I felt this in my body. I couldn’t, of course, because `neglect´ is not a feeling. The term alexithymia (from the Greek a = lack, lexis = word, thymos = emotion) was first coined by the Greek/US psychiatrist Peter E. Sifneos in 1972 after noticing that some patients showed extreme difficulties in talking about their emotions…
Non-Resistance
Some of us try to hold on to a certain static state, presumably out of fear of the unknown. This is akin to going down to the Rhein and ordering her to stop flowing. Imagine the amount of effort that would require!
Well, this is how many of us live our lives at certain times, quietly attempting to dictate the terms of the unfolding of the universe. I lived like this for many years and changed my stance only when I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, at which point I had become burned out…
Fruits of Devastation
We shame ourselves when we deny any aspect of our essence. In this dynamic, I had simply emulated those caregivers who, for reasons probably only they could describe (if they were still alive), could not endure aspects of my essential nature, and in order to be rid of their discomfort, thereupon shamed me. Left with the choice of believing that these caregivers, on whom I was totally dependent, were mistaken, or the possibility that I was somehow at fault, I chose the latter. This is where the process of shaming of self begins. The Judge is born…
Fawning
Fawning is an unconscious attempt to manipulate the reaction of others to ward off danger and maintain connection in an unsafe environment or relationship. This behavioural pattern can become habituated, appearing like personality, without us ever being aware of its traumatic origins. The term fawning was coined by Pete Walker, a psychotherapist who specializes in complex trauma (synonymous with developmental, relational or childhood trauma). Walker saw fawning as the “Fourth F” of trauma reflexes: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. It is particularly common among people who have had, or are experiencing, long-term, developmental trauma…
Healing Wounds
On holidays with the extended family at his beautiful holiday home in the west of Ireland, I was tagging along behind Grandpop, effervescent, eager for connection, wanting to learn from and share some emotional intimacy with this great man.
Unluckily for me, the great man must have been somewhat agitated on this sunny summer’s morning. At some point, as we were walking along the riverbank in the bright sunshine, he turned on me suddenly and, looking down from the heights of a six-foot man, told me that I was a case of verbal diarrhoea, instructing me to put a plug in it. Perhaps 6 or 7 years old at the time, I was devastated…
Solitude, Community, Service
Community is, in essence, solitude greeting solitude. The Great Spirit in me speaking to the Great Spirit in you. To be in community means to build a home around the essence that rests at the core of each of us. This beautiful translation of the Sanskrit term „Namaste“ expresses it best: „I honour the place within you where the entire Universe resides; I honour the place within you of love, of light, of truth, and of peace; I honour the place within you, where, when you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us“…
Reparenting
Looking back, it emerged that the family in which I grew up had thought me to deny my true feelings in the service of a pain adverse and emotionally illiterate dysfunctional collective dynamic.
How de come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions? The short answer is to accept and befriend the feelings, allowing them to bubble to the surface, and to simply be, without manipulating, wallowing in, or fuelling them, in the trust that `This too shall pass´…
Into Action
For my emotional sobriety, I avail of a variety of resources such as the Twelve Step Recovery Programme, the PQ Mental Fitness modality, and further elements from ancient spiritual to most recent neuroscientific practices, including many body-based therapy forms which have emerged over recent years. These help me retain, and where necessary, regain my balance, always following the principle of `progress, not perfection´…
