A man who blames others has a long journey to go. A man who blames himself is halfway there. A man who blames no one has arrived.
Chinese Proverb
You don’t have to know (i.e. remember the facts of the past) in order to recover. It’s sufficient to know from what beliefs I am operating. And then work on them. It’s the beliefs that we work with.
Claudia Black
I am here (Daytop Therapeutic Community, NYC) because there is no refuge, finally, from myself. Until I confront myself in the eyes and hearts of others, I am running. Until I suffer them to share my secrets, I have no safety from them. Afraid to be known, I can know neither myself nor any other, I will be alone.
Richard Beauvais
In the days after having written last week’s piece on learning to regulate feelings, my energy field experienced high levels of turbulence. One night, I woke just after 3 am. The first thing that struck me was the beautiful silence. Then memories relating to those childhood panic attacks surfaced once again.
One of the most searing memories was of lying alone in my cold bed after having been brought back to my room in the middle of the night by my father. He had deposited me there, leaving me alone in the darkness. This was after a visit to my parents’ bed in a state of distress which had been brought on by nightmares. The bed had felt warm and safe, and I knew it was not going to last.
It wasn’t that they didn’t try to console me. I’m sure they did the best they could under the circumstances. Since I had no idea why I was so distressed they couldn’t have known either. They would have been caught in the trap of believing that knowing would solve the problem. What is needed in such situations is not knowing, but simple presence.
It was the experience of being returned to my bed, alone, which hit hardest. This was my experience of abandonment.
As I lay in bed on this recent night, gently embracing the pillow which now serves as the surrogate of my Inner Child, a new insight came to me. I need never again be abandoned. That’s over. Now that I have stepped up to the responsibility of caring for my Inner Child, abandonment need never again be my fate.
This was a major shift. It came as a great relief. Even in that sense of relief, it didn’t take long for grief to well up inside. The grief of the loss of the tenderness and affection which was not to be mine at that time, and not only of having been initially abandoned by my caregivers, but, more specifically, of having internalised this pattern, of having abandoned myself for so many years into adulthood.
A few days later, another old wound – rejection – paid me a visit. Again, through the eyes of the child it is understandable not to want to own the fears and pain that kept presenting, with no apparent cause. As with abandonment, repeated exposure to rejection carries the message of not being OK as we are, with the sinister undercurrent that we will probably never make the grade. And, as we are wont to do, I had internalised those signals picked up from my environment. Self-rejection was the result.
The healing follows the same tried and tested pattern. Identifying and owning the feelings now re-surfacing from the ocean floor of childhood deep below. Attending the old wounds, not running away. Simply taking a pause, self-regulating, and being present, sitting with them in a loving embrace, just as things are.
That feels very wholesome. No need for analysis or corrective measures. Just the unconditional acceptance of what was, of what is, and the recognition that the self-rejection can now be relinquished and replaced with unconditional love.
The next visitor was cowardice. Physically frail, fearful, and sensitive as I was as a child, the humiliating accusation of being a coward is one that was often fired my way, especially by the more robust boys around me. Accompanied by goading and ridicule, it seems this is a further arrow that pierced my psyche, under the radar of my consciousness.
Associations with the character of the Cowardly Lion from the Wizard of Oz came to mind. The contemplations that followed are instructive, providing insights into my feelings of currently `being stuck´ in life, and how these might be transcended.
The Cowardly Lion embodies the innocence of youthful exploration. His first appearance comes as a bully, ambushing Dorothy and her friends in the forest. His innocence comes alive when Dorothy slaps him, whereupon he realises that his bullying and bravado simply mask a layer of deep-seated fears and doubts just below the surface.
He wants to be happy and courageous, to fulfil his ordained role as King of the Jungle, but instead he scares himself and is afraid of sheep. His faith in what he comes to consider the `Greater Powers´ – Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz – keeps him going. His dedication to embracing his destiny fuels his drive to explore. He joins his new friends so that he can ask The Wizard for courage.
Despite outward evidence that he is unreasonably fearful and his self-image of being a coward, he displays great bravery along the way. His actions contradict his self-image.
In several subsequent scenes, he shows bravery in the face of danger. Here we see similarities with the Scarecrow, who wants a brain despite being the smartest one, and the Tin Man, who wants a heart but weeps every time he accidentally does anything remotely mean. As we can see, all the characters are in the process of transcending erroneous beliefs about their essence and their capabilities.
The fundamental component underpinning these beliefs is shame. Shame is a painful and destructive force. It tells us that there is something inherently and irrevocably wrong with us, as we are.
Psychological clinical research tells us that partial or intermittent negative reinforcement can create an effective climate of fear, doubt, and shame.
Compassionate enquiry into childhood experience might contain some of the following questions:
Was it OK to make mistakes?
Was it OK to have feelings?
Was it OK to have needs?
Was it OK to have accomplishments?
Was I subject to unrealistic expectations?
Used as an extension of my parents’ needs and hopes?
Was I made responsible for their feelings and behaviours?
Rejected for who I am in my sexuality?
There were plenty of challenges in my family of origin, which is how I would have come to the self-defeating conclusions such as those outlined further above.
In a recent talk, Claudia Black PhD, clinical psychologist and prolific author of books on Recovery and Childhood Trauma, outlined strategies we deploy in our attempts to make life bearable while we are caught up in the overwhelming powerlessness of shame.
Referring to these as `Shame Screens´, they each serve the purpose of providing us with access to some form of pseudo power, the principle being that, faced with the choice between powerlessness and access to some false power, we will choose the false power every time.
The shame screens include the following: controlling behaviour, rage, perfectionism, procrastination, victimhood, depression, suicidal ideation, and addiction.
These traits have strong counterparts with the so-called Saboteurs in the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Mental Fitness modality which has become an integral part of my recovery process. These are Judge (Master Saboteur, meaning it is the strongest one in every person) aided by each person’s unique constellation of Avoider, Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Hyper-Rational, Hyper-Vigilant, Pleaser, Restless, Stickler, and Victim.
My main Accomplice Saboteurs are Controller, Hyper-Rational, and Avoider. Working hand in hand with the Judge, they have the capacity to hijack me and wreak havoc in my life. This is why mental fitness is indispensable for harmony, recovery, balance, and growth.
The core of the PQ concept is that any transformation process is made up of 20% insights and 80% practice. The PQ practice, cultivated by grounding exercises spread out throughout each day, enables us to intercept the Saboteurs and shift to the so-called Sage Powers of Empathy, Explore, Innovate, Navigate, and Activate. These Sage Powers are deployed in the Sage Perspective that states that `every circumstance contains a gift or opportunity´.
My life has taken me along the path of deploying most of the Shame Screens described by Dr Black. Acting out addictions – both substance and process-related, from the age of 16 to 42 – fortified the remaining elements, leading to a negative vortex which almost killed me. By an act of Grace, I was able to reach out and get help. I call it Grace because it is a gift, and it runs counter to everything in my default programme.
Once we have gotten physically sober – we have dropped the coarser variants of addictive acting out, – life provides the opportunity to zoom out and reassess reality, to join up the dots between our childhood experience, our belief system, and present challenges. As adults who have learned to self-regulate, to practice self-care, and partake of a healing community, we can separate our beliefs into the categories of `still useful´ and `self-defeating´.
The useful beliefs and corresponding behaviours can be acknowledged and further cultivated while those which are self-defeating can be relinquished and replaced by more wholesome alternatives. This is the bread and butter of working towards emotional sobriety.
When I apply this approach, it quickly becomes clear that the accusation of cowardice is false. There have been many occasions and situations in life where great courage on my part had been the essential factor in pulling through.
For any teenager to accompany his terminally ill father in his final journey takes courage. Getting out of town – in my case emigrating at the age of 19 – takes courage. It takes courage to ask for help, to do the work of recovery. It takes courage to set healthy boundaries. It takes courage to follow one’s bliss. It takes courage to share such insights as those outlined in my writings.
Cutting through the lies we tell ourselves is a critical factor in recovery, healing, and growth. As the same time, it is important for me, even twenty years into recovery, to see the potential and tendency to regress towards believing these lies once again and behaving accordingly, especially in phases of life marked by setbacks, losses, and high levels of stress.
This is what has become apparent to me this week. The old lies have reasserted themselves to a certain degree. It is at times like these that we need and appreciate our Wizard, our Dorothy, and our troupe of explorers.
The 1965 Daytop Manifesto quoted at the beginning of this piece continues as follows: Where else but in our common ground can I find such a mirror? Here, together, I can at last appear clearly to myself, not as the giant of my dreams, not as the dwarf of my fears, but as a person, part of a whole, with my share in its purpose. In this ground, I can take root and grow, not alone any more, as in death, but alive to myself and to others.
I have found my healing ground in communities focused on self-actualisation, among them those which have formed around Twelve Step Recovery and the Positive Intelligence (PQ) Modality.
