Today's therapy became very philosophical. A post of mine appeared on the What EveryBetty Said blog today and it was about the concept of all things being transitory. This led to my thinking about how I lost my anchor and my center when my mom died because she was those things to me. Then I wondered if maybe I'm making my BFF into those things in her place, and if I should pull back a little bit.
My therapist saw things differently. She's listened to me talk about the Zen Buddhist and Stoic philosophies that I read on and her take was about risk and needing to risk pain and the negative emotions (think in terms of the negative space on a graph) in order to have the possibility of joy and love and the full range of positive emotions (the upper, positive part of a graph). That what I really need is to create my center, my anchor, within myself, not pull back from people so I don't risk pain.
There are a lot of reasons why my center is not within myself. My parents did not raise me to be self-sufficient. In fact, my father — a cop — taught my mother to handle a gun and my little brother to handle a gun, but did not teach me. I was warned away from tools and ladders and other "dangerous" things because I "might get hurt." I was sheltered and protected, at least as they saw it (they didn't protect me from being molested) and pretty much expected to marry someone who would continue to take care of me. Even though my mother worked outside of the home and she made equal decisions with my father and was in no way submissive or second to him. It was all very weird — I saw that even as a kid. So I didn't develop an interior locus of control or a sense of self-confidence in the face of difficulty.
Next, well, are the traumas in my life. Molestation. Bullying. Then losing my father, then my brother before I was 22. I held onto my mother with both metaphorical hands and all my might: she was the reason I chose not to take my own life after my brother took his and I could barely cope: I felt a responsibility to my mom to not put her through that again. So she was my reason for living for a very long time. She anchored me to this life.
One of the biggest problems I've had since Mom died was this lack of a center or an anchor, a lack of being grounded. My therapist proposed that this is what I work on. Be my own center so that I can embrace those I love without leaning on them so that if they go away I won't fall over. Be grounded on my own feet so that passing traumas cannot knock me over. Be able to still love and care with a whole heart, without crumbling should I lose who I love.
The concept is a simple one, sure, but not easy for me to achieve. It's spiritual: what in my non-deitific life gives me a spiritual center? It's cognitive: what have I accomplished that proves to me that I am self-reliant and independent? It even touches that part of me that is kinesthetic in nature: not leaning, standing on my own feet, etc., like a Weeble ("Weebles Wobble But They Don't Fall DOWN!")
I'll address these aspects of centeredness and my life in later posts (or this one is going to be far too long; besides, then I'll have ready-made ideas for later posts). Right now, I'd like to know, do you feel centered and grounded within yourself? What does or does not give you that sense?
Sometimes it seems like there are so many levels in life. On one level my mom disapproved of everything I said and did from the time I was a young child on so I never leaned on her. On that same level, my dad was rarely present when I was growing up, so I never leaned on him.
ReplyDeleteOn another level, almost no one believed I would be capable of being on my own and I bought into that enough that I got married at 17 to someone totally unsuitable because he was the first person who asked. He asked when I was 15 and I pretty much ignored all boys/men after that for years. He spent years telling me I was dumb but cute and his. Yuck. Makes me sick to think of it.
Not going back there.
So you didn't learn that you could lean gently or embrace your parents and be embraced back. You didn't learn support, so you still didn't believe you could stand on your own two feet. And some men don't feel like men unless they feel so needed that his partner can barely manage to breathe without him. I'm glad you don't have him anymore and you have more than enough proven that you are self-reliant and independent.
DeleteThis has given me a lot to think about, Skye. I see many reflections of my own life here. Thanks,
ReplyDeleteMaine Betty
I'm glad when what I say gives others things to think about. Maybe this is my way of contributing to community.
DeleteI think I've said this before--that I got my main conception of this from Stephen Covey's 7 Habits book. To base your identity on values, and not on externals, because they're the only thing that can't be taken from you. I think he was also offering non-religious people a way to integrate this sort of thing into their lives. His whole book can be a bit convoluted, but that chapter obviously stuck with me.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's so true. I was in a sabbath-keeping church at the time, and a lot of people took their sense of identity/individuality from that, from the feeling that they were special. When the church revised its doctrines and made this no longer mandatory (they became more mainstream, in a good way) hundreds in our church (and thousands around the world) left. And you saw a lot of people whose entire identities were threatened, so it was really upsetting to them.
That's when I knew for sure that Covey was onto something. ;-)
[And yes, your blog certainly contributes to Online Community Land!]