From the moment we enter the world we begin a process of striving for autonomy in order to fulfill our destiny. Our life energy is channeled like a plant, a tree, a bird or anything else in nature towards the fulfillment of its purpose. If our search for autonomy is hindered, damaged or blocked by our environment then we lose our purpose and seek only survival. If we are encouraged and loved in a good-enough way then we can follow our purpose in confidence and within close relationships
Deepak Chopra talks to us of 'having a purpose in life' and living out our lives in the fulfillment of that purpose. The secret is to find your purpose.
When I was a child of about four years old I realised that I was filled with love. I remember feeling overwhelmed by my love and wondered about what I would do with all this love, who will I give it to and what shall I do with it all? Was that my purpose?
Perhaps as a small child I knew it what my purpose was later losing sight of it only to regain it thirty odd years later as a therapist. Perhaps I had tried to find an opening for all of this emotional love through my days as a nurse. More than likely I wanted to give it to my parents who rejected it because they were too busy being overwhelmed in their own world and couldn't see me and what I had to offer them. Only seeing me as a hindrance and a responsibility therefore that would be how I saw myself in relation to others. Because of the way my childhood went I lost sight of the value of what I had to offer thus losing sight of my own lovability. Because of my great need to survive in the hostile family situation that I was brought up in I learned to build a high wall of defense. That defense was a belief manifested by seeing myself as stupid. I was stupid to want love and be loved. Alongside that, my parents did think of me as a stupid child because I was so quiet and withdrawn. This again was reinforced at school in the early years because of regular absenteeism, being late, the violent atmosphere at home thus loosing my place in the scheme of things. All that plus my parents lack of interest and a general comparison to how clever my older brother was, how good he was and what he nice little boy he was. It was all so overwhelming I simply lost contact with what was going on around me. I developed a level of anger to protect myself from constant rejection. The best line of defense is attack was a saying I took on literally. In order to get by I had to adapt to my dependency, deal with the rejection of my love by others and learn the fear of distrustful attachments. So my anger hid my fear and my fear hid the real me.
Finding the real me was a long journey but it was started because of a need to find what my life was about and what my purpose in it all was.
Through asking myself the same questions over and over again as a young woman I strove to change my life.
I began gradually to recognise that contact with others was a way forward in my search for myself. However I had been too afraid of that contact based upon a lack of trust and also how could I talk to people openly when I expected them to think I was stupid? They would see me as uneducated, simple and thick. It was a negative cycle.
One important statement from an exercise in one of the first personal development workshops I attended was
My answers may seem obvious to you as you read this.
Ask yourself that question right now
Giving and getting love becomes a focus for survival and life, needing to attach yet fearing attachment can become a major part of who we are in relationships.
If we are born into a good-enough loving environment then growing up and receiving love may be easy. However if we are born into a situation where receiving and giving love is tenuous and uncertain, unhealthy and costly we develop the defenses to protect the inner self. We develop a false self or adapted self. In order to stay in relationships, find relationships, stay attached we sometimes give ourselves away, give up the real self and become what the other person expects us to be. We may lose sight of who we really are because who we really are may not be acceptable to those we love. We will build a self that is about what we think others want.
So we split between who we really are and the self that is constructed as a way of surviving or getting approval or reinforcing the early environmental beliefs. Repeating history in the here and now playing out old patterns of behaviour in order to maintain the familiar. Veering towards the familiar keeps us safe, staying away from the unfamiliar means we don't have to repeat history. Moving into the unfamiliar means change and change is often destabilising and frightening because there is sense of lack of control.
Too often, in relation to seeing ourselves as giving and receiving love there comes a negative internal response.
Do you believe that you're not good enough? If so why is that? What were the messages you got from the powerful others in your life as a child because whatever they were you will continue to believe them and put energy into covering up whatever it was they told you about yourself. If is important to remember that more often than not parents have not necessarily had the intention of putting you down. It is more often true that they are only replaying some aspects of parenting that they themselves learned from their own parents. We learn models of parenting from others and then unconsciously and consciously decide that we do not want to be like them and yet will hear ourselves saying the same things they said. We will act out the same behaviours with our own children as the parents did. Models of parenting are passed down from generation to generation some accepted and much rejected but very often the rejected aspects are where we ourselves were hurt by the parent, were we have the wounds but have not learned how to change the pattern. Even though our ideas are about changing the pattern if we have not healed the wounds from the past then we are likely to replay the scenarios over and over like a stuck record.
Think back to the messages you received about yourself as a child both verbally and non-verbally. If we go through life believing negative things about ourselves then as adults we will only get what we expect. It will account for why we stay in uncomfortable situations, stay with abusive relationships, rotten or dead-end jobs and awkward situations. How was your self-esteem crushed?
Self Esteem
How many of you felt flattered by the attention someone gave you and felt so pleased to have someone (anyone) you went along with the process only to find that into the relationship you were back within the shadow of your criticising or rejecting family situation.
Whilst working as a health visitor many years ago I was surprised to find how many couples I visited with children and new babies weren't actually in love.
Many women told me as they began to talk about themselves more openly how they had believed that no one would ever want them. Then when they did meet someone who showed an interest they were so afraid to lose them deciding that it would be OK or that they might never find another man so this was their only chance. I must emphasise that I have also spoken to men who have said similar things about their relationships. Drifting into a marriage in a passive way. Flattered by the fact that someone actually wanted them enough to go out with and even marry. However women are more likely to have wanted to escape from negative family situations only to find themselves caught in similar relationships. Women who have watched their mothers abused by their fathers, women who have low self worth because of lack of recognition within the family women who are looking for some way to escape from their life as it was.
This of course is all to do with how we value ourselves, and the extent of our self-esteem. If self esteem and self worth are low because as a child you were undervalued or treated as a worthless object within the family system, or your feelings, thoughts and even sense of being there was discounted and overlooked then how can you experience yourself as valuable?
We first have to be valued by a significant other in our childhood in order to see ourselves as valuable. Perhaps if someone for example a teacher, places a value upon you or someone at work sees you as worth having around then that in itself might trigger the beginning of some insight into feeling valuable. Perhaps you can begin to imagine that you are worthwhile. Being valued by someone else leads you to value yourself. Remember I said our sense of self-value original comes from the carers around us. However if you devalue yourself enough to stay in unhappy relationships or negative situations then you need to ask yourself why.
Through maintaining the negative situations the individual can in some way maintain a false sense of security. As I mentioned earlier being in an unhappy marriage with a partner who treats you badly might be familiar and it is possibly what you know best. Being in a job where you remain unnoticed. Looking after others and ignoring your own needs or maybe not even recognising what your own needs are. If we analysed why then maybe we would more than likely recognise that staying in negative situations is familiar even though it is uncomfortable. This familiarity gives a sense of safety even whilst feeling the hurt and distress, you can cope with it because you are so unsure as to whether you deserve anything better. It may not even occur to you that you can have something better. Although throughout this chapter I have posed questions as food for thought below I offer you the opportunity to begin to see how through owning aspects of yourself you may begin to move forward
Keep a note of what you have to change in you to improve the quality of your relationships.