We wouldn’t ask why a rose
that grew from the concrete
for having damaged petals,
in turn, we would all
celebrate its tenacity,
we would all love its will
to reach the sun…
we are the roses…
Tupac Shakur
Dysfunction
The Source from Which Self-Respect Springs
A relationship without basic trust has no security. Lack of trust creates anxiety. When we can’t tolerate anxiety, we resort to blame. And blame kills relationships. Anxiety is at the core of blame. When we’re upset, disappointed or angry because of another person’s behavior, we often use blame to discharge our feelings. To say it bluntly, we dump our negative emotions onto another person. Carl Alasko, Ph.D., the author of the book “Beyond Blame”.
John is rushing through breakfast. There’s no milk. He’s upset and says to Mary, “Darn it, Mary, why can’t you at least keep some milk in the house?”
In essence, John is criticizing Mary of being too domestically incompetent to even keep track of the household’s supply of milk.
Instantly she gets angry. “You know, John, I work too.” Frequently an accusation follows: “Since when are you so important that you can’t buy some milk yourself?”
Mary’s accusation angers him even more. “I almost got laid off at work and you expect me to stop and buy milk?!” Clearly, this argument is only going to get worse.
The antidote to blame is simple: state your complaint without criticizing or accusing. Admittedly not an easy thing to do.
But here’s how it works. John says: “Oh, darn, there’s no milk.” Not a word more.
Since Mary is devoted to John and committed to their success as a couple, she takes on the responsibility. “Really? I’m sorry. I forgot.” Nothing more needs to be said. Mary already feels bad. Carrying on about it won’t add anything to either the discussion or the reliability of the household milk supply.
To ensure trust, avoid blame. It’s a simple formula that helps keep relationships together.
A decade ago I might have been able to grasp the concept that Dr. Alasko writes about, but I would not have been able to practice it consistently. My anger about the past and fear about the future would have prevented it. How very grateful I am today that storm has dissipated though acceptance, hard work and growth. Today ‘I get it’, thankfully!
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life
is the source from which self-respect springs.
Joan Didion
The majority of what is above comes from an article by Carl Alasko, Ph.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-blame/201110/how-blame-kills-love
Originally posted here on May 22, 2012
What A Child Sees
No one is ever quite ready; everyone is always caught off guard. Parenthood chooses you. And you open your eyes, look at what you’ve got, say “Oh, my gosh,” and recognize that of all the balls there ever were, this is the one you should not drop. It’s not a question of choice. Marisa de los Santos
It was a long week and still fighting off the remnants of a cold, I knew once arriving home going anywhere wouldn’t happen. So an obligatory visit to the land of craziness, Wal-Mart World, was made after work. My fatigue caused me to walk back and forth unable to find things a good bit. By the time I got near the registers I was shuffling through exhaustion. Then came the wake up call.
A young couple with two children was over one lane and the late 20-something guy was griping at the woman telling her stupid she was. Everyone within twenty feet could hear him. Never will I forget the look on the woman’s face: one of absolute unhappiness and shame. She appeared hopelessness as if she had no choice except to endure her choice, the man she was with. Her head was bent downward which suggested she had known this treatment time and time again. The bruise beside her left eye made me think she likely faced worse later. Knowing that tugs strongly at my heart, but there is nothing I can do except tell about her here.
As bad as I felt for the young woman, I felt worse for the children. A boy around five and a girl around three stared straight at their parents taking in every thing that was being said. They were learning how a husband treats a wife and that a woman must accept what comes. How awful. I doubt if that relationship will ever improve. I hope the wife gets away from the her as#h*le husband some day.
So how does such a dark scene end up in a gratitude blog? Simple this: I am deeply thankful for parents who raise their children with respect and understand far more is taught by what a child sees than what they are told.
There is nothing more pathetically sad
than a parent who teaches a child not to hit
by spanking them. Well, that, and adults
who think hitting someone will solve a problem.
Anitra Lynn McLeod
Courage Enough To Step Through My Fear
What a dichotomy it is to want to be loved, yet fearful of it beyond explanation. Such a condition is called “love avoidance” and it’s a dysfunction I know for my own. It’s a form of “love addiction” and feels like slowly starving even though there is food within reach.
Dr. Janice Caudill wrote, Love avoidance is the systematic putting up of walls in a relationship to prevent feeling emotionally overwhelmed by another person. Consequently, it prevents true intimacy. It can be described as a form of emotional anorexia.
First hand I know love avoidants are romantics. Thirsting for love they spend a lot of time thinking about love and imagining being loved. However, when love arrives in not too long a time the walls begin to go up against it. Sounds crazy doesn’t it. A love avoidant looks for love constantly but runs away when it finds him or her. That the lunacy I lived with for far too long.
Love entered in my heart one day
A sad, unwelcome guest.
But when it begged that it might stay
I let it stay and rest
It broke my nights with sorrowing
It filled my heart with fears
And, when my soul was prone to sing,
It filled my eyes with tears.
But…now that it has gone its way,
I miss the dear ole pain.
And, sometimes, in the night I pray
That Love might come again.
J. California Cooper
Many wounded adults actually avoid love, becoming restless around persons who might provide genuine care and nurturing. In these cases, the closer the adult comes to obtaining the reality of love, the more they will push their partners away. This move, becoming avoidant and trying to create emotional distance within the relationship, is fueled by a fear of intimacy. Some love avoidants push away love as a test to see if their partner will continue to love them even when they are acting disagreeable or unpleasant. This behavior is a result of the conditional and irregular love the wounded adult experienced as children from their caregivers.
The struggle for the love avoidant is that he/she, like anyone else, wants to feel love and closeness. Regardless of what the past emotional, physical and/or sexual wounds might be, there is still an intrinsic desire for the security and affection and healing that comes from love.
For most love avoidants, they are very good at beginning relationships, but horrible at keeping and maintaining a relationship. There is a lot of pulling in and pushing out – pulling in their love interest and then once the connection happens and the relationship becomes deeper, they push their partner away. Douglas Dobberfuhl
It’s said that knowing is half the battle. Today my love avoidant tendencies are not nearly as pronounced as they once were. A good therapist, growing awareness of my habits and consistent work to amend them has made a remarkable difference in my life. Am I cured? Heck no; never will be completely. But I am deeply grateful for the more open heart that lives within me today. It has been a hard-fought battle against myself, but today I have courage enough to step through my fear and let love in.
Of all the events of my life,
inclusive of its afflictions,
nothing has humbled me
so much as your love.
Elizabeth Barrett to Robert Browning
A Gift You Give Yourself
I am mostly me, but bits of others people are mixed in. For some habits and tendencies I know exactly who I intentionally copied them from. Then there are those I picked things up from simply being around others; some good, some not.
What did I get from my Father? I look a lot like him and stand sometimes like he often did. He was a womanizer and with the best of intentions to be otherwise, I found myself in adult life following in his steps to a point. However, how he made a mess of his life went far deeper. In his late 40’s and 50’s came a slow suicide with alcohol and hard drugs. The addictions were picked up trying to be “cool” with 20-something women he liked to have around. He was attracted to truly “bad girls” who were a perfect fit his addictions. Dad got sober and straight the last year and a half of his life, but I never spoke to him during that time. He died at an Alcohol Anonymous meeting from a heart attack. I don’t hold anything against my Father any more. I actually feel sorry for him.
Then there is my Mother who taught me how to be truly selfish simply from watching her behavior. She was eighteen when I was born and not even 21 when my brother came along. By twenty-five my Father got another woman pregnant and left to be with her. Mom went kind of crazy after that and became highly self-absorbed. She was attractive and “easy” with a steady flow of men. From her antics I saw and heard way more about sex than any 8-year-old kid should be exposed to. She was completely oblivious to how she was screwing up her children. Like pets one might keep, she saw that we didn’t go hungry, had a dry place to sleep and went to school. Past that my Brother and I took care of each other but grew up starved for parental affection. My Mother is still alive but to my knowledge has never admitted any regrets. I have not spoken to her in 20 years and it’s a toss-up if I ever will. I pity my Mother and the mess she made of her life, but forgave her a long time ago (mostly anyway).
Forgiving our parents is a core task of adulthood, and one of the most crucial kinds of forgiveness. We see our parents in our mates, in our friends, in our bosses, even in our children. When we’ve felt rejected by a parent and have remained in that state, we will inevitably feel rejected by these important others as well.
The sins of parents are among the most difficult to forgive. We expect the world of them, and we do not wish to lower our expectations. Decade after decade, we hold out the hope, often unconsciously, that they will finally do right by us. We want them to own up to all their misdeeds, to apologize, to make heartfelt pleas for our forgiveness.
Getting to a forgiving place, finding the forgiving self inside us, is a long and complicated journey. We have to be ready to forgive. We have to want to forgive. The deeper the wound, the more difficult the process—which makes forgiving parents especially hard. But when we get there, the forgiveness we achieve will be a forgiveness worth having. From the May 2003 issue of “O”, the Oprah Magazine
For my own sanity, I forgave both my parents long ago. I forgave my Father for abandoning us and my Mother for not even trying to protecting my Brother and I from the evil stepfather she brought into our lives. I am grateful to have found some peace and light within memories that once were filled with darkness and fear.
Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.
Suzanne Somers
A New Way to Remember
My dysfunctions have been with me all of my adult life. However, conditions like depression, compulsion and trauma from childhood were not clearly known to me until the last ten years. When I began to ask “why” particular behaviors came over me in certain circumstances and situations, a true effort to educate myself started. In trying to understand some of my actions, I read book after book after book.
My studies were primarily two-fold: 1) about human behavior and why we do the things we do 2) about religion and how spirituality affects a person. Over several years I became fairly well-educated in the realm of psychology and generally knowledgeable about the origins of a wide number of religions and the spiritual practices that grew out of them. After all this time I was smarter and quite a bit kinder to others, but inside I was not a whole lot better.
Of particular attraction to me were some of the basic tenants of Buddhism. There I found direction about learning to live a better life contained within the “Eightfold Noble Path”.
This on top of the “Ten Commandments” of Christianity became a sort of roadmap for improving the quality my existence. Other teachings of Buddha helped me as well such as I was not my thoughts and how my constantly chattering mind can at times create insane lines of thinking. Having these insights made me more knowledgeable and I did get better, just not enough to overcome my demons.
…The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction there isn’t really much else that you need to learn or understand. Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity… From the second chapter of Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now”
What Tolle wrote explains well the dilemma I ended up lost within. Alone, I could not fix myself. I needed help. In some ways I wish I could say that realization came to me easily, but it didn’t. It took the ending of a marriage I did not want to be over and coming to face to face with the reasons why that were my responsibility. What I came to know is all of my romantic relationships had suffered because of childhood issues that had never been dealt with. It was like being hit in the head with a ‘two by four” that brought me to my knees determined to recover.
When the pain to stay the same, exceeded the pain to change, I sought help and truly began to grow and change. There is nothing particularly admirable about it. I simply felt I had no other choice.
Today life is pretty darn good and certainly better than ever before. Am I “fixed”? No, far from it. But I am a lot better and as the months pass, I continue to grow. The past is past, but I recall it differently today as containing my greatest lessons. With true positive anticipation and hope for the future, I am grateful to be where I am!
Forgiving does not erase the bitter past.
A healed memory is not a deleted memory.
Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget
creates a new way to remember.
We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
Lewis B. Smedes
Lost and Found
At the back of the class room was the “cloak room” is where we hug our coats. In one corner was a round cardboard “can” with metal edges that had originally been made to hold about three gallons of ice cream in the lunch room. Taped on the container was a piece of construction paper with “Lost and Found” written on it in Miss Pittman’s near perfect handwriting. She was a soon to retire, old maid school teacher who lived in the rundown school teacher dorms behind the high school. Years late I would come to feel sorry for her as I realized how lonely and sad her life must have been. She had evaporated into obscurity before I was twenty-one.
If we found anything in the class room and did not know who it belonged to, we were supposed to put it in the lost and found. If we lost something that was the first place to look for it. Sometimes things ended up there because some 5th graders would put other people’s things there as a joke, although I never thought it was funny.
No matter how strict Ms. Pittman was or how much in turmoil was in my life then, those were simpler times in that wrong and right seemed clearer to me then. My Mother had decided to marry a man sixteen years older that my Brother and I did not like. As we would come to know, that was for good reason. He was a mean and abusive stepfather and we always thought he had a few screws loose. In those days I knew bad was bad. That was clear. Then I imagined good was simply the absence of the bad.
Through my childhood and into early adult life there were parts of me that ended up lost and stayed unfound for many years. Unlike the classroom of my youth, there was no ice cream bin to check out for what was missing. I did not develop the ability to love a girl/woman properly and it was replaced with neediness and want. With very little family influence of love expressed and shown, there were no teachers to emulate. So I read books, watched TV and saw movies. When I was sixteen that’s about all I knew about love.
My education continued, but painful and slow, learning the most difficult way from repeated mistakes and bad choices. The girls, then women, I was attracted to were often attached and several times I became the ‘secret guy” on the side. Too, I had a penchant for choosing ‘female roller coasters’ who were emotionally unstable. I sure could pick ’em, but they were not the problem. It was my ‘picker’ that was. I look back now and can see I thought the intensity, the anguish, the heartache and the longing totaled together was love.
Today awareness of who I am, where I come from and what I have been through has brought a willingness to pull the lost part of me out of “lost and found”. Like a broken vase that has been glued back together, the fractures and scars will always visible. But it is from those very wounds that knowledge and wisdom benefits me today. My sensitivity, ability to relate and identifying my feelings are all keen sense now. From what once hurt and confused me came great teaching from strict and difficult teachers too, just like Miss Pittman. But I got A’s and B’s in her class and give my self pretty good grades for living life and knowing how to love today. I am grateful for the difficulties I endured that eventually made me more able than most to know and express my feelings.
People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.
But the self is not something one finds,
it is something one creates.
Thomas Szasz
Behind a Farting Camel
Hafez or Hafiz was a Persian poet who lived in the 1300’s. His work has been influential since that time even though little is actually known today about him and his life. His work made deep impressions on writers such as Thoreau, Goethe and Emerson with the latter referring to him as “a poet’s poet. Hafez has been a favorite since I became aware of his writing during my young “hippie days” (or was that “hippie daze”?)
In this piece, Hafez writes about depression and seemed knowledgeable about the subject hundreds of years before Jung and Freud. There are a few days per month I have to deal with “cycling depression” that brings a sort of dimness and lethargy into my life. Writing like the piece below from Hafez helps me understand I am far from alone. Many today suffer as I do and many did a hundred generations before me did too.
I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel…
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing!
In recent years the days of my depression usually pass like wind through a tree when limbs are moved by the passing but no damage is not done. Through counseling, support of peers and those who care about me, and reaching a level of understanding that “depression” is a ‘normal’ malady, I am much healthier today than ever before. Some deal with migraines; some throw their back out; I cope with depression. And I do it quite well these days and am grateful for all the love, support and insight that makes that possible.
If depression is creeping up and must be faced,
learn something about the nature of the beast:
You may escape without a mauling.
Dr. R. W. Shepherd
The Source from Which Self-Respect Springs
A relationship without basic trust has no security. Lack of trust creates anxiety. When we can’t tolerate anxiety, we resort to blame. And blame kills relationships. Anxiety is at the core of blame. When we’re upset, disappointed or angry because of another person’s behavior, we often use blame to discharge our feelings. To say it bluntly, we dump our negative emotions onto another person. Carl Alasko, Ph.D., the author of the book”Beyond Blame”.
John is rushing through breakfast. There’s no milk. He’s upset and says to Mary, “Darn it, Mary, why can’t you at least keep some milk in the house?”
In essence, John is criticizing Mary of being too domestically incompetent to even keep track of the household’s supply of milk.
Instantly she gets angry. “You know, John, I work too.” Frequently an accusation follows: “Since when are you so important that you can’t buy some milk yourself?”
Mary’s accusation angers him even more. “I almost got laid off at work and you expect me to stop and buy milk?!” Clearly, this argument is only going to get worse.
The antidote to blame is simple: state your complaint without criticizing or accusing. Admittedly not an easy thing to do.
But here’s how it works. John says: “Oh, darn, there’s no milk.” Not a word more.
Since Mary is devoted to John and committed to their success as a couple, she takes on the responsibility. “Really? I’m sorry. I forgot.” Nothing more needs to be said. Mary already feels bad. Carrying on about it won’t add anything to either the discussion or the reliability of the household milk supply.
To ensure trust, avoid blame. It’s a simple formula that helps keep relationships together.
A decade ago I might have been able to grasp the concept that Dr. Alasko writes about, but I would not have been able to practice it consistently. My anger about the past and fear about the future would have prevented it. How very grateful I am today that storm has dissipated though acceptance, hard word and growth. Today ‘I get it’, thankfully!
The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life
is the source from which self-respect springs.
Joan Didion
The majority of what is above comes from an article by Carl Alasko, Ph.D. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-blame/201110/how-blame-kills-love
We All Feel the Same Pain
There can be a thousand people in a room with only two dysfunction ones
and they will find one another. They’re attracted like magnets to each other
because they see them self in the other person.
A psychologist once said that to me and from experience I know it’s true. ‘Likes’ attract, even dysfunctional ones, just like the cartoon above I clipped a few years back and came across last week.
So what is a dysfunction relationship? A partnership that does not work well because of emotional baggage that has been brought into a relationship by one or both partners (more often than not, both!). While anger or dissatisfaction may be what is outwardly apparent, the inner core is almost always fear that originates from old emotional wounds.
If a relationship is not contributing to your emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual well-being, it is NOT functional. And if it is not functional … over time, it will manage to break your spirit, if you don’t manage it! From http://www.broken-relationship-help.com
The reality of life is most people grew up in a family that was dysfunctional to some degree, so there is nothing to be ashamed of. In some regard just about all of us learned unhealthy ways of being and relating when we were kids. Face that junk and work through it or else you’ll keep attracting people who at first seem like they complete you or fix you (neither of which is even possible). The scary thing is you won’t even realize you need to be healed until the healing begins.
I have a way to go in “growing myself back up” but I have come far in recovering from “issues” rooted in my childhood. I am happy, hopeful and grateful to be where I am today.
Everyone is dysfunctional.
The most dysfunctional people are the ones
that refuse to admit they are!
Why have we all been wearing a mask
and hiding when we all feel the same pain?!
Melanie Tonia Evan
Good Morning Gratitude 