Letting go of the Life-ring: Trust and Change

Trust and Change: Learning how to let go of the life-ring

 

So, dear friends an individual wrote in requesting some follow-up on the blog posting about clinging to the emotional life-ring (see the entry on “Just GetOver it! (Already) – NOT!).

Specifically the question was how to change patterns of the past. As you can see from the image in the posting “Just Get Over it!”, people who are abandoned, alone, out in the emotional ocean of life will desperately cling to that life-ring and when a rescuer comes along... well, they will switch from the life-ring to that person.

           

 

I won’t get into the phrases: “clingy” and “needy”, because EVERYONE is clingy and needy. Let me repeat that again, because it bears repeating:

 

EVERYONE is clingy and needy.

 

And as I mentioned in my post on “Just Get Over it!”, when well-meaning people criticize you (or worse) you criticize yourself with your internal critic by saying this.  Do you think it helps you or hinders? What do you think? – This is a test question, friends.

 

What do you think? When someone tells you, or you tell yourself – “You are clingy and needy!” Do you think it empowers you to go right out there and tackle the world? Does it make you feel like this:

 



Statue of Liberty

Monument to the Motherland, Kyiv

 

Or this:

Liberty Leading the People -- Eugène Delacroix

 

 

Or rather, do you feel rather more like this:

 

 

 

 even more small and less able to tackle the world? And then perhaps you feel that it is maybe even your own fault that you are... CLINGY and NEEDY?

 

What do you think is the correct answer?

 

For all those who chose the second answer: Full Marks.

For all those who wanted to choose the first answer, please refer to second answer.

 

Anyway, enough silliness.

 

The point is, when you are feeling abandoned by past relationships and/or desperate and wanting to regain what you have lost, it makes no sense whatsoever to BLAME yourself for what you no longer have or what you have lost. You have lost something and you feel a need (not neediness) until it is replaced. It is that simple. Blaming yourself by calling yourself down (or having others call you down) by saying you are needy or clingy helps not a bit.

 

So, embrace your clinginess and your neediness. It is there for a reason.

 

Hunh? Embrace your neediness?

Yes!

Emotions, you see, are our sensors. When you are feeling neediness or clinginess, it is an internal message from yourself to yourself that you wish to be more emotionally connected. Listen to that message and listen to that voice. It is there for a reason.

 

So, well and good, Steve, I hear you say.

So I acknowledge my neediness and my loneliness and my clinginess. So what? What am I supposed to do about this now?

 

Okay, so part of the problem with getting into relationships is, it involves two elements:

 

1.      Process

2.      And Trust.

 

Now, psychotherapists and counsellors are forever going on about “process” and no, we are not talking about this:

 

 processed cheese, although the word “process” is such a cliché with counsellors, you could say it is “cheesy”.

 

But, seriously, “process” is an expression we use to understand that CHANGE and the change process and the evolution of a person’s life and personality, does not happen instantaneously overnight. On the contrary it is..... a process.

 

And similarly changing ANYTHING in our lives is a process.  I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But at least you now know realistically HOW to change whatever you would like to in your life (within reason).

 

So,

 

Want to lose weight? – It’s a process.

Want to get out of that bad relationship? – It’s a process.

Want to have a fabulous, buff body or look like Arnold? – It’s a process.

Want to be wealthy? – It’s a process.

Want to get into that super relationship with the person of (most) of your dreams? – It’s a process.

Want to quit drinking/smoking/drugging (fill-in-the-blank) bad habit? – It’s a process.

 

Want to speak a foreign language? – It’s a process.

Want to get out of that job or change your career or go back to school? – It’s a process.

Want a sparkling clean, decluttered house and tidy garden? – It’s a process.

 

Just how many infomercials have there been where people can strike it rich with some super-duper fabulous get-rich-quick investment scheme or lose weight or put on muscles in no time at all? Unfortunately, they don’t tell you the other side of it: that it takes a lot of persistence and encouragement to get to that goal.

 

These infomercials are designed to appeal to all of us at a very basic level because they focus on basic human drives and basic human needs and goals. A man named Abraham Maslow




Abraham Maslow

talked about this and I may come back to this in the future on another post.

 

However, what you need to keep in mind, for whatever change you would like to bring about is that it is a process. Ten steps forward, 3 steps back. But a net gain of seven steps.

 

Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist,
 




Malcolm Gladwell

in his book entitled “Outliers”

 

talks about the “10,000 hour effect”, referring to a study by K. Anders Ericsson,










 a Swedish psychologist. According to Ericsson’s  research, which was written about in Gladwell’s book,  the bulk of most successful people in the world have put in about 10,000 hours into their field in order to be at the top of their field.

K. Anders Ericcson

 

There are no overnight success stories.

 

So, once again.   It is a process.

 

Secondly, and this is a little bit more difficult, apart from changing habits and routines, relationships, if one is talking about changing relationships, also involves trust. And trust again, is..... A process.

 

So the question might be: Okay, Steve. I hear that changing my life (or my relationship) might be a process – 10, 000 hours or 10 steps forward, 3 steps back until I reach my destination.

 

However, how do I trust if I have been burned?

 

Simple.    You don’t trust, if you have been burned.

 

Hunh????

 

You don’t trust if you have been burned. You are feeling fearful and frightened. You don’t trust.... until you feel safe.

Think again of the image of the drowning person with the life ring.  The person is fearful and frightened of drowning.  How useful would it be to the drowning person to snatch away their life ring and say:

                        “Now there you go! SWIM”

So the exact same thing applies to you. You feel bruised perhaps from a past relationship. You are distrustful. So you don’t trust. You have to go with what you feel.

 

However, you also know, logically that if you never let go of that life ring you will never swim.

 

So, you have to trust that you will swim and not drown.

 

I realize that this may be a little too abstract and metaphoric, so I will illustrate with a concrete example, where the names and information has been changed.

 

 

Once upon a time, I knew a middle-man who had had 3 kids and who had lost his wife due to cancer.  Very nice man, but unfortunately when he lost his wife, he started drinking like crazy and almost lost his job. Fortunately his elder sister came to the rescue and he went into rehab and got cleaned up.

 

Now, remember what I said about change? Well, change for this man was a process. Everyday he had to struggle to deal with his wife’s death and then his abstinence and like in Alcoholics Anonymous or AA, every day was one step at a time. So it was a daily process for him.

 

Now after about 3 years, the man who was still young enough, wanted to have a relationship. However, he felt a strong obligation whenever he met a new woman in his life to “be honest and tell her upfront that he was “an alcoholic”.

 

Well and good, I thought, except here’s the problem and I told him so.

When you get into a relationship it is ...... A PROCESS.

It is a process of getting to know someone and you don’t and shouldn’t spill your entire life story in the first five minutes you meet someone, especially not that which you might think would be   upsetting for the other person to know.

 

You do not need to tell them for example that:

1.      You used to be an addict.

2.      You were sexually abused as a child

3.      You have been bankrupt.

4.      You had a criminal record, which has now been removed.

5.      Anything else that someone else might be scared of.

 

Why? But shouldn’t I be honest and upfront with the person?

Absolutely. But do they need to know absolutely everything and every little transgression or fault about you within the first five minutes? No.

 

Everyone has faults. And trust and the process of trust will slowly start to bring out these admissions AS YOU GET TO KNOW THE PERSON. Look at it this way, the person you are getting to know, will likely have just as many faults and heartaches in their past as you, all you need to do is wait for the story.

And if you were to hear in the first five minutes about someone else’s failed relationships, what would you think?

Probably, you wouldn’t want to get involved with this person.

Which is exactly what this middle-aged man was struggling with.

He felt a compunction to be upfront and honest in the first meeting with anyone new and subsequently turned all potential partners off.

 

SO, relationships and trust are a process. It requires courage and time.

And be good to yourself. If you are feeling needy or clingy, it is because you are feeling a basic human need that we all need from birth: to be held, touched, loved, wanted and desired.

People who do not have this, dear friends can become very, very seriously dysfunctional.

 

So, keep at it and trust the process. Because as you do begin to trust the process, you will find yourself less and less like the clingy little child and more and more like the ideal of liberty.

Take care,

Steve.

I welcome comments, questions for clarification and dialogue respectful to this post and any others.

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Can I have your Identification, please?

by Stephen B.Chadwick, MA Counselling Psychology.
www.cowichancounselling.ca

WARNING: LONG POST: WARNING: LONG POST

So I am starting this next post with a familiar quote that everyone hears when they get stopped by the cops and are speeding or run a red light or did some minor infraction. What, you may ask does this have at all to do with counselling and psychotherapy? Wait for it. We’ll get to it.

Okay, Identifications can have a couple of different meanings. Apart from your passport or your driver’s licence, How you identify... how you identify yourself... and what you identify with can have some pretty important meanings. All of us have multiple identifications in this life: father, son, daughter, mother, cousin, grandson, sibling, co-worker, employee, boss, lover, etc., etc. and that’s just for starters.

            Think about this:

When you go to a party or a social gathering, what is usually the first thing that most people ask, apart from your name? You introduce yourself and then your “interlocutor” (my fancy word for the day, meaning the person you are having a conversation with) ... Anyway your interlocutor, says:  “So... what do you do?”

And you immediately, say... “I’m a _________(fill in the blank)”, as if an individual can be reduced to a single word. You can’t. Both male and female, we fulfill multiple roles in our lives.  Shakespeare mentioned this in his monologue from As You Like It where the character of Jaques, in Act II, Scene VII who states that “All the World’s a stage and... one man in his time plays many parts”.

So, identification is important. Perhaps more so for men that for women, because, and here I overgeneralize, because for men, they identify (generally) with who they are and what they do, whereas (generally) women identify with their roles in relation to others. Hence when the average man loses his job, he becomes a blank, a nothing. Like the fill-in-the-blank above. Whereas most women, again, these are overgeneralizations, may not feel the loss nearly as keenly because their identity is not so wrapped up in their job or career. This of course is not true for all women or all men. And any job or career loss is devastating. But perhaps some women (and men) can weather it better when their identity is less dependent upon what they do but rather their relationship to whom they do it.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the loss of the relationship can’t also be devastating. Take for example, the play by Tennessee Williams, Suddenly, Last Summer. Granted, there is a song by the Motels from the 80’s about this film. The original had some heavyweights: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn. There is a line in the film where Katherine Hepburn turns to Clift and says: “After all, I’ve buried a husband and a son. I’m a widow and a... Funny there’s no word. Lose your parents and you’re an orphan. Lose your only son and you are... nothing”.

 

 

This was a very powerful play but it illustrates the power of identification with what you are and  to whom you relate.

 

Taken to the other extreme, when you don’t identify with anything you have very little reason for existing... which I will discuss in a moment. Take for example another film, however this is Sci-Fi – Logan’s Run from the seventies. In this futuristic world, everyone is identified as a number – sound eerie already – Logan 5, Jessica 6, etc., etc. simply because real identification, interaction and meaning with other people are simply no longer possible because the world population has exploded and everyone is obliged to give up their life for “renewal” at age 30. Everyone goes around identifying themselves with a super, glow-in-the-dark chip implanted, Jesus-like,stigmata-like, in the palm of their hand. 

 

So, identification, how and what you identify as in this world is important. Important, so that your life has proverbial meaning and you are not just a number, like in Logan’s Run. But it is also important just how your identification is derived. And as I hinted at earlier, this can be what you do, but also what role you play in relation to others.

 

Now, you are probably asking why is this identification jazz so important anyway? Well, I’ll tell you. Because often the most difficult conflicts/stressors can come about psychologically AS A RESULT of the discrepancy BETWEEN what you are externally and what you are internally. In other words, what other people say or think you are and what you yourself think you are. In other words how you yourself, define yourself.

 

Again, you may think to yourself.... “Oh, what is all this malarkey?” “Who cares already?”

So, I will give a real, hard, concrete example. Two, in fact. I will start out with the most obvious one on the individual level and then I will go to the more abstract one on a national level.

Bear with me.

In a film by Pedro Almodovar (1999), called All About My Mother, there is a character called Agrado. Now, bear with me as Almodovar’s characters tend to be a little unusual if not bizarre. In the film, there is a play which is cancelled in a theatre as the main actress is sick. So, Agrado, who happens to be transgendered, offers to entertain the audience who would have otherwise left the theatre, by telling the audience her life story. In it she relates how she had endless amounts of plastic surgery in order to look like how she does and how much money and time it cost. She states that it was all worth it because “now the outside matches the inside” or “you are more authentic, the more you resemble what you have dreamed of”.

The clip is below with subtitles in English

 

 

 

Now, the character is talking about the externalities of what you look like – as a man, as a woman, etc. So, in this case, who are we to judge people who get plastic surgery? Yes, of course it is not “authentic”, but then the internal reality then matches the external reality and then the external identity matches the individual’s internal identity.  Problem solved. No more conflict.

 

Now, most of the population of this world are not transsexual. But stop and think for a moment. For all the women and girls out there who are looking to resemble something in a magazine. Should we begrudge them? No. They are in fact IDENTIFYING with the models in the magazine. Of course the lack of acceptance of how they actually look as opposed to how they would like to look, is what causes the conflict. You can either help them to accept they way they are or help them to become what they would like to be.

This conflict is even more profound for those who are indeed transgendered and are women inside men’s bodies or vice-versa.

But then, again, in terms of identification, for every man and for every woman, they will become their more authentic self when they either can become what they envision themselves to be and/or accept their external situation in congruence with their internal situation.

So, if you have always wanted to be an astronaut – and IDENTIFIED as one or if you have always wanted to be a ballerina – and IDENTIFIED as one and yet have not achieved the external reality to match the internal reality, then it is possible, perhaps strongly possible, that there will be some conflict or distress or disappointment.

Would it be that you could accept and love yourself as you are, where you are, then things would be okay. However, most people are not in that headspace.

 

In the next installment, I will talk about how this IDENTITY conflict can have national
consequences.

I welcome comments, questions for clarification and dialogue respectful to this post and any others.
And if you are interested in this or other posts, why not click on the Google + button or submit your email, either way, and follow?

Take Care,
Steve.