Psychology – Page 18 – Mindfulbalance

Stories 1: The Myths that sustain us

August 2, 2010September 19, 2010 Karl Duffy2 Comments

We are always guided by some myths, whether we are aware of it or not. From an early age we gather the elements which will come together as our personal myth. In our first relationships of love we get the attitudes and information which will determine the story we tell ourselves about the trustfulness of others. In this way, our basic sense of self is consolidated in the first two or three years of life.

Dan McAdams*, Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, has studied the stories which we tell ourselves as we make our way through life. He says that we have already by age three established a narrative tone, which lasts with us into adulthood. This narrative tone can be optimistic, stating that the world is trustworthy, predictable, knowable and good, or it can be pessimistic, believing that the world is unpredictable and unsafe, and that stories will end up with unhappy endings. Thus, as yesterdays post said, deep down we see life as fundamentally friendly or as frightening. This narrative tone is the most pervasive element underlying the personal myth which we use to guide us throughout our adult years, and gives our life a unity. For some people this unity can take the shape of an ongoing worry or fear, for others a belief that hope will prevail.

*Dan P. McAdams, The Stories we live by: Personal myths and the making of the self

What is good about disappointment

July 29, 2010July 29, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

I frequently say to people I work with that one of the key things is how we deal with disappointment. It is a necessary skill, because it is a frequent and inevitable occurance in an imperfect world. Each one of us has our own way of working with the discomfort coming from disappointments in our plans or in other people. These ways are often based on how well our parents helped us deal with early shocks and disappointments, or whether they tried to shield us from the ups and downs of reality. Sometimes a parent can think that the best way to raise their child is to shower them with protection and insulate them from moments when they or the world are less than perfectly loving. However, the child has to learn to live in the real world, and the real world isn’t perfect. In other words, it is right – and leads to the development of a healthy psyche – that the child is gently disappointed and comes to understand that it is not always possible to have people around them who understand and respond perfectly to their every wish. Even from an early age we have to learn to share, take our turn in games, postpone our own gratification and acknowledge that other people have needs, moods and different agendas.

Rather than a parent having to being perfect all the time, English Psychotherapist Winnicott said that they just had to be “good enough”. This means that the parent provides enough support – or “holding” – to support the child without going to the extremes of stifling it or of abandoning it. The skill of the “good-enough parent” is to give the child a sense of loosening when faced with new situations rather than the shock and subsequent fear of being ‘dropped’. This allows the child develop resources, maintain a sense of control and stops them from feeling that the world is unsafe all the time.

If this happens successfully, the challanges of life do not frighten because the child builds up interior resources. It means that relationships does not threaten because, paradoxically, a smothering early closeness can trigger fears of engulfment in later life. And it means that the adult has a healthier structure for dealing with disappointment because as a child he or she has learned that life and people can not be perfect all the time. Often our disappointments do not arise so much from what actually happened, but more from how we compare what happened to our expectations, our inner patterns or our fixed version of reality. Disappointment show us that life – like the good enough parent – is not always available to us in the fixed way we want or whenever we demand it, but is still good despite that.

For this reason disappointments are good teachers. They allow us to see that there is more to us than our conscious thoughts and desires. They reveal how we can be attached to a specific version of how things should be, or of what life owes us. This does not mean they are easy because trying to avoid what disappoints is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. However, we grow more quickly if we are open to working with disappointments rather than avoiding them. Rather than being negative, they can become positive moments of growth, leading us away from the suffering which is based on our lack of understanding of the deep reality of change.

Our culture has evolved into one that is pleasure-based and ego-identified, and that emphasizes immediate gratification. It also began to define success as your ability to control outcomes. Today, we teach our children that if you are an effective person, you can control your life. You can get and do what you want. If you do, you win in life. This modern image portrays “winners” as people who have it all together. You are not supposed to have internal conflicts, stress, or anxiety—that means you are incompetent. …… But this perspective flattens life. It denies the possibility of finding a deeper meaning to your experience. If you measure your self-worth and effectiveness according to these superficial cultural standards, then each time you suffer you are forced to interpret suffering as humiliation. Why would you choose to acknowledge suffering if it only stands for failure?

Phillip Moffitt, How Suffering got a Bad Name

Working with Negative Thoughts, part 2

June 12, 2010February 21, 2011 Karl Duffy2 Comments

As I said in the previous related post, the first step in dealing with negative thoughts is simply to notice thoughts in general, as mental events that arise and pass away, almost continually. We saw that we can develop the capacity to be aware of what is happening in our lives, by doing the simple exercise of awareness of the breath entering and leaving the body. However, what we quickly notice is often we are too busy thinking about what is happening, preferring that as a way of relating to life.

Still, let us persevere. The more we strengthen this, wider-than-thinking, capacity for awareness, the more we come to understand that thoughts, assumptions and beliefs are mental events and processes rather than reflections of objective truth. In other words,we begin to see the thoughts as passing through the mind, almost like clouds passing accross a clear blue sky. We begin to realize that thoughts are not as solid as we may think they are. We see them simply as thoughts, not necessarily true reflections of reality, and we do not need to follow them. Nor do we identify with them, but rather we try to create a space around the thought and stay there, observing it in silence and without analyzing it, judging it or interfering in any way.

To do this, we can try a second simple practice. We sit and become aware of our breathing. Then we imagine our mind to be the clear blue sky, spacious and bright. As thoughts come, which they inevitably will, we imagine them as clouds passing through the sky. Some are heavy, some are light, but we identify with the sky, not with the clouds. This is the second step in working with negative thoughts, simply noticing that thoughts arise, touching them lightly as if they are clouds, and letting them go.

We are accustomed to identifying with every large or small thought that comes along. But you can train in identifying as the sky instead. When you do, tremendous confidence arises. You see beyond doubt that you can accommodate it all —sunshine, storms, mist, fog, hail —and never give up.

Susan Piver

Confusion

May 20, 2010June 11, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

My work often reminds me that a lot of people have, to a greater or lesser degree, some amount of confusion within with regard to their identity. And often the roots of that confusion are to be found in the messages received from parents when they were children. For the most part these parents did their best to love and provide for their children. However, having unresolved emotional issues themelves they inevitably conveyed mixed signals, saying or doing one thing, but unconsciously expressing in their energy or mood something else. In my experience, this sends the signal that the child’s emotional independence and autonomy are subtly not accepted. As a result the child grows into an adult with a clear internal message of not being fully lovable. This can then manifest itself in persistent anxiety that seems to be present without reason, in depression, self-doubt, repeated failed relationships or the belief that one has to push hard to achieve any sense of worth.

Jung reminds us that whatever we do not pay attention to, or is lacking within ourselves, we compulsively seek in the outer world instead. So when we encounter something or someone that corresponds to our archetypal inner schema, we can often rush to compulsive solutions for the inner lack. He went on to say, in his seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, The self is relatedness. Only when the self mirrors itself in so many mirrors does it really exist. . . You can never come to your self by building a meditation hut on top of Mount Everest; you will only be visited by your own ghosts and that is not individuation. . . .Not what you are, but what you do is the self. The self appears in your deeds, and deeds always mean relationships.”

Putting these thoughts together, he seems to suggest that the lacks we inherit inside ourselves from our relationships with our parents can become manifest in the relationships we choose to have as adults. We can only travel with another person as far as we have travelled by ourselves. The stronger the dynamic is from childhood, the more likely it is that we will see it being played out in later relationships.

Alone

May 12, 2010June 12, 2010 Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Sometimes it is healthier to be alone. There are times in life when it is right to choose it – to move from the fear of being alone, to the ability to savour it. Mastering this ability is all about living a life in which we can feel whole and happy inside ourselves, and can take care of ourselves emotionally.

This capacity to be alone is one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development. In Winnicott’s theory of the development of the self, our ability to be alone is formed through the awareness of a stable loving presence. When we are secure in the knowledge of being cared for, we develop the capacity to be by ourselves. If that knowledge was not formed fully when we were little, we can sometimes throw ourselves into relationships and activities in later life because we do not like being with ourselves. Being able to be alone is the best preparation for healthy relationships because it is founded on a security deep inside and we are not using the relationship to run away from our insecurities.

Therefore, the best model for later life is the child playing contently by itself. Maybe this is why sitting practice is so effective; through it we learn to sit with ourselves, allowing our fears and anxiety arise and pass away without giving them undue space. We can develop strong roots, content in ourselves, at home in the silence, not running, planted firmly.

Therapy is completed when a child can play alone
Winnicott