"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." ~ Carl Jung
He sat across of the counsellor. Shoulders hanging, head down. Defeated. Again, he was betrayed by a loved one. The third time. He had not seen it coming. Sadness alternated with anger. He was angry at the world, at people and with himself. How could he ever trust someone again? He felt like a fool. He had done everything for her, how could that not have been enough? Was he not enough?
"I just can't seem to keep a relationship", he exclaims with frustration.
"When you talk about the betrayal, where do you feel that?" the counsellor asks him.
He closes his eyes as he puts his hand on his chest. "In my heart and stomach".
"How is it there?" the counsellor asks friendly.
"It feels tight. I am scared." He whispers. As if he can hardly breathe.
"Stay with that sensation. Now, how old are you there?"
"I am five. I can see my mother. Especially her eyes. Judgmental. It scares me. She used to tell me I'm no good. I guess I was hard to put up with, always breaking things. They always worked hard to give me everything. I gave my parents a hard time."
"You were just a five year old.... How did her eyes make you feel about you?"
His head nods and it clicks as he says, "that I was not good enough."
"And what did you decide as a five year old?"
"That I would try harder, be better." He sighs.
"If I give all of me, if I put my own needs last, then maybe one day I will be good enough to be loved", the counsellor suggests.
A tear wells up in his eye as he looks at the counsellor and exhales. He nods.
"Hmm, so what was the risk you felt around putting your own needs first?", the counsellor asks.
"That she would get angry."
"And not love you?"
"Yes."
"And then what would happen?"
"I would be alone...", he sighs, as his breathing runs more freely.
"Ah, so there you go... And even until this day, you give everything of yourself, to avoid that scary feeling. Of ending up alone.... And in an attempt to fix the past, you have become really good at picking partners who tend to overlook your needs as well, just as your mother did."
He looks up at the counsellor. His eyes clear and present. Now he knows what to do. He is not that five-year old anymore.
Background:
The example above, is one of many variations that shows how our past can still determine our present. Even though we thought we "moved on" or "got over it".
In our childhood years, we are extremely vulnerable. Often unintentionally, our parents may have not been attuned to our needs for comfort, love, understanding and being seen and heard as a child. They may have been busy, going through stressful times, dealing with loss, etc. Which caused them to be short tempered with us, being emotionally absent, or even less directly communicated in their presence not to bother them. To children, parents constitute their entire world. And as a consequence they are attuned and sensitive to the emotional wellbeing of their parents.
If one, or both, of the parents is not doing well, and for example is short tempered, critical, depressed or in any other way unbalanced, children -with their undeveloped cognitive abilities and their inability to put things into perspective- tend to draw a conclusion along the lines of: "it must be me", or: "the world is an unsafe place". This results in certain decisions such as; "I will put my needs aside", or "I can't trust anyone". Please note that it doesn't mean that you need to have experienced physical or any other form of abuse for you to draw these implicit conclusions.
These unconscious imprints, that helped us make sense of what was going on back then, travel with us as we grow older. They shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. This is not a conscious decision that children make. It is a necessary adaptation which helped us survive the circumstances when we were little. And often it served us well for a long time. We tried harder, we helped others, we never let anyone walk over us again. Until... there comes a point that we start feeling the costs of these survival strategies. We burn out, we get frustrated that no one ever helps us, or we find it hard to become vulnerable in a relationship.
Over the years this results in automatic behaviour and reaction patterns. You can compare it like driving a car; once you learnt it, the different actions that enable you to drive (such as changing gears) have become automatic. The good news is that we can change what we unconsciously learnt. And the first step is to bring to light what unmet needs unconsciously drive us. Like Carl Jung said: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you call it fate."
Comments