How much tough stuff do we have to cop? That is a question I am asking myself lately.. I got back into that book on anger and chemical dependence I mentioned in a post yesterday late last night and the jist of it is that addicts tend to complain a lot and get stuck in self pity. I get that in a way, there is tough stuff we just have to face up to and if we tell ourselves we have it hard and deserve special treatment that is not always the best way to go because in life everyone has challenges and tough stuff and running from it leads us no where good.
There is no escaping adulthood, or we can try and then we may end up not realizing our potential. That said what about that lovely child like as opposed to childish part of us? That part of us that is open to the mystery, full of joy, vibrant life and enthusiasm, has a lot of curiosity, likes making a mess as it can be creative and will not pick up after itself.. Is that part irresponsible? Or, if we cut off from it do we not just end up crippled by a lack of joy, promise hope and possibility? What if that part, in getting demonized, shamed and emotionally shut down then goes into hiding and takes us into a depression? Then it seems the only way to heal is to reclaim in and live in that at times and in the adult at others, or somehow marry the two.
I read very good quote that someone posted on the Friends of Bill W page on Facebook last night it was about where self pity can take us if we see ourselves as abject failures as opposed to wounded or developmentally arrested people who got a crippling and then blamed themselves for the crippling.. Taking such an approach leads to depression and hopelessness. What about, instead, seeing that we suffered and need to set that suffering right by making sure we then take positive action not criticizing the arrested Self but instead being inwardly kind and empathic to the derailed ‘self’ that fell, floundered and struggled.?This is not a task we can demand of the world to set right for us, and that is the approach taken in that book Of Course You Are Angry.
This brings me back to the subject of unmet needs again.. A short while ago I reblogged a post someone had written on Maslow’s Hierachy of needs.. One of the problems with being an adult child or the child of an adult child (emotionally immature or neglecting/ed parent) is that often we do not get to be a child.. We do not get to have needs or identify what they our.. Our emotions by large remain a mystery. We do not get to know that we have worth and value, or learn the steps to realize and recognize our potential. Some of us may instead be so hell bent on surviving in that non nurturant family that we literally turn ourselves inside out to be seen.. and this can end up with us burying huge chunks of who we are..
In the family we can then be seen as the ‘bad’ one if we struggle, protest or assert. There is a name for this coined by Jungian therapist Sylvia Perrera it is ‘the scapegoat identified individual’. SGII people can carry aspects of a families positive shadow that the family (or wider culture) considers negative.. We may be the truth teller the one who says it like it is, the one who feels the feelings underground or buried by others, that manifest them and then gets in trouble. The one full of joy and exhuberance in a emotionally repressive family. We may also, if we dare to call out abuse be excluded from the family and shame dumped or sent into exile in the emotional wilderness.. This is not an easy place to come back from believe me.. And there are aspects to this in the story of what Jesus underwent in his life as he was misunderstood by the majority of low range mass consensus individuals.
Truth is we all have that Godly spark of divinity buried deep inside of us.. Nothing of us can become totally bad if it is not exiled.. The bad may instead, often result from splitting it off.
Then being told we have to suck up things and are ‘bad’ for rebelling becomes problematic, being painted as a selfish person makes no sense, we need a sense of self and positive ego before we can lose it to truly help our fellow man.. This is why I often identify far more with the so called ‘fallen’ in life..They do not seem to be as arrogant or removed from truth and will not be as willing to cast stones.. but they will also have to fight to have their truth heard in a culture, group or society where towing the consensus line is the price of ‘acceptance.’
So when I ask that question about sucking up the tough stuff I have to exercise discrimination to find out what battles to engage in as well as what ones to leave behind. And as I go on continue to wrestle with all the ways I was labelled or in coming to fear parts of myself as ‘bad’ seemed also to cut off from my full creative and human potential.
Emerging From The Dark Night 