Revisiting Patricia Evans book on Controlling People is making interesting reading when it comes to thinking about how our true nature comes to be shut down in society.. I was just asking someone on another site about how they use visualization and intuition to help themselves deal with things we sensitives only touch base with on an energy level that approach could so easily be pooh poohed by others who long ago disconnected from imaginative or intuitive realms.
In fact, if you were a child like me growing up during the second half of the 1960s and 1970s its only natural you got shut down and while I am not saying girls had it worse, in some ways they were not allowed really to be feisty or strong, or perhaps even able to come in touch with their more earthly or sensual sides as well.. That said being an air sign myself I could be tapping into something that has been a bigger issue for me in my life than it has for others.
Evans makes clear in the opening few chapters in her book what happens when those around is dare to suggest they know us better than we know ourselves, that they have permission to know how we ‘should’ or ‘should not’ act or feel. Since our feelings thoughts, sensations and intuitions as well as emotions just are natural to us, energy in motion so to speak, the constantly give us information which we can choose to use in all kind of different ways and that informs us of our inner reality, provided growing up we were allowed that self definition.
I have already written a rather comprehensive post on Engel’s book earlier in my blogging career and I will link to that below but the case that she makes is that when someone outside of you attempts to control and define your reality in a way that is not accurate then they are making you into a ‘pretend person’ or even a Teddy Bear.. This pretend person or Teddy Bear must act in the way that person wants them to and if they do not then there can be hell to pay. What happens essentially when this is done to us (and she claims is widely endemic to our society the way it is structured) is that over time we begin to experience a dissociation or disconnect from our true feelings. I have post with some info from child abuse therapist Alice Miller on this same subject to follow this one.
As we become more disconnected from who we are and how we really feel the cost is often lowered vitality, buried anger and resentment, depression and, of course, anxiety should we dare to try to feel and live the truth of who we truly were that got shut down.
She also makes the case that as humans we have thoughts, feelings, intuitions and experience ourselves through our senses but that from the time of Descartes due to a collective bias we came to value thinking over the other functions and even see those who operated from their feelings or intuitions and senses as some how ‘crazy’ or mad.
The following notes are taken from Evan’s book :
when people operate on one function primarily, they are unaware of themselves in ordinary circumstances and they are, in an important sense, beside themselves. Consequently, they do try to get a grip on someone else just as they would do in a crisis. This is a way of being grounded when they aren’t grounded in themselves.
I’ve asked hundreds of pretenders if they recall what they said when they defined someone. Most could not clearly remember. They seemed to be unaware of their own reality while they simultaneously acted as if they knew the reality of another person.
If Betty (a mother who told her daughter she wanted a different flavor of ice cream to the one she actually wanted) were asked if she knew her daughter’s inner reality better than her daughter knew it, it is most likely Betty would say “No.” And if she were asked if she thought her daughter were strange, it is also likely that she would say, “No, of course not.”
Betty, like most people who consistently define another person is not likely to recall her words, because Betty is beside herself when she “makes up” her daughter. How can she reflect upon her words if she is not quiet there when she speaks? If she continued to try to make choices for her daughter, but met resistance, would she become angrier and define her daughter in more harmful ways? Would she say she treated her daughter this way because she disliked her? Or would she claim that she loved her too much?
We are inclined to tolerate certain assaults because they arise out of crisis, with the perpetrators naturally being beside themselves. We recognize the circumstances around their behavior. On the other hand, we find that some people appear to be beside themselves most of the time. Often operating primary on one function (thinking, feeling, sensing, or intuition) with a built backwards identity, there is a backwards quality to their behavior. Might they approach others in a backward way?
Evans goes on to highlight two incidents where strangers approached her in an effort to connect by telling her what she was doing needed to change.. In the first instance the man in question told her to smile and stop frowning due to it being ‘a nice day’ in the second a man looked over at her in a cafe and told her ‘you read too much’, both incidences flummoxed Evans. In these cases the two men in question had approached her ‘backwards.’
What would define these strange approaches?
In both instances I was told something about my inner reality before I was asked about ti.it
It seems that some unaware, well meaning, hard working people, while intending to connect with us, may instead do the opposite. When trying to make a connection, or strike up a conversation, or get to know us, the approach us backwards.
People disconnect from us the moment they begin to define us.. They begin to connect with us when they define themselves to us or ask us about ourselves. That’s how we get to know them and how they get to know us. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Interestingly when Evans told the ‘you read too much’ story to a battered woman from one of her recovery groups the woman said “If right now I heard, “You read too much!” I would either have wondered if I did or wondered why I gave the impression that I did.”‘
Evans goes on
Even when a person isn’t told what is “wrong with” them or how they “should be” they may be defined in an even more subtle manner. A client told me that he found that he was constantly explaining himself to a seemingly loving mate who, though adamant about her affections, paradoxically claimed to know his every motive. Furthermoe, she objected to all his attempt to define himself.
Speaking of his wife, he gave the following account.
Yesterday she said, “You bought that print because of the colors.” I said, “No, I saw it as a study in contrasts.”
Then she said “I know the colors are your favorites. You just like to argue”.
Of course, I objected. I told her I hate arguing. The whole thing turns my stomach. I feel like I am under constant attack, and that I have to explain my position on everything.
When I was reading last night she said “You sure go for female sleuths”.
I said “That’s not it,” and explained that I had just finished a mystery last week that had a male detective and that I just enjoy mysteries.
Why can’t she show some interest in me? Why can’t she ask what I like best about the painting, for example. Or a book for that matter. I feel like I’m drowning in her definitions of me. Almost like I have to explain my very existence
Backwards approaches at best reveal fuzzy thinking and at worst create devastating problems. I have found that people who cannot accept, feel, or even conceptualize their inner experience not only make themselves up from the ‘outside’ in but also approach others in this way, making them up from the outside in, not even noticing that they are doing so.
The very act of defining another person, one unconsciously plays God. At the extreme, don’t people who play tyrant, despot, dictator, or oppressor play God? Playing God is not uncommon and it is not always noticed. We have yet to see a world in which people do not make up people. We have not even come close.
Emerging From The Dark Night 