My Father's Aloofness Part II

Photo Credit: "I always felt that I needed to work much harder than other people did in order to feel and be loved." -- Christine Anne Platel

Connecting feeling to the past is painful because my father didn't know how to connect with me. Men of his generation (and before) had to be tough and just bear the hardships without complaining. No one had any right to enjoy anything for very long without a dark long shadow looming large. Now, as an adult survivor I have a hard time believing anyone wants me around. I never acknowledged this state-of affairs. How would you called it? The loss of...?

The best title I can offer is the "the loss of feeling wanted" Perhaps it's not a loss, because I don't know if I ever had the feeling in the first place. Now, my wounded inner child screams for attention, seeking ways to compensate for the love deficit of my childhood -- hypervigilantly looking for signs of rejection: long pauses in conversations, bored looks, short replies or smiles that are meant to create distance.

Inner Wounded Children

painting by Joan Miró

When we get around to understanding a little bit about our inner wounded child we are more aware about how our past can interfere with our present. As a young adult I knew I had issues to wrestle through -- both big and small. Still, apart from reading self-help books and listening to good sermons, I had no clue how to resolve my inner conflicts nor where to begin, so I often settled for avoiding my inner world.

I struggled with compulsive behaviors like rescuing others from their problems, excessive gift-giving and "falling in love" too fast. My locus of motivation focused externally, seeking to get my supply of approval through people pleasing. The wake up call came when I read John Bradshaw's book, "Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child"

Bradshaw writes some penetrating descriptions that pertain to the inner wounded child that are worth considering. Here is a summary of his thoughts (sprinkled with some of my own comments) for your viewing. Those of us who have had an emotionally chaotic childhood with many traumas may find ourselves struggling with some of these issues:

We may have difficulty trusting ourselves to meet our needs and therefore think we need someone else to meet them.
We may have difficulty trusting others so that we feel we have to be in control of our surrounding all the time.
We may fail to detect body signals such as not being aware how tired we are.
We may neglect going to the doctor or dentist.
We may have deep fears of abandonment.
We may feel we don’t belong anywhere or anyone.
In social situations we may be invisible so no one notices us, yet not even be aware why we do this.
We may attempt to make ourselves indispensable to others to make sure they will not leave us.
We may have a great need to be touched or hugged that could make us vulnerable to bonding too soon, too deep with someone we don’t even know and who could even be harmful to us…
We may have an obsessive need to be valued and may have difficulty establishing boundaries for fear that others may not like those boundaries.
We may isolate ourselves out of fear that people might end up rejecting us or we might end up rejecting them.Some of us are gullible and don’t see other people’s hidden agenda or else we see the hidden agenda but go along with it all the same...

Faceless Opponent...

I’ve taken some time out from Blog Land to understand a little more about myself -- to do some insightful reading and far away from any romantic pursuits. I was sensing something bothering me, a nameless, faceless opponent I couldn't identify. I think what I've been fighting (at least partially) is a kind of social anxiety or maybe generalized anxiety. I’m not sure if it's just one or both or something more. I didn't have any signs of social anxiety as a child, so it has me a little baffled. I do remember being outgoing and having enough friends.

I do remember however, that I had a huge fear of asking girls out on a date in my teenage years and would hang the phone up before anyone had a chance to answer. My ego trembled at the thought of rejection. Anyway, other that that I wasn't afraid to socialize and even enjoyed joking around in the class and kids liked it. In fact, I was somewhat delighted to be the center of attention. I didn't even worry about entering a crowded room, but I didn’t like being in loud parties, but that was because I was among adults and considered myself too young to be participating.

Perhaps the stress of a PD marriage changed me so that I don’t enjoy being out and about. Perhaps it’s part of a post traumatic syndrome. It’s all guess work. During my worst years of conflictive marriage I had no friends except those connected to my daughter's mother. These friends were okay, but weren’t exactly the kind of people I would choose if I did the selecting.

They were good persons but had no clue about emotional abuse and the effects it was having on me. Anytime I shared a glimpse of my somber world I’d get a blank look that told me I should stop right then and there. However, I liked them as they seemed to at least value my ability to preach, something I enjoyed doing though I always felt I wasn’t giving it my best. A kind of anxiety would take over that made it hard to be myself in those moments.

Eventually I started to become invisible to others, and I wanted it that way. If no one noticed me, I wouldn't have to talk, or be hurt by their words. I'd like to find and implement an anxiety reduction plan. Has anyone fought a similar battle with anxiety or PTSD?

©Reflector 2008

Living in your head...

One experienced pastor once asked his fellow colleagues, ¨Do you know how to ruin a Bible Study?¨ The others just looked at him in amazement. He responded, ¨Just invite seasoned Christians¨ That bold statement perplexed me at first, but months later it made sense to me. Before, I used to be silently disturbed about church life. I felt it had a stifling effect but I rarely ever bothered to question why.

Now as I understand and see with a little more clarity. It’s difficult to put into words, but the Christian culture sometimes feels more like the canned products you buy in the supermarket than the fresh stuff you prepare yourself. Some sermons, for example could have easily been delivered by an android and get more results! Could it be that many Christians have developed their intellectual abilities at the price of sacrificing their emotional mind? Let’s think about it.

¨Are you one of those people who pride themselves on being rational and logical in everything you do, including your relationships? Do you cherish a certain image of yourself as unflappable, unemotional and reasonable in the way you solve problems and in your relationship? If the answer is ´yes´ you may be one of the Mr. Spocks of this world -- those folks who conduct their relationships based primarily on intellect, not passion... You may even incite your partner into intense emotional exasperation because of your emotionally minimalist posture.¨

¨On the surface, you are proud to live in your head rather than your heart -- you are proud not to be ruled by your emotions. But on deeper examination, you may discover that you fear your emotions and are afraid of losing control. You don’t trust what you feel, and you are afraid of what your emotions might do to you and to others. You don’t want to be hurt, so you refuse to engage in emotional displays. For you, feelings are messy, dangerous matters, best left to those who choose to live life with emotional turbulence. ¨

¨Living in your head may give you the illusion of a greater sense of control over your life. It may seem to reduce the pain of living with hurt, disappointment, and disillusionment. In fact, many women and men who experienced pain by escaping into their books, becoming analytical geniuses, and dodging their emotions behind a barricade of theories and facts.¨Now, as I read these paragraphs, it seems clearer why I grew so wary of the deadness that surrounded some churches. It becomes so sterile at times you wonder whatever became of God.*¨Self-control does not come from controlling our feelings, but from feeling our feelings."

-- Jeanne Segal

© TR 2007

Hesitation and stammering...

¨Blessed are the poor in spirit, because they know with certainty, that any love they receive is not due to ulterior motives.¨ -- Joan Manuel Serat

As a child, especially when he had to read aloud... he would memorize the pages assigned to him, so that the next day if his teacher asked him to read to the class, he’d be ready, not wanting to make a fool of himself, because of the embarrassment of any impromptu reading.

Later as an adult, while in seminary he began preaching and discovered that his sermon would not get off the ground. He stumbled around over his own thoughts. He was so afraid he just didn’t have what it would take to be a preacher... his lifetime dream.

Like polite folks, everyone noticed the hesitation and stammering but acted like they didn’t notice. But of course they did and were just being polite. However, behind closed doors the elders of his church said that if he wasn’t able to preach at the age 26 then he’d never be fit do so, so he was ¨encouraged¨ to pursue ¨one-on-one¨ Christian ministries instead. He had no idea what was going on... clueless.

The odd thing was that this young man did not struggle to communicate every time he spoke. Indeed, he was capable of being fluent in certain contexts. When by himself, speaking to a pet or to a group of children or speaking to a someone with whom he was comfortable with he spoke quite fluently.

So what did he do? Well, he never missed a single speech class, all of them focused on the idea that stammering was simply an inconvenient behavior. His teacher worked with the mechanics and behavior of stammering, separating mechanics entirely from what was going on inside, from how he was looking at the world.

It takes courage to come out of hiding, to allow others to be part of one’s process even when we trip over our own words or seize up all together. I wish I could understand what makes me different.

© Troubled Reflector 2007

Dreaming "inadequacy"

I never thought about it much but now that I think back, anxiety has been an unsolicited life-long companion since my childhood although I did my best to pretend it never existed. Actually, I didn't know it was a visitor back then, but rather a permanent resident so the best I could do was learn to tolerate the day-to-day anguish with as much grace as I could muster. We seemed to be inseparable anyway. Do you know what I mean?

Anxiety has many frowning relatives and loves to have their company, so that I had to put up with such colorless characters as Inadequacy, Despair, Fear and Worry. I used to have recurrent dreams where Anxiety and Inadequacy especially seemed to take center stage. There were several scenarios yet all of them produced the same sensation: Sometimes I'd be preaching before a congregation I never had seen, however, I didn't have a Bible with me and couldn't remember the text I was to preach from. Sometimes I'd find myself in an unfamiliar park area I had never been to before where I was wearing only pyjamas, yet had to make my way past the police that surrounded the area to get back home. Sometimes I'd be in an unfamiliar High School writing a math exam having no idea how to answer the unintelligible equations that were staring me in the face. Sometimes I’d be involved in hockey (as a youth) but hadn’t brought the appropriate equipment so I'd have to sit on the sideline and just watch. When I used to have these dreams I could feel the tension go through my whole body, I’d sweat only to later realize it was just a dream, but a dream that revealed so much about my emotional/psychological makeup.

Don Miller, (a post-modern Christian writer) says he tends to get anxious about too many things… whether or not his ideas are right … whether or not people like him… whether he will get married or not …whether his future girl will leave him if he does marry… whether his car is fashionable enough, … and whether he sounds like an idiot when he speaks in public. He actually got me giggling as I often think the same things without really noticing how absurd these worries are. How about you? Do you pretend not to worry, but underneath suffer greatly sometimes?

© TR 2007