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Ellie 62 From: clearpathway@xxxxxxxxx.xxx Date: Sun Nov 28, 1999 2:59am Subject: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/depression-cause-cure/message/62?expand=1 Dear Elnora, I am 50 years old, a musician and artist; have had in many ways a wonderful life, but through it all the heartbreaking debilitation of these uncontrollable waves of depression and rage (often directed at self) that come and go unbidden, like unwanted guests. Through it I've remained optimistic (during my "normal" periods :-) ); I always sensed I would find a solution, because when I am rational and not flooded with these horrible feelings, I can clearly see my potential, my dreams and talents, etc. I was abused by my uncle when I was 3 years old. I know it happened but none of the details. I was sent to live with him and my aunt for a year. Also my mother is my adoptive mother, and I was adopted 5 days after her baby daughter died at birth. She was not a "happy camper" with me; I was the imperfect substitute for the real child. (She was very angry at me for having a crossed eye and bad hearing.) My father told me when I was 18 that my mother had always resented me; he needn't have told me, as it was painfully obvious to me every day. I remember the first time I acted out in a rage. I couldn't have been much older than 5. I remember the feeling of anger that welled up in me as I was playing with my doll. It felt like rage, and it felt like I wanted to hurt myself. So I ripped my doll's beautiful black velvet cape to shreds. I was usually a shy, well-mannered little girl, but every so often I'd have these -- I think my parents called them temper tantrums. Of course to my parents I am still their bad girl and black sheep. I have loads of anger and rage at both of them for abandoning me in so many obvious and cruel ways and seeing me through such a black lens, when I tried so hard to please them. Thank you for helping me to see that I can give myself permission to vent my anger in this wonderfully therapeutic and helpful way. Well, enough blathering, but my real message is Thanks, I'm ELATED! This is nothing short of an answer to prayer that I found your post on the April 99 raw food list. My husband and I did a guided visualization together yesterday for angelic healing, and right after that I sat at the computer and "accidentally" found your post and then your site. I know what I have to do now, and I'm READY to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Finally, I'm going to get a life and gain mastery of my emotions. Love, Sheryl Dear Sheryl, So glad you are here. I too found breakthroughs just after asking God for help. Those waves of depression and rage were your brain trying to heal. Now if you can redirect the rage when it surfaces, you can heal. I hope your husband will try the self-help measures as well, so as not to feel threatened by your recovery later on. Ellie
Madge
Ellie
Started taking GABA, the amino acid, in the evening for insomnia and chronic fatigue. The bottle says it is a key inhibitory neurotransmitter. Wondered if you could tell me how this relates to your theory? Maury.
GABA is inhibitory, but it is not a neurotransmitter in the true sense. GABA's function in the brain has to do with glucose metabolism. It's found in excess in neurons along with dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine, and other metabolites that are part of the toxicosis that is caused by the suppression of negative emotions. After one of the periodic detox crises, which are excitatory symptoms of emotional disorders (this would include a release and redirecting of rage if you are trying the self help measures) it is released along with excess serotonin, etc. These metabolites then have a depressant (sedative) effect on the post synaptic receptors. This helps end the detox crisis, so GABA might be called a protective neuromodulator. My scientific paper will be published in January and then I will be able to post it on one of my sites, so you can read more about this if you are interested. The insomnia is caused by over excitement in the reticular activating system and is a part of the detox process. It may persist until you are post flood using the self-help measures. Then you will be able to fall asleep easily. It's better if you can live with that since the GABA will add to the toxicosis, and contribute to symptoms. Every drug (this includes natural amino acids that are not endogenously formed, but are taken in) has an equal and opposite effect. If it sedates you now it will contribute to excitatory symptoms later, which might be more insomnia. But also, if you use it anyway I wouldn't worry too much, you can eventually give it up. Until I was post flood I ate a lot of things to help me sleep that were toxic, knowing the craving for these things would end when I was post flood. Try not to use it every night. I still at times take in toxic things (anesthesia for dentistry, etc.) knowing my body will eliminate them later. Ellie 65 From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Mon Nov 29, 1999 9:41am Subject: A good start Dear Ellie My parents were pretty heavy drinkers and very angry and authoritative. We were all pretty repressed as children. We were also raised in the Catholic church. I don't deny that they did the best they could and I am not aware of any conscious anger that I feel towards them but I know that the child that I was is still angry at the people that they were. A part of me is trapped in the past. I very much want to be free. I have done the bed banging a few times now and don't really feel as if I've really, really gotten as angry as I should it is difficult to let myself feel anger, I suppose many of us are afraid of anger, I am afraid to lose control and see anger as being a really bad thing. I am hoping I will get better at this as I go along. I am still in the very beginning and know I have a ways to go. Anyway I got angry at my husband today and though at first didn't think it could have anything to do with the past, went ahead and did the banging. What came to me was that I was really angry and upset about feeling uncared for (by my parents) and also having to be the one to take care of so many others. Being the oldest girl I was mothering my sisters and being responsible at much too young an age. I feel that not only was I not mothered but I was forced into motherhood against my will. Anyway, I realize this is an issue that will probably come up again. I was still angry about it later, so I guess I am not finished with it. I was able to tell my husband about this and he was able to see his own issue in the situation, so it is helping us both. He said he would read the article you wrote and maybe do this with me. I am also recognizing that it is important to let my children have their anger and grief about things and today I was able to let my six year old get mad and cry without trying to stop her. Usually their anger makes me angry and I hope to gradually become more tolerant of it as I realize more of my own emotion. I hope this isn't too long a letter. I am thinking of sending a copy of your article to my sisters and brothers perhaps after I get a little farther along. Goodbye for now and It helps to be able to write to you. Thanks for listening. Love, Carol
http://pages.nyu.edu/~er26/depression.html Ellie
Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Tue Nov 30, 1999 5:14am Subject: Slam man Dear Elinor, One of the problems I experience is getting stuck several times a day at work or at home. By this I mean I get extremely impatient that I am not able to resolve a problem immediately and this followed by anxiety and an overwhelming to desire to act out with one of several addictions. After reading your article it became clear to me that this is all anger and rage turned inwards. So recently I began writing about my frustrations whenever they occur. I let my fingers go and they invariably return to some anger about a childhood experience that was rage-provoking. When I am done lambasting the abusers I feel a great sense of relief and am able to move on. My concern is that when I do this more of these rage related blocks occur and they seem to occupy much of my day. Any suggestions for how to deal with this? Roger
Someone else also found it useful at work to write. She would jab her pen into the paper. Another person retreated to the men's room and did some banging on the wall. It's difficult to deal with the detox crises at work, but it's OK not to resolve it everytime there is a trigger, even to stuff the anger if needed. You will get another chance. It's a periodic detox process that is unconscious. But it may be enough to just mentally talk to yourself in a quiet way. When I was in public, I would often just say to my parents in my mind, "Get out of my head" or fu. I still use the fu prayer quietly in public when someone angers me. Any kind of mentally redirecting of the anger will help. It doesn't always have to be physical. I love the Slam man, sounds great. Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Tue Nov 30, 1999 5:35am Subject: God, the bad parent Ellie: I thought you might be interested in some anger work I did at a primal intensive last month. I have been non-spiritual and non-religious for most of my life and have of late becoming even more so. At the intensive after a particularly horrendous feeling of dying in the birth canal and feeling my mother's indifference to my pleas of help from her. I finally felt, with the therapist's help being born. Immediately, I began raging and cursing God for his indifference to me and to all those suffering in the world, especially the children. When I returned home, while driving I again became rageful at God. At home the primal continued and the feeling went from being angry at God to being angry at my mother FOR NOT HELPING ME - NOT HEARING ME - WHEN I NEEDED HER HELP IN THE BIRTH PROCESS. The next week I again became angry at my mother but this time I intentionally directed the feeling back and forth between God and my mother and needless to say I was not surprised that both of the feelings felt as though they fitted the primal feeling quite well. Needless to say I have discovered the origins of my feelings of indifference to God and my lack of spirituality. The therapist told the participants at the primal intensive that I had needed to get to those feelings of anger towards God out and felt deeply, and that in time I would solve my spirituality blocks because of that breakthrough. When I began cursing God as Allah and as Jehovah and as a multitude of gods, the therapist encouraged me to go even deeper into those rageful and cursing God feelings. Jake
"Characteristics of similar abusers, for example male or female authority figures, are laid down in common neural pathways, and it speeds the detoxification process to think of all past abusers during a detoxification crisis. These might include relatives, bosses, persons in authority, partners, or friends. Even notions of God as a parental authority are stored together with characteristics of past abusers and it helps to get mad at God as well. The real God is helping us to heal." I did a lot of raging at God with four letter words. I don't think it was God I was really raging at, but that notion of God as a parental authority. I still get mad at the real God sometimes, and tell him (or her or Energy) to get his act together. Sometimes when I do, I hear a small mental voice in my head saying, "I'm doing the best I can." I was telling this to a friend once, and she said she heard the same words. And when I die my first words are going to be...Why? Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Tue Nov 30, 1999 10:32am Subject: Pain -- Dear Ellie, I was in quite a bit of pain most of the day and finally decided to just start banging on the wall and getting really mad at my parents and others for all kinds of past stuff. This time I was more angry than sad, and when it was all over the pain in my intestines began to diminish and this morning it is completely gone! -- maybe physical pain is a trigger for anger wanting to be released. Carol
Good for you. Pain isn't directly a trigger of underlying anger. It's usually caused by toxins impinging on nerve endings, and what needs to happen is a detox of the toxins. When you get angry and do some work of releasing and redirecting, you are reving up the sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of detoxing, so this helps to get rid of the toxins and relieve the pain. When you think about a baby screaming 'ouch,' you can see it's a natural response, part to the fight or flight reaction. If I bite my tongue or stub my toe, I yell. Ellie
Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Thu Dec 2, 1999 10:36am Subject: Abusive relationships If anyone is trapped in an abusive relationship, it may not be easy to find a safe place to use the self-help measures, and they may even aggravate the relationship. Hopefully, an abusive partner will be interested in this recovery. If not, Alanon is available with its "detach with love" technique that can relieve tensions. I'm not supportive of suppressing the anger this way, but it may be necessary temporarily. Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Fri Dec 3, 1999 5:00am Subject: Abusive relationships I hope if you are in an abusive relationship that you can find a safe place to use the self-help measures. There is also a trick I learned in GamAnon, which was to leave literature in the bathroom or some place where your partner might read it. The article on my web site http://www.home.earthlink.net/~clearpathway/depression.html could be printed out and left somewhere where your partner might be a captive audience. This version is less confrontational about addictions than the version on my geocities site--it's more an offer of relief from depression. Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Sat Dec 4, 1999 7:15am Subject: Relationships Recovery means big changes in relationships sometimes, even partners who are supportive often have some issues themselves, and later may be threatened by your recovery. If you have been in any 12-step programs you are no doubt aware that this can happen. I don't mean to discourage anyone, of course, but also wish to be honest about this possibility. Ellie
From: Elnora Van Winkle Date: Mon Dec 6, 1999 10:01am Subject: Post flood=Post primal I wanted to send you Arthur Janov's excellent description of normalcy. The goal of primal therapy is to bring one to what Janov describes as post primal, ie normal. Post flood using the self-help measures is post primal, and can be achieved in a short time if the measures are used consistently at the first signs of detox crises. I don't necessarily agree with psychological explanations nor find them useful, but I identify with his description of normalcy, having used the self-help measures. I like the definition of post flood as a sustainable euphoria, not a 'high', but freedom from anxiety and distress. I am enjoying this euphoria, and hope you will too before long. Ellie
It is the aim of Primal Therapy to make individuals real. Normal people are real by definition. Post-Primal patients become-real because of their therapy. These patients still carry scars; however. They have been wounded many times over in their lives, and one cannot wash away their memories; one can only defuse them so that these memories no longer exert the force which made the neurotic act out symbolically. With so much deprivation as a neurotic, obviously the post-Primal person is not going to be a totally fulfilled human being. As a neurotic he could only struggle toward fulfillment. His therapy now frees him to fill his needs in the present. When I talk about a normal human being, I am discussing a defense-free, tensionless, nonstruggling person. My view of normality has nothing to do with statistical norms, averages, social adjustment scales, conformity, or nonconformity. When a person is himself, how he behaves may be as varied and infinite as the number of people in the world. The normal is himself. Primal Therapy makes someone into himself, rather than tries to have a person "make something out of himself." I shall discuss the normal in contrast with the neurotic. Later I shall draw a composite picture of a post-Primal patient: how he feels, what he does, and the kinds of relationships he has. Being satisfied makes the normal relaxed. The neurotic who is dissatisfied because he did not have his needs satisfied must search out apparent sources of his dissatisfaction. This keeps him from knowing what the real sources of his unhappiness are. So he dreams of getting a new job, going after another college degree, moving some-place else, or finding a new girlfriend. By focusing on his bad job, nonunderstanding wife, etc., he hopes the basic discontentment will be removed. I recall one patient coming into therapy one day complaining about the political turn of events in this country. He was obsessed with getting out and moving abroad. What he had to say about the political atmosphere seemed to be quite real. Nevertheless, when he felt his real discontentment, it did not change his ideas about the political situation, but it did alter his obsession to get out. What he felt was: "There is no good home for me." He had never had a good home. Bad home = bad homeland. His dream was of finding that good home elsewhere. Because he is not where he is, the neurotic will never be content for any lasting period of time. He is using the present to work out the past. So he will buy a house and fix it up, and when he is done, he will want a new house. Or he will find a girlfriend and then leave her after he has "conquered" her. To the neurotic, the struggle, not the result, is important. Thus he often cannot complete what he starts. He justifies his inadequate jobs on the basis of having so much to do. But he has so much to do because he does not finish. To finish and feel unfulfilled is to hurt. This is why so many individuals have a hard time in the last months of working for an advanced degree. It is also why some people cannot rest content with money in the bank. Just after getting out of debt, they must borrow again so as to maintain the struggle. To feel "I have arrived; I have money in the bank, and I still feel unhappy" is intolerable. The struggle takes care of that. Some neurotic house- wives rarely get up early and finish their housework completely. Then they would have to face the emptiness of their lives. Instead, they have one or two rooms in constant disarray; in this way they maintain their struggles. The normal, who does not need struggle, who needs no obstacles in his path to keep him in that struggle, can get down to things. The neurotic, delaying the feeling of his Pain, delays much of the rest of his living. Indeed, feeling that Pain is the beginning of living for the neurotic. Until he feels it, he must be elusive, in terms of eluding not only what hurts but any unpleasantness as well. Because he is constantly on the move away from his real self, he tends to be flighty-if not physically, then mentally. His mind is filled with what he plans to do; he cannot sit still. He is on the move even in his sleep, thrashing about or perspiring. He may be so activated that he cannot sleep at all-obsessed with disturbing thoughts and unresolved business. The normal can be with you completely. Part of him isn't locked away in "reserve"; the normal, therefore, can be completely interested. The neurotic is too often a whirlpool of distractions; his eyes, like his mind, seem to dart from one subject to another, unable to focus for any length of time. The normal, of course, is not split. This means that when he shakes your hand, his eyes are not looking elsewhere. He can listen completely, something which is rare in a neurotic society. The neurotic can really hear only what he wants to hear. Most of the time he is thinking about what he is going to say next. What he hears, as a rule, will be valued only if it refers to himself in one way or another. He cannot be objective and appreciate for itself what is outside him (and that goes for his children). Neurotic conversations can rarely transcend personal experience ("what I said," "what he said to me") because neurotic interest is in the self, which is unfulfilled. The normal is interested in his self in a different way. Everything in the world does not have to be related to it, but he is able to relate himself to the world. He is not using his outer world to cover the inner one. The normal does not feel lonely; he feels alone, and that alone feeling is far different from what he felt before when alone. It is a separate, unattached experience devoid of fear and panic. Neurotic loneliness is a denial of being alone, a need to be with others in order to flee from the catastrophic Primal feeling of being rejected and really alone most of one's life. The inventors of Muzak and the car radio understood neurotic loneliness; these are like Pain relievers-defenses provided gratis so that the neurotic will not have to feel his aloneness. For the normal, they are often considered an invasion of one's privacy. The normal is straight, and one can sense it in the way he reacts. The neurotic leads an exaggerated life, he either overreacts or under-reacts; since the time he found his true reactions unacceptable, he has had to react in phony ways or pretend not to react at all. For example, a patient had a neurotic friend over to see her new apartment. She asked her how she liked the decor. The friend said, "Oh, I wish my rug looked as good as yours." She only saw the room in terms of her own needs, and her reaction was a typically neurotic response. Or, if some neurotics hear a joke, instead of experiencing the humor and laughing, they will immediately counter with a topper. Whenever someone must "identify," rather than feel, we see this improper reaction. Thus, the normal reacts appropriately, not because he is trying to produce an effect or has studied a book of rules, but because he can feel what is appropriate. This means that to be a good parent, he need not endlessly study parent guidance manuals. He will be a natural person, allowing his children to he natural people. Because the normal no longer must cover the feeling of unimportance, he does not have to struggle to be treated as someone special by waiters and hotel personnel. For the neurotic, this is often a fulltime occupation. Part of the neurotic need is to surround oneself with people, not to feel alone, or to join clubs, to cover the feeling that one never belonged to a real family. All this incessant struggle is over for the normal. When I think about the neurotic struggle, I remember a recent advertisement for a brand of scotch: "It can be a small way of paying yourself back for. all the years of struggle it took to get where you are" Neurotic struggles are manufactured. Thus, a woman can spend years shopping for bargains and never feel that what she bought was totally satisfactory. Probably it wasn't. II she could have got her parents' love without struggle, then perhaps bargains wouldn't he so important. Bargaining is the all-American neurosis. It's much the same as the magic diet pill; it's getting something good for little effort, like scotch. What makes bargaining especially delicious is the struggle. The greater the struggle, the more valued the prize, except that this is not the real prize desired for the great struggle of the person's life. It is but a lowly substitute because years of struggle for parental love came to naught. Bargaining is the analogue of the neurotic's life with his parents with one difference: The neurotic finally wins what he often doesn't want. Walking into a store and paying the list price are difficult for many neurotics because to pay retail is not to be made "special." Anyone can pay retail, and if you do, you are just like anyone else. The normal is not a compulsive bargain hunter. He tries to make his life easy, not difficult. Closely akin to bargaining is the way neurotics treat money. One patient said that he could never keep money in the bank before therapy because it meant that he didn't have to struggle anymore. This man was in a constant struggle away from an early feeling of worthlessness. He had hoped (unconsciously) that money would make him feel worthwhile. But of course there was never enough money to do that. When he had money, he could not live with it because he still felt worthless, and so he was driven on to accumulate more. The normal is not using money symbolically to fill old needs. He feels worthwhile because he was valued just as he was by normal parents. Money is the natural preoccupation of so many neurotics because the neurotic, by definition, must feel worthless; he was not valued for what he was. Not being able to feel his true needs, he will always want more than he needs. There are other neurotics who can never spend money. Their struggle was possibly to try to feel safe and secure. But again, money alone cannot make an insecure person secure. This kind of neurotic is constantly postponing life: "Someday, when things are right, I'll take my vacation." He never lives. Instead, he clings to a fantasy of how life will be someday. That fantasy is intimately associated with Pain, which helps explain why so many individuals postpone so much of their lives. The normal, on the other hand, can get to things now. He has no old Pains dragging him back and making him put off matters. His real feelings eliminate the need for unreal fantasies. The normal is stable. He is content to be just where he is and doesn't have to imagine that real life is "out there" somewhere. One woman put it this way: "I used to look in the mirror and see my wrinkles and get terrified. I ran to one beauty expert after another, tried special lotions, and when that didn't do it, I tried a facelift. I was in a desperate flight from feeling that my youth was over and I'd never have a chance to get what that little girl inside me needed. Seeing those wrinkles and some gray hair set off my hopelessness at ever being little again, and so I ran and ran. I went to parties and functions by the dozens. Tried to be 'in' and attractive. 'Run' was my middle name. I couldn't stop." The normal can accept his age because he is living now and has felt and experienced his youth. He is not trying each day of his life to recapture something lost decades before. He is neither excessively worried about the future nor perpetually reminiscing about his past because he is not living a time that doesn't exist. With the neurotic, "the personality is the message," to borrow from McLuhan's apothegm. The personality is warped toward the message it must convey. Thus, the laconic person may he saying, 'Daddy, talk to me. Draw me out"; the fumbling, disorganized sort is saying, "Mommy, I'm lost. Direct me"; the hangdog look, "Mama, ask me what hurts"; the depressive may he saying, "Don't kick me when I'm down." Because the normal is no longer trying to say anything indirectly, he has no warped personality. Without old needs, people are just what they are. I am not sure how to explain this in any other way than to say that without a psychological frontispiece the normal just lives and lets live. As I have already pointed out, the body is part of that overall personality so that neurotics often look neurotic: we may find straight, thin lips closing down against unacceptable words, narrowed eyes "unable to see everything that is going on," as one patient put it. Or we will note drooping lips from unexpressed and unresolved sorrow and a jaw set in perpetual anger. The neurotic's entire organism is expressing the unconscious message. With no message to convey, we may expect a properly proportioned body in the normal, all else being equal. The physical changes I see in post-Primal patients lead me to conclude that some of what we believe is inherited may really be the results of neurosis. The normal is able to enjoy himself. It is' surprising how few neurotics are able to do that without artificial aid, such as liquor. As one patient put it, "Fun torpedoes hope. I managed to turn everything into something not pleasurable. If the whole day went well, I would suddenly get irritable and pick a fight. I couldn't stomach a steady diet of goodness. It made me feel uncomfortable, like the ax was going to fall. I look back now, and I think that accepting all that goodness meant giving up my struggle to make my parents good people. If I accepted goodness wholeheartedly and really enjoyed life, I'd have to give up hope of having my misery recognized." The neurotic isn't after pleasure now, he wants it to make up for then. The same can be said for affection. The normal enjoys affection without reservation. But for the neurotic to do so may mean, "I don't need you anymore, parents. I've found someone to love me." It is terrible difficult for the neurotic to feel that he is never going to be that little boy or girl who is going to get from his parents what he missed. An example of the difference between the normal reaction and the neurotic one was illustrated by a patient who, after Christmas, came in to say that he had got just "millions of presents." He needed to make it more than it was to fill the large lifetime void. Over and over one reads that children need chores or jobs to learn responsibility. Children are pressed into service to earn money, even when there is no need. So, when a young child is asked by a neighbor child to play, the first question out of the parent's mouth may be, "Have you done all your chores?" Somehow, parents fear that to let children do what they want means that they'll never do all the "shoulds." So they put obstacles in front of each want until the child comes to feel apprehensive about the simplest wants and be, too, eventually avoids them. Later in life this person may never be able to act spontaneously without the nagging question, "What should I be doing first?" One patient told me, "If I had fun one day and someone asked me to come over and spend the night the next day, my mother would always squelch it because it was 'too much excitement!'- meaning pleasure. She was probably terrified that I had used up my allotment of fun without paying my dues." The normal's life is much easier in this respect. He does not keep himself from living the present, nor does he put his children into the struggle so that they feel guilty about being free and spontaneous. Nothing is ever exactly right for the neurotic, because he was never right for his parents. It's an art form all its own never to say one praising word to a child, one phrase that means you're all right just the way you are, but patient after patient report they can never remember such a word. Instead, the neurotic parent must speak his Pain with every breath because that Pain is there every moment. The result of being criticized for a lifetime takes many forms. For example, you can buy some neurotics a present, and they will invariably find something wrong with it. Or they will find the bad in anything because only the bad was found in them. When the neurotic reads the news, he reads about bad news: what went wrong; who else is miserable or did bad things. In a neurotic society where people must project their misery outside themselves to make life tolerable, news becomes synonymous with bad news. The normal is not feasting on the misery of others. He feels their misery and wants to help end it. When you try to fill a neurotic's void, you have to remember what a bottomless pit it is. The neurotic may need very expensive gifts to cover years of emptiness and lovelessness. But no gift can do that, no matter how expensive; there isn't enough for in the world to warm a lifetime of coldness. Even achieving long-sought goals is not always the answer. A patient of mine finally got his PhD and went into a severe depression. He thought that after eight years of terrible struggle the diploma was going to do something for him but he still didn't feel loved or important. He told me that getting that PhD was like producing the final miracle and he couldn't feel it. The normal is not hoping that something external will do anything for him, so be can let things be what they are. For the neurotic, disappointment is the handmaiden of hope, hope which obscures reality often ensures that the person, will be hurt by his unrealistic expectations. The neurotic is bound to be disappointed by the Christmas party, for example, when somehow that party is expected to make him feel wanted and loved. The normal is healthy. He doesn't have to run around telling doctors, 'I hurt," because he could never say it to his parents. Because there is no pull toward being unreal, no symbolic system to keep the body restless and fatigued, the normal is not only more healthy but much more energetic. His energy is used for the accomplishment of real tasks, not for struggling to achieve the impossible. And the normal finally knows when he feels good. One patient told me, "I never even knew if I felt good. I was so far from my feelings. When someone asked me how I felt and I didn't feel bad, I had to deduce that since I wasn't feeling bad, there was only one thing left-I must feel good." The normal doesn't put anyone else in the struggle. He understands that children should be liked without having to earn it. So he doesn't make his children struggle for anything. Paradoxically, those children seem to do very well in life, contrary to the view that early struggle in life somehow prepares you for the later one. Many neurotics never even realize that they shouldn't have had to do anything to be liked by their parents. They have struggled for so many years to be liked that they can't imagine just being liked for being alive. The conditioning process of having to perform for approval begins almost at birth, where the child is "kootchy-kooed" to try to get him to smile (look happy). Later he is asked to wave "bye-bye" or to dance for the grandparents or to say this word or that, irrespective of how the child may feel at the moment. Almost every contact during infancy is one of performing at the will of someone else. This need on the part of parents and grandparents to get a constant response to them seems a subtle outgrowth of how little response they were able to get out of their own parents. When one stacks the normal up against the neurotic, it's a wonder that neurotics last as long as they do. If there were some key principle concerning real behavior, it might be as follows: Reality surrounds itself with other reality in the same way that unreality seeks out unreality. Real or normal people will not have continuing relationships with unreal people, and the converse would also be true. Phoniness becomes intolerable to the normal. He isn't going to flatter, submit, pamper, or mollify a neurotic in order to get along. He also cannot be charmed, conned, or dominated by the neurotic, so that unless someone is fairly straight, the relationship will he difficult. The normal will not be ensnared in someone else's struggle. One patient reported that before, he had had to finish his wife's sentences. She would start a sentence and then look to him beseechingly, and he would immediately jump in and take care of her. The reaction was automatic and unconscious. The neurotic isn't likely to continue a relationship where his neurotic needs are not being served. He has special requirements. He will tend to seek out those individuals who share his kind of unreal ideas and attitudes. We may often, expect, therefore, a homogeneity of thought within his group of friends when it comes to economics, politics, people, or general social phenomena. I am indicating that being unreal is an encompassing pattern. The neurotic must avoid reality until he is ready to face his own. Until that time he will create a comfortable but unreal cocoon around him in the job he has, the newspapers he reads, the friends he keeps. The strength of the neurotic's social unreality will depend to some degree on how much of himself he is forced to deny. If a man was never loved by his father, he may have homosexual fantasies. Some may recognize these fantasies and accept them; others may deny them and possibly not even admit that they exist in their dreams and daydreams. The latter group would be more denied than the former. They may come to despise even seeing homosexuals and want to pass laws against them. In their social behavior, then, they will demand abrogation of any rights of homosexuals-all because they want a daddy and can't say so. These same men might be so fearful of their "weakness" that they come to despise it. Not only do they try to act strong and independent, but they will want to pass laws against "welfare leeches" or any other group that can't be tough and Make It on Their Own. To repress one's own needs, in short, often means denying recognition of the needs of others. To try to change the social philosophies of some neurotics is tantamount to changing their whole psychophysical Systems. Neurotics believe what they have to believe in order to make life tolerable. To talk them out of their basic beliefs is like talking them out of their constitutional equipment. The normal is not interested in the exploitation of others. There is nothing that he needs from people that is unrealistic. The neurotic, helpless before his Pain, often needs to exploit others in order to feel an importance he cannot feel. He must do this in order to cover himself. He tends to need others to say what is good about him, his child, his house, or his clothes. Someone who is not normal cannot be giving of himself when that self is locked away inside. The neurotic may feign concern and interest in others and may convince himself that he is caring, but that self cannot care in any real sense until it can feel and express itself fully. So long as that real self is stuffed under fear and tension, so long as that self desperately needs, it cannot give. The normal isn't likely to collect many friends as a buffer against feeling alone in the world. His friends tend to be neither trophies nor possessions. Post-Primal patients report that they can get along with other real people, irrespective of their personalities. It is their contention that real people are open and honest and undemanding and that idiosyncrasies don't seem to be a threat. The normal doesn't need an appointment book full of Saturday night dates reaching months into the future in order to feel wanted or popular. A normal doctor wouldn't need a waiting room full of patients in order to feel needed. This last point seems to work in two ways. The neurotic patient may also become apprehensive when he is the only one in a doctor's waiting room and is taken in immediately. Because he has not struggled, waiting and squirming, he may feel that his doctor is not as good as the one who keeps people waiting an hour. The normal, who acts realistically, will tend to be on time because he operates on real time, not on some time from the past. What this means is that he will not use time symbolically to feel something he cannot otherwise feel. He will not be late, for example, to try to feel important or to try not to feel rejected as in the case with the neurotic. For example, being late can mean keeping unreal hope alive. It's one more way the neurotic is not straight with life. Or he will contrive a busyness that never leaves him time to feel. He keeps on the go, feeling a pressure from outside that really lies inside. Many neurotics manage their lives so that there is never time to live leisurely. They plan so many projects (time fillers) for the purpose of never having a free moment to feel or reflect. Pretty soon they have more to do than there are hours in the day. The result is that they are late to everything. As discussed elsewhere, there are pseudo feelings that no longer reside in the normal. This means that the normal would be neither jealous nor guilt-ridden. The normal, content to be what he is, would not envy others, want what they want, or demand what they have. I suppose that this is another way of saying that he can allow others -his wife, his children, his friends-to be themselves. He isn't living through their achievements and successes. He isn't busy stamping out their signs of happiness and life. The normal does not feel alienated because it is Pain that produces alienation of one part of the self from another. (Perhaps alienation from self is what enables leaders to discuss killing so readily. Divorced from their own humanity, they may not be able to feel for the humanity of others. Death is evidently not a real tragedy for those who do not feel life. It is in this sense that being "dead" internally makes the actual death of others less real and, therefore, less horrifying.) The normal seems to sense the pulse of life of others. He can be tactful, not out of a deep dishonesty, but because he can sense the Pain of others. He feels how much reality others may be capable of feeling. The normal is sensitive in the true sense of the word. He not only is mentally acute to the needs and drives of others, but has a total organismic sensitivity where his mind and body are directly affected by stimuli. I would differentiate neurotic, mental sensitivity from the openness of the normal. I want to clarify this point because there are many neurotics who are acutely perceptive and who do see accurately into the personalities of those around them. What they cannot do, I believe, is feel the situations they are in because they are acting out denied feelings at the time. So, for instance, a brilliant man may be expounding on some philosophic point at a dinner table, acutely sensitive to the kinds of people who are his listeners, while being totally insensitive to the fact that he is dominating the conversation. He is too busy acting out his need for attention and importance. This is why it is crucial for a therapist not only to be trained in perceiving the personalities of others but to be normal. If he isn't, he may be acting out his need to be needed, for example, with his patients, thereby countervailing any good his insightfulness might bring. The normal no longer suffers from "looking forward to," in order to escape the emptiness of the present. One patient said, "I used to rationalize that I wouldn't want to be rich because the rich must be unhappy. They can have everything they want and therefore have nothing to look forward to. I see now that if you can enjoy everything at each moment, you don't need anything to look forward to." The normal doesn't confuse hoping with planning. He may plan for a future situation, but he doesn't keep himself so full of plans that he has no present. It would seem that some neurotics keep things in the future so that they can never quite take pleasure now. I believe that this derives from early in a child's experience when to have led his life his own way, to do exactly what he wanted, would have meant rejection and possibly abandonment by parents who expected things done their way. He had to put off doing what he wanted, hoping for a future time when he could enjoy himself. This may go far to explain the idea many of us have had as children-"When I grow up, I'm going to be so happy." It would seem that some neurotics continue this pattern into adulthood. The normal, having given up unreal hope and the struggle to please, can lead his life as he pleases. The neurotic "wants"; the normal "needs." For the neurotic to want what he really needs is to feel Pain, so he must want substitutes -something attainable. The normal has simple needs because he wants what he needs, not some symbolic substitute. The neurotic may want a drink or a cigarette, prestige, power, high grades, or a fast car-all to cover Pains of emptiness, worthlessness, powerlessness, or whatever. There is nothing to cover in the normal, nothing to fill up. Life seems to conspire against the neurotic. He wants so much because he got so little. Yet because he has had to twist his personality in strange ways to satisfy himself even minimally, he becomes the kind of person who turns people away. His cloying demands, his dependence and narcissism become intolerable to others. The normal, who isn't trying to fill a lifetime of personal neglect in each social contact, is often sought after and emulated. The neurotic is a taker. No matter how much you may do for him, it may not matter because he must have those needs fulfilled over and over until they are properly connected and resolved-something usually that can only be done with Primal Therapy. The normal operates on the "musts" instead of the "shoulds." Neurotic behavior, in the Primal context, means the abdication of personal need in deference to parental wants and needs. Parental wants become the child's shoulds. A "bad" child is one who isn't doing his shoulds. The young child, trying to be good so he can be loved, tries to be what his parents demand. He does this with the implicit hope that finally they will fulfill his needs-that they will hold him, for instance. But parental needs can never be fulfilled by the child no matter how hard he tries. So the situation arises where the child is perpetually trying to satisfy his parent, to make him happy or pleased. It will never be enough; no child can make up for parental misery. The shoulds of the child are the needs of the parents. Not to perform them means giving up hope for parental love. Neurotic children become so involved in the shoulds-being quiet, polite, and helpful-that they lose sight of their personal needs. Having lost those needs, they want what they don't need. The robbery of children's needs is often subtle. Neurotic parents will remind children, "You should be happy. Stop complaining. Look at all we're doing for you. We've given you everything." Often children are convinced. They look around and see material goods and believe that they have what they want, and they no longer even know that they need something desperately-love. The tragedy of the shoulds is that in performing them, the child imagines that someday, when he does exactly what they want, his parents will shower a rainbow of love upon him. But since his parents themselves need what he can never give them, that day never comes To operate on the shoulds is not to function according to ones feelings. So the shoulds contain not only hope, but anger as well-anger at having to do what one does not feel. Having spent a lifetime doing what he did not want to do, the neurotic often has a difficult time doing what he must. The normal does what must be done because he acts in terms of realities. The neurotic is often indecisive because he is split between repressed needs and doing the shoulds. The normal can decide for himself because he feels that self and what is right for it. The neurotic relies on others to supply the shoulds. "What should I order from the menu?" In this way, he maneuvers his life so that people go on providing shoulds for him and he never allows himself to function according to his feelings. That simple question - "What should I order?" - is often a sign of the neurotic's deadness. It is saying, "I have no wants, no feelings, no life. Live my life for me." The normal is not in the search for the meaning of life, for meaning derives from feeling. How deeply one feels his life (the life inside him) is how meaningful it is. The neurotic who had to shut down against real catastrophic meaning early in his childhood must be in the search, conscious or unconscious. He may try to find meaning in a job or travel, and if his defenses are working, he may imagine that his life is meaningful. Other neurotics sense that something is missing and set out on the quest for meaning. They may travel to gurus, study philosophy, steep themselves in religion or cults-all to find a meaning that lies but a deep breath away. The neurotic must be in search because real meaning is Pain and must be avoided. Thus, the search becomes the meaning; because the neurotic cannot fully feel his own life, be must find his meaning through others or things outside him. He may find it in his children or grandchildren, their accomplishments and successes. Or it may lie in holding important office or making big business deals. It is when the outside things are removed that the neurotic suffers. It is then that he may begin to feel, "What's the use? What is it all for? What is the meaning of it all anyway?" The normal lives inside himself and does not feel that something is missing; no parts of him are missing. The neurotic must feel this way if he ever stops his struggle because part of him is missing. One patient put it this way: "I have a fascinating job. It's too bad it doesn't interest me." It had no meaning for him. The neurotic, unable to feel the full meaning of his life, must often invent a superlife or an afterlife - places where real living will go on. He must imagine that somewhere lie the real meaning and purpose if it all. He may think that savants can find it for him when only he can do that. The normal, by discovering his own body, has no need to conjure a special place where life really is going on. Implicit in the neurotic's seeking out psychotherapy is that possibly it will help him find a more meaningful life. It, too, becomes one long search. The normal has made a simple discovery: Meaning is not some-thing to be detected, only felt. He therefore does not race to weekend seminars on how to live the good life, find joy, or whatever. The neurotic's search is exemplified by a patient who was formerly a philosophy major in college: "I liked philosophy because I never had to know anything for sure. I never understood how much I wanted that state of limbo. I couldn't feel what was right in life, any way, so limbo was perfect for me. I searched in the heavens and in the intellectual clouds for some super meaning-all this so I didn't have to face that all my years of hassling at home had no meaning. It was senseless. Finding meaning in Descartes and Spinoza was a pleasant cover for all that." The normal is not trying to derive meaning from special occasions such as Christmas and Thanksgiving (Primal season, as one patient put it). The neurotic may be depressed during the holidays because the holiday gatherings did not make him feel loved or that he had a real, warm family. The normal has no need to make life what it is not. He has no need for the broad philosophical search. He knows he is just alive and living, no more. One could spend the test of this book describing the normal. Normal is, simply, whatever normal people do--and not digging endless holes to climb out of. Yüklə 5,47 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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