This
question appeared in a comment at
the Commandments of Men in response to the discussion of life
graphs and how to chart emotional responses. I read it and thought
it seemed like those intimidating essay test questions that say
“Define
the universe. Give examples.” Of
course, these are the kinds of questions that come at the end of the
test with only limited time to complete answer. I have so much to
say on the subject At some point, I suspect that I've said this all
before somewhere on this blog, but perhaps, not all at once, woven
together in this way. But I'll give it a go!The part about extremes of emotion, and people from dysfunctional families feeling like something is wrong if there's no big terrible drama, reminds me a lot of what I've heard about people who have serial dysfunctional romances. They're attracted to someone who will take them through the highs and lows of drama--even abuse--because those are the emotions they associate with love. They don't know anything else.
It makes me wonder, once you are addicted to those extremes of emotion, how you really get out.
I did
recently and briefly talk about the relationship effects HERE.
The short
answer is simple. First, one must remove the root of the problem, or
at least, de-bulk it as much as possible so that energy can be
directed at healing and living. Then one must start following and
living in healthy ways. For the person who grew up in a
dysfunctional home, this means nearly everything about their whole
life has to change, and first, they have to learn how to be healthy
and how to be comfortable feeling healthy.
But here's
the good news. Speaking from personal experience, I can say with
confidence that a person can “really get out” of the extremes of
emotion. I turned most of my big conflicts inward and experienced
depression and health problems instead, though I have relationship
carryover, too. My extremes tended to manifest in other kinds of
drama, at work and in chasing the promises made by the Word of Faith
movement.
I had to
empty my sense of toxic and undeserved shame, find a healthy sense of
worth (an internal locus
of control), and learn how to be healthy (I didn't know what
aspects of that really looked like in practice, though I knew what
the endpoint looked like). Then, I had to put healthy patterns of
living into practice. When I arrive, I won't be able to let you
know, because I'll be dead! I'm still working on all of those
things, and I have to constantly come back to my commitment to
emotional health, reaffirm my dedication to it, and then work at it,
but I've acquired lots of tools that I can use to do that and now
have a lot of experience with them. I also have to be very aware at
the factors that derail my determination so that I can avoid them,
and I have to work on determination, too, just because of the way my
personality fits together. I still have plenty of vital work to do.
How
then, does one attend to these wounds and “really get out” on a
practical level? What is the process?
I
glean from the wisdom of the experts, and most of them write the best
books on dysfunctional relationship. That's why I wrote the series
of posts dealing with the unhealed wounds of childhood and how
they can set us up to be both abusers and victims, discussing the
core message that they identify. After years of working with the
adult problems that arise from the wounds of childhood, those who
treat them find that they cluster around a predictable set of issues:
value,
vulnerability,
imperfection,
dependency,
and immaturity.
Removing
the Root Source (It's usually grief and shame.)
If you're
happy and healthy, and you go about life doing things that life
requires you to do, your reactions and responses to things should be
fairly predictable. But imagine that you have a wound that no one
can readily see, or imagine that you have a wound that you don't want
to admit that is hidden. When life inadvertently jabs you or knocks
you around, when you have no hidden pain, your responses are limited,
but when you carry around the extra baggage of wounds and their pain,
your responses are exaggerated. This is why we don't send wounded
soldiers back out on the field of battle until they've healed
physically and sometimes emotionally, because their attention is
diverted and their responses to threat and pain become exaggerated.
They can't do their jobs because they're (rightfully) focused on
their injury. And when the pain is great, people look to
extraordinary or dramatic ways of coping with pain.
The goal with
emotions and old emotional wounds is very much the same. If you find
the root cause of the inflammation and pain, and you help the person
desensitize to the pain by resolving the dilemma of the past, the
person will eventually abandon the extremes, much like a person whose
physical wound has healed. It takes a great deal of energy to bounce
between extremes, and when it is no longer needed, people will find
rest and ease in the middle zone of response instead of poorly
controlled reaction to ongoing and relived pain when it is triggered,
long after the initial injury. Poking the old site of an old and
healed injury likely won't be pleasant in the future, but when it
happens, the healed person will be able to express their needs, but
they won't feel like their life is at immediate risk because their
pain is so great that they lack self-control. They don't have to
expend energy to care for their wounds, and they will eventually and
naturally come into balance. The extremes are too much work.
A friend of
mine also uses the analogy that people pack all of their pain into a
suitcase (which is like one loaded full of stinking excrement), but
people identify with this emotional baggage so strongly that they
will guard it as their most prized and precious possession. Just
like a cumbersome suitcase that is full of stuff, it's heavy and
takes energy to drag around. Then there is the effort one must make
to hide the smell. But people get the idea that if they
discard the suitcase, it will mean that the events that it represents
may not have happened or that they will forget the lessons they
learned from whatever it is that they packed away. They loose
perspective because they identify with the pain and not what they
learned from an experience. It, too, is like a wound to them which
they guard and protect through their emotional connection to it.
With events that can't be resolved or when a good outcome can't be
realized, it becomes even hard for people to let go of the handle of
that suitcase. Freedom could be as easy as putting that suitcase on
the curb for the trash truck to pick up, and the person could be
free, but they have to be ready and willing to abandon it in order to
move forward.
I went to
several sources to help learn how to get out of the patterns and
accumulated a whole toolbox full of tools that I've used and continue
to use on my journey. Though my reading and study has been an
essential part of my change for the better, in hindsight, I did the
most healing when I saw a skilled counselor. I journaled about shame
using Chris
Thurman's advice which was essential (I'll talk more about it
in an upcoming post), and I read the books like Love
is a Choice (along with many others on
this list and more). Removing the thorn of shame and grief makes
the whole process of finding stability easier, and a person who can
serve as not only a “sounding board” but also a coach can make
all of the difference.
Commitment
There is also
the issue of whether or not the person desires to be healed. The
Gospels note that Jesus asked people whether they wanted to be healed
before He laid hands on them. Not everyone wants to be relieved of
their wounds and their pain, and sometimes, they are not read to
relinquish the struggle, especially when they equate their
woundedness with feeling alive.
It is one
thing to want to be free of pain, but it is another thing to want to
be well. A person can get a lot of what is called “secondary gain”
out of being a certain way. If you are sick, you have an excuse not
to work, and when you are well, you have to start working again.
Getting to do what you want as a result of your illness is secondary
gain. If you are immature and irresponsible and you commit to
growth, when you develop maturity and responsibility, you can no
longer hide. Growth requires the commitment to be willing to step
into the next phase where new the new, uncharted territory of health
leads us. This can be a scary thing if a big chunk of your identity
comes from being immature or believing that you are shameful and
incapable, or perhaps, without worth.
For me, I
committed to certain things that would “keep me in the zone of
balance.” I set goals that would ensure that my life would not
blast out into the extremes. I wrote those things out on paper and
determined in my heart and mind that I would stick with the process.
I wanted to change, that change would involve focus, and I had to
commit to a goal and a measurable endpoint. I drew and continue to
draw a great deal of encouragement from the old saying, “How do
you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Because of my
tendency to extremes, I had to learn to be satisfied to focus on the
single bites, trusting that I would get there. Maturity works at a
steady pace and has learned how to stay focused and at peace.
Immaturity looks an an elephant and says, “There is no way I
could ever accomplish my goal.” So I had to draw on past
experiences of meeting smaller goals to apply that same ability to be
determined to the goal of managing my own life. I wrote all of these
things down in journals, going back to them to evaluate my progress.
Know
Thyself (And Thy Patterns)
Sometimes a
life graph is a good way to start and can be a tool to help people
really identify either their early pains in life that may be at the
root of problems in their adult life. Sometimes it can also help
them see the patterns in relationships or on the job. I use graphs
and other visual things to help me to understand my relationships.
I've also
identified certain struggles and emotional reactions that I've had
regularly with certain people in my life using a graph. You don't
always have to chart your lifetime, and you can stretch out that
timeline to a single day or a few hours if need be. Long story
short, I was able to identify key, repetitive patterns in a specific
relationship which always turned into a conflict. (I'd plot out a
period of a month instead of a lifetime.) I used that graph which
noted our interactions to see what was happening so I could change
individual elements of it, and to evaluate myself, too. It gave me insight that gave me options –
new approaches that I could try to either avoid or perhaps resolve
conflict. I didn't have to do what I'd always done before, once I'd
seen the pattern and looked at my own behavior.
Unfortunately,
because this relationship was very dysfunctional and the other party
desired conflict because they didn't know what it was like to relate
to me without it, a whole different kind of conflict developed. I
eventually chose to detach from the conflict. When I felt like I'd
exhausted all of my choices, all aimed at resolving conflict or never
getting to the conflict to start with, I had to bypass it and agree
to not give conflict any opportunity. That was hard, because this
person was important to me and I dearly love them still. But the
relationship was a very draining DRAMA. I could not afford to
get stuck in the drama anymore. It just took too much from me, and
the other party didn't want to change. I couldn't relate to them
apart from drama. I don't believe that I would have seen that, had I
not gone to the trouble of looking at the patterns of how we
interacted.
I've also
done this with jobs and with my involvement with special causes and
church involvement. Though I hated to see it, my patterns were
predictable, and sometimes, they were seasonal. As part of my growth
in my profession, I wanted to leave a particular job after about six
months, but to build my integrity and to “face the music” which
became a daily mantra which was followed with “I can do all things
through Christ who strengthens me,” I stayed in the job for an
additional year, though I really did want to be free of it. I waited
for an excellent opportunity to come along which met my needs and
goals, and I would have never been qualified for it if I had not made
he decision to wait, far beyond my desire to bail out first set in.
I also spent that time preparing for the new opportunity.
I've found
that delaying a response in the interests of wisdom and patience
(though both of them seemed far from me at the time) was another tool
that I use to foster self-control, and I use that in relationships,
too. I may want to burst out with a comment or even a well-meant
word of encouragement or feedback to say “I don't know if you've
noticed or know this but...” It seems very unnatural in the
moment to keep from offering unsolicited advice, but I'll put time
limits on my comments and commit to them, just to keep myself
grounded by waiting to say them. Quite often, those things I would
have liked to rush into or out of resolve on their own, and the
things I wanted to blurt out become obsolete. Saying them would have
done nothing but put the other person ill at ease with my
“unsolicited advice.” In hindsight, I can see my initial impulse
as a lack of self control, my sense of immaturity which ultimately
goes back to my own sense of woundedness, making my responses about
me and not really about the situation that was at hand. Looking at a
graph of the patterns helped me understand myself, like looking into
a mirror, giving me the option to change that which I didn't like.
Waiting is a big tool and a mechanism of self-control
that I use often.
For help
getting an idea of weak points for yourself, though I'm not big on
the checklist stuff, I have found two that I like best. One is
featured in Harriet Braiker's book, Who's
Pulling Your Strings. Most books concerning dysfunctional
relationships have some kind of checklist which helps you focus in on
your problem areas if you have difficulty, and you can focus specifically on those items.
Learning
Health
People who
grew up in emotionally healthy homes that didn't model extreme
behavior or driven lives take for granted that those who didn't never
saw health and stability modeled for them. A dysfunctional person
can look at a healthy one and identify them, saying, “I want my
life to look like theirs.” But how do they get there?
It takes a
lot of study, and that study is usually followed by at least some
trial and error. I liken it to something a Christian friend said to
me about living as a Christian convert to the faith as an adult. I
take for granted all of those hours I spent in Sunday School and all
of the hours my mother spent reading Bible stories to me, long before
I can even remember them. I had to learn how to be functional
instead of dysfunctional, and I did a lot of that through reading
about the stuff most people take for granted. Today, there are more
books than a person can read which can help them learn from the
experiences and the instruction of others. Self-help books can be
great and some are essential, but great literature and biographies of
people who have lived through similar struggles to your own offer
instruction, too.
I think that
this is where wise friends come into play, and the wisdom of people
who have weathered lots of painful things in life can encourage us.
A situation in life can seem like the end of the world until you can
talk with someone who has lived through something similar or far more
troubling. This is where I also gleaned much from a counselor as a
sounding board. I've also attended free groups like Emotions
Anonymous (EA) who offer group meetings for those who have the
problems of addiction without the use of substances. A good group
(that doesn't become its own type of escape or new type of extreme)
can be a helpful resource, especially if you don't have a lot of
resources to pay for a counselor. You can enlist this type of
volunteer group of peers and friends who understand your struggles,
because they're struggling along with you. You can even get a
sponsor through EA, and even some famous
people have attended.
The funny
thing about learning health involves the realization that what is
healthy usually feels very abnormal. I don't struggle
so much anymore with this in my relationships, but I struggle with it
in other areas of my life that I'm working on as I continue to
develop my maturity and deal with the deficits. I also remember when
getting into new relationships, what feels most natural to me usually
is not in my best interest, so I should be cautious and patient to
see what unfolds instead of jumping in with all abandon quickly.
There's something about that which feels very wrong, but that is
force of habit and not health. This was a very difficult thing to
learn, and aspects of it don't feel natural at all. But I've learned
to know that my “radar” works against me in certain
circumstances, so I've worked to compensate so that I can be mature
and balanced. (There is a part of me that sings loudly with caution,
but I was taught to ignore that part of me in favor of habit when I
was growing up..) What feels right can be very wrong. I have to
follow health.
Journal,
Journal Journal!
That's a
subject that deserves its own post which I talk about but have not
spent much time explaining on this blog. In a post later this week,
I plan to write a bit more specifically about how I journal. I still
use it to help me stay on target by not only through the catharsis of
writing but by sticking to a method that brings me back to my goals
and my commitment to be a functional person instead of a
dysfunctional one.
