Healing and acceptance, as I understand
How would you think
If you weren't told
How to think
I send my writings to a small group of friends, sometimes it results in conversation around the topic. As I engaged in conversation with my friends, I realize that this poem represents the ultimate quest that each and every one of us needs to undertake. The discovery of Self and the severing of the metaphorical umbilical cord with the childhood home. Such an a-ha! moment.
Let me explain. Everything I lay out here is bits and pieces I picked up from various books I read in the last couple of years, and I am paraphrasing it in the way I understood and synthesized this information.
The constant struggle of every human being is a balance between authenticity and belonging. Authenticity is the expression of the truest nature of who you are. One would think that is easy, but as you read on, you will understand why it is not as easy as it should be. As the only species with the longest "childhood"- that is, where the young one cannot independently be out on their own until the age of 25 when the prefrontal cortex is fully developed, we are dependent on our caregivers and our tribe to take care of us until we reach that age. The need to seek belonging and acceptance by the people around us is hardwired in us for survival.
Let's take a simple example. The baby is hungry, and knows that s/he needs to cry to get attention. The baby is also realizing the cause-effect relationship between crying and getting milk, and this is coded in the child's operating system. I am hungry -> I cry -> Mommy notices -> I get milk -> I am no longer hungry.
Now imagine that the mother is stressed with something, and comes to the baby somewhat annoyed. The child recognizes this too (apparently one of the first emotions babies learn to discern is that of disgust), and the alarm bells go off - she is not pleased, I did something that annoyed her, and ohmygod she is going to abandon me. That is not good for my survival. I am hungry -> I cry -> Mommy is annoyed -> that aint good.
You see how the baby is conflicted between authenticity - I am hungry, and belonging - how do I not make mommy mad. How the baby trades off these two instincts will determine whether that incident was a traumatic memory or not. In cases where this incident is one off, the trauma is also one-off. However, where the incident is more the norm than the exception, the coding in the child's operating system becomes "I need to please mommy, how can I suppress my needs to not have her be annoyed"
This may not come as a surprise to many of you, but I was mind-blown when I learnt that every single one of us has suffered trauma through our formative years. These traumatic incidents change the code that becomes our operating system, how we make sense of the world around us and how we respond to events that happen in our lives.
What we are taught to think and feel are the base elements of the operating system. There are other aspects of our individual unique personality that may or may not have had the opportunity to surface in the formative years, and may nor may not have been accepted by the folks that are responsible for our survival. The parts of ourselves that we never expressed, or expressed but weren't accepted, we learn to reject ourselves. These are the aspects that is referred to in psychology as shadow. Shadow represents the part of us that we have relegated to the unconscious, and we are not consciously aware of their impact. Shadow is neither positive nor negative, it is simply that part of ourselves we are not conscious of.
Let me make this real for you. Let's say the culture in your house could have been that of frugality with respect to money. Anything that is more than bare necessities was likely looked at as excessive, and you were probably praised for penny pinching, for finding the cheapest deals. Now, you as an individual, probably liked to have the better toys that your friends had. But you could not allow that desire to surface, or that it was met with rejection when you did. So you learnt to say, you don't need nice things. The aspect of you that craves the nicer things in life is part of your shadow. It may be more obvious to others than to you that it is, indeed, your shadow.
"Know thyself" is a quote attributed to Socrates. It is, an active pursuit of what is unconscious, allow it to come to the surface, make friends with it, and then integrate it with the conscious part of ourselves. So the code is glitching, and we know that the code is failing somewhere. There has to be an active pursuit to unearth the full code, debug it, and then insert it back where appropriate, and hope the code works better.
What does this process look like? For things to surface from the unconscious, you need to feel safe. You had pushed certain needs to the unconscious because they were threatening your safety and your belonging. This threat level needs to de-escalate. As a child, you learnt that if you wanted nice things, your parents may abandon you. As an adult, you will need to realize that it is no longer true. You are no longer under threat of abandonment for wanting nice things. This process of getting to inner safety is essential, to allow the shadow to surface.
The process therefore involves healing from past trauma, to reinforce the inner safety. Then allow for the shadow to surface, then for you to make friends with the shadow, and then there is an opportunity for integration.
Back to my poem and my questions, and why this is THE ultimate quest. Do you know yourself enough to have unearthed the shadow? Do you know what to think and feel without being burdened by others expectation of you? Have you provided yourself enough inner safety for the truest parts of you to surface? What does that look like? The most authentic version of you that you claim ownership of, in the fullest way. I know that I am curious to see what that version of me looks like.
There is more on this matter that I understand, but haven't expressed here. There is much, much more that I don't understand. But this is my quest and journey. Do tell me what you think of this Psych 101 lesson, and if I should write more as I learn more on this topic.
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