Hello Jan,
In your introductory article on Planet Waves you say you will offer insights into our questions of why we behave the way we behave, in spite of ‘knowing better’.
In the last few years I found a lot of answers to the question ‘why?’, but I am still really helpless when it comes to the question ‘how to change?’.
When I tried to change with my sheer will, I found out far too often, that things turned out even worse. So I decided to just go with the flow, go with where ever the energy will take me — and just watch, and feel. And I thought “maybe change will come around the corner” — just because of increased consciousness.
Now I am watching, and feeling, and watching and feeling… but it looks like I am still running in circles.
For example, I am watching how I am over and over drawn to the same kind of men. These father-like men I really don’t want to be with, but they are the only kind of men with whom I can feel the energy to connect with. Then there are these other men, who would fit far more as partners — as I think — but I can’t feel a thing.
So now my question is, do you have any insights on how to change — smoothly — not only in thinking but in feeling?
Thank you in advance,
Stefanie
Dear Stefanie,
Thank you for your wonderful question, and for your courage in expressing your struggle so honestly. Every fall, when I begin teaching a new group of graduate students, I start with this joke: Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change. (Insert laugh of recognition here.)
But the truth is, even when we really, really, really want to change, we can still find our selves repeating self-defeating patterns over and over again. And as you so accurately point out, even having insight into our pattern, seeing it clearly and connecting the dots, isn’t enough to make change possible. So, if motivation and awareness/insight aren’t enough, how do we change?
It might help to step back for a moment and look at why we repeat destructive behaviors in the first place. Humanity has known for ages that history repeats itself, that we are creatures of habit and short memories. But Freud was the first to understand that we repeat certain behaviors for a self-protective reason. He called it “the compulsion to repeat” or “repetition compulsion,” and he described that by repeating self-defeating behaviors and patterns in our present lives, we avoid remembering the traumatic origins of those behaviors in our past. Paradoxically, we act out in the present what we don’t want to/can’t face from our past.
Although we now have other ways to think about this concept of repetition compulsion — for example, the idea of forming neural circuits that are very hard to re-program (see last week’s blog), the emotional underpinnings of this dilemma are still very real — something I have found true for myself and for my patients. Without exception, my experience has been that when we have been able to get to the roots of the experience, the pattern starts to change. So, in your example, although you understand that you’re attracted to men who are like your father, although these men are not the men you would wish to be with, you don’t have the right chemistry with men who don’t fit this pattern. Somewhere in that chemistry equation lie the early roots of your relationship with your father, in all its good and bad. Whatever aspects you are unable to remember — in spite of your insight and motivation — will get repeated time and time again. Truly, what we don’t remember, we are destined to repeat.
So, how do we access these memories so that we can change? There are many possibilities, all of them having to do with increased insight and self-awareness. Any type of work that would make increased awareness and the recovery of early memory possible would be very helpful. This might be depth-psychotherapy, body therapies like Hakomi, or safely-structured hypnotic regression. Realistically, it may be some combination of many types of approaches, because we store and retrieve early memories in a variety of ways. And then, just as I said last week, we need a commitment to changing the behaviors that keep the pattern going, because insight alone is never enough. As I say to my patients, change is like riding a bicycle, and insight and motivation are the two wheels. Each one is necessary to drive the other forward.
Most important is to have extreme patience and compassion for yourself as you go through this process. Change is never easy, especially change related to the deepest aspects of our selves. Those patterns, however self-defeating, have served a protective purpose and we owe them gratitude, even as we want to help them to go. If we can see the patterns as an opportunity for growth, development, and understanding, we can love them — and ourselves — more fully as we keep pedaling toward change.
Thank you Stefanie and to all the readers who answered the call this week — keep your beautiful letters coming!
Many blessings,
Jan
Jan I want to add additional thanks this morning. I awaoke this morning with awareness and acknowledgement of a broad pattern of destruction has existed in my life, beginning with an innocent childhood event. While I also know that many aspects of our current pain/s ccan also go far deeper and beyond these events we remember, having consciously connected the dots between these seemingly seperate events has given me an amazing sense of releif – and also a feeling of more pain than I can remember ever feeling. I figure that’s a good thing as now I can release it.
thank you for your gifts. Your letters are all in my “tool box”!
Sarah,
Thanks for the info and the approval. :::smiling:::
Hello, all – have been wanting to respond to the thread but Mercury Retro has been against it! So happy to share the conversation now.
Fe, I completely support the guidance of SheBear and Carrie; In the trauma of losing my first husband, I experienced the exact feelings you describe: “struggling with intimacy issues, fearing love because it brought death.” Although I kept moving along the highway, even marrying again and having a child, I was never fully “there”, and each behavior in my new life was reminding me of my old and bringing fresh grief and fear. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I received the missing piece in my personal healing, a soul retrieval done by a woman who is not a shaman but does energetic work on the multidimensional planes. After 12 years, I can honestly say that I am healed from that loss. It is a miraculous thing.
So many of our traumas occur even before we are born, yet we carry them within our DNA; in these realms of healing, wisdom cultures have much to offer, and I wish you blessings and guidance as you find your healer and complete your journey.
Thank you very much for your answer, Jan. It’s so good to be welcome with my question.
Thank you for your insights also, awordedgewise.
What I am seeing now is, that I have options. That I can choose if I want to dig deeper or run in circles for a little more.
Somehow I think I have chosen for the circles for the last year or so. I was so tired of digging deeper. Of processing and remembering.
And it is also good to see now, that the circles really aren’t all the same. They all may have the same center but differ in size and angle.
And yes, patience and compassion – either way I choose – is maybe the most important thing for me to learn and keep.
Thanks Jan !
From personal experience… It is easy to remember childhood trauma through the very childlike eyes in which they were inflicted. If one can see their personal childhood traumas through their now, adult eyes, the reaction can head towards changing into action.
Changing your reaction, changes the outcome.
Be there for yourself- you are the only one that will be by your side for your entire life.
BLESSINGS !!!
Hi Fe,
I connected with a shamanic healer here in Toronto through surfing on the ‘net. You might find her site useful as research.
http://www.shamansong.ca/
When I phoned her and made my enquiry she said she had to get back to me after she spent time tuning into whether the work would help me or not. A day later she called to say it would be fine. The session was about three to four hours long where she performed a specific style of drumming that took me to an altered state. While in that state I unearthed a long buried experience with my father that had never come to light in talk therapy. The trauma and how I learned to make peace with it has turned out to be an extremely pivotal one in my healing.
A lot of it had to do with both of us having the gift of music and I buried that talent for a very long time as a result of the trauma. Later on that very same year my father died and I found the courage to sing at his funeral. I had never sung in public before but I feel I was able to do so because I had already started to say hello to my talent again because of that one cathartic journeying session. I wanted to sing and send him on his way in a manner I knew he appreciated.
My suggestion to you would be to search online but also to check out any native healing centres in your area and ask people for recommendations.
Blessings for the journey.
Hi Carrie
It was awaiting moderation because it had more than one link in it – shame on you! 😉
Approved now!
S x
Can someone please tell me why my previous comment says “awaiting moderation” above it? Thanks.
Fe,
I found holotropic breathwork to be really helpful for stuck things. It is a very profound experience and done well with an experienced practitioner really helps bring up all that and release it. Here’s a website description about it: http://www.pathoftransformation.com/ib.html
You can find breathwork practitioners here:
http://www.holisticmed.com/inner/breath/holotropic.html#practitioners
or email a request for a list of practitioners here: http://www.pathoftransformation.com/cps.html
I hope this helps.
shebear:
Thanks for the suggestion. It sounds intriguing to me. It would be good to get some references on credible sources for this kind of work. Looking forward to hearing from you on that.
I see now a broader meaning for why we are in ‘this time’ learning ways of accessing information that is buried in our memories and in our DNA. For some time I have held the idea that we are going through a time of remembering and purging – so that we as Beings can re-generate differently going forward.
In the meantime, “repetition compulsion” is a wonderful concept to have been introduced to, thank you so much. Just some quick additional reading on this leads me to mimediately alter one of my own negative behaviour – that of getting down on myself for not “getting” something; for repeating. I can now embrace this if and when it happens and treat it more like I might treat a child who falls when learning to walk.
Now I can understand that repeating undesired behaviours is perhaps in some general way similiar to practicing the piano…..it is the repetition that allows for greater awareness – greater/deeper feeling and understanding about what I am doing – and repetition that allows for mastery.
Thank you Dr. S. Really really wonderful of you to be here.
Fe:
Have you ever considered a shamanic journeying session? Sometimes using a different method to access hidden emotions can bring about that quick release which can facilitate a much desired shift in perspective. A shamanic practitioner has the ability to explore the hidden realms of trauma in such a way that can speed up the healing process. The insights gained from the experience can be very freeing when recognized. With a greater perspective on the origins of the pain, one can own and integrate that insight back into the self.
I had one had an amazing journeying in 2007 that changed so much for me and I highly recommend having one.
A warm hug to you for opening up and sharing here tonight. I really appreciate it. I pray you find that way of making peace with those hurts and fears that hang around you.
Jan:
How does someone who has had a strong association of death with love move past the struggle of fearing closeness? Since my father died when I was young (18 years), I’ve found myself struggling with intimacy issues, fearing love because it brought death. Though not as profound as it was when I was younger, I am consciously “working” to relinquish fear of openly revealing myself in intimate relationships, fearing closeness because of fear of loss.
I know there’s no expressway to move forward other than to do it, to move through it, and being more mature, its becoming easier. It’s about plugging through. Though sometimes, there are those days when the fear of loss can hang over you like a cloudy day.
I’ve been through therapy about grief and loss as well as depression, which has helped me to see my way past the confusion, and relieve me of the weight I thought I needed to carry.
Maybe by writing you, I am looking to relinquish all of the fear, but that also may not happen completely — I know I’m going to live with it a long time.
Continuing to channel it through, by whatever means, even through this blog, I feel like I’m releasing stuck energy around it, and that energy release has also impelled creative growth.
This was a really good one! Like someone once said, ask yourself what is the payoff for remaining the same? Sometimes people remain the same because change is more frightening because of the unknown. We are more comfortable with the pain we know than with the fear of the pain we don’t know.
I used to feel attraction to men I felt were needy. I felt nothing for men who were emotionally stable and assertive. After therapy, I found that I felt better about myself to the point that I didn’t feel like “fixing” needy men anymore and I could feel genuine attraction to men who were not needy. That was new for me and scary but it was well worth the change because now I have a wonderful relationship with my husband of almost 24 years. He is not needy and he is a stable person.
Change is scary but often it is exactly what we need.