All links and comments are for your
imagination - not to be taken as absolutes ....
~ and moggi is sorry
that there are not more pictures!
The Cycle of Life:
Although I am an atheist I do believe that if there were a god that we should
not blame him for the situations that we, ourselves, create. God, as a supreme
energy, would want to give us complete free will - that is the existential issue
that we all face. When I talk about a ' no-choice ' being a choice I mean that
we commit sins of omission as well as commission.
Our faith in that energy for good and for wisdom is compromised by our fear and
our sense that we deserve better. We blame god for things that we are unable to
let be. We do not trust ourselves to be open to change and possibility and so
we do not hear 'god' when he asks us to forgive. The life of Christ as
described in the Gospels asks us to turn away from the Old Testament thinking
of ' might being right ', or that retributive righteous anger. It asks for us
to forgive even while we exercise the caution that comes from not forgetting.
The Old Testament thinking is what binds and constipates us. We see it in the
fundamentalists of all religions. But especially in the Judeo Christians and
Islamic leaders who are presently arguing in the Middle East. We pray for our
anger to be paid for in the 'blood' of others. We want someone to pay for doing
us wrong.
And of course they can't - nothing can replace those three
years of energy leaking out of your family. Nothing can get that energy back.
But if we allow for forgiveness then it is not us making the judgment against
others - but we are, like Jesus Christ, allowing for others to see the value and
freedom that ' the good ' can bring. And it takes so little effort too --- all
we have to do is answer to ourselves about what we want ..... really, truly
want.
I don't believe that the devil turns us away from accepting or acting in the
good. But I do believe that our fear makes us afraid to act and to accept and
work forgiveness. I feel that your anger at Mark became confused with an anger
at your faith for not protecting you. But maybe that same anger inhibited you
from seeing the situation developing - and in allowing yourself to trust
yourself in forgiveness of Mark .... as you see, feel and experience him on a
daily basis.
The anger cloaks like the fog you used to talk about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A newborn child cannot see anything beyond their mother. So they interpret the
world through the mother's skin, eyes, ears and mood. Almost in the same way as
they did in the womb.
The last quarter of the second year the child is starting to individuate. As
they learn sounds they begin to interact with the world on their own. As they
move farther afield they pick up their own responses and their own experiences.
The beginnings of a self referral system which is consolidated in the child by
looking back at the parent for affirmation and validation. First sign of
trouble and they expect mother/father to take care of it.
This process continues until the child is around six years. At this point we
see the first lie - the child is taking control of their reality and making it
theirs by articulating something that is from their thought not the
parents. We also see the beginnings of the first love affair - the beginnings
of genuine libido. The child will ' fall in love ' with the opposite gender
parent.
This process reaches a peak at 9years when the child feels that they are the
center of the Universe, that everything belongs to them and they experience
jealousy, seeing all adult relationships and conversation as a betrayal of their
primary partner.
At puberty the child begins to separate off from the parents and family. Little
by little the adolescent begins to take their own decisions based on the
knowledge bank that has been internalized over the years and experiences. More
risks are taken. Love affairs begin to take place with people outside of the
family --- first with a love object, then with an older brother/sister and
finally with someone their own age .... at this time the person is 17/18 and
should be able to individuate further by ' leaving home' and creating their own
families ( work, school, friends, roommates, love, marriage, children etc ).
The original family unit now becomes the family of origin and an extension of
their main, created family.
At 21-25 there is another hormonal change. Often, if the person has had
depression , panic attacks, or any other issue when they were around 15-17, then
they will see a reoccurrence at this point. This is the last of the throes of
adolescence. A realization that they are adult, that some hopes may not be
realized and a hunger to acquire the external marks of success - degree, job,
career, house, marriage, kids etc.
This process of breaking away is accomplished by such natural ways of
distancing, rejection of the binding ties that cause anxiety and guilt, and,
dysfunctionally, through various means, including substance abuse, geographic
separation, overworking, or periodic silences between individuals in a
relationship. "Ultimate forms of distance are cutoff, divorce, or suicide"
(Gilbert, 1992, p. 55). The other common patterns are: marital conflict, spouse
dysfunction, and child dysfunction. Conflict in the marital relationship often
is used in order to create emotional distance from the spouse (Kerr, 1981).
One unintended, positive by-product of such conflict, however, is that it can
protect the children from becoming the focus of parental anxiety. Anxiety can
also be reduced by one spouse consistently capitulating to the demands of the
other. Over time, and with heightened anxiety, such compromise will eventually
impair one spouse's ability to function, manifested in physical illness,
emotional illness, or some other acting-out behavior. In a similar manner,
anxiety could be manifested in symptom development in a child. Furthermore,
depending on the family's pattern of functioning and the level of anxiety, all
three of these nuclear family processes could be present in one family system.
Skowron & Friedlander (1998), defined differentiation as "the ability to
distinguish thoughts from feelings and to choose between being guided by one's
intellect or one's emotions" (p. 235).
Differentiation describes the measure or
ratio of individual energy tied in relationships. At lower levels of
differentiation, a greater percentage of energy is bound in relationships. With
higher the levels of differentiation, a greater percentage of energy is reserved
to direct one's own functioning (Kerr & Bowen, 1988). Differentiation refers to
one's ability to adhere to one's own inner convictions, regardless of others'
support, while also refraining from pressuring others to change their beliefs
and actions (Kerr, 1981).
Bowen developed an illustrative model, called "the
scale of differentiation", to convey the idea that individual differentiation
exists on a continuum, from 0 to 100. One hundred was seen as theoretically
attainable, but realistically impossible. However, he also cautioned that this
scale should not be equated with psychiatric diagnoses, since symptoms can occur
in both higher differentiated and lower differentiated people. The difference is
that more differentiated individuals will have a quicker recovery, and shorter
course, whereas less differentiated individuals are less adaptable under stress
and thus experience more emotional and physical symptoms (Skowron & Friedlander,
1998).
Differentiation should not be confused with selfishness, since a selfish
attitude may define self boundaries, but fails to respect the boundaries of
others (Kerr, 1981).
Nor does differentiation mean that one must be
unfeeling, or rejecting of relationships. Rather, it "allows for flexible
boundaries that permit emotional intimacy and physical unions without fear of
merger", (Skowron & Friedlander, 1998, p. 235) or loss of one's singular
identity. Bowen also used the phrase "taking an I Position" when referring to
differentiation, which represented the basic self position, maintaining a
clearly defined, non-negotiable sense of self. He believed that if one worked on
differentiating from one's family of origin, one would subsequently have a
greater ability to "be a self" in the nuclear family (Kerr, 1981).
If the person has not successfully broken away from their family of origin they
often get stuck in that latish adolescence.
Their knowledge base of how to
operate in life is not fully in place and they swing from needing the security
of the family of origin to trying to replace that with a love object who will
also take care of them. They cycle between the two situations fearing to break
away from what they have known and trying to replace the family of origin with a person who
can fulfill the same objectives .....
She is too scared to individuate and not 'old' enough to know that some of the
things that she has been told are her right are actually her obligation as
well. That to marry means to join with another as a complete individuated
person. That she cannot recreate her FAMILY OF ORIGIN with him because she is still an
adolescent in the same FAMILY OF ORIGIN.
If one keeps using the same cycle then what is happening is that the person has
not been able to break away and is trying to substitute one 'family' system with
another one that is fundamentally the same as the FAMILY OF ORIGIN.
That is where the existentialism comes in --- the person cannot self refer or
WILL not self refer or individuate. It is easier to maintain the same
adolescent self because then one does not have to make choices. So the family
system reimposes itself again and again -
In Bowenian therapy there is acknowledgment of this system and the therapist
will work through both family influences to assist the person in recognizing
patterns or cycles and then developing a way of decision making that allows for
a 'knowledge base' to be built that the person can use in their effort to
individuate.
If the person individuates then they become differentiated from the beloved. As
a differentiated individual they are not seeking to slot themselves back into
their original system and they are now creating and co-creating a new family
with an equally differentiated person. They do not need the beloved to complete
them - they want the beloved as a partner and as an individual to genuinely
share and interact with.
interdependence of two complete people instead of co-dependence
Remember John Bradshaw's equation 1/2 person X 1/2 person + 1/4 relationship
????
any use?
anonymity.
