What is resistance doing in my life?
I’ve noticed over the last 20 years that we humans resist the very things that are good for us and head right back where we started. I found out last night that a dear friend had slipped back into her addiction to alcohol and drugs after almost a year of being free from the obsession. I’ve been thinking about what that is about.
Naturally, I can’t know what is going on inside someone else, what demons that person is battling, but it makes me do some deep thinking about all the addiction we have in our today world. I have some opinions and beliefs about it that I’d like to share with you.
Somewhere in our past—early childhood, another life?—we encountered trauma. We did the very best we could to cope with what happened to us with a child’s immature brain. It seemed like life or death to us and may actually have been that serious depending on the circumstances. The problem is that we came up with strategies that we still are using to fight off what we believe is more of the same kind of treatment that we received.
There’s an instantaneous trigger response that happens to us like the fight, flight, freeze response. Perhaps we developed a coping strategy that worked but more often than not we were kidding us into believing that we would be safe if we did this strategy. Like using drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping… to make us safe.
It just doesn’t work. In fact, we become more vulnerable, attract more trauma to us with this strategy.
What do you do? What is the strategy that you developed early on that you hardly even notice that you are using as a defense? And once you see what you are doing, what is the real affect on others. Do they draw closer and become more supportive? Probably no.
And we do this over and over again while not understanding that we are bringing to us the very negative situations that we are trying to avoid.
For example, consider being a boss to someone who is constantly late for work and shows us under the influence or hung over. Consider being a friend to someone who is drunk instead of showing up for an outing or shows up under the influence and becomes belligerent/morose/seductive…
Why do we continue to do it? My opinion is that we have long ago forgotten what we were actually using the substance about—it’s not because of these surface events but because of that past trauma.
Then to enable us to tolerate what was happening to us, we began to like the negative feeling. We secretly liked the drama, the feeling of aliveness when we were victimized, the revved up feeling when we were beaten down or beating someone else down (better know as enduring or inflicting pain).
If we can really face what we are doing, that place that is below our conscious awareness, we can become more willing to consider that we could replace that negative feeling with something positive.
Here I’m reminded of that Aesop fable about the sun and the wind arguing about who was stronger. The had a contest-who could make the man take off his coat would be the winner. The wind blew and blew and the man wrapped his coat tighter around himself. The sun shone and warmed the man who soon took off his coat.
The moral that I’m thinking about is that we are asking that we give up the blustery pleasure of the negative for the gentle power of the positive. They don’t feel the same but are equally powerful.
Let me hear from you about your thoughts on this subject.
Thanks Julia, I’m going through a similar situation right now.
As a 2 year old, I was ‘not allowed’ to express anger or tantrum as it triggered sensitivity in my mother. I learned that to express some feelings were not OK, and I learned how to make my mother happy.
Now in my relationships, I find it hard to allow others close. If I am ‘good’ I betray myself, and feel an impostor towards myself. Yet if I express my fear, and push others away I don’t get the loving relationship I want. In fact, I choose relationships where others often fear giving love or being loved by me so that ‘distance’ is acceptable to them in the beginning of the relationship.
I don’t know how to be another way, aligned with my center or ‘real’ self. I know only how to be an impostor, or be the negative one, pushing others away.
I’ve learned spiritual practices as you mentioned above, where for example I’ll exercise and push myself deeper deeper until I feel the trauma of being pushed (the bluster of the wind) and then after communing with that tender place I’ll be more comfortable to open my heart later. Or I’ll expand my heart and sit in the warmth, which is great to know there is love from inside myself as well as receiving from others, and also to expand in a non ‘blustery’ way. Yet being in this expanded state is very scary for me as the slightest attack I contract back down to protect myself.
So some combination seems to work — feeling the wound and trauma, expressing that and releasing it and then not fearing it, my energy then can regulate and move through my being and unblock. Then expanding in the soft warmth of my center I can sooth and feel my power, without the need to push another away.
It’s not a perfect solution of course. Some days I don’t exercise or release, I am ‘tight’ and find it difficult to feel the ‘sensitivity’, then I have little awareness also of the warmth of my center or direction my ‘center’ wishes to go. In this place I am reactive, and lean more towards pushing others away or to please them, until I can reconnect or release, and progress deeper. Some days are beautiful though when I have released, and expanded, and others for some reason will come to me with love as if I am a 2-year-old, and love me without reason, just for being myself. This motivates further development and the healing cycle continues.
Thanks for the sharing as always.
It great to hear from you, Al. I’m so glad to hear that you are making progress with this process. When we continue to allow those feelings, eventually the child will have felt them “enough” and be ready and willing to give them up. Hang in there.