Struggling with avoidance and emotional unavailability is just about impossible when you don’t know what those things are.
The journey started 6 years ago when I was told to “secure your own mask first.” I agreed with this but I wasn’t really sure how to do just that. So I crawled, one step at a time until I was finally up on my feet and walking.
I am discovering now the incredible power in being who I really am and it feels astounding. I used to "dial myself back a notch" out of fear of how it would be perceived. I was told that I lived a rich and colorful inner life and spent a lot of time in my own head. I was aware that my thoughts tended to be diverse, at times controversial and unlike anyone else I knew. They just did not line up with the already accepted values in the common world so I simply avoided taking any chances of being discovered as the odd one out. I feared the rejection so I avoided it.
Not long ago I wouldn’t have been able to admit that most of my life has been a struggle to live up to someone else's ideals or to society’s acceptable norms as a whole. I have never felt particularly good at anything not because someone told me that I wasn’t but because I believed I could do better than I was doing and perhaps expected and even demanded more of myself than anyone had expected of me. I didn’t seek approval from others but I wasn’t willing to give it to myself either. I suspect this was a product of an overly relaxed childhood where very little was expected and therefore I learned set and strive for my own standards. Standards I set so high at times I consistently failed to achieve them.
I worked hard not to draw attention to myself because I learned to fear negative attention, disapproval and rejection. That fear was strong enough that I would rather avoid drawing any attention all together than to be the recipient of negative attention. However, that is changing quickly now as I have been able to reach down into the very core of that fear and ostracize it. I am no longer the person I once was; reserved, quiet, protective, passive and fearful. I am all the things I have strived to become but wasn’t willing to acknowledge, confident, outgoing, secure, loyal, polite, and passionate. A great deal has changed in just a short time but the work I had to do to arrive here was a very long road and a delicate struggle.
Learning to simply take the risk and talk to people, to build and nurture relationships that I once imagined out of my reach, was a challenge worth taking on. This is all very new to me and largely inspired by the support of several people I respect greatly and love dearly. To them I cannot be grateful enough.
I am still "testing" my new legs. They are a bit wobbly but at least I am walking on my own now. The struggle with avoidance is over for good. Yet I can’t help but notice the irony in how avoiding building and nurturing relationships most of my life may have contributed to my passion to study and understanding the dynamics of human interactions and behavior. Fascinated with the very thing I feared most and determined to comprehend every facet of it but afraid to approach it in real life has let me to the only career identification I will ever need: Human Relations Architect.
I am a new breed of the odd one out and finally proud to discover just who that is.
“Everything in my life brought me here” – Rainer Marie Milke
I refuse to look back and regret what I missed. I only look forward and wonder what great things are yet to come.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Meaning of Life - Victor Frankl
Victor Frankl is utterly amazing and my search for a psychologist or philosopher of today who "made total sense" has finally come to an end. I am only sorry that he lived during my lifetime but died a decade before I became aware of him. His legacy like many before him grows as his life's work begins to disseminate not just into the culture of psychology but that of human existence as well. The questions I have asked since childhood are finally answered.
For some professionals (i.e. politicians and social reformist) the importance of what they do is recognized during their lifetime and in the present, while for many others such as researchers and scientists the true importance of their work is not always fully realized until after their death. The movement or shift in the field of psychoanalysis that represented the life work of Victor Frankl is refereed to as the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy." It began in the late 1950's and 1960's and was felt mostly in Europe. It has not been widely accepted in the United States but I have little doubt that it will be (I of such amazing faith ;-) and that of course it should be. Perhaps it only needs someone to connect it to the force of the feminist movement here in the U.S. Perhaps it requires someone to bring even greater meaning to his work to finally break open the true force of his discovery.
His work is utterly brilliant and his life lived with purpose. Through my dabbling in psychology over the past 15 years I have always felt a little stuck when searching for answers and finding only partial answers. Often I sensed that while a researcher had done ground breaking and important work, the work was not yet complete and there was more to be learned and built upon. I have been fascinated by and have spent a good deal of time studying and understanding many of the various fields in psychology but psychoanalysis has always been the one field that draws me back to it with seductive force.
That said, it has always felt incomplete to me on some deeper level. As if the potential for the answers were there but not yet fully realized. Freud and Adler both dedicated their lives to the brilliant awareness of people as mental beings driven by internal forces. Yet Freud missed the mark in his theory of "will to pleasure" based on sexual drive and Adler missed the essence in his theory of "will to power" based on personal drive to succeed. Someone at sometime would eventually need to follow with an even greater truth. Personally, I have always believed that the "will to belong" (based entirely on my own mental musing and introspection) was the true driving force of all human existence and only when a person dedicated their life to this theory and uncovering the meaning behind this drive would we find ourselves on the mark and capturing the real essence of human existence and will.
My search has finally come to an end, Victor Frankl is that person. He was influenced by personal contact with both Freud and Adler. He survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and did not become bitter about those experiences but yet forgiving and perhaps even thankful for them. He had lost everything, his entire family, friends, and the first manuscript of his life's work, yet he emerged from destitute and started over. Victor Frankl hit the mark and captured the essence with the "will to meaning" based on the need to find purpose in living.
Reading his work and listening to his story “The Meaning of Life” has finally filled me with the sense of "that's it, that is exactly what I have been searching for." This was all I needed to know to finally realize I have found the eternal answer to my questions. Having found my own meaning and purpose in life I did not yet realize that understanding the power of just knowing I have a meaning and a purpose would provide the last missing piece of the puzzle. Suddenly everything makes perfect sense and the vision is entirely whole. Now I can use my purpose and meaning knowing it is all I will ever need to get through what ever lies ahead of me. It’s brilliant!
For some professionals (i.e. politicians and social reformist) the importance of what they do is recognized during their lifetime and in the present, while for many others such as researchers and scientists the true importance of their work is not always fully realized until after their death. The movement or shift in the field of psychoanalysis that represented the life work of Victor Frankl is refereed to as the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy." It began in the late 1950's and 1960's and was felt mostly in Europe. It has not been widely accepted in the United States but I have little doubt that it will be (I of such amazing faith ;-) and that of course it should be. Perhaps it only needs someone to connect it to the force of the feminist movement here in the U.S. Perhaps it requires someone to bring even greater meaning to his work to finally break open the true force of his discovery.
His work is utterly brilliant and his life lived with purpose. Through my dabbling in psychology over the past 15 years I have always felt a little stuck when searching for answers and finding only partial answers. Often I sensed that while a researcher had done ground breaking and important work, the work was not yet complete and there was more to be learned and built upon. I have been fascinated by and have spent a good deal of time studying and understanding many of the various fields in psychology but psychoanalysis has always been the one field that draws me back to it with seductive force.
That said, it has always felt incomplete to me on some deeper level. As if the potential for the answers were there but not yet fully realized. Freud and Adler both dedicated their lives to the brilliant awareness of people as mental beings driven by internal forces. Yet Freud missed the mark in his theory of "will to pleasure" based on sexual drive and Adler missed the essence in his theory of "will to power" based on personal drive to succeed. Someone at sometime would eventually need to follow with an even greater truth. Personally, I have always believed that the "will to belong" (based entirely on my own mental musing and introspection) was the true driving force of all human existence and only when a person dedicated their life to this theory and uncovering the meaning behind this drive would we find ourselves on the mark and capturing the real essence of human existence and will.
My search has finally come to an end, Victor Frankl is that person. He was influenced by personal contact with both Freud and Adler. He survived the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp and did not become bitter about those experiences but yet forgiving and perhaps even thankful for them. He had lost everything, his entire family, friends, and the first manuscript of his life's work, yet he emerged from destitute and started over. Victor Frankl hit the mark and captured the essence with the "will to meaning" based on the need to find purpose in living.
Reading his work and listening to his story “The Meaning of Life” has finally filled me with the sense of "that's it, that is exactly what I have been searching for." This was all I needed to know to finally realize I have found the eternal answer to my questions. Having found my own meaning and purpose in life I did not yet realize that understanding the power of just knowing I have a meaning and a purpose would provide the last missing piece of the puzzle. Suddenly everything makes perfect sense and the vision is entirely whole. Now I can use my purpose and meaning knowing it is all I will ever need to get through what ever lies ahead of me. It’s brilliant!
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