Pure Motivation

A New View of Depression

Before you read about Depression and especially if you are depressed right now.... here's a little stretch you can use to get into a mindset so you can more easily entertain the possibility of opting out of depression, at will!

If you have a pet observe how intensely he/she stretches his body and how each time he fully surrenders to that activity.

First, while lying on his side, he stretches his front legs up and his hind legs down as far as he possibly can. Then he rolls over onto his back and thoroughly stretches his front, by stretching up and down again, opening up the space between every rib in his rib case, so his lungs have more room.

Then, as if that wasn't enough, he stretches out his neck and ears while lifting his chin in the air and rolling over some more…he now rolls back and forth enjoying the release of the tension that normally holds up his body.

With a satisfied, contented glow, he gets up and strolls toward his food bowl. 

Now dear reader, follow your pet's little stretching video. How does that feel? What sensations did you experience? If you did this exercise with the same intensity and surrender as our sample dog or cat, you now have stepped out of your depression, even if only for a short minute.

How did it work? The secret is that most likely you were able to be in the present during those moments, whereas depression keeps you in the past.

This article is about expanding those moments of ‘being in the present,’ into hours, days, years…

Here's why I say that's possible: My view is that depression is the inability to fulfill a personal ‘holy grail’ you've been pursuing since you subconsciously made a particular decision as a young child – a holy grail which still (subconsciously) seems crucially important to your happiness, to your life. Your sense of identity is tied up in this quest, and being thwarted in it by whatever circumstances has a paralyzing effect on your vital force. That paralysis of life force is experienced as depression!

I'm going to tell you about a way out of that paralysis which you have almost certainly never heard of before.

But first, let's take a general look at the current scene about depression in the world today.

Depression is a depressing topic. So many people have been diagnosed as ‘depressed,’ yet the cause is still unknown. The ‘cures’ are often not effective, and can even result in further problems. Most people end up receiving medications, or Electro-Convulsive Therapy, or are being advised to use biofeedback techniques. These remedies seem to help some people; in others, the ‘remedies’ can actually worsen depression. Medical and health professionals, across every scientific field, have not found a definite or universal cause of depression, thus a cure is impossible. 

This article is important because it sheds new light on the cause of depression. Using a new theory developed out of my own experience, I state that the quality of your life is centrally determined by the quality of your Sense of Self. I am confident to make the startling assertion that the cause of depression lies, ultimately, in the lack of a healthy Sense of Self. This assertion is fully described and explained at the website www.holispsych.com.

The connection between depression and Sense of Self is not immediately obvious. I encourage you to think about what I am going to say here. What I say is based on my personal experience and on my observations of others, which have led to the Holipsych.com theory..

Concerning Depression, my theory asserts: Depression occurs when success in completing an action or behavior that is perceived as crucial to achieving desperately desired parental approval¹ is thwarted. Now you feel, “There is no hope for me to do what I perceive is necessary to be happy.” 

Thus, HolisPsych.com's answer to overcoming depression is: “Increase your Sense of Self. That makes you less dependent on the outcome of your achievements, actions or behavior or of what others think of you, inclusive your parents . The moment you are truly independent of those, you are free and not depressed!”

‘Self’ is a common term, but what does it actually mean?  How do you experience your ‘self’? There are healthy and unhealthy ways to experience your ‘self.’ I believe that the root cause of depression lies in a defective, unhealthy way of experiencing one's ‘self’ and that people in whom a Sense of Self naturally has developed at the right time in childhood are NOT prone to depression!

The healthiness or unhealthiness of a person's sense of self starts in infancy. If we are lucky as an infant we are regarded as a separately-existing, autonomous Being (-Self). Too often, children are regarded merely as pawns in the ‘emotional games’ of the primary caretaker.

In the latter case, Nature comes up with a substitute to fill the void of no sense of being an autonomous, independent Self. The child becomes dependent on the approval of the primary caretaker (and eventually others) in order to feel good about who-they-are, which is as close as they ever get to feeling like a Real Person.

Note: ultimately the approval becomes a ‘virtual approval’ which we are giving to our self when the primary caretaker is no longer around us.  This “virtual approval” is not an authentic or true opinion of ourselves. This self-judging system is just as powerful as the voice of the parent was in the first place -- if not more powerful!

The original void, that lack of a solid sense of being a Real Person, caused by a lack of being regarded as a Real Person, is intolerably painful. The void gets filled by an unhealthy dependence on approval, which is a poor and unhealthy substitute for being truly respected as a Real Person. Without that approval, then, there's a sense of not really existing, of feeling ‘annihilated.’

If you have been raised like those children, you might have a desperate compulsive need to do whatever you need to do, to get that approval. So your whole identity, of being an ‘I’ or ‘me,’ is based on earning that approval by doing those things, or meeting those conditions or expectations of the primary caretaker.

If there is no way to feel-good-about-yourself through getting that (even virtual-) approval, you might feel, on a deep level, that you don't actually ‘have a right to be.’! The feeling-good-about-yourself is the most desirable thing in your life, because it is experienced as giving you ‘permission to be.’

Unfortunately, this feeling good is not a Sense of Self, but merely an unhealthy psychological structure which substitutes for a Sense of Self. It is a way to function which, because it is unhealthy, leads to all kinds of unpleasant effects  on your quality-of-life-level. This feel-good-about-Self is what I call a Substitute-Sense-of-Self.

Because so much is at stake, the behaviors leading to approval become addictive, compulsive, unavoidable, and compelling. Over the years, successfully getting (even self-administered, internalized, virtual) approval through these behaviors becomes the only motivation you might have, all you really want in life. Check within yourself right now. Can you find some of these compelled behaviors? What do you expect to get from them? Are they truly your identity? Are they truly so important that you can’t go on living your life without them being realized?

Now check within again. If you were to feel or anticipate that there would be no way you can possibly successfully get to this state of feel-good-about-yourself, and  you are able to agree that in fact there is truth to the assertion that you perceive your identity is tied up in that feeling and the behaviors leading to that feeling, aren't you in some sort of a life-or-death situation as far as you're concerned?  You (perceive to) depend on those behaviors because (you perceive that) they give you ‘permission to be’.

In the reality of the ‘present’ and the ’present you’ (or the ‘you who is actually present and not in the past) however, a) this feel-good-about-yourself isn’t so crucial as you now think; b) the behavior, action or achievement you think you depend on and that is thwarted for some reason isn’t the only pathway you can go in your life. There are other options. You just don’t (want to) see them! (Denial!)

Now it should be pretty easy to understand why you would feel depressed, if you were, long-term, unable to achieve the (self-) approval you need to feel-good-about-yourself. If, over the course of a reasonably long time, your intention to perform the necessary actions or display the appropriate behavior  would be thwarted by circumstances from outside or even due to a situation you have created yourself, or simply because you are unable to succeed in it. That is what causes depression.

To feel unable to be successful in the realization of the for the purpose of getting that sense of feel-good-about-self -selected actions, behaviors or activities and that are individually different for every single individual, would indeed be a pretty depressing prospect, wouldn't it? Hopelessness about being able to feel like ‘a person-who-really-exists!’

The above scenario may seem far-fetched to you upon reading this for the first time but is not rare. In fact, starting with the infant's unhealthy, unfortunate situation, that leads him to adopt an unhealthy behavioral strategy for feeling like a ‘self,’ all the way to the moment in which this person starts to feel hopeless about being successful at the behaviors, that were designed to achieve that feeling – and thus achieve a sense of ‘existing’ – the scenario is so common as to be considered an epidemic. Just like depression.

 

The good news is that if the above scenario is an accurate description, then the way out of depression becomes clear.

If the foundation of the problem lies in the way you experience your ‘self’ then you need to work on getting a stronger and healthier Sense of Self. You have to work on ‘restoring’ your Sense of Self.

How do you restore your Sense of Self?  You find ways to be deeply and constantly in touch with the awareness that your life is about you as an independent and autonomous person – not about getting the approval of others. These ways are known, and are described at www.holipsych.com.

With a ‘Restored Sense of Self’, the behaviors you used to identify with and used to require for your ‘survival’, the behaviors which you were addicted to and compelled to do, are no longer needed.  You no longer need them to generate the good-feeling- about-yourself to fill the inner sense of emptiness and invisibility, because the void isn't there anymore. The initial (Indirect) motivation for those strategies, those behaviors, those ways of feeling and presenting yourself to the world, lose their intensity; they are no longer important for your survival (compare Direct and Indirect Motivation at www.HolisPsych.com)

You can still do those things, but based on a different motivation. They have lost their emotional ‘charge’. Now you can either do them or choose to do other ones instead just because you like doing them, because they are pleasant or enjoyable or because ‘they need to be done.’ Now you are free and there is no need for and no trace of depression.

You can learn to look at life with you own mind, through your own eyes, feeling your feet touching the ground, knowing that your body is the house for your spirit and that your life is about you and what you actively choose to do and be.

…...........

Now, once more stretch out like you have seen your cat or dog doing it, or a tiger in the Zoo. Close your eyes and imagine you are in that animal body.  Feel that through and through. It is your body, it is YOU! Then open your eyes and sense the connection between Life and you.

That’s enough for now.  This article does not pretend to solve your issues, but rather help you see a way to go. Sense, for a split second, that there is a way out of your depression. Study for a second the quality of your ‘self’ and assess whether it might need improvement. Become aware that the way out of your depression might lie in increasing the healthiness of the way you are sensing yourself.  Consider in all seriousness if maybe for you the way out of depression might lie in restoring the quality of your Sense of Self.

If you have questions don’t hesitate to contact us at : contact@HolisPsych.com

¹ If we speak here of parental approval we don’t only refer to the direct active parental approval but also to the internalized (virtual) parental approval.

This article was co-authored by Alia Aurami and Lily Burns

 

Motivation Theory

Introduction

It may be of interest to know that I have developed my views during the last decade. My website, in which I have initially organized the concepts and idiom I use, dates from 1999. The site is in Dutch and although I planned to, I never got to make an English version: http://www.holispsych.com

Life interrupted my work on this “New of Holistic Psychology,” and it hasn’t been untill moving to the Seattle area in November of 2004, that I started to seriously study psychology at Bellevue Community College. Before that moment I had not the slightest notion of psychology and my findings are entirely based on self-analysis. Therefore it is quite interesting that large parts of my theory do actually fit in quite well into the already existing theories. Although in many ways I reinvented the wheel, there are still concepts that I haven’t come across during my two courses and that I think are of interest. In a way I feel like a Kokoschka of Psychology, practicing the art without any formal education. I do hope the reader finds quality in the underlying theory, and that the concepts are a valuable addition to the description of behavior and mental processes.

I want to point out that if I speak of people, I mean people of my time and my area, which used to be the Netherlands, Portugal and since about 12 years the USA.

My theory regarding what motivates people during their every day lives.

People would live their lives much more in harmony with nature and be less opposed to the order of things and time, if during the years of early childhood till young adulthood there wasn't so much damage done to their potential. Many people have to spend much of their adulthood figuring out what went wrong, or compensating for what went wrong. It is my honest opinion that a lot of the world’s fate lies in the hands of the mothers. If mothers would have the capacity to free themselves from preconceived cultural notions, be balanced persons themselves and as such available for the child with unconditional love, the child would have no need to sought out things or compensate for missing aspects. In this case the human being would pretty much live like Adam and Eve in the garden of existence. They would be a lot less goal oriented and more appreciative of life itself.

This ideal world doesn’t exist and that is due to the imperfection of the mother. Because of the compensation tendencies towards selfishness, narcisism, confusion, ambition, lust for power, need for acceptance and other conditions of imperfection, the mother creates a next generation that lacks a certain to all percentile of Sense Of Self (SOS). A vicious circle keeps itself going here.

The nature of motivation

In order to understand the drives of people one has to first make the distinction between people who have this clear SOS and those who don’t. People with a clear SOS are psychologically healthy; those who don’t are psychologically ailing.

A clear Sense of Self

How is a clear SOS instilled in a person?

A child is born a blank slate. Nature provides its temperament and hereditary abilities or disabilities, and dispositions that may or may not be developed later on in life, due to social and historical circumstances and environment. A agree with Freud, who states that a person’s life is determined within the first 5 years; however I agree also with most other psychologists that people’s personality is formed or at least formable during the course of the whole life span. This may naturally occur by the events in life, but is much harder and more rarely undertaken as an active and conscious process.

Mirroring

It is clear that at birth, the child hasn’t drawn any conclusions yet about how it can influence the order of things in its advantage. This process starts unconsciously the moment the child experiences certain needs and finds out that those needs aren’t automatically met anymore, like they were while it was in the womb. The way the needs of the child are met and the way the child’s presence in general is being reflected back to him or her (mirrorring) is of crucial importance. The effect that a baby’s-toddler’s presence or existence has on the mother and father (or other educators) translates itself in certain behavior of the parents towards that child. It is the nature of this behavior of the educators that constitutes the first steps in the child’s process of distilling a sense of self. This process is an ongoing and increasing process based on the epigenetic principle as referred to in Erikson’s 8 stages.

Distinction: SOS-plus and SOS-deficiency

I would like to make a distinction between individuals who come out of their early childhood with the buildingblocks for a good and clear SOS internalized in their being (the SOS-plussers of healthy persons) and those who don’t (SOS-deficiency or ps.em. disturbed persons). To follow the path of those who do have a clear SOS would certainly be an interesting process, but in the course of this theory I will concentrate on those who don’t and are therefore considered psychologically unhealthy.

Little scientists

There is a process going on from the very beginning in the child and that is “adjustment to the provider.”  As the child learns that its needs aren’t so easily satisfied as before, one could say that the child is like a little scientist: it observes the effects of its own behavior and draws conclusions as to which behavior is the best one to obtain satisfaction of the needs. This process is based on his/her particular temperament.

Distortions in growth

The development of a child is comparable with the direction of the growth of a tree. Under ideal circumstances, that is positively mirrored by the mother/father/caregiver, a SOS builds up in a natural way. If the child has to bend and crawl in order to get its needs met and/or some positive feedback, its emotional and psychological pattern will litterally grow crooked. What is more and very interesting, I think even physically (spine deviation).

The person with a clear SOS is mostly succesful in life, as he/she doesn’t have to spend energy to worrying about what is missing in his life. The person can focus on the things to do. Those things, that are being given direct attention, and that are connected in a direct way to the essence of the person, have a lot of chance to florish. What this person does is about the things he does, about the content of the things.

To those, lacking the clear SOS, life is a different story. The need for a SOS is a very basic one, it is comparable to the spine of a person. When that need is not satisfied, the attention of the person, his/her motivation has to flow that way (theory of drive reduction). The person is primarily focused on the satisfaction of the need to create a SOS. This is the way he/she creates a Substitute SOS.

Psycho-Emotional Ego (PEE)

To battle anxiety and to feed the hope that once the needs of love and trust will be met, the person develops what I call a PEE. It is the fictional concept of Self that is based on the internalized parental wishes of how the child would be acceptable for them and eligible for their love. The PEE is in charge to create a Substitute SOS.

The PEE is comparable with Horney’s Ideal Self Image or even Rogers’s Ideal Self. Although especially in Rogers’s concept the ideal Self is considered to be based on absolute, more or less ethical standards in stead of on internalized parental wishes, compared to my PEE.   

Ego-references

The various aspects that the PEE is made of are the Ego-references. They complie all sorts of things, depending of what kind of life the person has, what their ambitions are, which ways the person uses to repair the damage of the past, that caused the need in the first place. This whole process is based on the conclusions of the person him or herself, aided by the epigenetic principle.

Anxiety

Ego-references often clash, are conflictuous among each other, which leads to a heightened state of anxiety. My personal experience is that this leads to physical symptoms as well: buzzing of the nervous system, increased tinnitus and above all insomnia.

Fury

On the other hand a so called “ almost achieved Ego-Reference” causes a violent protection of the circumstances that brought it about. The person becomes furious when some hindrances come in between. Sleeping is out of the question: one cannot let go of the perceived glory and needs to stay in control.

Depression

When a person is unable to work on the realization of his/her Ego-references because of certain unfavorable circumstances, a person feels totally depleated. The survival strategy has failed and because of the identification of the Self with the results on the scale of the achievement factor of the Ego-references, a person is paralyzed and has lost all motivation. It is necessary to note that not being able to score in the sector of the Ego-references equals a fear comparable to fear-for-death as it equals a Loss-of-Self (LOS).

Other symptoms

An immanent LOS, due to the impossibility to realize one or more Ego-eferences causes a lot of behavior related problems, such as: anger, rage, irritability, violence, suicide, addictions, compulsions, obsessions, reward-addiction.

Hidden Goal

People with SOS-deficiency base all their decisions on the hope that once their needs will be met and the damage repaired. This is an unconscious process that is based on the drive reduction theory. A need, be it physiological, psychological or emotional creates an aroused state that drives the organism to reduce that need, by trying to fulfill it. This is the hidden goal and it is the substantiating of the hope that the need will be met one day. This is the actual goal for what those people do. The actual content of the activity is no more than a vehicle to reach this hidden goal. Although for the outside world and for themselves they are busy doing the activity, they actuall are focussed on attaining the hidden goal. This is one a not recognized reason for failing and failure fear!

Motivation: intrinsic or extrinsic.

In people without or with little SOS we find almost no intrinsic motivation. Everything they do or avoid is based on their hidden goal

Edvard Deci and Richard Ryan ((1985-2000) have done research on motivation. They distinguish the well known concepts of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. However what I miss in their approach is room for what I call the improper* intrinsic motivation, being the impure nature of the motifs. The motivation isn’t geared towards what it pretends: the fulfilment of a certain task or the development of a certain process. It is geared to fulfill the psycho-emotional need through the performance of an activity. The activity can be anything, from performing music, to raising children, from seeming to be generous to being the opposite.

The improper* intrinsic motivation so far hasn’t been distinguishable from the proper* intrinsic motivation, being the real innate desire based on interest and pure motivation. It is only after training and awareness of bodily symptoms, that a person can learn to recognize the nature of his or her intrinsic motivations.

Failure Fear

Failure fear mostly indicates psycho-emotional disorder as described above. What generates this fear is threefold:

1. On the one hand the person doesn’t have the SOS , necessary to feel secure in one self. The clear sense of identity of what and who one is, of what one can and what one can’t do.
2. On the other hand the person uses the action or activity in reallity to fulfill a hidden goal. With this hidden goal he hopes to come closer to fulfilling his long term need, that drives him with an untameble drive. The person isn’t in fact busy with the action or activity itself, with the content of that activity. He only uses that as a vehicle to fulfill his ego-reference and through that action he attempts to satisfy his need (of identity, self-love, SOS). His focus isn’t on the contents but on his need. His intent is geared towards  him or herself. No wonder he feels insecure.
3. A basic sense of insecurity (inferiority complex), which causes this behavior in the first place, adds to his failure fear.

Real-Self is unknown

The drama in this setting is certainly that the PEE is so overwhelming and has caused the crooked growth or the person, that even when becoming aware of the problem, there is no knowledge, no recognizing  of the Real-Self. There is no falling back on something that is there, next to the deviation. The Real Self has stopped development the moment PEE has taken over. This means that the person, in order to have a chance to heal, has to start from scratch with the Self. That means, start as a baby and grow up to be a toddler. Become a child and an adolescent, find an identity and become a young adult. A very challenging process and way of healing. It works; I have done it.

Therapy: Motivation Check

Through guided awareness, the client can learn to recognize certain bodily and mental symptoms. We all know ourselves the best so self-knowledge is one tool; another tool is utmost honesty and integrety towards ourselves.

Among the relevant bodily symptoms the following are most obvious: insomnia, sweating, heartbeat – palpitation; hyperventilation, stress in its many forms, irritation – anger – violence etc.

    *1) proper and improper intrinsic motivation. Not being a native speaker I have a hard time to find the right translation form the Dutch “eigenlijke en oneigenlijke motivatie.” I haven’t been in psychology circles long enough to be able to ask well informed people for their opinion on this. Another option was: pure and impure intrinsic motivation.

Two Dutch Holistic Psychologists ... PK2 Selfmanagement!

 

Paul Kortman and Peter Kemperman are Dutch Holistic Psychologists who have an active practice in the environment of The Hague in the Netherlands, where they guide their clients into Self-knowledge.

“Self-knowledge is a tool against dysfunction and disease” is what they stand for. In order to heal, a person needs to get insight and understanding of what goes on in their own organism. “What body, mind and psyche express is the result of the degree of integrity you are able to apply in manifesting your blueprint. In other words: how true are you being to your Self?”

“Next to the actual ailment or dysfunction our clients consult us for most people get extra’s when we coach them. There are unexpected positive side effects.” As an example Kortman and Kemperman quote the experience of a Manager in a Multinational who consulted them to improve his communication skills. After an intervention of 3 days he left the practice with not only an increased charisma during his presentations but within 3 months the chronic sinusitis that had been bothering him for years had disappeared.

Practicing Holistic Psychological is a recently emerging phenomenon. I am honored to link to my Blog and soon also to my website www.Holispsych.com (english version under construction) the site of Paul Kortman and Peter Kemperman as practicing holistic psychologists. Although we have developed our knowledge and insights totally independently from each other it seems that we cover much of the same topics in much of the same way. This might be taken as a sign that our conclusions are relevant specifically for this day and age.

check them out at: http://www.pk2.nl

On insomnia

Do you suffer from severe or ongoing insomnia? Are you ready to consider that the ultimate cause might actually be an unhealthy ‘Sense of Self’ you developed in childhood? That turned out to be true for me. Check it out!

The inability to fall asleep or stay asleep is an occasional problem for some people, and an ongoing problem for others. It impacts one's life very detrimentally. But we don't have much knowledge about the causes, and for many people the problem  stays unresolved, and the bad consequences continue: irritability, poor concentration, health damage, etc. 

The current medications most often used to treat insomnia are sedatives, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety pills. These can be harmful and addictive because they change your brain chemistry.  More importantly, it seems clear that sleeplessness is a symptom of an underlying problem or misconception and by eliminating this symptom these medications merely mask the underlying cause. This way you not only become dependent on the medication but you don’t ever get in touch with what causes it in the first place. Not knowing what is ‘off’ in your behavior or perceptions you can't work on correcting it and the deeper cause is never truly addressed, leaving room for other ailments and dysfunction.

In my own case of insomnia, which started after the birth of my first child when I was 39 years old, the ‘underlying problem’ also showed up in rage, fear, depression, gum problems, an aching face, and poor concentration. I resisted going to physicians though, because I didn't want to be sedated or medicated. 

Insomnia ruled not only my life, but the lives of my loved ones as well.  I could not hold a job and could not participate in society.  My family of origin would not accept my problem and instead of finding support I encountered rejection. They preferred to pretend ‘all was well in the family’, let alone that there was room for investigation whether and they had any part in causing my problem. And although by now I compassionately understand where they were coming from it was very difficult to be continuously sleep deprived and go through life as if nothing was wrong and honor my own needs to heal my condition.

Since I didn't accept the typical treatments, I had to develop my own. I suspected that there be a reason to my insomnia and that the way to find a solution would be through soul-searching, self-knowledge, introspection, and getting to know my patterns of behavior. I figured that what manifested in the night time would probably be ‘off’ as well during waking hours. In other words: “What was wrong with my overall concept of being and doing during the day that caused me to be unable to let my self be drifted off into sleep at night.”

I did discover the solution! And it has reduced considerably the number of hours that I would lie awake and it has also greatly improved my overall quality of life. Implementing in myself a Restored Sense of Self is a hard and slow process and the insomnia is tough to turn around. It turned out to be a lifelong process as I am still learning every day but it pays off and besides: there is no other option. I HAD and still have to take the time and put in the effort to restore my Sense of Self.

If you too are suffering from occasional or chronic insomnia, I hope you will find my story useful.

First, I discovered that I had two kinds of motivation operating in my life. There was no problem with the motive of wanting to do things for the ordinary benefit one would expect from doing them. But, I discovered I was often motivated to do things for some reason less obvious. I discovered I had a ‘Hidden Agenda’ for doing these things. Worrying about accomplishing my hidden agenda was what was keeping me lying there staring at the ceiling, instead of healthfully sleeping!

So what was my ‘Hidden Agenda?’ It is described at great length elsewhere (www.HolisPsych.com soon to be launched) but in a word, my hidden agenda was that I needed my actions to generate certain particular kinds of results that would make me ‘feel-good-about-myself’ in a very particular kind of way. And I couldn't sleep because unconsciously there was a continuous ‘flight-or-fight mode’ playing as achieving these goals perceived as being of a life threating importance. How could I sleep if I needed to work on those results…?

What was that particular kind of way? My motivation, my hidden agenda, and my insomnia all revolved around my Sense of Self, namely the lack of a healthy Sense of Myself. I believe it is the same for many others, and that the real and unacknowledged ultimate reason for insomnia is a lack of a healthy normal Sense of Self.  The lack of this Sense of Self is the inability to feel like a real, truly existing, autonomous ‘I’ or ‘me,’ INDEPENDENT from the outcome of one’s achievements or behavior.

Let me explain very briefly here how that all plays out.

If a baby or toddler is related to by their parent or primary caretaker as a pawn in that person's inner games, rather than as an independent autonomous being, a healthy Sense of Self cannot develop. The child becomes ‘enmeshed’ in the caretaker's ‘games,’ and the closest the child ever gets to a sense of ‘self’ is the moments of feeling approved of by the caretaker. The child learns to behave, feel and think, in ways whose agenda is getting that approval.

And this is not a casual matter. The alternative to feeling those approval vibes is the feeling of ‘not existing,’ of being a ‘ghost with a body,’ of being invisible to others, not being seen or heard, not having a voice or a face. This feeling is terrifying to a child and we seek to avoid it at all costs. It amounts to feeling ‘annihilated.’  So our motives for doing things to get this approval have life or death importance.  Getting that approval is experienced as a matter of life or death.  Meeting the requirements or conditions we perceive as giving us the approval, becomes the most important thing in life.

It's a simple step to see how the basic anxiety that comes with this dependency on the outcome of one’s achievement or behavior plus the worrying about the daily specifics of getting this approval – considering what's at stake in getting or not getting it – could keep one awake at night!!! So much depends on the outcome of one's actions, choosing the right ones, doing them the right way, pulling the right face at the right moment. We lie awake in fear that the insomnia itself makes that we cannot function adequately, aren't up to all the challenges. We are terrified to end up feeling as if we don't really exist because we don't get the approval we need to feel some semblance of an existing ‘self’.

Meeting the conditions and requirements for getting approval, to feel some kind of ‘existence’ is the ‘Hidden Goal’ of the (Indirect-) Motivation of most of what one does in life. This was true for me, and I suspect is true for many others. 

The outcome of my actions, whether they result in approval or disapproval from the caretaker figure, is a primary concern of life, and I must devote waking and should-be-sleeping hours to engineering the right outcome, on penalty of not existing!!!  Without a strong healthy Sense of Self, this is my fate. I live in fear of being annihilated by lack of approval.  No good outcome of behaving, no feeling of existing!

The problem is that most of this fear and the actual motives and agendas, and the unhealthy nature of the Sense of Self, are all subconscious.  If you want to heal from being deprived, as a child, of healthy ‘mirroring’ by your caretaker who didn’t treat you as a separate autonomous being, then you will need to do a lot of getting to know ‘yourself,’ recognizing patterns, and checking out the nature of the way you experience a ‘self.’

The reward is a lot more than better sleep. The reward is a better life!

If you have a healthy natural normally-developed Sense of Self, or a healed Sense of Self (both are described in the chart in the website www.HolisPsych.com soon to come in the English language) then your sense of Self does not depend on the outcome of your actions.

While medical attention and medications might be necessary steps for some people, it's my contention that the insomnia problem gets truly resolved only by doing whatever changes one’s unhealthy complex of motives and needs that generate the insomnia via feeling threats to one's Sense of Self into healthy (Direct) Motivation.  Not being dependent on the outcome of any action, behavior, or the reflection of others of oneself, but rather standing independently (and ultimately inter-dependently) in the universe, is, I contend, the ultimate and ‘real’ solution to insomnia.

I would like to point out that we have to pay extra attention with a phenomenon that manifests itself as follows: when the parent or caregiver isn’t of real influence anymore, either by relocation or by passing away, her voice has been internalized in the child. It takes a tremendous effort to learn to distinguish what is your own voice and what is your caregivers’ voice. It feels like the voice of the latter is your own and only by emphasizing the question by wondering “is this truly my own opinion?” you may come across some surprises. Even after many years of consciously analyzing my motivation I often was misled believing I voiced my own opinion or judged myself by my own standards whereas it turned out not to be the case: it still was my internalized parent’s voice. I was still judging myself with their criteria!!!

It is vital to one’s health to have a strong and healthy Sense of Self.  As I have experienced it, insomnia is one of many health concerns caused by not having that Sense of Self.  I know it is possible that insomnia can be resolved by fortifying and healing (restoring) one’s Sense of Self, because I did it. A course on how to go about will be offered shortly.

This article is based on the Holistic Psychological theory of HolisPsych.com (founder Annet Vogels).

 Author Alia Aurami and Annet Vogels

 

 

On Butterfly-Hunting and Insomnia



This little story is a metaphor and aims to be an illustration of a particular psycho-emotional make up: the need to achieve certain results through doing particular things which, when done with a good result generate a certain kind of feel-good-about-self  – a feeling that is experienced deep down as a ‘right to exist’ or an overall feeling of being  ‘acknowledged as a person’ and that I therefore call a Substitute Sense-of-Self.

Or, in the technical words of my Holistic Psychological theory, this story is a metaphor for the experience of the need to use an everyday activity or action as a vehicle to repair/correct perceived early-childhood failures in character or behavior in order to satisfy, long past due date, the everlasting craving for the Hidden Goals (or virtual parental approval) that might have led at the time to a healthy Sense of Self but in the present merely generates a Feel-Good-about-Oneself that functions as a Substitute-Sense-of-Self.

The pattern described here results from a less-than-healthy childhood in which the person received from their primary caretaker a sense of not existing independently from  the caretaker's emotional ‘games.’

Every morning, after getting herself and her house ready for the day, Lisa Losos would jump in one of her many vehicles to go out and chase butterflies. She would have her pick among big trucks, vans, jeeps, SUV’s, and cars of all kinds and colors and it really depended on the circumstances of the day,  the weather and where she was planning to head out to, what vehicle she would take.

The net she would use to catch the butterflies was highly personalized in terms of style and decorations (Ego-References). The butterflies she aimed at were all of the same family: the MOD-butterfly. They were actually quite plain but Lisa remembered clearly that those were the ones her mother used to like and it somehow seemed to give her a huge satisfaction if she was able to catch one, even though her mother was long gone. She actually never wondered if she liked them so much herself nor did she envision the option to catch the truly beautiful colorful ones.

Each day, with the net held in one hand out of the lowered window, she drove in whatever direction she sensed might be favorable for her enterprise. She would be full hope and happily motivated in the morning but in the back of her mind there was the awareness that she couldn’t afford to come home with an empty jar. She would feel terrible believing her day had been useless and that now she wasn't even a real person!

She didn’t make money selling her butterflies, and she didn’t eat them. Instead, somehow, the amount of caught butterflies reflected for her that she as a person was successful and that she was a valuable contribution to the world.

So every time she caught a butterfly, she felt good about herself and at night when looking back at the day that was what she felt when contemplating her collection. In some vague way she felt she had lived up to an expectation. She didn’t know who had put that expectation into her, but she sure felt so much better when she was able to live up to it – it was almost as if she got permission to ‘be.’

No wonder she worked like mad to make it happen, to come home with a jar filled with moving wings. In a way she was addicted to this way of living cause because every butterfly caught represented a certain amount of feel-good-about-herself. Every little butterfly represented for her – even though she didn't realize this consciously – a permission to be in existence.

But there was more to this situation than good feelings. Some of the feelings were very unpleasant. The moment she actually caught some butterflies she always got really anxious they would die overnight and then they wouldn’t count anymore toward feeling-good-about-herself and she would have to go hunting all over again. She'd lie awake worrying about that. Her mind figured that by staying awake as long as possible, the benefits of today's butterflies could be prolonged!

Another reason for staying awake was the anticipation of tomorrow's hunt. After all, it was a stressful task to have to come home with a full jar over and over! A job never finished! And there were moments in which she wondered how on earth to make that happen. Where would she find enough butterflies?

Then there were other worrying thoughts as well: “How could she hunt successfully when there was so much else to do, or when she was not feeling well enough to go out hunting?” Sometimes she simply threw up her hands in despair saying “Enough is enough! I won’t do it anymore!” But that thought was also far from reassuring. Anxiety would hit her in the night and the adrenaline rush of fear would prevent her from getting the sleep necessary to be fit and well-rested to go on the butterfly hunt again.

Then she'd find herself in a vicious cycle of fear and desperate butterfly hunting. Her compulsion to be successful thwarted generated rage, and sometimes even depression, which aggravated her insomnia. The struggle to get out of the claws of those feelings would swallow all her time which made her insomnia even worse. She wasn't consciously aware of it but at some point her whole identity was tied up in the success of her butterfly-hunting; deep down she felt it was the only thing which gave her life a meaning.

Dear Reader, can you imagine how Lisa would feel if she ever woke up to a healthy sense of who she was and always had had an option to be and that all she had been doing with her life was – chasing butterflies?

 

 

Short Overview Holistic Psychological Model

Concise overview of the Holistic Psychological Model specifically targeted to the field of Alcohol and Drug Addiction.

This Blog post aims at revealing the crux of my newly developed approach to solving issues of dysfunction in several areas of life: physical, mental and emotional health, issues with addictive and compulsive behavior, social issues from divorce, child rearing and education to matters of politics and WAR. 

The thesis is: The lack of a natural Sense-of-Self is the cause of numerous human suffering. An extensive website is under construction which will contain all the details of this psychological model. The time has come that so many people are in need of taking their healing in their own hands and that is exactly what this work aims at. It helps you to understand how my psyche worked and how I was able to bring about important change. What you need is complete honesty towards yourself and patience and endurance to bring about the change you always tried to implement.

The key concept in my approach is the concept of the importance of a healthy Sense of Self as opposed to the absence of one, or what I call: a lack of Sense of Self.

Thesis:

a) A Lack of Sense-of-Self can be the cause of a great deal of human suffering.

b) Addiction and compulsion can be the direct result of a Lack of Sense-of-Self.

c) Healing this condition is a prerequisite for being successful in healing alcoholism and drug addiction.

In order to get a clear view on what the theory is based on I need to speak about three different topics: the Sense-of Self-concept, Motivation and Pathology.  The 4^th one is ‘Tree-analogy’ and is meant as an illustrational aspect and imagination aid.

I distinguish three types of Sense of Self: the healthy Natural Sense-of-Self, the unhealthy Lack of Sense-of-Self which is a condition that for a person leads to a great deal of trouble of various kind and a Restored Sense-of-Self, realizable through exercise and practice. Once the Sense-of-Self is restored most of the problems caused by a Lack of Sense-of-Self will be automatically eliminated. A Lack of Sense-of-Self is caused by insufficient acknowledgment of the person as an autonomous and potentially independent human being early on in his life.

I will speak about Motivation and distinguish a Direct and an Indirect Motivation. The nature of Motivation reveals a great deal about the presence or the absence of a Sense of Self in a person. We will speak about Hidden Agenda points, Ego-References and the experiencing of a state of Feel-good-about-Self as a Substitute Sense-of-Self. In the theory a great number of new terminology has been developed but for this short overview we will limit ourselves to the basic concepts.

Pathology is a section that we will shortly touch on only to give a small indication of what might all be affected in a positive way by Restoring the Sense of Self

Tree-analogy: For a better visualization of the process involved in the insufficient mirroring of the child that ends up with a Lack of Sense-of-Self an analogy is used, with the formation, growth and development of the shape of trees.

Is Alcoholism a hereditary disease or a personal, avoidable problem?

As I am working my way through the one and only booklet that seems to be a guideline for gathering knowledge on what the facts are about alcoholism and which dates from 1981, Under the Influence*, I can’t still help to feel the need to publish my personal opinion. When I first started to look into this subject, shortly after the death of my brother Pim in 2003, who suffered a terrible death as a diabetic and severely addicted alcoholic, I was strongly opinionated against the ‘disease model’ , suspecting deeper and more informative reasons for the self-destructive behavior of the alcoholic.

I had started some 20 years before that incident, to try to make sense of the experiences of myself and of those of my brother. My brother’s death and my own severe insomnia and other difficulties in daily life, heavy problems of 2 of the 5 members of my family of origin, motivated me to draw my very own conclusions that I wish to share on this webpage.

As I reread (in 2010) ‘Under the Influence’ I find, compared to my initial reading in 2003, much more value in the answers the author gives to the so fiercely debated question whether alcohol is a disease for which one is to be pitied rather than to be blamed or a situation that can be avoided by taking one’s personal responsibility.

I am impressed with the explanations of the chemical reactions in the body that requires a lot of knowledge that I don’t have. I accept that and am grateful for the information. However the concept that I have been suspected to be and stay absent in the common ways it is understood why some people are/become alcoholics and others don’t  is indeed still not mentioned and based on that fact I presume, unknown.

I consider it my duty to shed a light on it from the position where I am in: a former insomniac who lost her brother to alcoholism and has experienced a great number of other problems, both in my own life as well as in my family of origin.

This page has a place in the work about ‘Holistic Psychology’, because I believe that for many persons the root cause of alcoholism may lay in the subject that is dealt with in this work and be one and the same, as it is a root cause for an enormous number of human suffering: a lack of Sense of Self.

For full understanding of what a Lack of Sense of Self entices and the impact it has on the development of a person and subsequently on her quality of life, I invite you to look into the explanations as they are presented in this work and website. The subject is complex and in this stage I am unable to give a satisfactory short overview of its content in order to create a short cut to full understanding.

First you do have to spend some time taking in the concepts presented in this Holistic Psychological Model and then my statement hereunder on how this applies to alcoholism will make sense to you:

A Lack of Sense of Self is a psycho-emotional but invisible problem. Therefore we can’t clearly distinguish what is the difference between an alcoholic and a non-alcoholic. However the question really comes down to, as admitted in ‘Under the Influence’ as well: What is the difference between a person who has the power, the will to stop drinking and obey the physical signs of ‘enough’ by ceasing to take in more alcoholic beverages and a person who ignores those bodily signs.

There are two groups of people (after therapy there are three): individuals with a strong Sense of Self and those without a Sense of Self.  Now for the latter the challenges of listening to ‘themselves’ , obeying signs of their bodies, are gigantic:

-   There is no Self to listen to; there is no Self to interpret signs of the body either

-   The person with a Lack of Sense of Self’s problems are very basic and lay on a deep psycho-emotional level. His or her need to hide in the world of alcohol (and drugs) is great, greater as for those who have a Sense of Self which enables them to take charge of situations, whatever bad they are at some point. For them the ‘I’ is present at some point to pick up the pieces and make changes.

The person with a Lack of Sense of Self has a lack of concrete understanding of his or her own particular condition; there is no willpower as there is no active subject to exert the willpower all together.

-   As a result there is a catch 22 condition: due to the inaccessibility of the problem the person keeps on hiding in alcohol which aggravates the condition as physical addiction kicks in.

In short I would like to state that, contrary to what the above mentioned book proclaims, it being that there would be no mysterious X-factor that sheds a light on the question of why some people are predisposed to become alcoholics, there actually is one. It is the absence of a (Natural) Sense of Self.

*Milam, Ph.D. James R., & Ketcham, Katherine (1981). Under the Influence, a guide to the myths and realities of Alcoholism. New York: Bantam Books

Dependency on work

I found out I am totally dependent for my sense of identity on the outcome of my achievements. Many years ago it was my work as a bassoonist in a top class classical orchestra. At the birth of my first child I was struck by insomnia and I had to work out the problem. I found I was dependent on my work as a musician for my sense of self.

Now 25 years later, I have untangled most of the knots in my brain but I find that now I'm dependent on sharing my knowledge because, "Who am I without being seen and heard by somebody? Who am I without effectively helping somebody?” I haven't grown into the disposition yet that I want to help somebody for the sake of that somebody but I want to help somebody so I can feel good about myself. I want to help somebody so I can be admired, thanked, paid, acknowledged.

Today I found out that everything in my life now is centered around making myself problem free, not to get the love of my mother anymore, but so I can work as I perceive that to be my only vehicle for being seen and heard. I travel a lot so there is a lot of interference in my work activity. I am writing a website but over and over again it is interrupted due to my travels. To a certain degree I could continue my work during those travels but I fear that it's due to my dependency and me getting out of whack every time I settle into a new environment, that in practical life it doesn't really work that way. I have to get into balance every time over and over again both with my sleeping patterns that are disrupted by jet lag and by a recurrent eye-migraine that indicates lots of stress in my brain. The eye-migraine points to the places where have to look into. It actually prevents me from working on the computer because the glare of the screen frightens me and keeps me in fear to get this eye-migraine, not for my own health but because it interferes with my ability to work! It's not a major ailment but it drains my energy quite a lot and besides it's not healthy, it shows that something is off.

As I have resolved most issues from the past (I don't say all) I actually was at my wit's end because I didn't think there was something left. As I was pondering desperately, wondering if I needed help, I remembered how I got all upset yesterday, screaming: "I am so scared that I can't work, that I can't function! Who am I if I can't work? My worst fear is that I have to be at home all by myself and my life will consist only of dealing with all the trivial household things. My worst fear is ‘being average’, to not standout, to not contribute to the world."

I felt that since I had been home from my travels my hands were icy cold every time I was working on getting myself in shape to work on my website.  The moment I thought I was there an eye- migraine popped up. So I was back to zero again. Again I wasn't in a good shape to work. And then the truth dawned on me that after all these years in which I had managed to get rid of many symptoms, there still was this one dependency: my complete dependency on my work as an out-of-the-box thinker in psychology.

I still have to learn that I AM not through my work. I still have to answer the question every minute: "Who am I without my website?" and convince myself with the answer: I am me. I just have to be me. I just have to be: ME. I should not be the slave of my work but enjoy the 'living experience', go out in the sun, read a book, do trivial things if that actually gives me joy and admit it. I am not there for my work! I have to be happy to live my life, I have to appreciate the gift of life!

I don't need a vehicle for my sense of self. I don't need a vehicle as a substitute sense of self. I am my ultimate vehicle and my energy should be geared towards myself, wondering what I want or what needs to be done. I should not wake up, happy that I slept so my condition is good enough to work. I should wake up, happy that I slept so my quality of life is finally better.

And yes I can fool myself for a minute, three minutes, an hour, for three days, for a week or for a couple of months, forcing myself to abstain from working to ultimately do that only to use ‘getting in touch with myself’ to get in shape to work again. The mind is 'tricky'! So I have to be very alert not to fool myself because ultimately I do myself a disservice. It may feel as if I'm more alive when working on ‘my vehicle to be seen and heard’, my website, my blog-entries, ultimately I flourish more if I use that energy to cultivate the plant that's ME.

So I shouldn't have written this article may be, because it feeds my need to be seen and heard, to work towards being acknowledged. Ideally I should actually first ‘be there’ and then choose to work or not. However I was unable to discipline myself and so here it is. It also is an exercise though in being honest to myself, not fooling myself, acknowledging my need and direct it towards true self care.

My hands are still nice and warm...

 

A Direct versus an Indirect Relationship with your Self

Throughout the majority of my life I had an “indirect” relationship with myself. An indirect relationship is where you experience your Self through achievements, e.g. conditions to fulfill, tasks to complete, or trying to be perfect. I am currently working on having a “direct” relationship with myself.

Recently I had awareness of this while driving to the hair salon. As I noticed that I would be late for the appointment, I was overcome with stress, to the point where I found it difficult to drive. After 25 years of introspection I finally came to realize that this stress, although it had the appearance of being related to the fear of missing the appointment, was actually way out of proportion with the actual circumstances.  It had to be about something else, something hitherto unknown to me, at least consciously. I decided to not so much pay attention to the symptoms of the stress, such as heart beats, sweating, dry mouth, tight throat, which was quite a challenge. Instead I forced myself to look as deep as I could into myself as this stress obviously came from a place, where there was more at stake than simply missing an appointment. What I found was that I once again, was dependent on the outcome of an action for my Sense of Self (SoS), to feel-good-about-myself.  There they were again, the thoughts and feelings of failure: “I screwed it up, I’m late again. It’s the same old story. I’ve done this for so many years. I can never be on time”…

In that very moment, I decided to just simply stop being dependent on the outcome of actions for feeling-good-about-myself.  As I had I recognized that I seemed to have an obligation towards myself to always feel-good-about-myself, I should stop let that depend on conditions outside myself and not jeopardize the quality of my life anymore with extraneous stress. Wasn’t it ridiculous that I was blaming myself for something that in reality is not even a big deal while punishing myself by feeling-bad-about-myself but in a way that went all the way to my core? Furthermore I realized that there will always be a multitude of circumstances that I cannot control. It is sheer madness to let myself be dependent for my Sense of Self (SoS) upon the outcome of my actions. And it’s not a real SoS but it’s more like a substitute Sense of Self (SSoS). I definitely have to stop using the outcome of my activities, as a mirror in which I can look at myself to determine whether I have a right of existence or not. I need to administer to myself here and now and for ever what I so desperately seem to need: to feel-good-about-myself!

As I, personally, lack a sense of self, overtime I have filled this hole with substitutes, in the search for structure in my life. Where else do you base your decisions on, in what else do you anchor your criteria? There are so many conditions that I have to live up to. Being on time to an appointment or class is one of them. The condition of arriving on time to an appointment fulfills then the function of structure-in-my-life and as such is responsible for how I feel-about-my-self. How I-feel-about-myself- in its turn is then a substitute for the lacking SoS as there is no other SoS. That’s why I call it a Substitute SoS.  When I fulfill the requirements (that are all self-imposed, but also there is more to that one, but not for discussion within the scope of this article*) at least I have a positive- sense-of-myself by feeling-good that I arrived on time. That is how it used to be for me.

A “direct” relationship with yourself, as opposed to an “indirect” one, as described above, is not dependent on these outside circumstances. In a “direct” relationship with yourself you experience, feel, sense yourself from within. You stand completely behind yourself at all times, knowing that you are alive and have the right to exist. This, as opposed to perceiving yourself as a bodily ghost, which although being physically alive, isn’t acknowledged as a living being by others. Having a “direct” connection with yourself is living in the present, and doing an action for the sake of the action, rather than because of a dependency on the outcome.

An example: a music-fan can recognize when a musician has trained for years, but places his or her sense of self dependent on playing. If the musician uses the performance as a “task” for himself, a compulsive need to find out over and over again whether his performance allows him to feel-good-about himself, the fan knows.  It comes across in the music and is picked up on by the listener. The music, in spite of being technically OK,  sounds as if something is “missing,” a passion maybe, and a sense of the musician being present in the actual action of making music itself, rather than being preoccupied with flattering/comforting the substitute Self.

Essentially, living with an “indirect” relationship with yourself is using activities as “vehicles” to sense yourself and to feel alive. It is comparable to a person cutting herself in order to experience herself through the pain…

Needless to say here that it’s not the real thing. We must work on strengthening our actual Sense of Selves (SoS) to replace this substitute sense of Self (SSoS). As I am sharing with you my findings in this article I am in the process of trying to cut out using activities as a vehicle to feel-good-about-myself. This is trickier than you think, because this very article is highly prone to be one as well and therefore writing it is quite a challenge. It helps me though to stay aware and to find back my real SoS within, over and over again, until it becomes a habit; one could say that I am “reconditioning my unconscious mind”  towards  having an unconditional support within myself, rather than a conditional self-acceptance that depends on every “task” I create for myself.

If you are interested in this subject and would like to learn more about it, please visit my website at www.Holispsych.com . However until further notice it is under construction for the moment.  I am working on it…If you really want to discuss this or need help feel free to contact me at Annette@holispsych.com

With thanks to Audrey for her contributions in the editing.

All rights reserved 2009

The allegory of The Castle of Enmeshment

  The allegory of The Castle of Enmeshment

Far away, in a country hidden in a valley covered by fog, lies a village called Struggletown. It’s a village like any other and most villagers live a reasonably happy life: they work, do what needs to be done and on the weekends they usually find small pockets of time to do what they truly enjoy. Some people make instruments on which they make music to which others sing and dance; others carve wood or sculpt. There are philosopher meet-ups and horse races. Some women keep themselves occupied with embroideries and others play games with their children.

A small group of inhabitants however feels restless and unhappy. The people in that specific group are physically naked and under a lot of stress. They seem to be missing normal clothes, like the ones the other villagers wear, but they don’t have the faintest idea why. They hardly ever come out of their hiding places and keep themselves compulsively busy with all kinds of soul searching hoping to get to the root of this problem. Ever since birth these unhappy individuals have heard people whisper about the Queen of MOD, who lives in the Castle of Enmeshment, on top of a very steep and rocky mountain. She has a factory in the basement of Her Castle that produces plain, flesh colored body suits that cover up their nakedness. With artistic skill, the bodysuits are painted in such a way, that they look just like normal clothes but in reality though, the jackets, pants, skirts and cardigans are like the faux finish furniture and chandeliers on the walls of The Castle: only painted on. Nevertheless the people who have visited The Castle and have a suit like that don’t have to hide anymore and can come down to the village, being able to mingle with the other villagers as they almost, though not quite, look like them as. From afar there is no visible difference between the clothes of the normal villagers and the fake suits from The Castle. Up close though, the naked villagers fear the imitation   may be visible. Therefore they have to make sure at all times to not let anybody come to close, or worse, let anyone touch them, lest their beautiful outfits would be discovered as false.

The Queen of Mod had put in place quite a number of specific requirements in order for the villagers to qualify for these suits. They had to travel to The Castle while making sure that the flow-of-feel-good stays was guaranteed.  The flow-of-feel-good refers to a type of energy field that must, at all times, be sustained between the applicants for the suits and the Queen of Mod. It is generally known that the Queen depends for Her well-being fully on being continuously pampered by vibes that make her feel-good-about-Herself and She really does make sure that everyone who enters The Castle is feeling the responsibility of meeting her needs in the matter. In fact any visitor who enters The Castle feels almost crushed under the pressure of manipulating his or her own feelings in favor of generating vibes –of-feel-good-ones to the Queen. Too much is at stake for them, now isn’t there?

Halfway The Castle there is the House of Ego-References, where the naked villagers have to pick up one or more tasks that they are then required to carry out to perfection, without complaining. These tasks consist of certain behaviors: they are to avoid creating or experiencing any tension whatsoever, they must be happy at all times and can never be late. They are not allowed to experience conflicts or disagreements with others. They are not to have sleeping problems and must have time enough to chat while completing their tasks at perfection. They cannot be sick or have money problems and must never complain about anything, while making sure they perform better than the normal villagers.

When finally a desperate naked villager is able to fulfill all these conditions and actually does arrive at the castle in good shape, fresh and fit, without any problems or lack of money, well fed with rosy cheeks and a smile on their face, even though his task was very hard to accomplish, then the Queen of Mod would open the doors to Her Castle of Enmeshment and the villager is allowed in. However if there are any interferences or small hindrances or the villager doesn’t feel so good about the way his task is performed and his face shows that, the Queen of Mod will deny him access to The Castle.  Even though he would grovel, promising improvement, the door simply is not opened and the poor villager has to crawl all the way back home to his hiding place, to ponder about how to go about to realize his unavoidable next trip to the Queen of Mod, holder of the suits.  

Once inside the castle, the fortunate villager is well received and experiences a sense of homecoming, even though the conditions remain the same at all times: he must keep up the appearance of not having any problems and  he must keep the Flow-of-Feel-Good going so the Queen of Mod can feel good about Her Castle, Her hospitality, in short about Herself.

After a few days in the Castle, the naked villager is provided with what he comes for: the plain body suit that looks like a normal outfit.

The situation never is safe though, things can take a turn for the bad at any given moment: a hindrance, an obstacle in The Flow-of-Feel-Good, or if the villager makes a mistake or even if the Queen herself does something that interferes with the good atmosphere makes that She explodes in a terrible temper tantrum and Her yelling would shatter the windows of the Castle. When that happens the villager is kicked out of The Castle and his painted body suit disappears into thin air as if by a trick of black magic. The shocked and shaken villager, naked again, hides as quick as he can and has to find his way back to his dwelling in such a way as not to be seen by others. He then spends some days mourning the loss of his suit and of his efforts and then embarks on the journey to The Castle anew…

Meanwhile the other inhabitants of Struggletown have no idea what is going on in the lives of the naked ones. They just sense that something is different, is “off”, and so they don’t really include the naked ones in their daily lives, even when they are wearing the painted body suit. That makes the body-suit-people feel excluded and lonely. On top of that they are under a lot of stress to make sure that The- Flow-of-Feel-Good towards the Queen is sustained. They walk on egg shells to not make mistakes and work hard to keep the appearances going because they are always at risk that their suits are being taken away from them.

At times when the unfortunate villagers find themselves losing everything againjust as they are about to enter The Castle, they break down and are overcome by rage. That causes them to commit crimes and bad acts towards others. It even happens that they kill themselves or their families or that they burn down their own or other people’s houses out of desperation. No, Queen of Mod, as holder of the suits, is never their target, although She would be the one who deserves it. They need her.

One day, a naked villager, who had spent an enormous amount of time and energy thinking about his peculiar way of living, and who had been rejected by the Queen many a time, found himself exhausted and at his wits’ end when he was struck by a mind altering thought: “What if I just make my own clothes, just like the other villagers do. It is strange”, he pondered. “It is strange that I have never thought of that solution before, but I guess my mind wasn’t set up to envision that possibility.” He recognized that since birth, his people had been the naked ones. They were brought with the unquestioned idea that they to get their clothes in an indirect way, through the Queen and through fulfilling tasks and conditions for Her. “So we focused our all out attention and spent all our energy on pleasing the Queen. It never occurred to us that we have the option of providing in our need for clothes ourselves, and the real ones too! We ourselves can meet our needs in a direct way! I can wear whatever clothes I choose.” 

He pondered this new concept for a long time as he sensed the vastness of the impact of this insight. Then he concluded, still in awe, “I guess our minds just were not able to generate the concept of that possibility because it wasn’t put in there in the first place. What  creatures of habit we are!”

The villager had to collect all his courage to face the fears of going through town with his first self made clothes…but as he grew more skillful in cutting the fabric and sewing the parts together, his fear lessened and eventually subsided all together. He had broken out of the prison of his own mind and opened himself to normal life; he was finally free.

Read for cloths: Sense of Self

 

With thanks for joyful contributions to Audrey Brown and Marielle Higler

Our Hidden Goals are what keeps the War going

Today, as I was struggling for peace of mind and tranquility in my soul by trying to find a balance between ‘me doing’ and ‘me being’, I thought how wonderful it would be if I were strong enough to stand up against the drive that keeps me in the ’doing’ mode most of the day.

However from experience I know that battling my Hidden Goal to become a wonderful and gifted musician requires as much power as to try to stop a hurricane. Still I have made a lot of improvement over the years which have lead to big positive changes in my life. I am not so easily infuriated or frustrated anymore; I don’t yell at my kids as I used to and treat them as beloved human beings; my husband doesn’t have to cover up with love the black spots in my behavior anymore and is treated as a respected friend and companion.

Through all this I came to the conclusion that peace in the world is served tremendously with us human beings getting in touch, becoming aware of what is the ultimate drive behind our actions.  What lies at the roots of what we have become and of where we are heading.  Why is what we aim for so important to us that we sacrifice our marriages, the wellbeing of our children to get things the way we perceive we need them to be.
Most people are of the opinion that if we only could find solutions to the many conflicts we would decrease the amount of violence in the world. They spend their time and energy in all kinds of creative or less creative ways to solve the conflicts, only to notice that if one is solved, a next one would arise and they have to start from scratch.

In general a conflict provokes emotions in people. I have found that the way we deal with the emotional side effect of the conflict is usually not addressed and maybe because that aspect seems hard to be influenced.  However it is clear that if we react to things from a mind and heart that are well balanced we will be able to contribute in a much more positive way to the process of problem solving than when we are upset or even enraged.
The way that state can be reached is by looking inside ourselves. Understanding what we are after in our lives and what are the reasons to that specific goal. And here I have to let everybody know that the utmost honesty towards oneself is required here, because deep down inside we are the only ones that know what we are after. We have to stop fooling ourselves by pretend reasons.

We have to get to the point to find the courage to face our trauma’s, hurts, failures once more with an open mind to be able to deduct how those experiences or perceived experiences have shaped our drive, our motivation to compensate these experiences whatever it takes. We then can clearly see how we have come to identify with these compensation strategies in such a way that we can’t afford to fail in making them work at the cost of losing our sense of identity.  This connection also implies that we stay stuck in the past as the strategy we developed as a reaction to a trauma may have been valid in the past but doesn’t serve us in the present. Because we are so caught up and identified with these Hidden Goals we are blind for what happens now. We become the slave of a strategy that is not well adjusted to the moment.

Succeeding in our Hidden Mission is all we can think of at the cost of causing numerous hurts to others and even at the cost of our own happiness.  Our mood may seem joyous at the surface because we have learned to be good in pretending but deep down we are angry and frustrated.  That mood seeps through in the way we react on situations and conflicts, be it with our spouses, our children, our employees or bosses. It doesn’t take much imagination to extend this thought to the soldiers who are actually fighting in the wars and who are detached from their personal environment in which the social code keeps them within acceptable boundaries.

Instead of acting out on others our rage or failure fear concerning our self imposed Hidden Missions we must take responsibility and invest time and effort in discovering what those Hidden Missions are so we can deal with them in a constructive way.

I suggest we implement a training program in the schools so children learn from early on the skill of getting in touch with the ultimate Motivation that drives us humans to become who we are when growing up. Only when we are able to become the master of our drives we will stand a real chance to become who we choose to be. And don’t we all want love and peace?

So help the world by working out your issues, by looking into your Hidden Goals. Learn to be in the moment as in the past there is nothing you can do.

STOP THE WAR; dismantle your Hidden Goals!