Wednesday, September 17, 2014
My birthday this past Sunday was memorable partly due to the fact that I finally spoke to my former 'online boyfriend' on the phone. I cannot recall the last time we had spoken. I believe it might have been some time in April or May.
Mark lives in Florida. We have still never met in person. We met online and began talking on the phone. I consider him a good and loyal friend. Last Sunday I found out that Mark had been in a coma for part of the summer that is now ending. To learn about this on any day would be difficult enough. To learn about it on my birthday made the day a bit surreal.
There has been a persistent pattern throughout my life thus far in which the people I come to develop deep bonds with vanish from my life unexpectedly. The pattern started early when my mother became ill with schizophrenia. I lost her when I was a very small boy. Somewhere in my child mind I suppose I crafted a story to explain what happened to me in a way I could handle. The storyline I crafted was 'people do not stick around'.
Future events continued to confirm this storyline. When I nearly lost my father at the age of eight years old I became very withdrawn, bitter, angry and fearful. It boggles my mind a bit now that a child of eight years of age can actually feel something like bitterness. But it is apparently possible to experience qualities of being and feeling that a person would typically associate with adulthood. I remember recounting these feelings of bitterness and sadness to my therapist in a recent session. He acknowledged my feelings and helped me to feel a bit less alienated by subsequently recounting how he once had a six year old boy who was so distraught and fed up with life that he wanted to kill himself. Yes, you read that right! Can you even conceive of a child of such a young age wanting to kill himself? It doesn't seem possible, right?
Children who are traumatized very early in their lives can ultimately end up carrying such a burden of pain, alienation and, yes, even despair. I was one such child. But I held my darkness in and kept smiling outwardly. I felt positively compelled to smile or at least behave in a way to convince others that nothing was wrong because I felt my very survival depended on it.
By the time I reached the age of legal adulthood the expectation that people would constantly leave my life and prove unreliable became a deeply buried, unconscious core belief. I believe it correct to claim that the lives we live are an 'out-picturing' of the deepest beliefs we hold about ourselves, others and the world. By 'out-picturing' I mean to say that the tangible reality of our life is a mirror of our inner world. If we believe that people are unreliable, cruel, self-absorbed and the like we will tend to (often unconsciously) effortlessly bring people into our lives whose ways of living and being in the world will only confirm the validity of our deeply held beliefs. It thus seems to follow that if we want to truly heal our lives we must become conscious of these unconscious storylines and beliefs about ourselves that are not only untrue but highly dysfunctional and destructive. If we want peace in the world beyond our skin and bones we must create peace within our bodies. The outside mirrors the inside.
I have come to believe that my own future peace, happiness and joy is radically contingent on my ability to remove these previously deeply held and unconscious beliefs that I first developed in childhood. Becoming conscious of the existence of these beliefs is the very important step. Once you become conscious of them you can then attend to them.
When I learned that Mark was in a coma this past summer I felt something like a slap to my face. Suddenly this deeply held belief that 'people will not stick around in my life (so why bother)' was, in a sense, right before my face. It's as if I could feel the very belief taking on material form before my very eyes. I could somehow feel the burdensome weight of carrying around this painful belief.
I love Mark dearly and wish him well regardless of where his life carries him and where mine leads me. I don't know what my future will be but I do believe the time is now to continue to do the heavy lifting of therapy such that these old beliefs can finally be uncovered, acknowledged, attended to and released. My very future depends on what I believe about myself and what I believe is possible.
And the same is true for all of you who are reading this! As I recall my friend Mark Hollenstein once saying in his voicemail greeting 'Make it a great day!' You have the power to make it a great day. Do you believe you do?
My birthday this past Sunday was memorable partly due to the fact that I finally spoke to my former 'online boyfriend' on the phone. I cannot recall the last time we had spoken. I believe it might have been some time in April or May.
Mark lives in Florida. We have still never met in person. We met online and began talking on the phone. I consider him a good and loyal friend. Last Sunday I found out that Mark had been in a coma for part of the summer that is now ending. To learn about this on any day would be difficult enough. To learn about it on my birthday made the day a bit surreal.
There has been a persistent pattern throughout my life thus far in which the people I come to develop deep bonds with vanish from my life unexpectedly. The pattern started early when my mother became ill with schizophrenia. I lost her when I was a very small boy. Somewhere in my child mind I suppose I crafted a story to explain what happened to me in a way I could handle. The storyline I crafted was 'people do not stick around'.
Future events continued to confirm this storyline. When I nearly lost my father at the age of eight years old I became very withdrawn, bitter, angry and fearful. It boggles my mind a bit now that a child of eight years of age can actually feel something like bitterness. But it is apparently possible to experience qualities of being and feeling that a person would typically associate with adulthood. I remember recounting these feelings of bitterness and sadness to my therapist in a recent session. He acknowledged my feelings and helped me to feel a bit less alienated by subsequently recounting how he once had a six year old boy who was so distraught and fed up with life that he wanted to kill himself. Yes, you read that right! Can you even conceive of a child of such a young age wanting to kill himself? It doesn't seem possible, right?
Children who are traumatized very early in their lives can ultimately end up carrying such a burden of pain, alienation and, yes, even despair. I was one such child. But I held my darkness in and kept smiling outwardly. I felt positively compelled to smile or at least behave in a way to convince others that nothing was wrong because I felt my very survival depended on it.
By the time I reached the age of legal adulthood the expectation that people would constantly leave my life and prove unreliable became a deeply buried, unconscious core belief. I believe it correct to claim that the lives we live are an 'out-picturing' of the deepest beliefs we hold about ourselves, others and the world. By 'out-picturing' I mean to say that the tangible reality of our life is a mirror of our inner world. If we believe that people are unreliable, cruel, self-absorbed and the like we will tend to (often unconsciously) effortlessly bring people into our lives whose ways of living and being in the world will only confirm the validity of our deeply held beliefs. It thus seems to follow that if we want to truly heal our lives we must become conscious of these unconscious storylines and beliefs about ourselves that are not only untrue but highly dysfunctional and destructive. If we want peace in the world beyond our skin and bones we must create peace within our bodies. The outside mirrors the inside.
I have come to believe that my own future peace, happiness and joy is radically contingent on my ability to remove these previously deeply held and unconscious beliefs that I first developed in childhood. Becoming conscious of the existence of these beliefs is the very important step. Once you become conscious of them you can then attend to them.
When I learned that Mark was in a coma this past summer I felt something like a slap to my face. Suddenly this deeply held belief that 'people will not stick around in my life (so why bother)' was, in a sense, right before my face. It's as if I could feel the very belief taking on material form before my very eyes. I could somehow feel the burdensome weight of carrying around this painful belief.
I love Mark dearly and wish him well regardless of where his life carries him and where mine leads me. I don't know what my future will be but I do believe the time is now to continue to do the heavy lifting of therapy such that these old beliefs can finally be uncovered, acknowledged, attended to and released. My very future depends on what I believe about myself and what I believe is possible.
And the same is true for all of you who are reading this! As I recall my friend Mark Hollenstein once saying in his voicemail greeting 'Make it a great day!' You have the power to make it a great day. Do you believe you do?
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I invite you to accompany me as I document my own journey of healing. My blog is designed to offer inspiration and solace to others. If you find it of value I welcome you to share it with others. Aloha!