Читать книгу The Woman's Book of Resilience - Beth Miller - Страница 10

not that one, this one 4

I WILL DISCOVER AND GET MY NEEDS MET

These days, though, I'm letting my real taste, or lack of it,whatever, show through. These days I look at the sample thatthe painter who knows so much about color is saying lookswonderful and I think, “Well, no, not wonderful, not to me.”

—ADAIR LARA

ONE DAY RECENTLY I saw a woman fall. I was walking with a friend on a busy city street, when, as if in slow motion, the woman walking just ahead of us missed her step on a curb and fell flat on her face. The fall must have taken her by complete surprise. She didn't shield it with her hands; instead she fell forcefully. I watched her head bounce on the sidewalk.

I hurried over to her, bent down, and asked if I might help. Without even looking at me, she said no, she was fine, thank you. And then she simply got up and walked away. My heart was still beating fast; I couldn't imagine how she was okay.

My friend and I continued our walking down the street. A block away we met the woman returning from her quick errand. She had a huge “egg” on her head, visibly throbbing and already every shade of black and purple, as well as serious abrasions on both her arms. It was obvious she was far from okay.

The experience led me to reflect on my own experiences of falling (in all senses of the word), as well as the experiences of so many other women I have known. I particularly remember lamenting the common feeling of humiliation, especially if the “fall” happened in public. Not focused on whether we were physically hurt, needed medical attention or just love and support, or even a moment or two to simply recollect ourselves before getting up, we worried about being humiliated and embarrassed.

And another story of like kind: I was walking, semi-hurriedly, to the bathroom in a crowded movie theatre, knowing I'd have to face a line. As I neared the bathroom, a couple in front of me, walking oddly and slowly, blocked my way. I could not get around them. The woman of the couple was also headed to the bathroom, and indeed there was a line, so I queued up behind her.

Now, for the first time, I could see her face, which was contorted in agony. She was obviously not just experiencing mild discomfort but real physical pain. When she noticed me looking at her, she explained that she had had to go to the bathroom for a half-hour but hadn't wanted to miss any of the movie. Sensing her real distress, I suggested that she go to the head of the line.

She didn't respond—just continued to stand there in her private pain. Then she looked at me pleadingly and said, not exactly to me but as if she was speaking out loud to herself, “I can't stand this.”

“My God,” I said, “please, go plead your case to the woman in front or try the men's room,” which was right across the hallway. Again she appeared not even to register my words. By this time she was standing with her legs pressed together tightly and her face crunched in pure agony.

Just as I was beginning to feel truly unnerved, she blurted out, “I cannot do this! I have to find another bathroom,” and turned and walked away in a very slow, clumsy, pigeon-toed way, her inner thighs pressed together. She briefly stopped to look into the men's room for her male friend and then walked on.

For reasons I will never know, this woman simply could not or would not ask for help, could not or would not make her needs and situation known, even to take care of a very real biological need. As I reflect back on the scene, I imagine the private horror of not being able to say, or better yet, assert herself in such a time of genuine need. I see her vulnerable to a humiliating or painful experience because she could not say, out loud and publicly, “Look at me, please, I need some help and I need it now.”

Just what was her risk? The risk of being scorned, not listened to, not believed? The risk of having too much attention paid to a humiliating moment? Why did this seem greater than the risk that she would be able to get to the toilet before her bladder burst?

What these stories reveal is the raw face of shame—the shame that can squelch the hurt and the desperate. Shame powerful enough to have people wish or believe they were invisible, not really there, not connected to anyone else, not mattering. Shame that impedes our willingness and ability to take ourselves seriously. In this chapter we look at what gets in the way of taking care of ourselves, of getting our needs met; how to move through those obstacles and know where else to turn when our needs cannot be met.

the raw face of shame

The Greek root of the word shame is scham, the skin used to cover the exposed, vulnerable parts of a person. I have watched shame work “miracles” as it turns attractive women into believing they are ugly, bewitching confidence into self-loathing, talent drowned in addiction, and beauty of the soul torn apart by eating disorders and other self-destructive behaviors. So while the stories I've just recounted might seem unusual or extreme, most of us know full well the feelings of shame in one form or another.

We are living in a world that looks askance at vulnerability and fragility. As women, we have learned to feel ashamed of our tender sensitivities and often feel humiliated when they are revealed. However unnatural it may be to be ashamed of our needs—and it certainly is—we have been handed a legacy of being subordinated, powerless, manipulated to believe we are inferior citizens; in fact, we have, often, through history, been scapegoated—scapegoated to carry the extra burden of shame for the rest of the society.

Let's look at one way we inherited this legacy of shame for having needs. Throughout time, the human being has been all too aware of the dangers and threats to life and limb. Whether it is natural forces, human enemies, or the awareness of the inevitability of death, our lineage shows the human attempting to appease and avoid these forces. It is not a good idea to be overly susceptible or vulnerable to these threats, and so, in biblical times our ancestors employed the use of a scapegoat—a literal goat, symbolically dressed in all the sins and vulnerabilities of the citizens of the society—and then deliberately exiled from the community that was attempting to find security. And, if our ancestors did not use an exiled goat, they would slay a beast or victim in order to appease the gods with a sacrifice. Over time, the concepts of victimization and scapegoating became intimately connected; the word victim originally meant a beast selected for sacrifice. Our relatives, in a ritualistic fashion, commonly practiced either sacrificing a beast/victim or excluding a scapegoat—two ways of symbolically making the rest of the community feel safe from harm. The finding and labeling of a scapegoat would “ensure” that the rest of the community would be safe from unpleasant and overwhelming feelings of vulnerability and helplessness. If the victim or scapegoat could be seen by the gods as carrying all the community's wrongdoings, then the average, model citizen would be seen as strong and sinless.

In order for this ritual to work effectively, it was important for the community to genuinely see the scapegoat as bad, evil, sinful, dirty, wrong. When you believe that there is something wrong with the victim or scapegoat, and therefore it is deserving of punishment, then you don't have to be susceptible to the senseless and irrational terrors of the world. It is best, of course, if the scapegoat embodies those qualities the dominant group considers absolutely other, such that society is willing to sacrifice, for only in isolation (not connected to the dominant clan) can this other absorb the great variety of the community's hostile and contradictory accusations. That's why scapegoats are most often sought among the weak and powerless; they cannot strike back in revenge, and therefore cannot plunge society back into reciprocal violence. Any bully on the schoolyard knows this instinctively.

We live in the wake of three patriarchal religions that posit the view that women are dangerous, unequal to men, and have the ability to distract men from important work. Women's sexuality, emotions, and natural work of nurturing and caretaking are seen as troublesome, weak, and inferior. To the degree that any individual woman buys into this scapegoating as the weaker and inferior sex is the degree to which the woman will render herself invisible, not wanting to take up any space and certainly not needing anything.

To need is to be present, alive, and deserving. To be a scapegoat means your role is to sacrifice your needs for the good of the dominant society. To “go against” the role given can induce a feeling of being wrong, standing out too much, and experiencing shame. Women still collectively carry the shame of needing something for themselves. And not just women who identify themselves as victims, either. It is a rare woman who does not hold, in some fashion, the scapegoat complex. It's as if we are all following an eleventh commandment: Thou shalt not need!

needs? who me?

I would be a wealthy woman if I had a nickel for every woman who told me it was selfish or unnecessary to think of herself before others or to go out of her way to get her needs met. The baby needs me, the dog needs me, the Third World needs me, the environment is dying, and my husband's work is more serious and therefore more important. If not selfish then not deserving; if not deserving then invisible; if not invisible then overreacting; if not overreacting then too unimportant to be taken seriously.

A woman I work with is very strong and powerful in the work world. In fact, she is the president of a firm made up mostly of men. She manages to deal effectively with her work world as well as raise her family. One day she found herself with a splitting headache. She was at work and did not have any Excedrin in the office. She would not buy herself another bottle because she had one at home. She didn't “need” another bottle, so she suffered the headache until she got home four hours later. Why? Because on some level she didn't believe she should have needs; and certainly she couldn't justify buying another bottle of aspirin for herself when she could surely survive the headache until she got home.

Another woman I work with is nothing short of a warrior for every family member, client, and cause that requires her attention. She is truly strong, stable, and impressively capable. It took two years of concentrated effort before she could say, “I need your help” to her daughter.

Women do have needs—naturally and genuinely. Simply because we don't recognize, vocalize, and activate them does not mean we aren't attempting to meet them, however. Just like any other oppressed energy, needs go underground and come out in another fashion—often indirectly, covertly, slyly. Sometimes we might not even be conscious that we are managing to get our needs met, and sometimes such subterfuge results in us settling for secondary gains—in other words, when we cannot say directly that we want and need to be taken care of or given attention, we will, as one example, sometimes magnify, massage, or fabricate ailments to get the attention or care or to avoid being abandoned. It doesn't matter that we do not need to be sick; in fact, it is often a big price to pay simply to get attention.

Not only do we, at times, settle for secondary gains, but we also build a reservoir of resentment. Resentment toward the people who are getting all of our attention at the expense of us taking care of ourselves, resentment that we are not able or willing to take ourselves seriously, and resentment at the gargantuan price we pay for not getting our own needs met. Gillian wanted to keep two old flowerpots that had never been used but would make a designer-quality end table. Her husband Stan said absolutely not. “I am not lugging them in the car for 200 miles and having them take up extra space in our home. We do not need any more furniture.” End of discussion. For the umpteenth time, Gillian gave in. She was used to it. Her wants and needs had always been given little airspace or consideration in this marriage. She gave the flowerpots away. She gave them away to a woman she didn't even care for, which, in some ways upped the martyrdom quotient. A possible secondary gain—she found a way to express her irritation and see herself as such a “good” person!

Around the same time Stan began to have some physical ailments and exhibited a great deal of stress and anxiety about his well-being. He was feeling too weak to assist himself, but Gillian promised to call and inquire about getting him some help in the local hospital. Somehow she just couldn't seem to remember to make that call. This passive-aggressive behavior was her way, however unconsciously, of getting her needs met—the need to be heard, the built-up anger at not being taken into consideration, the need to be taken seriously, to believe she has equal weight in a discussion. Because these needs did not get brought to consciousness and acted on in a direct fashion, they came out in less-than-helpful and constructive ways. And because she was not able or willing to make enough waves to get her needs met directly, her resentment kept her from being available when Stan genuinely needed her.

taking ourselves seriously

We are trained to think it selfish to consider ourselves, but needs are natural and necessary to being resilient. To be resilient requires overcoming the resistance and collective tide of not being deserving or taking yourself seriously. A sentence in the research on resilience marked itself indelibly into my psyche: “The resilient have an uncanny ability to get their needs met”—no false modesty or blind eye to real needs and the importance of taking care of themselves. They did what they needed to stay strong and upright.

In their work on children, psychologists Michael Murphy and Michael Moriarty found that resilient children had a pattern of reaching out and finding “another mother” in the neighborhood. My friend Suzanne, who suffered untold physical abuse by her stepmother, tells me how she picked her boyfriends in high school. “I checked out their mothers. If the mothers were cool and available I would go out with the guy. That way I could spend time in the kitchen with the mom.” (The secondary gain was getting a substitute mom out of the deal—which was worth it even if she did not like the guy all that much!)

In addition to finding that kids would seek substitute parents, Murphy and Moriarty found that resilient children would work to excel in an area that would increase their resourcefulness—instinctively knowing that this would enable them to feel good about themselves and allow them to carry on with their lives and purposes.

For example, look at two little girls who lived in similar circumstances of abject poverty and neglect. They literally did not have enough to eat and were left to their own devices for hours at a stretch. One of the little girls, feeling ashamed and helpless, sat in the dark, twirling her hair and thinking of all the food she would eat if she had the money to go to the store. The other little girl, recognizing her physical and emotional hunger and using her observation skills, remembered what she knew about her neighborhood. There was a family down the street that was not much better off financially but somehow that mother managed to feed her family every evening at 6 P.M. The little girl knew that if she showed up right before suppertime she would be invited to join them. She not only found a way to fill her empty tummy, she fueled her self-respect with her resourcefulness and got to be around other people for a meal. Getting her needs met increased her sense of confidence, esteem, and security. It gave her a sense of her own power to know that she was capable of taking care of herself when the occasion required.

In order to bounce back, we need to take care of ourselves. We hear the message every time we fly: In case of an emergency, put on your oxygen mask or life vest first before attempting to help others. You cannot be helpful to others if you are not breathing! The same principle applies here: Being depleted, martyred, bruised, or otherwise occupied steals the very thunder needed to survive and triumph. In order to be available for life's ups and downs, to be resilient, we must discover what soothes, comforts, aids, supports, and enables us to take care of ourselves. An African proverb says the same thing poetically: “Be wary of a naked woman offering you a dress.”

oh my, i do have needs!

When my mother was diagnosed with adrenal cortex cancer, she went through a debilitating several months digesting the information and making decisions about treatment and possible end-of-life options. When she came through the radiation treatment after the trauma of the surgery, the cancer (which had metastasized) had abated long enough for both of us to catch our breath. I found myself so depleted from the previous months that I wondered whether I could hold up for the duration of her illness and likely subsequent death. My circuits were near overload.

A quiet voice of wisdom kept murmuring to me that I needed to rest and soak up warmth. When I stopped resisting (and stopped listing the dozens of reasons I could not afford to take care of myself at this time), I took several days off and checked into the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco. The Miyako Hotel has Japanese baths in every room; just what the Great Doctor was ordering. I followed the Japanese ritual of washing and rinsing outside the bath and then settling into a deep bathtub filled with hot, scented water, and spent three days taking so many baths and soaks that I lost count.

I left the room long enough to get a couple of Shiatsu massages and explore a new restaurant for each meal. I had a new novel by Robertson Davies in my room and a special handpicked pound of See's chocolate candies. I spent luxuriating time watching the clouds form and reform, wondering at the beauty of the sunrays bursting from the seams and partitions of the clouds. I deeply listened as the rain fell, bringing such welcome refreshment for a thirsty and dry Earth. I could identify with the earth and feel its gratitude at being nourished and brought back to a moist life through the washing sprinkle of the clouds.

In just three days I was returned to health and contentment, as I remembered all the parts of me back into one whole. This was not a matter of escape or a dalliance. This was essential for synthesis and for recovering the resources sorely needed to continue to face, endure, and resolve the ongoing issues of my mother's illness and our two roles in her life and death.

When I do groups for women who want to increase their resilience quotient, we do a powerful exercise for needs. I ask them to pair up and face each other, each holding a blank piece of paper. Each woman is given fifteen minutes to answer the question, “What do you need?” Her exercise partner acts as a recorder, writing down each need the woman verbalizes and asking the question again. “What do you need?” You would be amazed how long fifteen minutes is when faced with looking deeper and deeper into an area that has been unused and undervalued.

The answers get richer as the women delve into the parts of their psyche holding this information in reserve. “I need help.” “I need some rest.” “I need to know I am loved.” “I need reassurance.” “I need to exercise my authentic voice.” “I need proper medical care, with dignity.” “I need to know my place in the world.” “I need to have compassion.” “I need to forgive.” “I need the laundry to disappear.” “I need my kids to stop fighting.” “I need to be accepted for being gay.” “I need to exercise more.” And so on and so on.

We also spend a great deal of time committing to getting some of these needs met. An assignment might be to spend the week looking for unmet needs and declaring to yourself that you will find ways to fill the need. Here are a few stories that have come out of this group process: