Читать книгу Beyond Fear - Paula Nicolson, Dorothy Rowe, Dorothy Rowe - Страница 13

We experience our existence in such a way that it seems to us that we live in two separate realities. One is the reality of what goes on outside us, what we call the world. The other is what goes on inside us, our thoughts, feelings, images, sensations and perceptions. To cope with living we have to be able to distinguish what goes on inside us from what goes on outside us, and then to knit together, in some consistent way, our internal and external realities so that we can find a meaning which enables us to carry our life forward and communicate with other people. We have to relate our thoughts and feelings to our perception of the outside world, and we have to relate our perception of the outside world to our thoughts and feelings. This two-way process is what psychologists call ‘reality testing’. If we do not do this very well we are considered by others to be mad, or at least very strange.

Knitting these two realities together is not easy because they do not appear to be equally real. One of these realities seems to be ‘really real’: the other is ‘kind of’ real. For some of us our internal reality is more real than our external reality. For some of us our external reality is more real than our internal reality. This ‘more real’ relates to what it is we sometimes doubt. Some people never doubt what is going on around them but at times they doubt their own thoughts and feelings, and such doubt can lead them to say, ‘I don’t know who I am,’ or, ‘I don’t know what I feel.’ Other people never doubt their thoughts and feelings; indeed, their sense of existence is the one thing they never doubt, but the appearance of the world around them, or even that it exists, is something they do doubt, particularly when they lose confidence in themselves or they encounter a sudden crisis.

Whichever reality appears to be the less real for us is the reality which contains a great danger.

For those people for whom external reality is more real than internal reality, internal reality contains a danger which is felt as an emptiness, a vacancy from which all kinds of unknown and unknowable things can arise. Such people will express this by saying, ‘It’s not wise to introspect too much,’ or ‘I spend too much time trying to understand myself.’ For them the embrace of external reality is not dangerous. What is dangerous is for external reality to drop away and for them to be left alone and isolated, an emptiness in an emptiness. For these people, being left alone, completely abandoned and rejected, is the greatest fear.

For those people for whom internal reality is more real than external reality, external reality contains a danger which is felt as an unknown and unknowable territory from which all kinds of uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces can arise. Such people have no anxiety about introspection, for within themselves is where they live their life, but they often speak of needing peace, which means a quietening down of, or distancing oneself from, external reality. For them external reality dropping away and leaving them isolated is not dangerous, for they live within their internal reality. What is dangerous is the embrace of external reality, because out of external reality can come the forces which confuse, overwhelm and destroy. For these people, chaos is the greatest fear.

When we are coping with our lives and having no difficulty in knitting the external and internal realities together, we can be unaware of the differences in the qualities of the realities we perceive. But once we come under stress the differences in the two realities become more pronounced, and if the stress continues and increases we become less and less effective in knitting our internal and external realities together. Some of us run away from the emptiness we find within and busy ourselves with the outside world, while some of us withdraw into ourselves and shut out the confusion outside.

A simple way of discovering which reality is more real and how we experience our existence and our annihilation of our sense of being a person is to go through a procedure of questions and answers which is called ‘laddering’. This is a technique which I used in teaching, and only in a limited way in therapy. For a television programme, The Mind Box, I demonstrated this method with Sandy, a psychiatric nurse. While Sandy and I were seen looking at and driving cars in some dashing and bizarre sequences of film made on an empty airstrip, our conversation went as follows:

DOROTHY: Sandy, we’re going to play a little game. It’s called laddering, and in this we’ll start with something quite trivial, and then go on to something very important, but the first thing I’m going to ask you is, can you give me the names of three kinds of cars?

[This conversation took place in the days when the UK had a large car industry.]

SANDY: Yes, Rover, Triumph and Ford.

DOROTHY: Now can you tell me one way in which two of them are the same and the other one is different?

SANDY: Yes, Rover and Triumph are all part of British Leyland and Ford is an independent company.

DOROTHY: And which would you prefer, a car from British Leyland or one from an independent company?

SANDY: I’d prefer a Ford from an independent company.

DOROTHY: Why is it important to you to have a car from an independent company?

SANDY: I think I prefer something that’s somewhat unusual, something different.

DOROTHY: And why is it important to you to have something that’s different?

SANDY: In some way, I suppose, I get admiration from other people.

DOROTHY: Why is it important to you to have the admiration of other people?

SANDY: The admiration of other people makes me feel good. I suppose it makes me feel… it helps to establish my existence.

DOROTHY: What would you do if there wasn’t anyone to give you admiration, if you were completely isolated?

SANDY: Completely isolated? I can’t actually foresee myself in total isolation at all.

DOROTHY: But suppose you were completely and absolutely isolated for an indefinite period?

SANDY: In that case I should think I would be withered up, I’d die away. That would be the end of my existence, I think.²¹

Now Sandy was seen alone in a vast empty space. He looked miserable, but that was because he found making a television programme a nerve-racking experience. In ordinary life he knew he needed people, and he was effective in meeting this need by having a talent for friendship and doing a job which involved people.

We use the term ‘laddering’ because in this process of question and answer we begin with a trivial decision and value judgement and proceed to more and more general, abstract value judgements until we reach the top of the ladder, the ultimate value judgement, which is how we experience our existence and how we experience our annihilation.

Being annihilated as a person is our greatest fear. It is worse than bodily death, for after death we can imagine ourselves, or some important aspect of ourselves - our children, our work, the memories our friends have of us - continuing, but after annihilation there is nothing of our person to carry on. We have gone, brushed aside like chalk off a blackboard, engulfed like a raindrop in an ocean, consumed like a dead leaf in a fire, swirled away like a puff of smoke when the wind blows. After annihilation our body may continue to function but that which was our person has gone.

Sandy was one of those people who experience their existence as being part of a group and their annihilation as isolation. His external reality was more real for him than his internal reality. Had Sandy been one of those people for whom internal reality is more real than external reality, our producer, Angela Tilby, would have had greater difficulty in finding images to accompany our words. Sandy may have made the same choice of cars on the same grounds of wanting something unusual, but he would have gone on from there to talk in terms of personal development and achievement. I would have asked him what would happen to him if he were unable to fulfil his ambitions, and he would have spoken about himself (not his body) being overwhelmed and destroyed by chaos. Not easy images for television to supply, but a fate very real for those of us who experience our existence as the continual development of individual achievement, clarity and authenticity, and our annihilation as chaos.

All of us fall into one or other of these groups. We are either, as my friend Sue Llewellyn refers to herself, a ‘people junkie’, or we are absorbed in the study and development of our internal experience. The words that are used to distinguish these groups are most unsatisfactory. Those people who experience their existence as the development of individual achievement, clarity and authenticity I called What Have I Achieved Today Persons, or introverts, and those who experience their existence as being part of a group and their annihilation as isolation I called People Persons or extraverts. ‘Introvert’ and ‘extravert’ are words which are used in many different connections, but here it is well to remember that introverts can acquire excellent social skills and can appear to be greatly ‘extraverted’, while there are many lonely and shy extraverts. Thus introverts can behave in ways which would be described as extroverted while extraverts can behave in ways which would be described as introverted. An extravert and an introvert can do exactly the same thing, but they each do it for different reasons. To determine whether you are an introvert or an extravert you need to look not at what you do but why you do it.

I was certainly not the first psychologist to discover that we divide into two groups, those people who turn outward to the world around them and who have as their first priority their relationships with other people, and those people who turn inward and who have as their first priority a need for organization and a sense of personal development. Freud saw this difference and labelled the two groups ‘hysterics’ and ‘obsessionals’. Jung saw the difference and similarly called the two groups ‘extraverts’ and ‘introverts’. The arch-critic of psychoanalysis Hans Eysenck worked in an entirely different way, using questionnaires with large groups of people, and found what he called the traits of ‘extroversion’ and ‘introversion’. He was interested in the physiology of the brain which underlies these traits. His research team found that the two groups of people could be distinguished by the habitual arousal level of the cortex. Introverts, they found, had higher levels of arousal than extraverts. Thus introverts need an environment which is relatively calm, peaceful and organised while extraverts, in Hans Eysenck’s words, are ‘stimulus seeking’ and enjoy an environment where there is much going on and which contains a great deal of what introverts would call ‘clutter’ and extraverts would describe as comforting and reassuring objects.²²

While the majority of his fellow psychiatrists in the USA saw depression as a purely physical disease, Aaron Beck became aware in the 1960s that his depressed patients had a particular way of thinking, or what he called ‘a depressive cognitive style’. He developed a way of investigating this style, and out of this initial work has come a vast body of theory, research and practice called Cognitive Therapy.²³,²⁴

A depressive cognitive style was made up of ‘schemas’ or structures which were stable and enduring and developed from early life experience.²⁵ By 1983 Beck and his colleagues had discovered that each depressed person’s schemas had one of two distinctive superordinate schemas. They named these superordinate schemas sociotropy and autonomy. The person who used a sociotropy schema placed high value on a positive interchange with other people and was extremely concerned with being accepted, being intimate and being supported and guided by others. The person who used the autonomy schema placed high value on and was extremely concerned with achieving their goals, maintaining their high standards, being independent and maintaining what has been called ‘the integrity of one’s domain’.²⁶ A later statistical study using factor analysis found further evidence for the existence of these two distinctive cognitive styles.²⁷

Some years ago, when I was running a seminar for an international group of managers, the Japanese managers in the group told me that in Japan there was a series of popular psychology books which divided people into two groups in the same way as I had described dividing people into extraverts and introverts. They could not supply me with an English translation of these books but they were totally unsurprised by what I had said.

No matter how diverse the theories and the jargon these different psychologists used, it does seem that they were all commenting on an enduring feature of all human beings - namely that, individual though our interpretations of events might be, they all seem to fall into one of two groups, one where the person is turned outward to external reality, and one where the person is turned inward to internal reality.

Over the years that I have been writing about extraverts and introverts, quite a number of people have told me that, though they have read my books or listened to me lecture, they cannot work out whether they are an introvert or an extravert, or they insist to me that ‘I’m a bit of both’. I have found that such people are invariably extraverts. Introverts find what I have to say mildly interesting, but I am not telling them anything they have not always known about themselves. One of my introvert friends told me that in his teens and twenties he had wanted to think of himself as an extravert and had tried to act as such, but somehow he never got the knack of it. He resigned himself to recognizing himself as an introvert who enjoys good company. Some extraverts admire what they see as the superior qualities of an introvert, and either persuade themselves that they are an introvert or that they feel inferior to introverts. Neither attitude is wise because there is nothing to choose between being one or the other. Extraverts and introverts both enjoy certain advantages and labour under certain disadvantages.

It is not surprising that introverts usually know that they are introverts. Introverts introspect. They know that they need a peaceful environment, that chaos upsets them, and that every day they have to feel that they have achieved something, however small. Knowing that they have tidied a kitchen cupboard will allow them to feel that the day has not been wasted. They work out theories about anything that attracts their interest. (This is not to say that all such theories are clever. Some are stupid, some bizarre.) Just working out a theory about why something is so can seem to them an achievement which gives them satisfaction. Extraverts are more interested in doing than in working out why. Their thoughts are not so much concerned with theories as with fantasies that involve much activity. Extraverts can be keen and observant critics of what goes on around them, but they are not impelled to work out in any detail why such things happen.

Some extraverts, busy focusing on what they do, find the question of why they do what they do impossible to answer. A friend of mine, a delightful extravert and the author of a number of highly successful romantic novels, asked my advice about a story she was developing. When I asked her why her heroine wanted to pursue a certain investigation my question completely flummoxed her. She knew that her heroine wanted to obtain certain information but she did not know why having this information was important to her. She knew what her heroine would do but she did not know why. Yet if we do not know why we do what we do, how can we ever understand ourselves?

Of course, we all want to achieve and to have good relationships, and when our lives go well we can usually fulfil both aims, but in the final analysis we are either an extravert or an introvert, and when, our backs are to the wall, in the extremes of danger, there is only one construction of our existence and potential annihilation that we know. In ordinary life we have to make conscious attempts to learn the skills in which we are naturally deficient, and if we are wise we do this. Many introverts learn to be highly skilled in social interactions; many extraverts learn to be highly skilled in experiencing, labelling and understanding their internal reality.²⁸

Unless we come across a psychologist who is keen on laddering, we rarely make conscious and explicit how we experience our existence and our potential annihilation. We simply use our experience of our existence and potential annihilation as the basis of everything we do. Sometimes it is hidden. Sometimes it comes out clearly in what we say about ourselves.

Linda Evans, who was once a very famous television star, revealed herself as an extravert when she said:

My main purpose as a child, and as a young adult, was to be loved. I was passive and submissive at any cost. The idea of rejection was frightening to me. I’ve broken out of that mould by now; but I still have this feeling for anyone who is warm.

There’s an old Chinese saying, which I apply in my everyday life, that ‘everyone you meet is your mirror’.²⁹

In contrast, the writer Edna O’Brien, when interviewed by Miriam Gross, revealed herself as an introvert. Miriam Gross asked to what extent she felt that writing was a way of explaining oneself, of making up for the failure to communicate fully in ordinary life.

It’s a stab at it. I think it was Beckett who said - I’m paraphrasing - that you write in order to say the things you can’t say. It’s a cry, or a scream, or a song. Whatever form it takes, it is definitely an attempt to explain things and put them right.

Did she feel that if women had more confidence and a more active role in the affairs of the world, they would invest less energy in their emotional life?

I do. But, ironically, I think that much as our longings might hurt us, they also enrich us. Because finally, when the curtain is down, I mean, when one is dying, what really matters is what took place inside, in one’s own head, one’s own psyche. And people who acknowledge the relative failure or paucity in areas of their lives - either in love or in work - are in a way more blessed than the others who pretend or who put on masks. Though you suffer by not being confident and you suffer by not being befriended or loved as you might like to be, you are the sum of all that need and at least you’re alive, you are not a robot and you are not a liar.³⁰

These are two successful people, successful not only in terms of fame and wealth but in developing a way of life which allows them to be themselves, to live within and to extend that which gives them their sense of existence. Linda Evans was eminently lovable, on screen and off, as they say. Edna O’Brien used everything that came to her, whether it caused her pain or not, to develop her own clarity and understanding in ways which meet with enormous public approval. However, when we do not develop a way of life which allows us to be ourselves, when we cannot live within and extend that which gives us our sense of existence, we suffer great fear.

Ken had come to be cured. As soon as he sat down he announced, ‘I have a good, secure job. I’ve got my own house and no money worries. I’m forty-two and I’m in good health. There is no logical reason why I should be anxious.’

He had been off work for six months. He was so overwhelmed by anxiety that he could not attempt the simplest task. He spent most of his time going over in his mind technical work he had done in past years in the homes of neighbours and friends, trying to convince himself that he had not made any mistakes and that the people living there were not in danger.

He was an engineer, a practical problem-solver. ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘When there’s a problem, they come to me to solve it.’ He liked people looking to him to solve their problems. I asked him why. He said, ‘It gives me satisfaction.’

At that time the UK was in the midst of a huge strike by coal miners, and this had created a series of problems at his place of work. As he would solve one, another would be created. There was no way all these problems could be solved simultaneously. He felt that he could not afford to let his staff and his superiors see that there were practical problems which he could not solve because that, he feared, would diminish him in their eyes.

A friend, ‘the most logical and competent chap I know’, had committed suicide. Ken had found him. ‘It didn’t upset me particularly,’ he said. But, in fact, inside he was greatly upset.

In later discussions Ken told me how his mother, a very strong-willed woman, had insisted that he achieve and that he help people. He had to accept what she said because she had ways of enforcing her orders. He told me how one day, when she discovered that he had lost his best sweater on his way home from school, she had come to the cinema where he was happily watching a film and, in front of all those people, had hauled him home to look for his sweater. The shame he felt then was the shame he feared if, through his own carelessness, he caused the people he had tried to help any suffering.

He had come on his own. I asked after his wife.

‘She says I’m getting her down.’ No, they didn’t discuss things much.

At that first meeting it was not until he was near to leaving that he said, ‘My sons have their own friends now. They don’t need me any more.’

Ken was unable to say, ‘I feel that I am alone, abandoned and rejected. I fear I shall disappear.’ In contrast, Ella was able to describe her fear.

Ella nearly died in a road accident. Four years later she was still weak and shaky and prone to tears. She had not returned to work, and she found driving a car a frightening experience.

‘I just want to hide myself away,’ she said. ‘I don’t want people to see me like this. I used to be so confident and in control.’

She had always had to be competent, but only in the feminine skills of housekeeping. ‘My mother thought that a girl didn’t need an education. A woman’s fulfilment was to be a wife and mother. I won a scholarship to grammar school but she wouldn’t let me take it up. I got married and had a family, but I’ve always done something more. I’ve always worked. But now, I’m back to where I started. I’ve achieved nothing. I’m weak and frightened, and I’m just what my mother wanted, a wife and mother and nothing else. No personal achievement. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?’

Ella’s statement that life is about personal achievement is just what an introvert would say, though introverts cover a wide range of activities in what they call personal achievement. Extraverts say that life is about other people, though they cover a wide range of possible relationships with other people. Both extraverts and introverts need to achieve and they both need other people, but for extraverts achievement is to strengthen their relationships with other people while for introverts achievement is what life is about. Introverts need other people to stop them disappearing into their own internal reality and losing touch with the world around them, while extraverts need other people to provide an essential part of their sense of existence.

When we are small children we are aware that we have certain talents and powers. We may not be able to put a name to them, but we know that whenever we use them we feel an enormous joy. The passionate pleasure of acting creatively and successfully in and upon the world has always given puny human beings the will and power to go on striving in a vast and dangerous universe. As children, if we are lucky, our talents and powers are approved of and encouraged by the adults around us. If so, we can then use our talents and powers to develop and make ourselves safe. If we are extraverts we use our talents and powers to gather people around us and keep them there, and to fill the empty space within us. If we are introverts we develop our talents and powers to gain clarity and personal achievement and to relate our internal reality to the external world.

However, if as children the adults around us do not recognize or approve of our talents and powers, we are forced to neglect and to deny them and to learn skills which we know are not in us. This leaves us with a sense of feeling ‘not right’, in some way always an impostor. We are left with a sense of longing. We may not be able to put a name to the object of the longing, or we may know the name but be too ashamed to admit it. How could this delicate wife and mother admit that all she ever wanted was to sail her own boat round the world? How could this rugby-playing company director admit that all he ever wanted was to be principal dancer in a ballet? How their families would laugh if they said these things! Perhaps they dare not even admit these longings to themselves. Then all they become aware of are certain passionate dislikes. She ‘cannot stand’ Clare Francis, who was such a brilliant sailor, while he refuses to accompany his wife to the ballet, saying that he has better things to do than watch ‘those poofs’. The prevalence of envy in our society shows just how many children have been prevented from developing their talents and powers and being themselves.

Both extraverts and introverts need other people. Extraverts need other people to establish and maintain their existence. Introverts need other people to help them gain clarity by setting standards and giving approval. When I was discussing this with Mick McHale, I asked him which for him was the more real, his internal or external reality - what went on inside him or what went on outside him?

He said, ‘Internal reality is far more real. I tend to believe that far more than my external reality.’ He went on to say that while he wanted approval, when he did actually gain it it no longer meant anything to him. ‘I think the difference is, if I’ve got things sorted out and I know I’ve done a good job, I can reward myself, but if it’s on the periphery of that, if I’m not sure whether I’ve done a good job or taken the right direction, then it’s very important and I really appreciate it.’

‘So getting approval makes things more clear for you.’

‘Yes.’

If extraverts are left in isolation they are in danger of being overwhelmed by the emptiness within them. Under stress they continue to perceive their external reality as ordinary, but it becomes dangerous. If introverts are left in isolation they are in danger of retreating into their internal reality and losing the ability to distinguish internal from external reality. Under stress they find that external reality becomes increasingly strange.

We need other people to help us structure ourselves and our world, but it is other people who threaten the structures we create. When they disappoint, leave, reject or betray us they show us that we were wrong in our expectations. When they criticize and correct us they show us that our meaning structure may not be an accurate picture of what is going on. When they press their ideas upon us or try to force us to be what they want us to be they threaten us with annihilation. We have to learn ways to defend ourselves.