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ОглавлениеFamily members, with their deep needs and attachments, usually don’t give dependency on each other up without a fight.
For weeks Carol had trouble starting her therapy sessions. As soon as she sat down, she would nervously ask me, “What should I talk about today?” No amount of interpretation or encouragement could budge her from this ritual. Week after week she began our sessions the same way, always embarrassed to ask the question, but completely unable to start without voicing it She was coming to me to talk, and yet wanted me to pick the subject! As time went on and Carol confided more experiences of her past, we began to understand. Carol was showing me how she had related to authority figures her whole life. As a child, Carol had to ask permission for practically everything she did. Her behavior in our sessions was showing me the painful contortion of permission-seeking that she felt forced to do all her life.
It was no wonder Carol suffered from depression, at times even taking to her bed in fits of despondency. Although she lived a comfortable, financially secure life with her husband, Carol felt chronically overwhelmed and often sought social isolation to the point of not wanting to see anyone or answer her telephone. No matter how comfortable it looked from the outside, Carol’s life was an uphill battle every day. It was an ordeal for her to make even minor decisions, because she was so afraid her husband might not like what she did. Her husband was a strong, decisive man, but not a cruel one. His strong personality simply rushed in to fill the void created by Carol’s hesitation. He said what he thought, expressed his wishes and Carol folded. This was exactly the pattern Carol was unintentionally setting up in our sessions. She was so accustomed to doing what others wanted that it had become her main way of relating to other people. It became easy for me to see why she went so far as to even avoid answering the telephone; for Carol, any contact with other people meant being dominated into something to which she could not say no.
No overbearing character was taking charge and forcing her into a subservient role, but Carol was responding to our therapeutic relationship along the exact lines she had followed in her childhood and with her husband. This was a priceless moment in Carol’s therapy. We began to see the other side of her story, the ways in which she was defeating herself—and then blaming others for beating her down.
When Carol solicited direction from her husband or me, she was secretly hoping for validation and support of her desires—without saying so. She asked what her husband thought about things not really to get his opinion, but to indirectly seek approval for what she wanted to do. Her husband, of course, took her requests at face value and gave his opinion, thinking he was being asked to contribute. Carol listened to his suggestions with resentment, feeling angry and victimized. She felt deeply misunderstood, as though he had steamrolled her. Why was everybody always running over her? she asked herself.
It was not unusual that Carol wanted to talk things over before making decisions. Soliciting advice and input promotes a feeling of harmony and closeness with the important people in our lives. Successful people who value others’ insights like to keep an open mind and listen to other ideas, but they have no intention of blindly following other people’s advice, and they definitely are not asking permission. Talking it out and hearing another viewpoint simply serves to clarify their thoughts and feelings on the matter. The point is that this style can be effectively used in the service of what will ultimately be an independent decision.
This was not what Carol was doing. She in no way enjoyed getting the advice she felt compelled to seek. Her compulsive need for permission frustrated both herself and others.
In Carol’s childhood, she had been punished for making mistakes and thinking for herself. She was the youngest in a family of tyrannical older siblings and impatient, easily angered and controlling parents. Assertiveness had come to feel dangerous to her, while indecisiveness signified safety. Carol cleverly succeeded in her life by inviting others to run it for her, and fortunately she usually picked the right people to tell her what to do. At a certain point in her late thirties, however, this lifelong trade-off between safety and self-fulfillment became intolerable. Depression hit when she got sick of being pushed around, but was too scared to do things differently.
Carol’s Next Step
Carol’s challenge was to break away from the child status she had assigned herself in her own mind. Exploring the painful subordination she had suffered as a child, we realized together that permission-seeking had been her best way of coping under the threatening circumstances of her childhood. Unfortunately, she had carried forward her “youngest child” mentality to all her adult relationships, including those with her husband, friends, and employers. She had such a charming way of going along with others that she was well liked and fit in easily. However, once a relationship reached a certain level of closeness, Carol began to tilt back and forth between avoidance and resentment as she struggled to find some way of getting her needs met without openly asserting herself with the other person.
Once she could see how she was unintentionally inviting just the kind of domination she had hated since early childhood, Carol had some new choices. She began to take small steps toward making decisions on her own, and she practiced determination in the face of her husband’s initial resistance. The results were amazing. Carol was astounded at how often she was able to have things her way once she stepped up and asked for it She saw her husband in a new light, no longer impressed by his pronouncements of authority, because she no longer accepted that he knew best every time. Carol had decided to give up her child status in her relationships. As she did so, her vulnerability to depression faded, and she began to discover new avenues of creativity and enjoyment for herself.
Permission-Seeking Means Never Having to Leave Home
Carol’s dilemma had many aspects to it, but at a primal level she was simply seeking the security of childhood. All of us can relate to that wish. Whether our childhood life was happy or miserable, we all had that peculiarly secure feeling that our fate at least was in the hands of grown-ups. We only had choices up to a point, and for most of us nobody was seriously expecting us to know best—because we were just children. Under those conditions, a person can only feel minimally responsible.
The enormity of adulthood responsibility can frighten us into giving up the joys of adult freedom. Like Carol, we can settle for self-denying depression rather than feeling the anxiety of adult responsibility and freedom. However, it is only in a grown-up frame of mind that we can pursue who we were meant to be.
Childhood should prepare us to become an adult in our society. Usually this involves the act of leaving home in some form, a circumstance that is honored around the world through many kinds of ceremonies and rituals. Another way of looking at the need for these rituals is that family members, with their deep loves and attachments, usually do not give dependency on each other up without a fight.
Buying the Car
I come by my awareness of permission-seeking honestly. I did not like to offend people and as a young adult I often went through the agonies of indecision we all suffer when I was about to take major steps forward. One such important moment occurred when I bought my first automobile. I was in my early twenties, still in graduate school, and while it would certainly be a convenience, a car was not yet a necessity—except that I wanted one. While home on summer break, I had an unparalleled opportunity to buy a great small car. All the conditions were right, and I even had the collateral for my first bank loan, a loan the bank was willing to delay payments on until I was out of school and employed. The whole thing fell right into my lap. Naturally I had to ask my mother what she thought.
In a cautious and objective tone of voice, my mother simply suggested that I consider where I was in my life—still in school, no money and no job—before I made such a decision. Objective or not, the feedback was clear: you are overstepping your bounds. To say I felt deflated would be a gross understatement, but at the same time I in no way lost my desire. Boiling in a pot of conflicting feelings, I broke down in tears. How was I ever going to do this when my mother thought it was a bad idea? It was a big step and I knew it; I was putting myself on the line for a debt I did not yet have the job to support. The other truth was that I was trusting myself to get the job, pay down the loan, and enjoy the car for a whole year before I had to start paying it off.
Perplexed by my tears, my mother reminded me that the decision, of course, was mine, and that she was merely giving me the feedback for which I had asked. This was true, but why did I feel such turmoil? Now I can see that what I was really asking for was her blessing, for her to side with my strivings for independence and responsibility. I needed her to firmly show she was in favor of my “growing up.” Getting her objective advice was a pale and secondary concern. Not being in touch with my real emotions at the time, all I could do was feel completely miserable and totally neurotic as I watched the car deal cool.
However, the part of me determined to have what I wanted continued to weasel toward a solution. I telephoned my friend, Peggy, who has since used her tough-minded heart to excel in a career of forensic psychology. To my credit, I called the one person I knew on this earth who had no trouble taking a stand. I dithered and obsessed into Peg’s patient ear, until she had finally heard enough. “Screw ‘em, Lindsay,” she said, “What you really want is to believe in yourself and buy the car.” And that is what I did.
Automobiles are often symbolic of our sense of control over our lives and where we want to go. They symbolize our readiness for freedom and express our belief about our place in the world. Most importantly and most basically, they literally take us away from home. How you feel about your vehicle, how it functions, and what it looks like can be fascinating symbols for how psychologically prepared you are to leave home, and how you feel about this separation.
The Envious and Bullying Parent
Ask yourself this question: who arzyou waiting for permission from to start your life? This is the person you are afraid will judge or abandon you. If it is hard to see it in those terms, then just ask yourself who has the real power and control in your family. That person is your particular psychological bully, the person you have given the authority to hold you bade.
It may be especially hard to think of our parents as bullies. After all, they only want what is best for us. But the unfortunate fact is that parenthood does not change anybody’s personality structure. If a person was angry and controlling before he or she had children, that person will likely continue that behavior when he or she becomes a parent Biological events do not necessarily create psychological transformations. Envious and bullying parents do not give permission for their children’s happy independence—such permission would be contrary to their fundamental attitudes and beliefs.
One of my clients, Bonnie, found her emotional freedom by daring to look at this aspect of her mother. Bonnie was a thirty-year-old woman who had struggled to come to grips with the painful truth about her childhood Her mother had been a sexually repressed, bitter woman who had been dealt a hard life of oppression by an angry, alcoholic husband. Even though Bonnie was her father’s favorite, she had always identified her father as the bad guy, because his rages and lack of responsibility made him such an easy target Her mother fanned this belief, encouraging Bonnie’s disdain and fear of her father. To all appearances, her mother was a selfless victim who stayed with her husband for the sake of the children.
As Bonnie grew up and started to date, a self-defeating pattern began to emerge. Bonnie was a bright and very pretty girl whose good looks and confident flirtatiousness brought her the attentions of Ted, a decent and highly attractive young man. Their mutual attraction was intense, and Ted and Bonnie dated seriously through her last year of high school. Bonnie even found a climate of safety and acceptance within his close, devoted family that she had never felt at home. But as Ted became more serious and seemed about to propose, Bonnie suddenly panicked She cooled off toward him, and soon started making excuses for not returning his calls. No amount of Ted’s earnest persuasion could move her, and before long the happy relationship had collapsed.
After graduation, Bonnie continued to work and live at home until she met her husband Tom, a man who made her feel safe but who held little attraction for her. Accepting his marriage proposal was easy. Tom was neither especially handsome nor sexually exciting, and Bonnie settled into married life with relief. After a few years, Bonnie was no longer placated by the satisfactions of her role as wife and mother of their two children. Without ever crossing the line into an affair, Bonnie began to form crushes on attractive men with whom she had contact at work. Once again, if the desirable man responded to her; Bonnie became extremely anxious and withdrew. By this time Bonnie had entered therapy to deal with her feelings of inexplicable depression. She was willing to be extremely honest with herself and soon she was able to identify what she saw in her mind in that split second when a handsome man began to respond to her. “I see my mother,” she confessed “She’s furious and is going to attack me. Her face is ugly with hate, as if she wants to kill me.”
Bonnie shocked herself when she came out with this image. She had no idea where it came from, but it led her to explore the issue of her mother’s envy and anger. Bonnie had always remembered her father’s dramatic temper, but now she began to recover memories of her mother’s fits of anger, and her bitterness over Bonnie’s special place in her father’s heart Bonnie’s insight had touched the icy core of her mother’s envy.
Rapunzel’s Dilemma
Bonnie hit upon the fairy tale of Rapunzel as a vivid metaphor for her childhood relationship with her mother. In this story, the wicked witch isolates the golden-haired Rapunzel in a lonely tower, possessing her youth and beauty as only a jailer can da When the witch comes with food, Rapunzel must let down her cascade of hair to allow the witch to climb up with her basket. The witch poses as caretaker and protector, but her real purpose is to satisfy her sadistic envy by keeping Rapunzel away from grown-up happiness with a man. The witch uses Rapunzel’s hair, her “crowning glory” symbolic of her greatest gifts, in a coarse, unappreciative way, as a ladder for her own ascent.
As long as there is no prince to tempt Rapunzel, she and the witch keep up their uneasy arrangement. But when the prince does come, tricking Rapunzel into letting down her hair for him, he intrudes into the forbidden domain of mother domination and tempts her to freedom. Here was the dilemma of both Rapunzel and Bonnie: pleasure and fulfillment are standing before them—but the witch is on the way. Sure enough, when the witch sees the prince climbing down the priceless hair after a visit, she is enraged. Once inside the tower, the witch confronts Rapunzel and in one horrifying swipe of the shears, cuts off Rapunzel’s hair, triumphant in the fury of her revenge.
This is the prototype metaphor of parental envy. Rather than giving the child permission and encouragement to enter the world, the envious, sadistic parent destroys the child’s chance at happiness, even if it requires the psychological mutilation of the child’s greatest gifts. The point is that the envious parent will do whatever it takes psychologically to hang on to control of the child; for to see the child go off and experience true fulfillment would be maddeningly painful.
Bonnie’s mother prevented the necessary mother-daughter separation by poisoning Bonnie’s mind about the motives of men. She tried to possess Bonnie’s beauty herself taking vicarious pleasure in Bonnie’s pretty vivaciousness but making the girl feel guilty for using it with men. Bonnie was deeply confused about her mother’s mixed messages to be sexy and pretty, but at all costs not to give in to her sexual feelings. As a result, Bonnie was free to flirt and attract (under her mother’s watchful eye), but not to have a real relationship that would psychologically take her away from home for good. Caught in this bind, Bonnie struggled to find some happiness, but not to be so happy that her mother’s life would be revealed for what it was: bitter, miserable, and squandered. By marrying a man who did not excite her, Bonnie stayed her mother’s little girl and made sure she was not any happier than her mother or anyone else.
Bonnie became conscious of this terrible childhood dilemma only after her husband Tom died, and she was once again free at a relatively early age to explore what she wanted out of life. She met a “prince,” one of those men who do not mind pursuing and awakening reluctant ladies. Finally, Bonnie was able to complete the hero’s task of braving her mother’s anger and fear of men in order to enjoy life on her own. She cut the negative ties to her childhood, and proceeded to enjoy a love affair that allowed her to complete every unfinished crush she had ever had—without her mother’s permission.
Breaking the Rules
Permission-seekers are never good rule-breakers. That’s why they need to make a point of breaking rules once in awhile. Bonnie did this by breaking out of a stifling subordination to her mother in order to really live. She broke their secret rule that Bonnie could leave home and marry only if she agreed to never have a more fulfilling life than her mother did.
Most of us have these kinds of old, unexamined “rules” that govern our choices in adulthood. Some of them may be helpful, enabling us to expedite our daily decision. Many other “rules” are just plain harmful, such as when a person unhappily stays in a family-owned business because his parents want him to, a couple pressures themselves into having a family because their parents want grandchildren, or a daughter puts off a career change because her parents are proud of her current status. There are many unspoken rules that may need to be broken in order to release us to our own adulthood.
The key is not in the rule-breaking, but in the creativity and productivity that are released when we do things differently than we have always done them. Joanne, another client of mine, was an example of a woman who followed all the rules, putting up with her husband’s drinking and waiting around for him to come home whenever he pleased. She always prided herself on being a “good wife,” but finally her deep frustration had resulted in depression, which caused her to stay close to home and stop driving her car. She also had a ballooning weight problem. In therapy, Joanne worked on identifying what she really wanted to do, instead of waiting around to see what she had time for after her errant husband got home to help with the children. One day she decided to try out her new behavior. She informed him he had to be home early because she was going out shopping. Laying aside her worries about supper and bedtime, she handed the kids over to him and cruised the store aisles until closing time that night, blissfully savoring her freedom. It was around that time in her life that she began to drive again, something she had given up when her depression started. A tiny broken “rule” about what good mothers should do in the evening opened up a sense of freedom and determination that was just what Joanne needed to begin seeing herself as a separate person with the right to pursue her own goals.
Another client, Sara, solved an acute depressive crisis by packing up all her favorite books, needlepoint, and writing journal to take a weekend by herself at a local hotel by the beach. She came up with this idea on her own, in response to my question about what she thought would make her feel better. As a young Navy wife with several young children, it was hard to break the rule of frugality and self-sacrifice to take care of herself in this way. In fact, compared to antidepressants and long-term therapy, it turned out to be an inexpensive antidote to her depressive feelings of powerlessness. She returned from her escape with a better self-image which in turn improved her relationships with her husband and children.
Too often the rules we will not break are the ones that forbid us from taking care of ourselves at the expense of someone else’s inconvenience or hurt feelings. We ask too much of ourselves, making up all kinds of silly rules to follow, and then invoke guilt when we fall short. You might be surprised at how much better you feel when you try a little piece of freedom or give yourself a break. Often just the symbolism of a small act of self-caring is enough to open a way out of hopelessness and bring one back into the world of possibility.
The Reassurance Addict
For the overly socialized person—the really good child—asking permission becomes a way of life. The ability to jump in and take what you want and need to fulfill yourself gets confused with too much concern over doing the right thing. This results in a loss of initiative and a habit of waiting to see what others think every time. There are times when asking for permission goes completely against the flow of life, against the dance of the real. It plugs up your inspiration and intuition, preventing you from taking what you need from situations and other people. Permission-seeking is the very opposite of taking charge. There are many moments in our lives when thinking too much about getting permission is the kiss of death to our confidence. We become hesitant and tentative. We lose track of what is okay and we become reassurance addicts.
Going ahead with our dreams is all about breaking this habit. In Rapunzel’s terms, it means challenging the witch. It necessarily means a degree of separation from loved ones and your old roles in the family. If your parents have brought you up to think for yourself and have respected your ideas, then it is going to be much easier for you to think clearly about where you want to go in your life. However, if your confidence was undermined by a parent who treated you as incompetent, or only gave you love when you were being obedient, then following a freely chosen adult path can feel daunting. Lest you think I am only talking about young adults here, let me reassure you that there are plenty of forty- and fifty-year-olds waiting for permission to do what they want with their lives. Of course, the permission will never come as long as they see themselves as needing to uphold expectations of their parents or others.
Mature age alone does not mean we have individuated from our parents at a mental and emotional level. That is where the homing pigeon of permission-seeking comes in, bringing with it the addiction of reassurance. We try to return to a source of security to get permission before we make that next step. And like the addict, we can never get enough.
The Permission of Experts
Asking permission keeps us stuck in a one-sided love affair with another person’s power. We can easily get trained into the habit of looking to experts to tell us what we should do. Often this is helpful, but sometimes expert opinions are the last thing you need. These opinions can get in the way of your own knowing, of your own real experience and intuition.
When you look to other people to tell you something as important as who you were meant to be or what you really want, it can confuse your purpose. You become like a driver looking backwards over your shoulder, asking the expert in the back seat to tell you where to go, when the road is right in front of you and the wheel is in your hands. Here is where permission-seeking has to end, even if it is in the constructive guise of gathering more and more information. Your direction has to come from the still, small voice inside you, from syn- chronicities and serendipities, from moments of enlightenment and moments of hitting bottom. Your job is to make contact with your own personal moments of realfration. There is no expert on that but you.
Why Are We So Afraid of Our Own Power?
Many of us give our power away. Why? Because responsibility can be so frightening. It is a bit like a favorite uncle giving us a wonderful toy which turns out to be a little nuclear bomb. There we sit on the floor, holding the so-called toy in our hands, stunned by the power of it, unable to move for fear we will blow ourselves up. That is often how we handle our own power. We are scared to death of it Not knowing how to handle the power, we want our uncle to take it back. We are eager to give that gift back. ‘You take it!” we say, and feel great relief. As grown ups, the responsibility of adult power can feel like our very own ticking bomb. We don’t want to hold onto it too long for fear of what might happen; so we pass it from our hands into the lap of the next person. Then we ask their permission for what we already had the freedom to do! It’s an arrangement many of us accept. It has the familiar ring of childhood security, as we sink back into dependence upon strong adults to take care of us. This is often what we adults secretly wish we could go back to.
But was that really what we wanted even as children? Look at the behavior of two-year-old children, three-year-olds and four-year-olds. Look at the normal six-year-old boy and twelve-year-old girl. All are in a constant battle for power and self-determination. If they have not been too traumatized by overpowering events, and if they have not been made to lose their natural confidence, they are on the lookout for ways in which they can increase their freedom and control. The two-year-old essentially walks around demanding, Power! More power! Give me power! Get out of my way! Coming through! Then we as adults convince him that his power is dangerous, will hurt him, and he had better trust us to tell him what to do.
The older some of us get, the better childhood dependence looks to us. We even tell our children and grandchildren not to be in a hurry to grow up, to enjoy their childhood. We don’t think about it from their point of view. What is there to enjoy about always being told you cannot do something, having your judgment second guessed, and having someone tell you you can’t do such small things as plug in a lamp or work the toaster, when you’ve seen your mother do those things a thousand times? The child knows better. She is in a hurry to grow up, open her own doors and pick out her own clothes. Nevertheless, in one way or another, she is told that she has to wait for permission. Over and over this inability to make our own decisions is drilled into our heads as children. We gradually learn that it is not a good idea to have too much initiative. After all, we could electrocute ourselves, bum ourselves up, get hit by a car, or whatever the awful outcomes were that our parents scared us with. Out of their desire to protect us, they taught us to be afraid of what we wanted to do.
Here is the tragedy: we don’t just learn not to chase balls into the street or put our fingers in light sockets. We also leam to mistrust the go-get-it impulse we had as we saw the ball go into the street. In other words, our curiosity, our urge to go after what we wanted are tagged as the things to resist, instead of the actual source of danger. After years of parents filling us with fear and expectations of punishment, we leam that when we feel intense motivation and burning curiosity, we are about to put ourselves in danger. This idea of our own inadequacy becomes an over-generalized belief that extends far beyond its boundaries of usefulness. From there it is but a short step to fear that we are going to cause harm to ourselves or others if we eagerly go after what we want.
The rule about not running into the street is not about the street being dangerous, it is about the cars on the street being dangerous. However, because we do not trust our children to look for the cars, we teach them that the street is dangerous. As we grow up, it becomes our responsibility as adults to figure out which of those old fears are unrealistic. We leam that reasonable caution allows us to cross all kinds of streets, to try all kinds of things with safety. We no longer have to stay in our own front yards.
Pleasurable Correctness—Are We Having Fun Yet?
At the beginning of our lives, we get our start using pleasure and pain to define who we are. If it feels good, it is me. If it hurts, it is not me. It is our original source of self-concept, and continues to be throughout our lives. However, as children, we can be made ashamed of what we like to do, resulting in desperate inner attempts to change what we cannot change. Part of this is simply socialization. When socialization goes overboard, we can reject our true natures to the point where we can no longer tell what we enjoy. If we don’t know what we enjoy, we don’t know who we are.
Pleasure is a funny thing in our culture. Our pleasures are very keenly watched, defined and evaluated. If you ask yourself what really brings you pleasure, you may be surprised. Try to be totally honest and open when you answer this question. If you were given free rein and no one would disapprove of you, what would you do that brings you the most pleasure?
Whatever they are, your pleasures are about as close to your real self as you can get Nothing can convince your true self that something is fun if it is not. No matter how hard you try, if it is boring, it is boring. As children, our inborn sense of fun and pleasure can become all tangled up with that which other people approve. We begin to worry that what we really enjoy may make us a little too “different” We try to become interested in what we are not, until by the time we are adults we may be totally confused on the whole subject Pleasurable correctness has taken us over, dampening our life force with its wet blanket of conformity.
Remember the slogan, “Are we having fun yet?” It rang true, this T-shirt plaint Too often we secretly seek validation to tell us whether or not we are having a pleasurably correct experience. Group reactions tell us what is supposed to be fun, leaving us feeling isolated and baffled if we do not like it Pleasurable correctness is an important value in our society, and it is tied to making money: if we can’t sell it to you, it can’t be the best kind of fun.
If you suspect you have fallen prey to pleasurable correctness, ask yourself, “Am I having fun?” If you are not, it means there is something wrong with the situation, not you, and you need to get out of there and do something else. You cannot fake enjoying yourself. It is too personal, too real.
However, you have an inner critic who does not care about your real enjoyment This part of your mind is invested in your remaining a member of the group, the family, the job, the chain gang. It hates uniqueness and personal feeling. It is anti-pleasure, because pleasure is such a heartfelt expression of pure individuality. Our inner critic can make us worry about correctness even -when every molecule in us is uncoiling in blissful surrender to a pleasurable experience. Hearing this judgmental voice, we evaluate instead of emancipate, we judge instead of enjoy. The inner critic keeps up a running commentary of what it thinks you ought to be doing or not doing. It stands in your way, and denies permission for certain individual pleasures and interests because it can see exactly where you are headed: away from the group. It springs to its feet in alarm, full defenses out, shouting, “You can’t do that!” The inner critic gets its start in the family’s authority, but it hooks up with the advertisers and media to tell you how to fit in and be more like other people around you. People who can honesdy follow their pleasure make lousy targets for sales pitches and guilt ploys.
Don’t wait for the inner critic’s permission to become yourself. By definition, if you depend on others to discover your true self, you never will.
Suicide: The Last Refuge of the Permission-Seeker
When you are forbidden freedom and happiness, what’s left to keep you going? Suicide is just one extreme way of making real the living death that a life of seeking permission brings. It is the one act that is perceived as not under the control of someone else.
Many people who at times have wished they were dead are in fact people who have a very powerful life force, a real drive for growth and enjoyment of pleasure. They are sensitive and strong, and feel the insistent urge to expand beyond their family. If this healthy urge is repeatedly criticized and thwarted, and they see no way out, then the idea of death can become the final, tragic way of liberating themselves. Fantasies of death in these cases are not abnormal or signs of mental illness. They are only symbolic wishes for freedom. At a subconscious level the person logically but irrationally thinks that if he or she could just stop this life, he or she might have a chance to live at last.
Self-destruction is the last self-expressive act of the powerless. It is a peculiar kind of creativity, but that is what it is. A suicidal plan can be the last attempt at taking control over charting your own course. And what a tragedy that so right an instinct could end itself in its own moment of creation. The suicide hopes for the big win in this last dramatic act, but it is a no-effort, magical wish to become whole and separate without working for it.
Any of us can perform little suicides all day long by not speaking up for our needs or waiting for permissions that never come. But your unmet need will sit indefinitely outside the door and wait for you to call it inside. It is the need to enjoy your life and to express who you were meant to be. Suicidal feelings tell you how far you have gotten away from your own real life. Suicidal feelings are a cry from the soul, an angry soul that is sick to death of living without air. A soul that no longer agrees to be the perfect victim.
If you have ever felt sick to death of your life, you know this feeling. By the time you get to this stage of frustration and hopelessness, it is extremely difficult to think of another way to solve your problems. Suicidal fantasies satisfy so many neglected urges for power, self-expression, revenge and escape that they can be hard to give up without help. They become a siren song that lures us toward the thrill of destruction and away from a truly fulfilling life—permanently Don’t listen to them. Run, don’t walk, to a good therapist who understands the symbolic wish and can help you figure out how to satisfy all those urges and still be around to enjoy life.
Signs and Serendipities
Have you ever had a sense of receiving a “sign” about what you should do at certain key points in your life? I have. At one point in the writing of this book, I was about ready to throw in the towel. I was wondering how I could keep on working on this project when I had so much else going on in my life that was demanding my attention. It seemed that just to turn out the number of pages to which I had committed myself was taking more time and effort than I had to give. The next day as I was driving to work, feeling thoroughly discouraged, the car in front of me slowed down and then stopped to make a turn. Just before he turned left, I carefully looked at the rear of his car. That is when I saw the message on his license plate: DONT KWIT.
My urge to give up collided with the perfect words right in front of me on that license plate, just when I needed to be slowed down and reminded of my real goals. How perfecdy in tune with my need. I immediately was reassured.
Is there a way to understand and use these kinds of serendipities? You could give it a mystical explanation, seeing it as a sign from God or a message from a kindly universe devoted to our growth. On the other hand, the scientist in you might say that we program our brains to pick up any cues related to our current need. No matter how you look at the sign, it is an act of recognition. When you see something and get that charge of meaningful recognition, you are struck by a sensation of knowing this is your answer. You feel ownership of it. The sign seems meant for you, and therefore significant and even precious. This sense of recognition often has an intensely comforting feeling to it, telling you you are on the right track after all.
However, there is another, negative type of sign that is used by people to justify why they cannot have what they want from life. This kind of sign “proves” that their dream was not meant to be and stops them in their tracks. Often this kind of sign-reading happens when you are just taking the first tentative steps in something new. Maybe you are making the first phone call to check on college courses after being out of school for fifteen years. Maybe you are checking out positions in another company, because you have finally decided you do not want to suffer in the old job any longer. The “sign” comes when your call does not get through or the conversation does not go as expected. “Oh well, its a sign,” you might say. And you back off. You treat the sign as a little bit of proof that you were not really meant to go ahead with that plan. This kind of sign confirms your fears. It gives you a resigned feeling. It does not energize, inspire, give hope, or lead you onward. It just keeps you stuck.
Disheartening “signs” that your hopes were not meant to be are nothing more than the projection of your own discouragement and fear. When you keep noticing these kinds of signs, your mind is telling you that for whatever reason you are afraid to keep pursuing what you want. It is not a sign from the heavens about what is not “meant” to be! As a rule of thumb, always take these negative signs with a grain of salt, as nothing more than simple proof of your reluctance. On the other hand, you must feel free to take uplifting serendipities at full face value! This is legitimate because you are simply accepting the projection of your own secret confidence that you can and should be following your dream. The right kind of serendipities and synchronidties feel light and encouraging. They lift you into more of life, whereas discouraging signs sink you down with resignation. They are very different states, and are excellent clues as to how ready you are to go after your dreams. Again, evaluate an experience’s worth by what it does to your level of energy. If it pumps you up, believe in it. If it brings you down, discount it as quickly as possible. This rule is obvious and simple but it can be easily overlooked.
The real benefit of positive signs and serendipities is that they reflect our inner landscape, our land of dreams, and where we stand in relation to them. Learn to read where you really are through the kinds of “signs” you are experiencing. They are very reliable reflections of what you are willing and able to accept at this time. If many negative signs are crossing your path, it merely shows that you have inner fear and a lack of preparation. That is all it shows.
The signs and serendipities you see and feel will tell you whether you are primarily committed or primarily reluctant. Remember that serendipities confirm a rightful order to the universe and hopefulness about your life. In contrast, negative signs are agents of your own fear, the voice of the old guard telling you that the world does not want you to come play. “See,” the voice says, “they didn’t return your call. They don’t want to play with you. Come home,” it whispers, “back where you are safe.” Surely this is not what you want to listen to for the rest of your life. Such a life, as Thoreau said, would be one “of quiet desperation.”
Getting Your Blessing
Who does not crave a parent’s blessing when he or she steps out into the world? Blessing is an old custom often neglected in our culture, but it is still psychologically crucial. In the old days, a young man getting ready to set off on his self-supporting life would go to his parents for a blessing. This ritual put the stamp of approval on his transformation from child to grown man. It required the parent to give up complete ownership of the child, so he could become a man in his own right It also gave notice to the young man that his childhood was officially done.
These days, instead of sitting down with our parents and getting the go ahead to grow up, we leave this very important matter hanging. We inch into adulthood without a ritual that says explicitly; “This is the end of my childhood, it is now up to me.” For many people in our culture, this final necessary step is not fully experienced until middle age when elderly parents die. We have ceremonies for school graduation, for marriage and baptisms, but none of these provide the psychological ritual we need: the official recognition that grown children are people with a right to unique lives apart from their parents’ expectations.
When parents are not required to give their formal blessing to their child’s independence, they can continue subconsciously to influence and even rule their children’s lives. No matter how they feel about us, most parents do not want to let go. Parents continue to need their children, way past the point of what is good for parent or child. Emotionally mature parents release their children anyway, but the insecure parent keeps an iron grip on the attachment. In some families, an ambitious child may be able to get out on her own with few problems, while one of her siblings may continue to be stuck in some version of the baby role, awaiting the permission to grow up that never comes.
It is not how often a person has contact with her family that identifies her level of independence. It is whether or not the person has taken hold of directing her own life. It is perfectly possible to grow up, leave home, get a job, and still be caught in the role of lifelong child, because you care too much about what your parents think. How can you tell if you care too much? You find yourself thinking twice—once for yourself and once for your parents—before you pursue what you really want.
Think again about the person from whom you feel you need permission. Who it is will be obvious if you give it a moment of honest reflection. It may be a disapproving parent, a depressed or needy spouse or maybe even a domineering friend. But the people from whom you need permission are the people who are mentally holding you back. You worry about what they would think; you can hear their criticisms and warnings inside your head. Wanting permission from someone tells you that you have accepted that person’s domination over your life.
Asking for permission puts us in an infantile, dependent state, but asking for a blessing is a step toward adulthood. With a blessing request, we already know what we want to do and are planning to do it When we make the bold move of asking for a blessing, it is because we want the most important people in our lives to support us. The most compassionate and empowering parents do not wait for their child to ask for a blessing: instead they give it spontaneously at each new crossroad in their child’s life. However, if you are like many of us, your parents overlooked that step, leaving you always feeling a little uneasy about your adult status in their eyes. Therefore, you may need to get your blessing someplace else.
This new kind of permission, this blessing, can come from other sources: yourself and a mentor or supportive friend. In many cases, you have to give the permission and blessing to yourself in order to grow up and leave home, no matter how old you are. Think about it this way: you have done your time. You have put sheer numbers of years into what other people wanted you to do. You must now do something for yourself. Whatever your age, don’t wait for a mid-life crisis. Seek self-understanding now, and look for your blessing from the people who can give it ungrudgingly.
Find people who love to see you stretch your wings, who applaud it when you strike out on your own. Let them be the ones from whom you seek your blessing, because they will certainly give it Look for people who are not threatened by your dreams, who would rejoice in your success.
Mature, loving parents give their blessing, even if their own dreams have gone unfulfilled. This kind of parent makes sure support for his child’s future outweighs his inevitable envy of the child’s freedom. Even if your parents do not or can not extend this kind of support, you can bless your dreams with the compassionate heart of such a parent, the parent you must become to yourself.
