Many of us are wandering the earth, accomplished in many ways, capable of fulfilment at points, but with a fundamental wound that stops us from becoming who we might be, and we don't quite know who we are. It isn't, of course, that we can't remember the basics of our biographies. We're unsure about two things in particular, we don't have a stable sense of what we are worth, and we don't have a secure hold on our values or judgements. Without knowing who we are, we tend to have particular trouble coping with either denigration or adulation. If others decide that we are worthless or wrong, there will be nothing inside us to prevent us from swallowing their verdicts, however wrong-headed, extreme or unkind they may be. We will be helpless before the court of public opinion. We'll always be asking others what we deserve before seeking inside for an answer. Lacking an independent verdict, we also stand to be unnaturally hungry for external praise; an audience clapping will matter more than would ever be wise. We'll be prey to rushing towards whatever idea or activity the crowd loves. We will laugh at jokes that aren't funny, uncritically accept undeserving concepts in vogue and neglect our more real talents for famous easy wins. We'll trail public opinion slavishly, constantly checking the world's whims rather than consulting an inner barometer to know what we should want, feel and value. We need to be kind to ourselves.
No one is born with an independent ability to know who they are. We learn to have an identity because, if we are blessed in our early years, someone else takes the trouble to study us with immense fairness, attention and kindness and then plays us back to us in a way that makes sense and that we can later emulate. They give us the beginning of an accurate portrait of our identity, which we take on and enrich over the years and use as a defense against the distorting verdicts from hurried or ill-intentioned others. Knowing who one is is the legacy of having been known properly by someone else. This early identity-building unfolds with apparently innocuous life-saving small steps. It must have hurt, and a parent might say in response to an upset, thereby validating an infant's feelings. Or, 'it's OK not to feel happy on your birthday, the parent might say another point, delicately upholding an infant's less typical response to specific events. Ideally, the child isn't just known. They are also interpreted as likeable. A good parent offers generous interpretations. They are on the child's side and are always ready to put the best possible gloss on moments of ill-temper or failure – which forms the basis upon which resilient self-esteem can emerge later.
That is the ideal, but it can, of course, go very wrong and often does. A parent may offer mirroring that is out of sync with the reality of the child. ‘Look who is such a happy little boy/girl, a parent might insist when the opposite is the case, badly scrambling the child’s ability to connect with their emotions. Or the parent might only lend the child a very punitive way of interpreting itself, repeatedly suggesting that it is ill-intentioned and no good. Or the parent may not show very much interest in the child, focusing themselves elsewhere, so that the child grows up with a sense that not only is it not worth cherishing, but also because it has not been adequately seen and mirrored that it doesn’t quite exist. A feeling of unreality is the direct consequence of emotional neglect. Realizing that we lack a stable identity is a sobering realization. But we can, with a fair wind, start to correct the problem at any point. We need to seek the help of a wise and kind person, perhaps a good psychotherapist, who can study us closely, mirror us then and adequately validate what they see. Through their eyes, we can learn to explore, perhaps for the first time, how we really feel and take seriously what we want. By being witnessed generously, we can more often take our sides and feel increasingly solid inside, trusting ourselves more than the crowd, feeling that we might be able to say no, not constantly swaying in the wind and feeling that we have some of the ultimate truths about us. Having come to know ourselves like this, we will be a little less hungry for praise, slightly less worried by the opposition and much more original in our thinking. We will learn the vital art of knowing and befriending who we are. Our Know Yourself Cards help us better understand our most profound, elusive aspects.
https://youtu.be/4lTbWQ8zD3w
No comments:
Post a Comment