by Edith Eger
This is how we release ourselves from the prison of avoidance—we let the feelings come. We let them move through us. And then we let them go.
KEYS TO FREE YOURSELF FROM AVOIDANCE
Feel so you can heal. Develop a daily practice of checking in on your feelings. Pick a neutral time—for example, when you’re sitting down to a meal, waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, or brushing your teeth. Take a few deep breaths and ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?” Scan your body for sensations like tightness, tingling, pleasure, or pain. See if you can identify a feeling and just name it, without judgment or trying to change it.
Everything is temporary. When observing your feelings at neutral times becomes a comfortable habit, next try tuning into your feelings when you are flooded by a strong emotion, positive or negative. If you can, step away from the situation or interaction that is provoking the feeling of joy, sorrow, anger, and so on. Sit in stillness for a moment and breathe—it might help to close your eyes or lightly rest your hands on your lap or abdomen. Start by naming your feeling. Then, see if you can locate the feeling in your body. Get curious about it. Is it hot or cold? Loose or tight? Does it burn or ache or throb? Finally, observe how the feeling changes or dissipates.
The opposite of depression is expression. Think of a recent conversation with a friend, partner, colleague, or family member when you avoided saying what you were feeling. It isn’t too late to take responsibility for your feelings and express your truth. Tell the person that you’ve been reflecting on the conversation and would like to follow up. Arrange a convenient time to speak, and say something like, “You know, I didn’t know how to express this at the time, but I realize I was feeling ____ when ____.”
Chapter 3 ALL OTHER RELATIONSHIPS WILL END
The Prison of Self-Neglect
One of our first fears is of abandonment. Thus we learn early how to get the A’s: attention, affection, approval. We figure out what to do and whom to become to get our needs met. The problem is not that we do these things—it’s that we keep doing them. We think we must in order to be loved.
It’s very dangerous to put your whole life into someone else’s hands. You are the only one you’re going to have for a lifetime. All other relationships will end. So how can you be the best loving, unconditional, no-nonsense caregiver to yourself?
In childhood, we receive all sorts of messages—spoken and unspoken—that shape our beliefs about how we matter and what we’re worth. And we can carry these messages into adulthood.
For example, Brian’s father abandoned the family when Brian was ten, and he became the man of the house, taking care of his mother, doing everything in his power to make life easier for her, to soothe her pain—and to make sure she wouldn’t leave, too. He brought this caretaker identity into adulthood and kept choosing relationships with needy women. He resented them for the constant sacrifice they demanded, and yet he had difficulty setting healthy boundaries. He thought that to be loved, he had to be needed.
Another patient, Matthew, was born to a mother who had not chosen to become pregnant with him. She felt burdened by motherhood and entered into it with no sense of anticipation or enthusiasm. When parents are stressed or disappointed or unfulfilled, their children pick up the tab, carrying the burden into their own lives. As an adult, Matthew still held a terrible fear of abandonment that manifested in rage. He was cruel to his girlfriends, and would go on rants in public, yelling at people, once even throwing a dog across a parking lot. He was so afraid of being left that he turned the fear into a self-fulfilling prophecy, behaving in such a way that people had no choice but to step away from him. Then he could say, “I knew it all along.” He became who he dreaded in an attempt to control his fear of abandonment.
Even if we didn’t experience a discernible event or trauma that forced us to fight to be loved or seen, most of us can remember times we protected others or performed for them in order to secure their approval. We may have come to believe that we’re loved for our achievements, or for the role we fill in the family, or because we take care of others.
Unfortunately, many families, in trying to motivate children to do well for themselves, create a culture of achievement in which the child’s “being” gets entwined with her “doing”; she’s taught she matters not for who she is, but for how she performs and behaves. Children are under such intense pressure to get good grades, be high-performing athletes or musicians, ace college entrance tests, earn a degree at a select college or university that will lead to a high-paying job in a competitive field. But if a good report card or good manners earn love, that’s not love at all. It’s manipulation. When so much emphasis is placed on achievement, children don’t get to experience unconditional love—that they’re loved no matter what, that they’re free to be themselves, that it’s permissible to make mistakes, that we’re all in a process of learning and becoming, and that learning can be exciting and joyful.
My grandson Jordan is a photographer, and he was recently hired to take portraits at an acting studio in Los Angeles. A director who just days earlier had won two Oscars was visiting the acting class that day. Someone asked him where he had decided to display his trophies, and he surprised everyone by admitting he’d tucked them away in a drawer. “I don’t want my kids to come home from school every day,” he said, “and see my Oscars and think, What am I possibly going to do to compare?” I laughed when Jordan told me this, because he is also the son of an extraordinarily successful man. His father, Marianne’s husband, Rob, won a Nobel Prize in economics. And Rob also keeps his prize in a drawer, tossed in next to the wine opener!
There’s no need to hide our success from our children. But this director and my precious Rob have a lovely way of acknowledging that their awards and accomplishments are not who they are. They don’t confuse who they are with what they do. When we conflate achievement with worth, success as well as disappointment can become a burden on our children.
Marianne told me a sweet story that’s a good reminder of a very different legacy we can choose to pass on. My oldest great-grandson—her grandson Silas—came to stay with Marianne and Rob in New York one weekend. He said, “Granny, I heard that Papa won a big, important award.” He asked to see it. Marianne pulled it out of the drawer and Silas stared at it for a long time, running his finger over his grandfather’s name etched into the gold plaque: Robert Fry Engle, III. Finally, he said, “My middle name is Frye. Why does it say Fry?” Marianne said, “Well, who do you think you’re named after?” Silas was delighted to discover that part of his name came from his grandfather. Later, a family friend came over for dinner and Silas proudly asked, “Have you seen my prize?” He ran to the drawer and pulled it out. “See?” he said. “My name’s on it. Papa and I have a prize!”
It’s not good to live with success looming over you, feeling burdened by the need to reach a certain height to be worthy of love. And yet the strengths and skills of our ancestors are also a part of us. It’s our legacy. It’s our prize, too. We honor our children when we can create a culture not of self-aggrandizement or self-effacement, of overachievement or underachievement—but a culture of the joy of achievement. The joy of working hard. Of nurturing our gifts. Not because we have to. Because we’re free to. Because we’re blessed with the gift of life.
My daughter Audrey and her son David have taught me so much about nurturing gifts rather than fulfilling expectations. David is an incredibly bright and creative person. As soon as he could read, he had a photographic memory for sports stats. I’ll never forget watching The Wizard of Oz with him when he was two and he deduced that the woman riding her bicycle in the storm was the Wicked Witch. But while he excelled in extracurricular activities in high school—playing soccer, writing songs, performing with the choir, starting the school’s first comedy club—and scored very high on standardized tests, his grades were a problem. Audrey and her husband, Dale, were often called into the counselor’s office because David was in danger of f
ailing classes. His senior year, when he was accepted at two small private colleges, he reluctantly told his parents that he didn’t feel ready to go.
Education has always been a strong value in our family—in part because Béla and I missed opportunities when our lives were interrupted by war. But Audrey didn’t guilt David or lay down the law. She listened. And when she learned about a new music academy opening in Austin, where they live, she told David that if he could get in, he could take a gap year to focus on music, and then figure out his college plans. He jumped on the opportunity, recorded a demo of original songs, and earned a spot at the music school.
Taking time to focus on something he loved and was good at—and feeling supported by his parents in doing things at his own speed, in his own way—gave David the focus and motivation to later pursue a career path he cared about. When he did go to college—on a choir scholarship—he knew what he wanted to do, and he genuinely wanted to be there. He was making a choice that served him, not just doing what he had to do to fulfill someone else’s expectation. Now he has a journalism degree and a job he loves as a sportswriter. And music continues to be an important and joyful part of his life. I’m moved and impressed by Audrey and Dale’s parenting, and by David’s capacity to know and express his truth.
Too often we’re boxed in by expectations, by the sense that we have a specific role or function to fulfill. Often in families, children are given a label: the responsible child, the jokester, the rebel. When we give children a name, they play the game. And when there’s a “best” in the family—a high achiever or good girl or good boy—there’s usually a “best worst.” As one of my patients put it, “My brother was very disruptive as a child. The way I got attention was being cooperative and being good.” But a label is not an identity. It’s a mask—or a prison. My patient said it beautifully: “You can only be the good girl for so long. Bubbling under the surface, my real personality was trying to get out and my environment wasn’t encouraging of that.” Our childhoods end when we begin to live in someone else’s image of who we are.
Instead of limiting ourselves to one role or version of ourselves, it’s good to recognize that each of us has an entire family inside. There’s the childish part, the one who wants everything now and fast and easy. There’s the childlike part—the curious free spirit, adept at following whims, instincts, and desires without judgment or fear or shame. There’s the teenager who likes to flirt and risk and test boundaries. There’s the rational adult who thinks things through, makes plans, sets goals, figures out how to reach them. And there are the two parents: the caring parent and the scaring parent. The one who is kind and loving and nurturing, and the one who comes in with voice raised and finger wagging, who says, “You should, you must, you have to.” We need our entire inner family to be whole. And when we’re free, this family works in balance, as a team, everyone welcome, no one absent or silenced or ruling the roost.
My inner free spirit helped me survive Auschwitz, but without my responsible adult on board, she can make a lot of messes, as my granddaughter Rachel—Audrey’s beautiful daughter—can attest. Since she was young, Rachel has loved to cook, and it warmed my heart when she asked if I’d teach her some Hungarian recipes. I decided to show her how to make one of my favorite dishes: chicken paprikash. It was a special kind of heaven to be in the kitchen with Rachel, the smell of onions sautéing in butter (a lot of butter!) and chicken fat. But soon I noticed her father, Dale, at my elbow, wiping up the spatters of schmaltz and dustings of spice that flew from my spoon. Even patient, down-to-earth Rachel was growing exasperated. “Stop!” she finally said, grabbing my arm before I threw a bunch of garlic and paprika into the pot. “If I’m going to learn the recipe, I have to measure and write down how much you’re putting in.”
I didn’t want to slow down. I love to cook by instinct, to let go of measuring and planning and just go by heart. But that wasn’t giving Rachel the foundation she needed. To effectively pass down my strength and skills, I couldn’t rely on my inner free spirit alone. I needed my inner rational adult and caring parent in the room to round out the team.
Now, Rachel makes the best chicken paprikash and szekely goulash, and when I made a nut roll the other day, I had to call her to tell me whether to add a half or full cup of water to the dough. She didn’t have to look at the recipe. “It’s a half cup!” she said.
It can be especially challenging to balance our inner family when we think our very survival depends on filling a specific role. After decades of maintaining an unhealthy pattern with her sisters and parents, Iris is trying to break out of the confining role she grew accustomed to filling in her family.
Her father served in WWII and was discharged from the army after a tank he’d worked on exploded with men on board. He became a psychiatric nurse, but began drinking heavily and suffering from depression, paranoia, and schizophrenia, so much so that by the time Iris, the youngest of four children, was born, he regularly spent large stretches of time in the hospital. She remembers him as a gentle, sensitive, brilliant man. She loved to sit in his lap after her bath and have him comb the tangles out of her wet hair. Or she would pretend to fall asleep on the couch in the evenings so he’d carry her up to bed. It felt good to be in his arms. When she was twelve, he had a massive heart attack. By the time the ambulance arrived, his heart had been stopped for twelve minutes. The medical team managed to revive him, but he was severely brain damaged and became a permanent resident at the same hospital where he’d once worked. He died when she was eighteen.
At a young age, Iris learned to fill the caregiver role in her family. In one of her earliest memories, her parents had been in a heavy discussion. She could sense the tension and slipped into the room, hoping to lighten the mood. Her father scooped her up and held her. “You’re my favorite,” he said. “You don’t cause any trouble.”
This message was reinforced by Iris’s mother and sisters. She earned the A’s in her family by being the responsible one, the person others could depend on. Her mother, a hardworking, nonjudgmental person always sensitive to the hurt or shame or embarrassment underlying others’ behavior, remained steadfastly loyal to Iris’s father throughout his worst years, but had a nervous breakdown when Iris was a teenager. Years later, when she herself was ailing, she told Iris, “I feel I’m in the middle of a stormy sea, and you’re my rock.”
Much of Iris and her mother’s relationship centered around their mutual concern for Iris’s sisters, who’d endured rough and chaotic lives, suffering among them the traumas of sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as struggles with addiction and suicidal depression. Iris and her sisters are now in their fifties, and she continues to grapple with complex feelings that stem in large part from her caretaking role in the family.
“I live with a huge feeling of responsibility in my heart,” she told me. “I was called ‘the lucky one.’ I didn’t experience abuse. My father was away in the mental hospital when I was very little and he was at his most crazy. I’ve never wanted to take my own life. I’m happily married to a kind man and have three wonderful children, now adults. I feel guilty at times about the good things that have come my way. I feel heartbreak for my sisters. I feel selfish for not doing more for them. And I’m exhausted at times—maybe from trying to maintain security, or live life as the girl who didn’t cause any trouble because everyone else’s problems were so much bigger. I daydream about winning the lotto and buying them each a house, setting them up financially for the rest of their lives. Then I might feel freer of this guilt I carry.”
Iris is a beautiful woman, with blond curly hair and full lips. She seemed preoccupied, her blue eyes darting as she spoke—the agitation that comes from a life of trying to earn the A’s. Iris had imprisoned herself in her perception of her role and identity: to make things better for others, to lighten the load, to not cause a fuss or have big problems, to be the capable, dependable, responsible one. She had also become a prisoner of guilt—survivor’s guilt for he
r journey being easier than her mother’s and sisters’. How could I guide Iris out of a life of patterning herself as the responsible “good girl” and wishing she could fix others?
“You can’t do anything for your sisters,” I told her, “until you start loving yourself.”
“I don’t know how,” she said. “This year I’ve had hardly any contact with them. And I’m relieved, which feels terrible. I worry about them. Are they okay? Could I do more? And I could do more. That’s the truth. And yet, when I do more, it becomes toxic and all-consuming. So I’m in a mess. I don’t know how to move on.
“I’m lost about how to re-form any connection,” she said. “And I’m torn, because while I do want to reconnect with them, when I’m really honest with myself, it’s so much easier when we’re not in touch. And that feels awful.”
There were two things I hoped she could let go of: guilt and worry. “Guilt is in the past,” I told her. “Worry is in the future. The only thing you can change is right here in the present. And it’s not up to you to decide what to do for your sisters. The only one you can love and accept is you. The question isn’t how can you love your sisters enough. It’s how you can love yourself enough.”
She nodded, but I saw hesitation in her eyes, something held back in her smile, as though the very thought of loving herself was uncomfortable—or at least unfamiliar.
“Honey, when you concentrate on what more you can do for your sisters, it isn’t healthy. It’s not healthy for you. And it’s not healthy for them. You cripple them. You make them depend on you. You deprive them of being responsible grown-ups.”