by Bruce Tift
Imagine being a little child standing out in the world and feeling threatened. You might put up a wall for protection or even hide in a little box. That would help, but it would also keep you from feeling connected with the environment. In the same way, when we put up a psychological barrier, we end up feeling disconnected from ourselves and from life. Being alienated and disconnected from life doesn’t feel good, and so we suffer. What we don’t understand is that we’re the ones choosing—with very good reason—to put up the wall. It’s not happening to us; we’re doing it ourselves. The very success of our effort to protect ourselves leads inevitably to an experience of feeling divided against ourselves and separate from the world. We feel alienated from life. We also become distrustful of it, because of course life is unpredictable, and it may, at any moment, cause us to feel those feelings we’re doing everything to avoid.
INVESTING IN OUR STRATEGIES
This leads to something I find all the time in my work, which I don’t think is being discussed enough. As adults, we all seem to want to resolve our neuroses, but we don’t understand that we have an incredible investment in maintaining them. Our young strategies were put into place for our own survival, well-being, and protection. It’s not until we actually investigate—in a very immediate, embodied way—whether these protective strategies are still required that we can hope to resolve them. Until we can do that work, we’re going to constantly—and unconsciously—look for evidence that proves our survival strategies are still required, necessary, and justified.
Most of us are not aware of this paradox. Consciously, we want to relieve ourselves of the suffering these patterns carry with them. But unconsciously, most of us are even more invested in making sure that those patterns stay in place, so we don’t have to feel the feelings that were overwhelming to us as children. If they fail and the unwanted feelings arise, we experience panic.
For example, it would be to my young benefit to unconsciously look for evidence that dependency is weak and undesirable. I might notice that weak people are more likely to be victimized. That would validate my strategy of independence. I would not be as invested in looking for the downsides of independence, such as isolation and a sense of being cut off from the world. Instead, I would look for evidence all around me that weakness is a bad thing, and I would likely find it. So I would continue to deepen my investment in independence, perhaps adopting a relationship style of giving rather than receiving. After all, in order to receive, you have to acknowledge dependency; you have to acknowledge that you have needs, that you want something. To give, on the other hand, requires no neediness. Subconsciously, I’ve adopted exactly this type of strategy, placing myself in life circumstances that require I be strong, take risks, and be competent and self-sufficient. The role I play in my life thus serves as evidence, proving over and over every day, “See, it’s necessary to be independent. Independent is the right way to be. Dependency is unwise and maybe even dangerous.” It wasn’t until my forties that I started to see that I am, shockingly, an incredibly dependent person. At first I felt an annihilatory panic at this discovery. But once I became used to the panic itself, there was incredible relief and relaxation in owning the dependent part of myself, in feeling less divided and more whole.
Many times in my therapeutic sessions, this exact same process takes place. Clients claim that they want to change their habitual patterns, but when we actually start to investigate what would be required—which is to feel exactly the feelings they have dedicated their life to avoiding—a lot of very mixed feelings come up. And that becomes exactly our work: to acknowledge and be kind toward the feelings they’ve been running away from since childhood, as well as toward not wanting to feel those feelings. I encourage my clients to value having mixed feelings about changing their habitual patterns. It’s natural, because changing those patterns requires quite a bit of discomfort. To persevere, clients must be willing to tolerate a fair amount of panic, at least for a while. My opinion is that it’s worth the effort, but most people are not going to intentionally invite horrible feelings into their lives. Generally, those who persist are either suffering greatly from the consequences of their out-of-date formulas, like Darren was, or are emotionally resilient, mature, and curious enough to be willing to risk having those feelings for a period of time.
When we examine these neurotic avoidance strategies, we often find they involve strong self-aggression. For example, whenever the experience of dependency might arise in me, I would tend to have an inner dialogue in which I’d call myself bad names for feeling weak. I would bring out the “shoulds,” predict bad consequences if I didn’t get it together, and so on. Once we see what we’re doing, we often don’t understand why we’re doing it. Why in the world would I attack myself, sometimes viciously, sometimes almost obsessively? But imagine yourself as a young child, maybe one or two years old. And imagine that your parents come into the room and give you a choice—either they hit you, or you hit yourself. Which would you choose? Almost all of my clients say they would choose to hit themselves. Of course, if we hit ourselves we can pull the punch, know when it’s coming, and have a little control in a difficult situation. But I believe the major benefit is that by hitting ourselves—or in this case, by aggressively shutting down our own emotions rather than having them shut down by a parent—we can continue the fantasy that our parents are only kind, protective, and loving. They’re not hitting us. We already have the unconscious clarity that our parents are limited, sometimes severely so. But as a little child, we can’t afford to consciously see that. We don’t yet know that in fifteen or so years, we’re going to grow up and be able to leave our family. When young, we’re living in a type of eternal time. If we acknowledge our parents’ limitations—that they are sometimes cruel, uncaring, and unloving—then we’re going to be in big trouble, forever.
So most of us actually have an investment in making ourselves the problem. “If I’m the problem, then that explains why my parents are not loving me as I need to be loved. If I just fix what’s wrong with me, they’ll show up. They will be there for me.” But, of course, we have to make sure we never solve the problem of what’s wrong with us, because if we do, it will become clear that it isn’t us, that we are, in fact, dealing with very limited parents, siblings, and life circumstances (poverty, discrimination, violence, and so on). And trying to do so as powerless, dependent, immature little beings.
By the time we’re adults, there’s a lot of momentum in place. We’ve had a lifelong investment in not solving the problem of our neurotic suffering. If we were to solve it, to see our lives clearly, we would be at risk of having to deal in a direct way with the truth—which is not always pretty. We might have to acknowledge that we don’t really know who we are or what the meaning of life is; that there’s no evidence we will ever have a life free of pain and disappointment; that we and everyone we love will die; and so on. As little kids, we relied on our parents and the world to metabolize and digest our experience for us. If they didn’t do their part, we had to come up with some very solid survival strategies. Naturally, it’s going to take a lot of courage and tolerance of anxiety to bring ourselves up to date. We will need to weather a period of intensity in order to know whether we have the capacity to handle our own experience now, in a direct and unmediated way—to see if we can, in fact, take adequate care of ourselves and become the confident and kind person we want to be.
PRACTICEINVESTIGATING OUR STRATEGIES
Perhaps we all want to resolve the suffering our young survival strategies create, but equally, we do not want to experience the disturbance and panic required to do so. Rather than ignoring our contradictory feelings, the kindest thing to do—for ourselves and for others—is to bring awareness to those feelings. We can keep ourselves company as we check out our more vulnerable experience, reassuring ourselves that we are safe by going back into what might be called neurotic experience whenever we choose—taking little risks, then retreating into safety, and then going
back again. If you care to try this out, continue with this meditation.
Find a few minutes when you won’t feel distracted. Sit somewhere comfortable. Take a few deep breaths, if that might help bring your attention to the present moment.
Bring to mind a core vulnerability in your life—something you’ve developed strategies around not feeling. You may have some clarity about what your vulnerabilities are, or you may not. If not, just bring to mind some fear you’re aware of.
For example, if you’re afraid of feeling something, that experience must already be there; it must already be a part of your life. First comes a feeling you can’t handle, then come your strategies for not feeling it. Imagine acknowledging that fear from as great a distance as you choose, and just let it be there. No need to understand, heal, process, or make it go away. Just experience being in relationship with that fear. How is it to hold that fear in your awareness? What do you feel in your body? Does it feel familiar or unfamiliar?
Now, give yourself permission to ignore that fear. Participate in that experience as well. Where does your mind go? Is it easy or difficult to move away from that fear?
Once again, step back into relation with that fear. Feel what that’s like. What do you notice? Is it easier to be with the fear? Harder? Do the same sensations arise in your body this time?
You might go back and forth like this several times, doing your best to stay present and embodied while you do so. There is no agenda to resolve anything—just an invitation to be more aware of what’s already true.
NEUROSIS AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR EXPERIENTIAL INTENSITY
Carl Jung once said, “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” I agree with him, though I would say neurosis is always a substitute for experiential intensity. I say that because we tend to contract away from not only pain but also aliveness, sexuality, joy, open awareness, and a number of other intense experiences. One of the things I like about Jung’s understanding is that it characterizes neurosis as an activity of intelligence (which is not synonymous with wisdom). It’s not pathological; it’s not some pattern that blindly got put into place. Neurosis is not something that happened to us. It’s an unconscious choice we make, moment after moment. It’s what happens when we say, “I would actually prefer not to feel this incredibly difficult, vulnerable, disturbing experience right now, so I’m going to try to go around it. I will distract myself. I’ll be self-aggressive. I’ll get very activated. I’ll get involved with parenting, or with work. I’ll learn to meditate and be calm. I’ll exercise.” We might try to get out of our immediate experience of intensity through any number of ways, and basically, they all work in the short term. It’s like taking a drink. If you’re disturbed and you have some alcohol, there’s a good chance you’ll feel a bit calmer after that drink. Other people may use meditation to escape from their disturbance. But these, like all neurotic habits, are temporary solutions, giving us temporary relief. The pain and intensity we’re experiencing is probably going to come and go all of our lives. As children, this choice was often the best we could do. As adults, it’s an expression of a basic lack of trust in ourselves.
In the long run, neurotic habits have a counterproductive effect. Why? Because we are not dealing with the truth of our lives. Avoiding our difficult experience doesn’t make it go away. We are not training ourselves in how to work skillfully with it. We perpetuate a sense that there’s something about us that’s not workable. And our avoidant strategies have their own price tags, because they’re based not on reality but on fantasy. Engaging with our current life based on out-of-date avoidant strategies becomes increasingly unskillful and unsatisfying, as more and more time goes by. Our sense that something is off becomes harder and harder to ignore, even while we are unable or unwilling to really challenge ourselves.
I often see clients in their late thirties or forties who have spent decades avoiding their disturbance and anxiety through neurotic strategies. They often describe having a very thick, complicated state of mind. It feels heavy and dissatisfying. Something is off, not working. They can’t actually explain it based on any current life circumstances, as everything might be going okay. Yet they still feel heavy and confused. From my perspective, this heaviness is often the result of a cumulative avoidance of the truth of their experience. If we are constantly putting up a smoke screen to hold disturbing experience at bay, it’s natural that we’ll lose clarity in other parts of our lives. If we’ve felt at war with ourselves for decades, we’re probably beginning to feel a deep exhaustion.
In addressing neurotic or unnecessary suffering, the approach of traditional Western psychology is to address specific life issues, one after another, trying to find the source of the dissatisfaction in repetitive, historically conditioned patterns. Is there a problem in our marriage? With our boss? Are we too invested in our kids’ success? If so, Western psychology seeks to find the reenactment that’s beneath these current problems and then resolve it. My preference, however, is to clarify the reenactment and then investigate how we might be invested in maintaining it. The function that is served by this investment turns out to be the same, regardless of the symptom: the avoidance of experiential intensity. Addressing specific issues one after another will hopefully improve our circumstances—we might learn how to have better boundaries, better conflict skills, or an improved self-image. It’s a very valid approach. In my experience, however, it doesn’t get to the heart of things. Perhaps it will be more direct to increase our willingness to consciously participate in any form of experiential intensity. Central to this effort is learning to recognize and challenge our life-long aggression toward our vulnerabilities and instead learn to practice kindness toward them. When we approach neurosis not as “wrong” but as our best out-of-date effort to take care of ourselves, then our neuroses actually become more available to work with. If we’re in a conflict with another person and that person treats us in a kind way, it’s easier to work with that person skillfully. If, on the other hand, we treat each other like enemies, it’s very difficult to find common ground. So rather than attacking each life issue as if it were a problem, my intention is to invite awareness, presence, and kindness to all of our experiencing, without exception. Why not work with the foundation of all neurotic experiencing, which is aggression toward and denial of the incredibly intense and open nature of every moment of our experiencing? Why even be aggressive toward our aggression? Isn’t that more of the same? Why not be kind to our aggression, and then look for what’s beneath it?
I see the nature of neurosis as arising not out of pathology, but instead out of our clarity and vulnerability. Each neurotic pattern represents our best effort to take the very best possible care of ourselves. If we can appreciate neurosis from that point of view, we can work with it rather than attacking it. However, when we feel anxiety and fear—which are right at the heart of our evolutionary hardwiring—we usually make an automatic effort to get away from our disturbance or conquer it in some way. The next section discusses how this aggression manifests in our emotional life and how we can work with it more effectively.
THREE TYPES OF FUNDAMENTAL AGGRESSION
Although we’re working with the developmental, or Western psychotherapeutic, view in this chapter, one of the most accurate and helpful frameworks I know to help us understand our fundamental aggression toward ourselves comes from Buddhism. In the Buddhist tradition, the neurotic aggression we maintain toward the parts of ourselves we’ve disowned—our core vulnerabilities—is said to have three forms: positive, negative, and neutral.
In our culture, we usually think of aggression as synonymous with anger or negativity. But there are so many ways in which we are aggressive toward the truth of our own experience, and they often don’t look like anger. From a developmental point of view, we’re talking about aggression toward the truth of our experience—toward the aspects of ourselves that we have found unworkable and have tried to reject. These aspects become our emotional vulnerabilities. F
or example, Darren was not able to tolerate feelings of being a disappointment or failure, so these experiences became what he was least able and willing to work with. Unfortunately and necessarily, they were therefore the parts of himself that received the least amount of self-compassion. I find that when people open to the possibility that they are being aggressive toward themselves, it invites curiosity and, perhaps down the road, maybe even a little more gentleness. That gentleness allows us to begin to unwind the childhood strategies that are no longer serving us. We can become curious about what feelings or experiences those strategies are keeping at bay. “What is it I don’t want to feel? Is it actually serving me to repress those feelings? What if it’s no longer necessary to do so?”
All of us are in the same boat; all of us aggressively disown aspects of our experiencing. Perhaps we are drawn to some spiritual path in the hopes of living a life of harmony and peace, transcending any anger and conflict: positive aggression. Maybe we place ourselves in a competitive and stressful job that seems to require that we always push ourselves and never indulge in feeling weak: negative aggression. We could create a lifestyle that feels too overwhelming to deal with and may feel that the only response is to collapse and space out: neutral aggression. Understanding that there are three different styles of aggression may help us develop some empathy for others; some understanding that all of us are pretty freaked out about dealing with life; that we all have difficulties and we’re all being very aggressive—it just takes on different forms.
In Buddhist language, the “positive” form of aggression is often called passion or attachment. In Western psychological language, we might call it the neurotic feminine, because it is an out-of-balance expression of the attributes generally associated with the feminine side of the connecting–separate spectrum. Note that “feminine” is not interchangeable with “female.” Although it’s perhaps more common for women to show up with neurotic feminine strategies, men display them as well. All life forms must have both connecting and separate energies. The point of any style of aggression is to get out of an experience of disturbance as quickly as possible. The passion, or positive, form of aggression uses the strategy of trying to keep our engagement with life always positive. To maintain this hope, we tend to locate any problems within ourselves, privately, where they won’t disturb our relationships with others. People displaying neurotic feminine aggression become very accommodating when faced with a threat. It’s as if they are trying to erase themselves, so as to erase the tension that comes with any conflict.