Posted by Kalamatianos on January 3, 2004, at 12:41:25
In reply to Re: Thank yourself for hanging in there(long) » Kalamatianos, posted by DaisyM on January 2, 2004, at 17:44:14
<<<"devoid of feeling"
>>>...is appropriate for retrospectives. The hypothesis is that if a memory is evocative, it probably contains unresolved conflict. "The Objective View" teaches us to take in information and process it before attaching a value to the memory of the perception. Value in this case is a specific emotion; a feeling. Since you can't get excited about the memories, they just are. (objectively, hypothetically).
<<<...responsibilities turn into obligations
>>>Obligations come first. All throughout our childhoods, we remain obligated to our parents and guardians. This serves to keep us alive. Its also easier for parents to have the one-way-street nature of obligation as a management tool for their parenting job. With obligation comes "The Tyranny of the Shoulds" and don'ts, approval instead of true love, expectations instead of plans and goals, and avoidance of the new and the unknown.
All of this works fine into adolescence when parents don't know the next step; emancipation. By emancipating, I don't mean emotional severance and abandonment. Robert Subby from Minnesota wrote about this in the 80's. It means instead, a welcoming ritual of the former-child into adulthood. American aboriginals would send the 14 year old out into the wilderness with a collection of survival tools and instructions to return about a year with the spring thaw. If he made it, he was declared a "Brave" and no longer a youngster in the tribe.
So the ancients got it right, and we seem to have lost our way in the last 50 years. Perhaps the desperation of the great depression and the young men being absent during WWII lulled a generation into forgetting this natural process and its purpose.
DaisyM, if you were not instructed by your parents that adulthood is a whole different thing than childhood, adulthood can be the notion of being overwhelmed. e.g.: expectations are one-way like obligations. As a child, there was only one outcome expected for a promised event. I had the expectation that the event would happen because the parents I was obligated to said it was going to happen. This worked fine for me as a child, but gets in my way as an adult. Anytime I get excited by an expectation, my complicated adult life seems to change things on me, and I end up disappointed and despondent and feel a failure.
In my business life I have plans goals and personal (handshake) contracts. If the initial vision vaporizes, I always have optional paths toward optional results. So why can't I morph that over into my private life? I found the answer in 1988. I found that I could do this once I declared myself no longer a child obligated to my family of origin. I was 41 and declaring myself belatedly emancipated in front 15 friends and acquaintances, thanks largely to Robert Subby's book.
Thank god I wasn't required to be responsible, in the adult sense, as a child. I already had problems with self respect and self esteem. Boy, how close do I feel I was to being a casualty of my own childhood!!!
poster:Kalamatianos
thread:294529
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040102/msgs/296025.html