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The most noticeable emotions that affects many people around this time of year revolves around attachment pain. It is amplified by the rampant externalism that permeates this most commercialized time of the year. Attachment pain centers in our relationships and need for relationships that lies at the very deepest part of our brains. It is the most basic need we experience and the most intense feeling that affects all other emotions throughout the rest of our brain.
I notice the heightened awareness in my own emotions of the various forms of attachment pain that swirl around inside my emotions. My perception and general outlook act as filters through which I interpret these feelings and try to make sense of them. If I am feeling negative, critical or self-pity I tend to produce unreasonable expectations that others should understand how empty I am feeling and spend more time filling the emptiness inside me with their attention and love. If I am feeling more mature or analytical I may evaluate more realistically where I am in my different relationships with the people in my life and try to understand how I could make an improvement in those relationships.
As we spend time in close proximity with family members in close quarters and under heightened stress levels resulting from various factors like exhausting food preparation, increased emotional sensitivity creating potential for possible offense, lack of normal rest and just the fact that more people in close proximity allows less time for each to be heard – as all these factors come into play, the emotional maturity of each person involved has a direct correlation to the experience we all take away as memories and how our attachment feelings with each other grow in depth or shrivel in pain.
We are all aware to at least some extent of the nature of this problem/potential. The holidays can be times of deep bonding and loving experiences that give us wonderful memories to enrich our lives. But most often these are ideals most often found in stories we read in books but only wish intensely to happen to us in real life. On the other side most people can quickly bring up horror stories of painful clashes produced by bringing immature relatives and friends together with unresolved grudges and over-sized expectations which sooner or later explodes into deeply painful clashes creating deep rifts, anger, blame, shame etc. that can easily last for years to come.
Most of us try to carefully and delicately maneuver a course of compromise and appeasement through the minefield of our holiday relationships hoping that when its all over the good bonding will outweigh the negative experiences and we will end up farther ahead than behind in our emotional sum total. This may not be the experience of some, but for all of my life this seems to describe the holidays quite accurately. And this one is certainly no exception.
As I thought about this over the past few days I tried to learn wisdom and understanding from what was taking place around me. There were those that I wanted to love openly and embrace fully but who kept me at arms length both physically and emotionally because of grudges they wanted to cling to. There were others who themselves were carrying deep pain that no one else knew about until it was quiet and safe enough for them to open up and share what they were suffering. I felt insufficient and inadequate to bring resolution to their complicated problems but wanted to provide an open heart to share their emotions to the extent that they were willing.
Others carry even deeper feelings of self-worthlessness and are possibly trying to supply the lack by serving others and keeping everything in order. This is certainly not to say that everyone who spends a lot of time preparing food and gifts etc. is suffering from low self-worth. But it can be a very easy method to avoid facing the deep attachment pain that remains unfaced and unaddressed inside many of us. The holiday events are always a strange mixture of external, choreographed behaviors designed to create an image to everyone around us that prevents others from seeing what is really going on inside. We are almost universally all afraid of being truly honest with each other about who we really are and how we really feel largely because we do not know how to be honest inside ourselves either. We have lived in a facade for so much of our life that that is about all we know, so we continue our well-learned practice of image management and hope for the best in the increased pressure during the holidays.
Meanwhile our heart is aching deep inside hoping desperately that love will come our way and our craving for acceptance and deep bonding with significant people in our lives might become more of a reality during these times of close interaction. Once in a while we make progress, but often we feel successful if we can just survive the holidays without a net loss emotionally.
I would like to learn how to live better than this. I would like to have my heart trained and mentored by someone who knows how to relate better than I do, who could show me how to act like myself under pressure and be able to greatly enrich my relationships instead of just survive them. I feel very inadequate in this area for it involves heart work with which I am very unfamiliar to date.
I am starting to perceive that one of the underlying issues at play during these times is the one of control. Most of us to some extent or other are trying to control those around us. This is natural but not helpful or healthy. It goes back to the false god syndrome and image management. We want to project a certain image to those around us of what we want them to think about us so we spend a great deal of energy massaging the information we allow to emerge about ourselves and our feelings. This restricts the freedom of those around us to choose what they want to believe about us or how they can relate to us. Of course, they too are playing the same game so it looks a lot like old-fashioned sword fighting where everyone is carefully maneuvering to gain a position of strength and dominance for themselves. While this may be be very natural and human it is counterproductive to deepening positive bonding with those we want to love.
Will this change? I hope so. When will I change? I don't know yet. I am simply recording my observations at this point which in itself helps to clarify the issues for me. Much of the time, when I sit down to write out my feelings or frustrations I have little idea of what emerges by the time I have finished writing. As the words begin to flow out the next thought begins to take shape and is pretty much ready by the time I get to it. It is an interesting process and one that has helped me condense into understandable context what before was mostly emotional concepts not clearly defined or understood.
The various sources that I have been learning from over the past few months and years such as Wilder's material on the brain and maturity, Regier's material, insights given to me regularly from the Word of God in my personal reflection, the book My Utmost for His Highest and many other sources (many of which I have listed on my web page) help me to have language to put into words the insights that form in my mind. The insights from others shared through their resources or comments coalesce together in my mind and heart to fill in a harmonious bigger picture that in turn adds to a yet greater picture that never stops growing.
I like it even better when others can synchronize with this process and share together with me in the discovery process. This ties back into the bonding process that creates attachments and brings longterm satisfaction which contributes to maturity and emotional growth. But for some reason, as wonderful as this could be, there seems to be things in my personality that block this connection with other people. I have had very little success in making friends most of my life, especially at a deeper level. And when I thought I had succeeded these relationships usually feel apart or simply faded away for reasons I could never quite understand. I have always concluded that there was some elusive offensiveness about me that was a blind spot for me that made me unusable as a deeply trusted friend to those I so deeply wanted to bond with.
