Where Does Poetry Come From? Does it come from a series of events that have left physical and mental scars on us? Is it the emotions of everyday life escaping from our souls and into words for us to try and make sense of it all? Are they just pretty rhymes and ideas sparking the fires of our imaginations, or simply survival skills?
Separating From Old Survival Strategies
I have used it as an escape from the pains of a failing family. Words written where the writer weeps for answers to how and why. My words were raw, uncontrolled emotions becoming stronger and stronger as each day passed by. I’ve written out rhymes asking why I am alive, why am I the only guy who can see that the fire in my eye has burnt out. These words were my voice; my way to scream and shout. To cast away the lies and doubt. There was a point where placing words on paper was the best poetry I could write; but the soul has no limits, and I can break free of this height.
Up and away, there’d come a day where I may say I am a poet.
A person who writes poems.
A person possessing special powers of imagination or expression. This poem is titled Individual by Thomas Conlan.
Finding Ourselves
When the author of that poem asks, “Where does poetry come from?” I believe he is asking is where we come from. The process of therapy is about finding our selves as we truly are. This article is about some of the challenges we must face in order to do just that.
As children, the need to be loved and accepted by our parents lead to an internal conflict because of the no-win dynamic we put ourselves in. When something makes us feel upset with our parents, we turn that anger against ourselves. As children, when we have needs that are not being met we try to protest and get our parents attention. If they are unresponsive we feel more desperate and feared that we would not be loved or cared for. This can lead the child to feel anxious, depressed or both. Children do not have the capacity to experience love and anger towards their parents simultaneously, so instead they blame themselves for their parents. Eventually this can lead to shutting down our feelings and needs and developing strategies that are more likely to get our parents attention. Parents may also be decent people who find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of parenthood. In order to shift this, children need to be assured by their parents that they are not at fault for their family’s challenges.
Developmental Stages
These survival strategies come in 5 developmental stages and are related to essential capacities.
Capacity Of Connection
The first one is about the capacity of connection- The capacity of connection is about being able to be in touch with our bodies, emotions and connect with others. For people who had challenges connecting as children, connection, being seen, and in some cases even existing felt scary. To manage this fear of connection, they learned to disconnect from their bodies and emotions as a way to avoid being seen. It felt safer to experience themselves as invisible.
They find themselves feel like they belong or fit in. Because they feel like they don’t belong, or fit some people go into their heads and find themselves engaging in a lot of thinking. Others completely leave their body and seek comfort in the spiritual world. As their awareness increases they come to see the conflict between feeling lonely and wanting to connect and understand that they avoid connection because it feels overwhelming.
Janet’s Story
Janet was adopted and never knew her birth parents. She was adopted into a family where her adopted father had an alcohol problem and could also be verbally and physically abusive. The abuse seemed to coincide with times when he was high. Janet had to figure all of this out for herself because her father was secretive about his use. As an adult she never felt like she really belonged and always felt different. Connecting with other people often felt challenging, and she was especially sensitive to the mood shifts of others.
When she felt triggered she would dissociate by disconnecting from her body and engaging in circular thinking. Due to traumas of being given up for adoption and feeling uncomfortable in her adopted home, when she re-experienced these memories, she became highly agitated, and experienced dread and impending doom that she couldn’t put words to. She had a boyfriend who felt like a close friend. It was hard for her to really trust people, and the trust and she felt more trust for animals.
Janet Connects With Her Survival Strategies
When she first started therapy she would share in a distant way that felt more conceptual than personal. When I would ask her for specific examples of what she was referring to, she would respond in a general way. After I asked her about this, she said that she was worried that she would be pinned down and get stuck taking a particular position that didn’t completely fit for her. She would also dissociate, disconnecting from the present moment interaction we were having in the room.
As she brought more awareness to this dynamic, she realized that she was dissociating and engaging the same distancing strategy with me that she used with her father to avoid getting him angry and risking abuse. As she was able to connect this past strategy with present moment behavior, she realized that she had more freedom to share what was actually true for her and that she felt the freedom to change her responses, she was getting in touch with the primary human capacity for connection.
Attunement
The second capacity is attunement- “Many people with this style become caretakers because they learned to cope by attuning to other people’s needs and instead of their own. Attunement is about being able to tune into our feelings and needs and being able to express those other people as well as attending to their feelings and needs and being able to talk about it together. This is especially important for people that we feel close and attached to. For some people it may be scary for them to acknowledge their feelings and needs, let alone expressing them to others, because there’s a fear that they won’t be met. When clients of the style work through the shame of needing, they are able to have more satisfying relationships with others. Having more satisfying connections makes it easier to trust in connection and let go of the compulsive caretaking”.
Jessie’s Story
Jessie grew up with a mother who was sometimes warm and affectionate with him. Other times she would pull away. If he felt hurt by her pulling away and wanted her attention, she would get irritated and pull away more saying that he was a fussy baby. She seemed to get hurt at each developmental stage that he took. She enjoyed walking with him when he took his first few step, but felt hurt when he wanted to be able to walk on his own. He became attentive to her pulling away and would cry seeking reassurance. Since she saw him as a fussy baby, she was dismissive of his tears.
As an adult in relationships, Jessie was afraid of abandonment. He had learned to become numb to his own feelings and needs, especially if there was any way that they were different from those of his friends or girlfriend. What he noticed in therapy was that he was significantly more attentive to his feelings and his needs when he was by himself. He realized that he felt lonely by himself, but much calmer and able to listen and attend to his needs more effectively. He was very generous in relationships, giving his girlfriends anything that he intuited they might want. He always wanted them to do the same thing for him and would feel anxious when they didn’t, believing it wasn’t fair. Later when he realized in therapy that he was angry, it reminded him that who he was actually angry at was his mother, who rarely considered his needs but always expected him to be available to her. With this awareness, although he felt extremely vulnerable, he began bringing up his needs regularly in friendships and relationships, which left him feeling more connected, relaxed and alive when around others.
Trust
The third capacity is trust– “The dilemma is being able to accept parts of ourselves that we’ve judged or rejected. In order to stay away from this conflict this client would most often avoid asking for help. Sometimes they reject what’s most authentic because it is also most vulnerable.
Individuals with this survival strategy respond to having been controlled and manipulated as children by attempting to manipulate those around them. Their biggest fear is losing control. They compensate for feeling small by needing to look like they are the one on top. Some of them are really good at making impressions, selling themselves, influencing and motivating people. They have learned to gain control by promising others what they think the other people want to hear or promising them what they believe others want.
As they acknowledge and accept that they were betrayed as children, and deal with the hurt and pain they can be more present in their bodies and hearts and reach out for help without feeling small. They once believed that being strong is having power over others. But they discovered that their true power is in their strength and vulnerability.
Jed’s Story
Jed remembered as a young man a message that he took from his father: “You need to look, act and feel strong at all times”. He remembered that even as a kid, he had the habit of pushing himself over and over again to do things that I wasn’t ready for. Things usually worked out ok, or even went well, and he experimented with more than he might have otherwise. As an adult, he initially believed that people would judge him as weak if he was open and vulnerable. When others asked him what was happening with him, he shared what he thought he should ideally think, feel or want. He realized that he didn’t like the inauthentic way he was portraying himself to others.
Even if things went well he didn’t feel good about it because he hadn’t really shown them who he is. Later he realized that it takes courage to be vulnerable. Even though doing this didn’t always feel safe or easy, it felt good to be himself and over time he ended up feeling much stronger and more confident by being open and vulnerable than he would have ever previously expected.
Autonomy
The fourth capacity is autonomy– “Individuals with this survival strategy can be caring, kind, and openhearted but find it challenging to set limits and boundaries with others. If they make a decision they worry that others will make them wrong, so they end up making themselves wrong. They are so worried about making a mistake in relationships that they need to take space from others in order to lessen the worry that they will be taken over.
They’re very loyal and good friends, but it’s hard for others to know where the relationship stands with them. A sign that someone is shifting away from this strategy: When they can let go of having to continue the habit of being nice, good and flexible and allow themselves to be honest in their closer relationships, this allows more intimacy, and at the same time staying in touch with their need for independence.
Thomas’s Story
Thomas was born in another country and moved to the United States as a young child. There were several factors that led him to having difficulty trusting others and feeling very alone. Thomas grew up remembering his father’s emotional distance and inaccessibility. He remembered trying to get his father’s approval and attention, but always had a sense that his father was disappointed in him. He tried to prove to his father that he could perform well, but when his father turned away from him, he became anxious and collapsed into depression. When this would happen Thomas would turn against himself and internalize his father’s reactions as proof that Thomas himself was a failure.
Thomas later learned that his father wasn’t expecting to have children. Thomas’s mother was also critical but could also be warm at times. Thomas sensed that his mother was trying to give him advice by telling stories. Although he felt like he could be more of himself with his mother, it was hard for him to feel like he could ever relax with either parent. He remembers trying to talk to each parent separately when they would have fights with each other trying to get them to make up with each other because he felt that they both became more distant during these times.
As an adult, Thomas has difficulty tuning into what he wants and often worries that expressing what he wants directly will lead to rejection if the other person he’s with wants something different. Over time Thomas learned to tune in and trust his emotions and intuition. Over time he also learned that he could communicate directly with others about his feelings and needs and trust that he would be ok no matter what the outcome.
Love And Sexuality
The fifth capacity is Love and Sexuality– “People with this survival style are energetic, go getters, successful, and often attractive. However regardless of their attractiveness or accomplishments they’re constantly stressed about living up to their own high standards. Since their self-worth is based on looks and performance, it is conditional. There is a divide between their sexuality and their heart. Clients with this survival style often grow up in families where tender affectionate emotions such as love as well as sexuality are viewed dismissively. Healing happens when they let go and surrender the need to perform and be in control, and just be with their feelings. From there they can begin to integrate their sexuality with an open heart”.
Sharon’s Story
Sharon grew up in a family where she had to prove herself constantly as a child in order to get her parents attention. Her parents would constantly share her accomplishments with the community. Sharon shared that when this happened she felt both seen and invisible at the same time. She grew to enjoy the attention and admiration but it also scared her. Each time she got it she told herself that she would need to keep pushing herself even harder to maintain their attention. As a teenager, she was tall and attractive and received lots of attention from boys.
Sharon’s parents were never physical with her unless she performed in an exceptional way. Then they would become emotional and touch her briefly. She remembered feeling lonely at home and trying to reach out for an affectionate hug. Her parents responded by telling her they were busy and encouraging her to find another project to fill her time. As an adult, Sharon was a workaholic and found it incredibly difficult to relax and let go. She surrounded herself with other go getters. She would often be seeking a relationship with a high achieving partner. Once in the relationship, she took pride in describing the relationship by saying “we are a power couple”. She had the fantasy that these relationships would support her and her partner growing together in their careers. Ultimately, she noticed that there wasn’t much intimacy outside of the goals they were achieving. Sharon said that she also felt burdened because she was contributing more financially and contributing more overall in their relationships. When Sharon realized there wasn’t enough connection, she was the first to break the relationships off.
At a certain point Sharon realized that this striving to continuously perfect herself left her feeling empty. She decided to take a break from dating and focus more on connecting with herself and her heart, recognizing that she learned to cut off from herself since childhood. Giving herself this space allowed her to grieve and open her to the possibility of giving and receiving love effortlessly without having to prove herself. It wasn’t easy for her to disengage from her strategy of workaholism and proving herself in this way, but she was able to become more aware of this pattern, the part of her it served, and how it disconnected her from herself.
Key Takeaways
Therapy is about being able to reclaim our needs and feelings that we once needed to cut off from. We learned to believe and reject information that conflicts what we first learned in childhood. The more that we find ourselves identified and locked into these beliefs, strategies, thoughts, impulses and feelings the more we will be living our present day life through a memory. There may be an impulse to criticize yourself if there is something you read that feels like an accurate description. My intention for sharing this information is to help others to recognize patterns that get in the way of being their full selves. Exploring how you get locked into strategies and patterns can help you to dis-identify from past strategies and start to live your life in ways that are most reflective of who you are and who you want to be.
Learn more about survival skills and separating from past strategies in Part IV or go back to Part II
