WHERE IS OUR SAFETY NET? WHICH ONE?

23May2016 By Judith Barr

Nik Wallenda is a daredevil and a high wire artist. Part of the famous Wallenda family, originally circus performers, he carries on the family tradition by walking the wire across dangerous places at dangerous heights, for people to see both in person and via television. In recent years, he has walked across Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, and the Chicago Skyline canyon of skyscrapers.

He walks the wire without a safety net!

Yes, he walks the wire without a safety net. And that’s his choice. But what about the rest of us? Those of us who aren’t high wire artists, and don’t choose consciously to walk the wire of life without a safety net?

We are born into many kinds of families … some families with, as they say in my field, “good enough” mothers and fathers. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect. It doesn’t mean they haven’t been wounded themselves in some way. It just means that somehow they have managed to be good enough parents, give their children a good enough experience in their development, and prepare their children enough to know themselves and find themselves when they lose their way.

How have the good enough parents done that? Maybe they’ve done their own inner healing work. Maybe they, themselves, have had good enough parents. Maybe they somehow have had a sense of responsibility and a sense of commitment that guided them to find out how to become a good enough parent – inside and out. Maybe a combination.

However the good enough parents do it, bonding with a good enough mother and being held by her physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically, and spiritually … is like being given a safety net. In other words, attachment to a good enough mother is a safety net – outer and inner. Most importantly it is an internal safety net that makes a deep and lasting imprint.

Although we don’t want to know it, don’t want to even imagine it, would likely deny it’s true for us … most children in our world today do not have “good enough” parents. And most adults in our world today did not have “good enough” parents, either. The history of wounding in our families in our world goes back more generations than the famous Wallenda family’s talent as high wire artists.

Family wounding can start in an instant – an instant of neglect, an instant of abuse, an instant of loss, an instant of abandonment, an instant of insanity …

It gets compounded generation by generation, as members who were impacted by that first instant carry it on through their lives, acting it out consciously and unconsciously – through repressing and defending against the wounding experience and its impact on their minds, bodies, hearts, and souls.

Family wounding starts in an instant, but it certainly doesn’t stop in an instant. Family wounding doesn’t stop even in a generation unless that generation doesn’t have children, and even then it still lives on and gets acted out by those who are still alive. But the end of family wounding can begin in a generation if that generation takes responsibility to end it, enters a deep process of psychotherapy to heal the family wounding to the root … and passes that healing tradition onto the next generation to continue.

The result of the family wounding … most children don’t have a safety net. And most adults – within whom the child they once were is still alive – don’t have a safety net either. And the safety net that was needed and either never existed or was shattered … that safety net needs to be replaced or re-created from the inside out. That takes time. It takes time individually. It takes time as a family. And it takes time as a community – local, national, and global.

It’s part of what I offer to help people do when they work with me … replace or re-create a safety net within. And then from the inside out into their lives.

To do that, they need to allow themselves to come to realize – if they haven’t realized already – that living without a safety net as a child led them to build a safety net themselves, as a child. So although they did the best they could for a youngster trying to take care of themselves, they built the kind of safety net a child would build – perhaps a 1-year old’s safety net; perhaps a 4-year old’s safety net; perhaps an 8-year old’s safety net. So the safety net may have helped them as a child, but it is a twisted, distorted, not really safe safety net for an adult. It has holes and knots in it and isn’t really very strong as a here and now safety net – inside or out.

Maybe a little boy had no safety net in his family. Maybe he was sexually abused as a child. Maybe he cried out ‘no’ when his abuser held him down, only to be smacked by the perpetrator in response. So in the face of no safety net, the little boy’s safety net in his mind became to never cry out ‘no.’

As time went on maybe he extended what he thought was his safety net to not saying ‘no’ at all. It might have kept him from being smacked, or worse, as a child. But it also kept him from saying ‘no’ or crying out as an adult at times when he needed to in order to keep himself and his loved ones safe.

Perhaps a little girl had no safety net in her family. Perhaps she was tricked by her family and then humiliated when she discovered she was tricked. Perhaps she built what she imagined as a little girl was a safety net – inaction. Just hiding out in her room and not taking action on anything when at all possible. It might have saved her from humiliation as a child, but as an adult, it led her into unsafety in ways she could have never imagined. For example, people could take advantage of her and her inaction. People could corner her and make her even more vulnerable than she already was and felt from childhood.

In these examples of safety nets lacking in childhood and built by children … we see a tragedy not only in the life of children in our world, but also in the life of the adults they become. Because growing in years and growing in size does not mean maturing. It just means growing in years and size. The child you once were is still alive inside you … needing help, needing healing, needing maturing, and needing real safety.

But who in our world offers to help children and adults create a new inner safety net?
A world so very focused on the external. A world so very focused on functioning. A world so very focused on symptoms. A world that supports the child alive inside, still starving for safety, to continue to use young ways to try to feel safe, and to find more and more ways to feel a respite from the unsafety s/he grew up with and the unsafety s/he still faces today. An example of this is the government suggested practice in the 1950’s of practice drills in case of a nuclear bomb – having children get under their desks in school “for their safety.” So … no saying ‘no’ and no taking action expands into addictions of all sorts to hold the pain and fear of the unsafety at bay. Drugs – street and medicinal – alcohol, television, politics, guns, football, sex, fights, and more. Even prayer and meditation can be misused to mask the lack of safety net that exists within and without.

Because we ignore the lack of safety nets we had as children … Because we ignore and hide from the continued lack of safety nets we have within as adults … Because we reflexively hold at bay the experience of young unsafety … we also hold at bay the experience of unsafety we live with today.

Unaware that any unsafety today will trigger our young experiences of unsafety …we are blind to the unsafety we live with. We are blind and deaf and numb to the truth that we have created the unsafety we live with today … out of our defenses against the unsafety we lived with as children. And we are blind, deaf, and numb to the awareness that the sense of powerlessness we feel in the face of the unsafety today is mostly the experience of powerlessness we felt in the face of unsafety as children long ago, being transferred by us onto today.

Perhaps we tried to get more and more safety by making more and more money, believing that huge amounts of money would one day make us safe. But then comes something like the recession of 2008 and … the safety net we tried to create in the outside world as a way to defend against the lack of safety net on the inside came crashing down. The safety net we tried to create in our late 1990-early 2000 world to defend against the lack of safety net in our world in the years of our childhood … disintegrated.

Maybe we tried to do all sorts of things, unconsciously believing they would create the safety net we didn’t have as a child, and hold at bay the pain and terror of that young lack of safety that still lives within us. Maybe we have destroyed our air and our water, destroyed our forests, our food, and our weather. Maybe we have destroyed our infrastructure. Maybe we have destroyed our travel. Maybe we have destroyed our health. Perhaps we’ve destroyed our politics, our government, our economy, our culture by indiscriminately falling for, accepting, and normalizing the destructive acting out by anybody at all – the lies, sexual abuse, cheating and stealing, bullying and threatening, and more.

Perhaps we have been unconsciously destroying our safety net in the outer world today as a result of trying to avoid facing the shattered safety net from long, long ago, still living in our minds, our hearts, and our bodies.

This is what happens when we defend against what lives within us instead of tending to it and healing it. What we originally defended against ends up being the very thing we create. Defending against a shattered or missing safety net, creates defenses that in the end create the very thing we were trying to defend against … a shattered safety net.

That’s what we’ve done in our world.
That’s what we’ve done in every arena of our world.
And no matter how big or how small, we have all played a part in it.
We all have to take responsibility for it.
We all need to take our part in healing and repairing it …
Starting with healing from the lack of safety net in our lives long ago.
Starting with healing from the lack of safety net still within our psyches and souls.
Starting with healing ourselves – from the inside out.

If we do not start from within ourselves, the safety net will never be truly repaired or re-created – within or without. Because we create from the inside out.
We cannot repair safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.
We cannot repair individual safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.
We cannot repair communal safety nets from the outside in and expect them to sustain over time.

Do you want a safety net in your outer world?
Then begin now:
Commit to get the help to heal to the root from the lack of safety net in your childhood and within yourself today.
Don’t be tricked by others who are also creating unsafety today by defending themselves against feeling the unsafety from their childhoods that still lives within them.
Don’t be duped or seduced into believing you can continue to hold at bay that painful lack of safety that’s been with you for years and years without consequences.
Don’t be fooled into thinking your holding your unsafety at bay will be safe for you, those you love, or the world as a whole.
It won’t. It isn’t.
Look what it has created in your world already.
Look what it has created in our world already.

Get the help to face it and work through it …
This is the real hope.
We all have this choice.
We all have this opportunity.
We all have this possibility.
And we all live with the consequences of our choices.
This is the real hope …
Choose well!

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP KEEP OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

If you grow up without someone to welcome you, who you really are….
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up without someone to nourish and help you become more and more fully who you are, mind, body, heart, and soul …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up without someone to nurture you into thriving as you …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who interferes with who you are and who you are meant to develop into …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who neglects the essence of who you are and your development of that essence into fullness …
You don’t have a safety net.

If you grow up with someone who colludes with someone else’s neglecting or interfering with who you are and have the potential to become …
You don’t have a safety net.

If truth be told, there are very few among us who had “good enough” parents who helped us to form a healthy, lasting internal safety net. And for those of us who didn’t … it is crucial we explore how our self-created safety nets were distorted.

Commit today to explore ways in which your own childhood experience affected your internal safety net. In the absence of the true safety net of attachment to a good enough parent, did you create your own distorted “safety net,” maybe one which led you to avoid owning your ‘no’ or led you to inaction, like the examples in the article … or maybe one which you act out in other ways, with the potential to create unsafety for yourself and those around you?

Working with your internal safety net can be very delicate work. Find a compassionate therapist, one who can safely help you explore and heal the wounding within, and help you create a truly healthy safety net inside.

Imagine what our lives, our children’s lives, the lives of our families, our communities, our world would be like if everyone worked to heal their inner wounding … creating lasting safety nets within themselves … and in doing so creating true, healthy, lasting safety in our world!

Healing the Roots of Slavery and Prejudice

29Jun2015 By Judith Barr

In the heartbreaking midst and aftermath of the Charleston, South Carolina massacre, many are claiming change. We can change our behavior. We can change our symbols. We can change our words. We can pass laws that seem to claim we’ve changed our attitudes or even our values. But unless we really dig deep into our feelings and heal what is at the root of racial prejudice … the changes on the surface will only be a guise of change. And they won’t last. They will only conceal what is still festering beneath the surface within us individually, and also societally. Hidden within, masked by outer changes, the roots will continue to create the painful, destructive outcomes within us and all around us.

This is as true with racial prejudice as it is with anything else that is unresolved deep within.

I have many times thought of writing about the deep roots of prejudice, and the cruelty that people act out on each other as a result. This week as I’ve sat with the events in Charleston, I felt deeply called to write about a different root than I have in the past. I hope this will be food for your wondering. I hope you can let this inform you, intrigue you, and inspire you to look deeper into yourself – for the sake of your own healing, for the sake of those around you, for the sake of our country, and for the sake of our world.

*****

Please wonder with me …
Where do we get the idea we can own other people? And do whatever we want with them and to them, just because …? How did we ever come to believe we had the right to enslave beautiful dark skinned natives of one continent and bring them to our own to do our bidding? Or to receive our wrath if they didn’t? Even receive our murderous rage when they didn’t do what we wanted, when we wanted it, how we wanted it?

Where did this start?
How did this start?

Some might look at it historically, perhaps working backwards beginning with human trafficking today. Some might go all the way back to Ancient Egypt. And some even before that.

Here’s another way to look at it.

When a child bonds well, meaning healthily, with mother … that healthy mother – the one we call in my field the “good enough mother” – does our bidding. She is focused on us, protecting us, nourishing us, taking care of our needs, and doing so with love. No, she isn’t perfect. Not even the “good enough mother” is perfect. But when she makes a mistake she is self-responsible, acknowledging her mistake and finding a way to repair the mistake and its consequences. She does this from love and consciousness, a good heart. And as a result, she creates trust.

When we have this as a child, the attachment with mother becomes internalized and helps us feel secure. It helps us give what we received from mother to ourselves, and often to others as well. When a child has this from mother, the child feels something kindred to owning mommy. But it’s not the same thing. Because in this healthy scenario, mommy gives herself to her child. She whole-heartedly surrenders to the care of her baby … while hopefully still taking good care of herself.

But when a child does not have this healthy attachment, there is no real sense of security. There is a deep hole within and the person feels a sense of starvation for some way to get someone to focus on him, protect him, nourish him, take care of his needs … to do his bidding. There is a deep urge – whether conscious or unconscious – to find or create a way to have someone give what was missing in childhood. A craving to own someone.

From here the cycles upon cycles of damaging and destructive “owning” begin. This child grows up and finds someone to own. It might be his wife. It might be his child. It might be both. It might be his own unhealthy parent who didn’t give as he needed in childhood. His craving to own is truly insatiable – whether he’s aware of it or not, whether it shows on the outside or not. No amount of owning someone today or tomorrow can fill the emptiness of lack of attachment with mommy long ago. But as the current experience of insatiability grows and grows, at some point he moves on from enslaving those who are supposed to be his loved ones to others in his life and then to someone he can make his slave.

All along, over time the other little boys and girls who didn’t attach healthily with mother have been finding ways to own people in their lives, too. And eventually they join together to make people their slaves. To bring people home as slaves from the other side of town or the other side of the country or even the other side of the world.

Others see they can make money off of satisfying the very young craving to own somebody that lives in so many people. And these “money makers” find ways to bring many who will become slaves to the people who, at the root, are starving for mommy.

This owning and money making becomes normalized in the minds and hearts of the individuals and in the minds and hearts of people communally. And it gets passed down from generation to generation, even if not in awareness. The mothers who didn’t have a bond with mommy feel like they own their children, and treat them that way. And those children feel the same about their spouses and children. And on and on and on …

Those who suffer from being owned, don’t know what to do.
Those who suffer from owning, don’t feel consciously like they’re suffering.

Most importantly … nobody is aware that this stems from the earliest times in childhood, when a baby does need mommy to do his or her bidding.
Most importantly … few are aware of how starving we are in our world for healthy attachment from the earliest times in our lives.
Few are aware of how painful it is for a child to be without the deeply needed bonding.
Few are cognizant of the damaging consequences of lack of bonding on an individual, a family, and communally for generations to come.
Few let themselves feel what a trauma this is for all of us.
Few realize how much of what happens in our cultures and in our world is the damaging consequence of unhealthy attachment.

One of the tasks we have ahead of us as we work to end racial prejudice is the same task we have in other arenas of our lives: we need to heal our wounds from the earliest ages, even from the times when healthy attachment needed to occur, so there is healing from the inside out … and not just a guise of healing.

This is courageous, honorable, transformative work.
We all need you – and all of us – to participate in it.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP MAKE OUR WORLD SAFE
FROM THE INSIDE OUT

None of us is immune to wounding, and even if we don’t actually “own” slaves or consciously feel entitled to “own” others, we may still be feeling the effects of wounding to our early attachment that cause us – consciously or unconsciously – to seek in people in our current lives the healthy “owning” of mommy that we missed as a child.

What you can do:

Commit to explore within yourself if and when you feel entitled to “own” others. You can start by exploring what you feel when someone in your life says “no” to something you’ve asked of them. Do you have strong feelings anytime someone says “no” to you? Do you only have strong feelings when the “no” comes in response to something you feel is really important to you? Do you only have strong feelings if the “no” is a response to something critical to your health and wellbeing? Do you feel scared? Hurt? Angry? Vengeful? Do you feel indignant that they are not “doing your bidding”?

Now ask yourself: “Is my response a here and now response or a young response from long ago that is still alive inside me today? Or is it a combination of the two?” To find out, trace those feelings back, as far back in your life as you can. Maybe you felt this same way – with good reason – when you were a child or even an infant, when mommy withheld the care she should have given you … care you deserved and were truly entitled to. Keep tracing these feelings back as far as you can. And, if the wounding at the root of these feelings calls you to seek help, commit to finding a good, integritous, caring therapist to help you truly heal these feelings to the root.

What else can you do?

After you have explored your craving to own someone, you can also explore the other side of this coin. Perhaps your experience was not only the absence of mommy giving herself whole-heartedly to you in a healthy attached relationship. Perhaps you also experienced her trying to own you. As a result, in addition to your trying to own people in your current life, you might also transfer mommy trying to own you onto other people in your life today.

You might think people want to own you when they really don’t.You might feel people want you to focus only on them when that isn’t the case at all. You might accuse people of wanting you to do their bidding, when that isn’t true. Those transferred feelings may be so strong that your insistence on and defense against the other person trying to own you may in itself enslave you, the other person, and your relationship in a scenario that isn’t here and now and isn’t the truth. This often happens between people in all kinds of combinations, including people of different races.

If this is the case, you can also trace those feelings back, as far back in your life as you can. Maybe you felt this same way – with good reason – when you were a child and mommy tried to own you, enslave you, trap you … instead of take good care of you. Keep tracing these feelings back as far as you can. And, if the wounding at the root of these feelings calls you to seek help, again … commit to finding a good, integritous, caring therapist to help you truly heal these feelings to the root.

Whatever our skin color, gender, nationality, creed or affiliation, we all need to do this inner healing work, before we can even hope to help our world heal from prejudice and the tragedy it often brings. Imagine what our world would be like if we all committed today to do just that!