Maybe It's Not So Bad? Therapeutic Lessons (Nov 11, 2016)

A guy comes into my office complaining of porn addiction.  From an Internal Family Systems perspective, I immediately know the problem isn't just the part of him that is driving that behavior; it is the polarization between that part and another one that judges, fears, and/or hates that part.  The porn-loving part acts out, the anti-porn part pushes back, and the porn-loving part gets stronger in rebellion.  The client is powerless as these polarized parts duke it out.

To begin the process of freeing my client from this trap, I might begin by asking the anti-porn part to relax back while we hear from the porn part.  It might describe to us its motives, how it is helping the client, what it needs, etc.  As we release the tension of the polarization, we begin to find common ground, even if it is just that both parts involved are on the side of the client.  Eventually, the porn-loving part could be worked with to find other ways to meet my client's needs, or a compromise can be effected.  Or, after being allowed to express fully, the part might realize that the behavior is not actually necessary.

Our Democratic and Republican parties, and to some degree the voters who back them, have become increasingly polarized over the past few decades.  We have been powerless to address the needs of the country as this polarization locks us into paralysis.  Republican control of the White House, Congress, and presumably the Supreme Court, not to mention most governerships and state legislatures, may seem like a nightmarish scenario to many people, but it at least will get the pendulum swinging.  Who know what can happen four years from now, as more younger voters come online and many of Trump's supporters discover that his policies did not benefit them?  The voters will know whom to blame.  Perhaps any impulses to fight at this point, such as protests and movements to abrogate the election results, would just increase polarization, and would be better avoided.

In Core Energetics, we see a person as an expression of Higher Self, Lower Self, and Mask. Though we come onto this planet as HS energy, insults to our essence trigger protective LS reactions that are disconnecting or aggressive. As these produce further negative results, we develop the Mask as an additional protective layer. Most clients come to therapy stuck in their Mask, having lost connection with HS. Our work frees them from the Mask by encouraging full expression of LS energies, perhaps by hitting a foam rubber "cube" with a tennis racket and yelling. Once the embracing of LS has brought them out of Mask, they tend to drop into HS. OK, America, ready to hit the cube for four years?

Dr. Stanislav Grof, co-developer of Holotropic Breathwork, wrote extensively about the residues of birth trauma in the psyche.  He describes four stages (Basic Perinatal Matrices or BPM) of birth: the blissful floating in the womb; the victimization, powerlessness, and stuck feelings when the contractions begin before the cervix dilates; the aggressive energies moving through the birth canal; and the triumph and release of tension once we are born.  Each of these matrices has a distinct emotional component that he calls a "system of condensed experience" or "Coex," and each populates both the individual unconscious and the collective.  For example, the first matrix could be represented by the archetype of heaven, and the second by hell.

The coex of BPMII might contain elements in our biographical lives of powerlessness, mistreatment, victimization, captivity, and deep depression.  In the transpersonal realm, it taps into similar scenes, such as mass persecution and oppression, imprisonment, and the Holocaust.  Any current life event that resonates with BPMII elements will cause them to vibrate in our psyche, bringing up powerful feelings that we will tend to attribute to the external event.  Clients and friends with whom I've spoken over the past few days are suffering from this PTSD-like phenomenon, dropped into memories of childhood bullying or collective burdens from the Holocaust or other ancestral persecution.  These need to be felt and acknowledged, but their true source needs to be recognized.  In our current reality, we seem to be pretty safe.  I'm choosing to drop myself more into a BPMIII state, which contains the danger and discomfort of BPMII, but allows for the freedom to claim our power and struggle for freedom.

You may have heard the Taoist parable that goes something like this:

A poor farmer and his son worked their farm with their horse.  One day, the horse ran away.  The villagers exclaimed, "How horrible that this happened to you!"  The farmer responded, "Maybe. We'll see."  A few days later the horse returned, along with several beautiful wild horses.  The neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck, but he just said, "Maybe. We'll see."  As the son was trying to tame one of the new horses, he was thrown and broke his leg, rendering him unable to help with the chores.  Again the villagers commented on the farmer's misfortune, and his comment was, "We'll see."  The following week, soldiers marched through the village, conscripting young men for a dangerous war.  Having a broken leg, the son was spared almost certain death, and...

Were the election results a catastrophe?  Maybe.  We'll see.

Part Two

Please excuse my recent verbosity and addition of yet one more email to your pile, but some responses to my last little essay, plus recent Trumpian developments, call me to write just a bit more.

Some folks have asked whether two positions I took contradict each other.  I was suggesting that trying to fight the results of the election would increase polarization, but I also stated that I was embracing a "BPMIII" stance.  For those not familiar with Stan Grof's work, a BPMII state would activate memories of being in the womb when contractions were happening but before dilation of the cervix.  We feel powerless, hopeless, victimized, and stuck with no way out.  In BPMIII, because the cervix is opening, we have possibilities, but we must struggle to achieve them.  You can read more about Stan's perinatal matrices here or in many of his books, most notably Beyond the Brain. 

Let's say you wanted to get a cat out of a particular room.  Here are 3 approaches you could try:

1. Push the cat out of the room.
2. Entice the cat out of the room.
3. Pick up the cat and carry it out of the room.

In case you've never tried option 1, here's what happens: the cat pushes back.  Not the most effective approach.

Options 2 and 3 have pros and cons.  If the cat prefers being in the room to whatever treat you are offering, option 2 gets you nowhere.  If your cat is from the planet Krypton and is stronger than you are, option 3 fails.  Even when option 3 works, it sets up some future consequences: the cat may be more likely to sneak into the room later, or it may run away next time you approach.  So choosing between them requires some strategy.

(By the way, I assert that in trying to move towards healing and wholeness by getting past the cat-like psychological defenses, good therapy employs a judicious mixture of options 2 and 3.  Option 1 represents unskilled therapy.  Option 2 alone sacrifices some effectiveness, and option 3 alone is dangerous.)

Option 1 represents polarization.  When we react from a polarized place, we lack clarity and wisdom, and therefore effectiveness.  I watched footage of young people protesting recently, yelling slogans such as "Not my President!"  Guess what?  Barring an amazingly executed violent act, on January 20, he will be their President.  While I appreciate the energy, passion, and willingness of these protesters, in some way their response feels like a temper tantrum.

In a BPMIII state, we feel anger, power, and willingness to fight.  What do we do with those feelings?  We do what we practiced in Breathwork sessions -- we witness and claim them without being compelled to act them out.  They are there for whenever we choose to employ them.  A warrior is willing to fight, but uses strategy to choose her battles.  Without clear evidence of fraud, what is the desired outcome from protesting a fair election?  It is just pushing against the cat -- the roughly 50% of voters that selected this man.  (Sorry, the electoral college is not going to defy their states and throw enough votes to Hillary to win.)  Wasn't the left outraged just a month ago when Donald hinted he might not accept the election results?

On the other hand, we can mobilize and fight specific policies.  Yesterday Reuters quoted a member of Trump's transition team saying that the new President would be looking for ways to bypass the four-year procedure to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change.  Is this a cat that we can pick up and move?  That is a question worth exploring.  Perhaps, having attained the pinnacle of power, Trump will decide that he wants the adoration of the masses.  Perhaps, through simple memes, most of America can be convinced of the need to act on climate change, just as Trump won them over.  I'm sure that many of his votes came from good people that do not necessarily support Trump's values, but that needed to protest the plutocracy supported by Clinton Democrats as much as by Republicans.

As the next four years play out, if the civil rights of our brothers and sisters are threatened, if tax changes further beat down our underclass, if action on gun control becomes possible, if unwise and belligerent foreign policies are proposed, if Roe v. Wade is attacked, if the control of money in politics is made easier, if health insurance is taken away from those who need it, then let's take a breath and notice what is reacting in us.  Then let's fight the good fight.