If you have been following my work for any length of time, you will already know that this approach turns a lot of medical thinking on its head. The idea of unblending is no exception to that idea! So many of the clients I work with have been trying more medical solutions for years and have become very frustrated with rehabs, therapists and Doctors.
I start the work by telling them that questions of how to manage and heal their issues is not the best place to start! In my experience, if you start with those type of questions you are setting yourself up for confusion and conflict. The best question to start with is who is it that is asking the questions! It’s not as straight forward as you might think, because you are complicated!
But don’t worry. There is a way of simplifying your complicated nature. In order to make really effective progress you only have to understand two areas of your complexity, your brain and your mind!
I want you to think of two rooms in your head, your brain is in the back room and your mind is in the front room. Got it? That’s not so difficult now, right? Well, these rooms are very different, they think differently, they work differently and they see the world differently. Once you understand the differences between them you will have gone a long way towards effective practice.
The point is that they can both ‘run the show’ as it were. Your thinking, feeling, and behaviour can all originate from either room. So the place to start is to understand which room is running the show, since they have very diiferent views about what constitutes good and healthy behaviour and outcones.
So the difference in your experience will be enormous, depending on which room is making the decisions. To give you a head start in understanding yourself better from this multifaceted perspective, let me first describe the main differences.
Understanding the main differences
Let’s look at the front room first. You can think of this as your mind, or your authentic self. This is the real you, in terms of the higher functions. It includes all the things that make you human. Things like morals, ethics, and attitudes like “who do I want people to think I am” and “what kind of person do I want to be”.
When you consider the front room, the main word to remember is ‘response’. You respond from this room because responses are considered and include those elements of self worth, self image and self standards mentioned above.
The back room you can think of as your brain, or your protector. If the front room is more spiritual in nature, the back room is more animal. In the back room are the lower functions, such as self security, self safety and self survival.
When you consider the back room, the main word I want you to remember is ‘reaction’. This is because reactions are automatic, based on survival and consider themselves succesful simply by surviving the experience.
These differences will give you an idea of what the two rooms care about and, as a result, what it might be like to have them ‘run’ any situation in your life. Now that you have a basic idea, let me give you a simpler idea about the differences.
Your back room (brain) does not care about your money, your job, your relationship, your family, your success in life, your career or your health. And it does not care about the future!
Your front room cares about all those things, and, what’s more, you will generally know when the front room is in charge because of your state. In the neuroscience based IFS approach, the authentic (front room) state is understood as
Because it’s so important to see your state as the starting point of your enquiry that I have written more about it. Follow this link for Everything starts with your state. To be clear, your state is the main thing that tells you which room is running the show.
Before you decide what to do next, what to say, or how to feel about anything that has happened, always try to remember to ask yourself this, “do I feel calm”? “do I feel confident, courageous etc.”? This raised awareness of your state will be the key to huge progress in your personal development and overcoming your issues. Learning to not only differentiate between the two rooms, but to make decisions mainly from the front room is the main difference between successful and unsuccessful people.
So this is where the idea of ‘unblending’ comes in. This is why I started this by saying that when you ask yourself what to do about your situation without unblending places you in a confused and conflicted position before you have even started. Unblending is the process of making a distinction between your front room and your back room. As you practice more and more, you will become so much more aware of which room is dominating the proceedings by your quality of state. In any challenging situation, when you feel your authentic state of calmness, confidence or courage drop out, try your best to stop! Give yourself time to focus on improving your state, before you go making any important decisions! There are tools I have developed to help you with this. Follow these links for help. Big picture little picture. Awareness acceptance action.
You are normal!
It can be quite a hurdle to see yourself this way. I belive that, as a culture, we are soaked, saturated in the medical model. This means that, unless we retrain ourselves to the contrary, the first question we tend to ask is “what seems to be the trouble”? Our assumption is usually that there is something wrong with us. This is backed up by our (blended) experience, which is often full of things that we wish would have been different, things that we wish we had not done or said.
When we adopt an approach based on neuroscience, the starting point is different. We start by unblending the two rooms. As we get better at doing this, our apparently ‘crazy’ behaviour starts to make sense! Once you start to spend more and more time in your authentic state, you will see that you do not need to be told what to do, you will already know! Let me put it in the form of a question.
Do you think your life would improve If you could find a way to stay in the front room? Imagine making more and more decisions from a calm confident courageous clear thinking position! This is your future.
Learning to use the difference
Once you have grasped the basic difference betwee these two rooms you are ready to take charge of your life. So lets make a start!
Let me ask you this. Are there parts of you that you hate? Are there ways that you are that you wish would go away or stop happening? These are occurences of the back room and to make real progress you need to stop hating and fighting! After all, you are losing that fight, right?
It no longer makes sense to hate these parts of you once you understand that they are just trying to help you and protect you. Think of the parts of the back room as younger versions of you. They don’t know what you know, they do not have your wisdom or understanding. And they only care about your safety comfort and security.
As you learn to follow this approach, you will learn to appreciate your back room, it’s not the enemy, it’s your friend! The main thing that neuroscience ahs helped us understand is that your brain can rewire, its brilliant at it!
The main practice is to negotiate with the back room from the front room. Ask your back room to trust you with particular situations. This takes time but will amaze you once you start to see results.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope you are encouraged by what you have learned. Here are some more links to help you understand and practice.
If you have been thinking about attempting to recover from your addictive behaviour, it’s possible that you have not even considered what approach you will be taking. The medical model of addiction has become so prevalent in our (western) culture that you may be assuming that it is both the correct view of your ‘condition’ and the only way to bring about a recovery. I am here to tell you that there is another approach, and it may work much better for you!
So let’s be clear from the start. I’m not saying that your addiction does not fit the criteria of an illness. Much cleverer people than I have concluded that it does. Things like recognisable symptomatic behaviour and typical physical emotional and mental patterns lead us to this idea of ‘illness’. What I am saying is that, like any other ‘condition’ that is attitudinal and mental in its presentation can also be usefully viewed in other ways. I have been working in this field professionally for well over twenty years and I want you to know that what neuroscience has discovered in the last ten has changed the game forever.
Understanding your behaviour relationally
Imagine, at least for a minute, that all the problems you are experiencing have originated because your brain is working very well! Not because you are ill or broken. I know, this is a radical idea, right? You may be in so much trouble as you read this that the idea that you are operating well seems like a sick joke. But stick with me for a minute and see if I can’t convince you to give this approach a try.
The first thing I want you to do is separate ‘pre’ and ‘post’ difficulties. What this means is that you need to recognise and separate problems that originated with your vulnerability and problems that have developed because of your vulnerability. They are quite different and need to be understood that way. Take the typical alcoholic drinker. They start drinking because of their vulnerability to alcohol and the effect it has on them. But once the habit takes hold, post problems develop because they start lying and covering up their habit and spending etc.
Step two would be to see the post problems as a consequence of the ‘pre’ problems. This will help you to understand that post problems will simply dissolve once the pre problem is dealt with. I know that some of you will be reading this and realising that you are spending all your time dealing with post problems since things got worse. But suddenly it seems obvious that this is getting you nowhere since the pre problem is not even getting a look in. But the size and nature of the post problems are convincing you that you must be really ill or spiritually sick.
Or you may have been trying for ages to overcome your ‘sickness’ using various forms of ‘cure’. I won’t go into these forms here because my assumption is that if you are reading this, it’s because they are not working for you. Well, be encouraged. There is an alternative. It is based on the latest findings of neuroscience and the practice of IFS therapy. It is a relational approach and the first relationship to work on is the relationship with yourself.
The Relational Approach
When a person has a vulnerability towards alcohol, drugs, or behaviours, there is always an accompanying difficulty in the relationship with themselves. Just think about the way you talk about yourself to yourself. You know, that stuff that goes on in your mind that no one hears? If you work on improving your relationship with yourself, your relationship with everyone and everything else will automatically improve.
Essentially, neuroscience has shown that the two separate parts of you (your mind and your brain) can either work together harmoniously, or they can be in conflict. The first hurdle you will have to get over is to understand that this difference within you is perfectly normal! The medical approch has trained us all that this difference between our parts is indicative of an illness, and that is why you have never herd of this apprach, until now!
The second hurdle to get over is to be able to accept that your brain is not going to change until you provide evidence for that change. In other words your brain will continue to offer you solutions that you have trained it to offer you, until you produce evidence that you would rather have something different.
The best example of this comes from your own experience. How many times have you told yourself that you did not want to drink again or do X ever again? But you did didn’t you? The decision to stop was conscious, in your mind. But the training was unconscious, in your brain!
Improve your relationship with yourself
The first and most important relationship to work on is the one with yourself. Ask yourself this, would you be happy if everyone could see what you say about yourself, to yourself? Would you talk to anyone else like that? In order to recover, you need to grow. In order to grow you need to learn. You will not learn much in a state of self loathing. Don’t poo poo this idea, it is going to take real courage for you to stop judging yourself and to stay calm and relaxed enough to learn from what just happened! Remember, the main comittment is to learn from everything that happens.
Your relationship with yourself will improve once you see a good enough reason to work on it. Well here it is. You need your brains agreement with your mind. You probably cannot force it, so you need to negotiate it. I have a three step process for this which will help you practice.
Improve your relationship with people
It is well known and universally accepted that people with strong family ties do better in life. Stability and solidity are generally improved by better connections with the living world. Of course there are some of you that need to break off all ties with your family. This is an exceptional circumstance which general comments cannot cover. For the vast majority of us, improvements with the family will result in improvements in your recovery. This is mainly because when we reconnect with our close ones, we are reconnecting with the living world. The idea of addiction and the dead world is a very powerful one. When you first started to practice any dependent behaviour you were escaping from the real world into the dead one. How many times have I heard addicts say that “alcohol is my only friend”.
Not considering your parts may be restricting your progress
After nearly forty years working in the field, I am in no doubt about the biggest difficulties you face when trying to make positive lifestyle changes in your life. It is not considering the complex nature of the human condition. You are complex, and you need to take this into account! Learning to understand this complexityand work with what we call your ‘parts’ will offer you the best opportunity for the growth and progress you have been seeking.
There are several reasons why you may have not considered your ‘parts’ when attempting to recover from addiction, dependence, or make spiritual, financial or relational progress in your life. Here are two of the most important.
You may not have heard of the idea
It’s not that long ago that Richard Schwartz developed the idea of taking what we knew about families like the dynamics, relationships, and struggles. And applying these ideas internally. The idea of Internal Family Systems was born when he discovered that these same principles relationships and pressures were also present internally, within each person. It worked! As people developed better relationships with themselves they managed their ‘parts’ better and created more harmony and less internal conflict, just like we had been doing with families!
You may have thought you were ill or mentally strange
Because the medical model has had us thinking about ourselves as unified or ‘just one thing’, you may have been embarassed or ashamed about your inner ‘thought’ life. How you sometimes think, what you seem to believe. Especially when it comes to your behaviour and how it stacks up with what you see others doing. They may have seemed much better than you in the way they appear or behave. You may have proceeded on the asumption that there was something wrong with you and that you just had to put up with it, or, worse still, that you had to fight it. It is this failure to ‘beat’ this part of you that frustrates people the most. I want you to know you have been on the wrong track!
Your parts are a healthy and normal human component
The storing of traumatic and problematic experience in your brain is what we are calling your ‘parts’. It is your brains reactions to perceived threats and its way of protecting you. So there are essentially two hurdles to get over before this understanding can be useful.
Number One – This is normal and healthy! The activity in your brain that watches out for you and acts to protect you is not happening because you are broken or malfunctioning. It is hapenning because you are functioning well. You are not suffering from multiple personality disorder or have evil spirits living in you.
Number Two – This is useful and necessary! Imagine being in a dangerous situation without your brain acting to protect you! No fight or flight reactions! You would be very vulnerable to almost any danger. Your brain will always get you out of danger better than your mind will. For brain think reaction, for mind think response.
Your parts are constructed through your experience
So the problem is not that we have parts, that’s normal and useful. The problem arises when your lived experience trains your brain that certain things are a threat to you when they weren’t, or are no longer threatening. There are lots of things that feel threatening to a baby, a toddler or a young child, that would not be threatening to an adult. Let me give you an example. When I was about five or six, I remember standing on my Grandmas back step. She was washing clothes in the kitchen and getting on with her day. She didn’t seem to sense the danger! You see it was raining, hard! The rain was bouncing off the garden path and the puddles were growing visibly. I could see the rain across the feilds, for miles, and I was scared!
So what was the problem? At my age I did not have the experience to know that the rain was not a danger to us. I did not understand that it would stop soon and the water would drain away. In my childs imagination I saw the rain never stopping and everyone drowning. This type of thing is typical of childrens experience as they do not know the limits of the natural world.
Your parts are in sequence
As you develop your understanding of those parts of you that you have recognised, the next step is develop your understanding of the way your parts are sequential. Just like the Russian dolls in the photos, each of the parts that are constructed through trauma are ‘covering’ the previous part. This is one of the best ways to understand and make sense of the parts and is the equivalent of ‘exiling‘ in IFS theory.
This will take some getting used to as it turns more traditional approaches on their head. Instead of starting with the most visible of your problems, we start with the most hidden. Since all parts are protecting the one below we want to know more about the sequence and the stories that caused these protections. This is the work of recovery and we should not rush it.
As you develop your understanding of those parts of you that you have recognised, the next step is develop your understanding of the way your parts are sequential. Just like the Russian dolls in the photos, each of the parts that are constructed through trauma are covering the previous part. This is one of the best ways to understand and make sense of the parts and is the equivalent of ‘exiling‘ in IFS theory. Once you identify a part, ask yourself this question. “If this part didn’t turn up, what would happen”? Let me offer you a typical hierarchy of parts I often see. If the client has entered treatment as an addict, they will often start their therapy sessions with a strong sense of that ‘drug taking’ part. When we explore what would happen if the drug taking part did not show up, we often discover an agitated or angry part. And when we ask about what would happen if that part did not appear, we often encounter a sad or ignored young part. Imagine these arts as Russian dolls actually covering each other with their appearance and you start to get the picture of how these things work. So why do they do this? Always and only for one reason, to protect you!
Your parts are protecting you
Because the initial reason for entering treatment is that you are acting out addictively and that this is causing huge problems in your life, it makes sense that you see these parts as your enemy. The main one, which is the addictive one, is making you do thigs that you do ot want to do! These behaviours are getting you into all sorts of trouble. Why wouldn’t you see them as the enemy?
If only you could get them to stop, or just go away. Years ago, working in treatment centres, we knew about the enemy withi alright, it was often called ‘my addict’, and seen as some sort of evil spirit. There was lots of ‘spiritual warfare’ along the lines of ‘which one gets fed the most’ etc.
But what if I told you that these parts of you are only trying to help you? Only trying to protect you? And that this is what they were designed to do! Once you get this idea you can begin the recovery journey of working with your brain instead of against it.
Imagine that you had been protecting someone for years or decades. Without stopping or taking a break. Constant vigilance and dedication to your task. Imagine you had do this without any thanks, and without any recognition! Now imagine that, after years of dedication, the one you had been protecting announced that you were the enemy! That you needed to be removed or exiled. How would you feel? If your dedication was as total as your brains is, you would continue to protect, no matter what opposition came your way. Like a Parent protecting their child there would be nothing anyone could say that would get them to stop.
It’s like this with your brain. It has been designed to protect you and trained (by your experience) to protect you in certain ways. Yes, you have trained it by your behaviour. Remember that your brain only knows things through your senses, thoughts and behaviour. It records your responses to situations and forms cliches of thought patterns based on this behaviour. These are called neural pathways and get stronger and more entrenched the more you repeat them. When you start to work with your brain instead of against it you appreciate, educate and negotiate your way to forming new neural pathways and develop a harmoised self instead of a conflicted self.
How does understanding help us to work with our parts?
The more you understand the heirarchical relationship of your parts, the more you see the way they cover each other, the better you will be able to sympathise and empathise with their behaviour. The first question is the most important one.
“How do I feel about this part”?
If you feel anything other than compassion, you have not achieved the observer position, which is vital in working effectively with these parts. If you feel angry or ashamed when you think about any part, then step back some more and observe the part that observes the first part! Continue to step back until you feel the compassion that your authentic self has for all your parts.
Once you feel comfortable that you are observing your parts with compassion and feel connected to them, the next three questions should be;
How old is this part?
What is this part certain of?
Wha does this part have me doing – thinking – feeling?
Always remember, you are an explorer, not a detective! This is not psychiatry or anyting medical. The main function of this exercise is to produce evidence (your brain only rewires itself based on evidence) that these things your brain is protecting you from are not dangerous, even if they were previously when you were much younger.
I hope this brief foray into the neuroscience of personal progress throuh the rewiring of your brain has given you some hope for the furure, or at least some things to think about.
It takes quite some time and effort to shift from a medical idea to a neurosciece based idea of the human condition, do not be discouraged if you find yourself snapping back to things like ‘self loathing’ or conflicted self.
If you want any further support, please consider emailing me.
It always amazes me when I see art reflecting the deeper things in life, particularly in film. Patterns and themes that can often take therapists years to learn and recognise are often portrayed by artists with no training or apparent expertise. These themes and traits are often included in their work primarily as observations from the life of the artist themselves and are all the stronger for that. In this post I am going to take a look at the main theme of my work, which is the family pattern of addiction and reverse addiction. And the way I see this reflected in storylines of Films and TV series. Particularly in the way people caught in this pattern, attract each other, live with each other, affect each other and frustrate each other.
Addiction and reverse addiction as relationship patterns
Years before my own recovery, it was obvious to me that certain people would react to me more favourably than others. Whilst some would clearly be affected by some form of empathy around my ‘problems’, others would be unaffected (I thought they were cold) and would say I had a ‘chip on my shoulder’. I also noticed a tendency to ‘flip’ or change my personality depending on who I was with. When I was with someone who was very giving and generous, I would tend to take advantage, whilst also developing a state of hoplessness. On the other hand, when with people who acted more selfishly, I noticed a tendency to feel responsible for their welfare, even down to shopping, cooking and cleaning
Although I did not understand it yet, and was still some years away from my own recovery, I was experiencing part of the pattern of addiction and reverse addiction. Years later, after I had recovered from my own addiction, I studied and became a therapist. This led me to an understanding of narcissistic tendency and co-dependence as medical terms. However, being trained as a systemic therapist, I did not see these things as conditions. Instead, I learned to use communication theory as a way of recognising patterns and themes around the way people engage in relationships.
Moving away from simple medical diagnosis
Using my own experience as well as my training, I learned to see issues as things co-created in relationships, rather than immutable personal traits or conditions. In other words, that the way we are is, at least partly, contingent on who we are with. It is from this perspective that we can relate the positions of addiction and reverse addiction more closely together. As opposed to unrelated ‘conditions’ such as addiction and codependency.
As I started to develop these ideas in my practice and rehabs I worked in, I started to notice a great deal of consistency in the way people were attracted or repelled by each other. So this started to make sense to me based upon their history and tendency. For instance, an addict that had been extreme in their behaviour will tend to attract an extreme reverse addict. Whilst a more high functioning addict who has no history of drifting into chaos, will tend to attract someone with a milder form of reverse tendency. In other words, there is a form of unhealthy balance here which is unconscious but extremely consistent.
My main aim in this post is to look at the examples of this pattern in film and TV. There are many examples so I will restrict myself to three, one film, one TV series and one book. Finally I will look at the greatest example the world has been given, which is the story of the Prodigal from Luke 15 in the Bible. The purpose of introducing these ideas through mainstream media projects is to help you to see the patterns more clearly for yourself, and to use this understanding in your own recovery. There is no better way to gain a better understanding of something than to see it as part of a story. Let’s first look at a very current series Happy Valley, with the amazing Sarah Lancashire and Siobhan Finneran.
The purpose of introducing these ideas through mainstream media projects is to help you to see the patterns more clearly for yourself
Happy Valley
The pattern of addiction and reverse addiction is strongly present in the BBC series Happy Valley. There have been two seasons already produced with a third due to be aired on January the 1st. In the story Catherine Cawood (played by Sarah Lancashire) is a Police Sergeant in a small Yorkshire Town. Her Sister Clare (played by Siobhan Finneran), lives with her along with her grandson Ryan (played by Rhys Connah).
Initially not much is made of Clare’s addiction, it’s only later in the series (series two, episode two) that the complexity of the sisters relationship is exposed through the vulnerability of Clare when she is left at a funeral by Catherine for several hours. She gets drunk with the daughter of the deceased Anne Gallagher (played by Charlie Murphy) who is also alcoholic. This begins yet another chaotic night
Components of the theme
There are many recognisable components of the above mentioned theme present in this series. Notice that when Clare gets drunk, it is when she is left for five hours at a funeral because Catherine is so busy trying to meet many other obligations. This weight of responsibility for others, felt by the ‘reverse tendency’ is a strong component of the theme and one of the main ways that reverse addicts become burned out. There often seems to be no defence for the reverse addict against the consistent needs/demands of the addict., and the continual pressure of meeting others needs.
Familial construction
This pattern is primarily seen inside a family and we always remember that Catherine and Clares attitudes were both born out of the same family, the same parents, the same upbringing. Any dysfunction in the family tends to pressurise the children into one or other of these extreme patterns. The interesting thing is why do people in the same family tend to go in apparently opposite directions? Whilst Clare became a heroin addict and did not manage to make any progress in her career, Catherine grew up with the huge burden of responsibility for others. This led to a career in the Police force and an unhealthy pressure of responsibility to be looking after others.
In the series Catherine is holding down a difficult Police Seargents role in a small Yorkshire Town. Underfunded and unsupported from upstream, she has chosen to step back from her detectives role in order to look after her Grandson. Left when her daughter commited suicide. She is also housing her sister Clare who is volunteering locally but not yet secure in her recovery. You might ask, “who made Catherine responsible for everyone else”? What makes Clare sometimes give up on everything and return to the drugs whilst her sister cannot leave her post? It is this bifurcation along family lines that is not natural, they were not born this way. It is the effect of dysfunction in the family.
Relationship construction
How we build relationships, and who we build them with, form another strong theme. Addicts and reverse addicts are like magnets, forming very strong attractions and repulsions. Because of the subconscious nature of this attraction, the unhealthy aspects of the bond are often not apparent until much later. If you ask someone who struggles with these things why they do what they do, they will often answer vaguely or with a somewhat glib reply. Those of you who have watched the series will see this in Catherines responses. The moral sense that they are supposed to do something is a force that is present in the brain more than the mind and, as such, is not easy to get to grips with. The good news is that the brain can be rewired.
It’s also important to review how you think about yourself. If your thinking is built on ideas like “I’m like this” or “I’m too much like that”, then there isn’t much you can do. However, if you can start to think of relationships as the way of understanding yourself, then you are opening up all kinds of possibilities for growth and development. Think about who you are in this, or that relationship, and why. It’s very noticable in this series that Catherine is very different depending on who she is with.
The moral sense that they are supposed to do something is a force that is present in the brain more than the mind and, as such, is not easy to get to grips with.
Intensity explosions
Explosions often become inevitable in the intensity of such unhealthy, unbalanced relationships such as the Sisters in this series. What the reverse addict sees as caring, helpful and necessary, the addict eventually experiences as restricting, smothering and controlling. Notice in the drinking scene how Clare is desperate for Catherine to “leave her alone”. This pattern or theme naturally strangulates over time to become an unbearable tension for both. The more the reverse addict notices the addict’s problems, the more they act to help. The more the addict perceives the help as controlling, the more they attempt to be free of it, and so on.
Flipping as a relational phenomenon
Following the intensity of the explosion in the relationship, the typical way Catherine and Clare relate is itself reversed, in other words they can ‘flip’ or swap positions. It is part of the pressure of the unhealthy balance. So, following the explosion we would tend to see reflection on behaviour. The addict might be concerned about the extent of their selfishness, the reverse addict eventually cracks under the pressure of meeting everyone else’s needs. Flipping then, is something that happens not only within an intense relationship but also, as a natural consequence of who we engage with.
Only when I laugh
In the 1981 film “only when I laugh” adapted from the play of the same name by Neil Simon, Georgia Heinz (played by Marsha Mason) is recovering from alcoholism. The story covers Georgia’s return from rehab and her attempts to return to her acting career. There are many great observations in this piece and several themes are present.
Notice in this clip from the movie, how the friend and the daughter go from lively animated chatter to a kind of limp lifeless silence once Georgia has left the room.
It was fascinating to me that in her interview with Bobbie Wygant Marsha confirms that she did not have alcoholism in the family, but had seen people who did not realise that they were embarrassing themselves with alcohol. Neil Simon grew up during the great depression and was said to have had a volatile upbringing with the family splitting up several times, but alcohol l was not the problem. So, again, they were derived from observation and human understanding.
Far from the madding crowd
I can’t finish this brief look at these patterns and themes without a mention of Mark Clark. A character most of us can recognise in our lives. In Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the madding crowd, he introduces the character briefly.
“True, true; it can’t be gainsaid!” observed a brisk young man–Mark Clark by name, a genial and pleasant gentleman, whom to meet anywhere in your travels was to know, to know was to drink with, and to drink with was, unfortunately, to pay for.
In Hardy’s novel this character is portrayed as somewhat more universal, as if he would have the same effect on everyone. And there are some that appear to have this effect, but most people have different effects on different people.
The Prodigal.
The greatest example of this family pattern comes from the Bible and is found in the Gospel of Luke. In Chapter fifteen we read the story of the Prodigal Son. Possibly the most famous story in the Bible. Along with Noah and the flood, Adam and Eve in the garden, the Prodigal is so well known that people of all faiths and no faith are familiar with it.
Of course the typical way this story is taught and understood is in the context of the Fathers love for his sons, and this is clearly the main idea, but there is another underlying theme here and it is so important that when I am teaching counsellors and Church leaders about how to help people in their recoveries, I say that everything we need to know about addiction, rock bottoms and recovery is in this story! It’s all there if we dig a little deeper.
So we see all the usual suspects in this tale. Isolation, selfishness, poor decisions, chaotic behaviour and wild living. Rock bottoms and repentance. Acceptance and reconciliation. But wait! There is also another theme emerging right at the end! Look at the way the older son is so angry at the reconciliation that he refuses to go into the house. The Father goes out to him but he will not be comforted. This issue is so serious that we do not even see the resolution of it in the story.
Learning from our greatest teacher
Well, what is the older brother’s complaint? What is the problem? Shouldn’t he be happy that his younger Brother is back in the family? Well, if all his work, contributions and commitment were genuine, he would be. But his issue is exposed right at the end of the story when he cannot contain his resentment. He did not get the outcome all his efforts were aimed at. So here it is again. Two siblings from the same family, with the same Father, the same environment and the same history. And yet they grow up in completely opposite ways! One trys to gain acceptance and success by following all the apparent rules and meeting everyones expectations. Whilst the other escapes into selfishness and thinks only about what he can get! Looking at this story again through this apparently ‘modern’ lens is fascinating. It shows us that this family pattern has been around forever and will continue to emerge wherever families are formed.
I really hope that this brief journey into art and the way it has reflected life has given you some food for thought, Especially if this is a subject you are struggling with yourself. Our aim in recovery is to improve all our relationships. With everything, and everybody! This means achieving a balanced position in relation to our boundaries with others. This can be very difficult and take time, so be patient with yourself. Take another look at this post for guidance on balance and what it looks like.
Thanks again for taking the time to read this. All the best with your progress.
My work in this field took a huge leap forwards when I took on board the complex nature of being a human being! I often remind my clients that when we say ‘I’ we are using a complex statement! So the core principle here is something like ‘you are always working with what is between your ears’! To start using our daily experiences and challenges to grow into our recovery we need to understand what is happening during difficult moments and the relationship between our brain and our mind.
SELF MANAGEMENT
So I want you to consider the idea of differences. Internal differences. Can you accept or even consider the idea that there are parts of you that do not see things the same way you do? That do not have the same beliefs that you do?
There is no more difficult moment for my clients than when they are recounting some ‘crazy’ thing they did or said. Describing it as something they are ashamed of or how it was ‘just not like me’ can be one of the most challenging things for people in early recovery. But once they understand the way their brain works when threatened they have a coherent method to work with.
Before my clients enter treatment their options are limited. They can either attempt to fight these compulsions (conflict) or attempt to deny their existence (fragment). Only when they enter treatment and understand why these things are happening can they accept themselves (harmonise). Let’s take these options one at a time so you can check out if this is what you have been doing.
Conflict
When we take the fighting option we are led into conflict, but it’s okay because it’s conflict for a good reason, right? There are so many articles and books about how to win and how to be strong and how to fight that you may think of it as an obvious thing to do. So you try to banish the negative thoughts or to aggressively replace them with ‘positive affirmations’.
Sound like you? Let me ask you something, did it work? The fact that you are reading this is pretty good evidence that it didn’t. Let me tell you something. If you want these inner negative voices to get stronger, keep exercising them. It’s your resistance to them that is making them stronger. You need to harmonise not argue.
But these books are talking about our relationships with others not ourselves. Then we might think it works for the relationship with our self just the same. You see I fully agree that conflict and it’s resolution is the key to personal growth (on the outside). Please click this link for my take on this. But our relationship with ourselves needs a different approach.
So in relationships with other people difficulties are good. The problem is that things are very different on the inside. When it comes to yourself conflict is not the way forwards. I always remind my clients that “Your mind runs your life…. on licence from your brain”. So when you are dealing with a part you are dealing with a child. But a child that is much stronger than you! Overpowering it is not an option!
Our brain protects us
Now this understanding doesn’t mean that we should just allow all kinds of hateful and demeaning language to go on in our heads. It doesn’t mean that we should stop trying to control ourselves in challenging situations. It means that we should understand that we have parts of us that are trying to protect us and do not necessarily think the same way that we do about things. For instance you as an adult may genuinely want to stop drinking but a younger self does not!
You see there is a very good reason why the mind and brain relate in this way. The brain is much better at helping you survive genuine danger! It is faster and more ruthless in it’s decision making. And it does not waste time philosophising or meditating, being mindful or even things like hunger or desire. It makes the decision that you are in danger and simply shuts your mind down and takes over, at lightning speed! Once the danger is passed, you are given your licence back and can start making decisions again.
Once we get the idea that we have younger parts, and that these parts do not have the same maturity wisdom or experience that we do we can start to approach these things from a more effective angle.
Fragment
Whilst it’s true that nothing works for everybody, we can also say that everything seems to work for a while! Even the worst ideas can appear good in the short term. Denial fits into this category because it would be everybody’s short term pick. Just pretend it didn’t happen! Just convince yourself it isn’t true! For as long as it works it’s the perfect solution since there’s no effort, no cost and no time wasting on solutions. If you have felt the effects of long term denial then you know what I’m talking about. For this article I want to show you the damaging effects of fragmentation.
Denial in addiction is like trying to pretend that an embarrassing relative actually does not belong in your family. As long as you are convincing yourself and others that you don’t know this person you don’t have to feel the shame of what they do. But you are tearing yourself apart.
The start of integration
I help my clients to be grateful for what the ‘part’ is trying to do. I help them to understand that when they were very young they had limited knowledge of how to handle a dangerous situation and so they could not expect much in the way of growth. These were what I call survival strategies and their only aim is to keep you breathing! My clients learn that they are no longer in a war zone and so the survival strategies are no longer appropriate. What they need now are flourishing strategies!
So you will take a very different approach once you acknowledge the part of you that is trying to help you and to start to work with it. I call this ‘integration’. Here are three things we say about our ‘parts’
1 They are created by trauma
2 They are triggered by threat
3 They are always trying to help you survive
Harmony
So why is it they screw things up with what they have me saying or doing? “I behave like a madman sometimes”. “I say I’ll never do it again and then there I am, at it again”. These are very typical things to hear in my line of work. Let’s apply this new understanding of our ‘parts’ to these stories and see what happens.
Inner harmony begins to be created once you assume that anything you do that is out of proportion with the situation is being decided by a ‘part’. In other words you start from the assumption that your ‘adult’ is not only able to handle things in a measured and grounded way but that your adult will always make the best decisions based on the circumstances. Inner harmonising develops when you accept the three things above and work with your younger part to deal with whatever your brain is perceiving as a threat.
When someone is introduced to these ideas they can be a little difficult to take in. When someone is struggling to take it in I ask them which football team they support. I tell them that I support another team and ask them if it seems crazy to have two different opinions in the room? Of course there is no problem and so I go on to ask if we can still talk and get on? Again no problem.
Sometimes I ask them if they always believed what they now believe. “If we went back in time to when you were ten, would you have the same beliefs or understanding you have now”? Of course they would not, and this helps them to make sense of what is going on between their ears.
Understanding your parts
Your ‘parts’ screw things up because when your brain perceives a strong enough threat your mind is ‘shut down’ and a much younger part of you is pushed out there to deal with whatever is going wrong. Imagine a six year old having to come up with a solution to your ‘grown up problems’. Here are three things I want you to know about the way your younger parts think
1 It is always about now (they don’t think about the future)
2 It is always naive (they do not think about the health consequences or any other consequences)
3 It is always radical (If one adult proves untrustworthy, don’t trust any of em)
Look for these things in your ‘triggered states’.
Integrating your ‘parts’ is part of your recovery journey
In a process I call ‘self-parenting’ or ‘self-management’ you will learn not to fight with your parts who are only trying to help. Nor will you deny your role in things when a part takes over. Rather you will learn to parent yourself as part of your growth into recovery. I go into more detail in the links to podcasts below but I will say a little about how this is done here.
The actual trauma that created this particular ‘part’ may not be known to you or be very obvious to you. Remember that trauma is how something affects you, not something we can measure by the size of any particular event. But even if you can’t remember anything it can still help to have a picture of yourself at a certain age (photos work well). A nickname can also help since the first move towards integration is to develop a little separation (ironic I know).
Now ask yourself “when things got hard for me at that age, what could I have really done with from my parents but didn’t get”? This gives you a starting point for self parenting. When feeling ‘triggered’ by anything you can now apply this parenting from your adult self and integration of your ‘part’ begins.
I will leave a link to a three episode series I’ve done on ‘inner child work’ that will go into more detail on this approach.
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about this approach or running a group based on these ideas, please watch the video below
