Disappeared

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

We are very sophisticated in the way we hide our true feelings. We build fortresses whose reliability the creators of Fort Knox could envy, we apply disguises more skillfully than the Indians, we sew carnival costumes, the brightness of which dazzles the eyes - we do anything to avoid being in a situation where we were hurt very much.

If we grow up in a "good enough" socially and emotionally supportive environment, then we develop in a holistic manner. Our creativity, spontaneity, confidence develop organically, and we grow up with an understanding of our Self, with the ability to defend ourselves, with the desire and ability to build and be in healthy relationships. However, if in childhood we were neglected, if our vital emotional or physical needs were not satisfied, if instead of support we were shamed, then the healthy development process was interrupted, and we had to survive in all available ways. But the problem is that the child's choice is very limited. The child cannot physically "leave the stage", get out of the trauma situation. And then he leaves emotionally.

In childhood, we all make secrets, hiding the most precious thing under a colored glass in the ground. So the child - "removes" his wounded part along with spontaneity, creativity, emotions, spark of life, trust, desire for closeness deep underground, into the unconscious, leaving on the surface what Winnicott called "false I". And while one part grows, adapts, learns to meet external requirements, and, as far as possible, to be in the world, the other, hidden, part sleeps deeply under reliable protection. It contains all the most valuable and our psyche often does not allow her to wake up, so that she does not face depreciation and humiliation again, since then she can disappear altogether.

“There will never be another situation in which this child's traumatized personality suffered so hard! Never again will this helplessness in the face of harsh reality … In order to prevent this, I will subject the suffering spirit of fragmentation [dissociation] or cover and comfort him with fantasies [schizoid distancing], or stun him with drugs and alcohol [addictive behavior], or I will bother him and thereby deprive him of any hope for life in this world [depression] … In this way I will preserve what has survived from this forcibly interrupted childhood - innocence that has taken on so much suffering so early! " - describes this mechanism Donald Kalshed.

By hiding ourselves from the world and the world from ourselves, we retain the ability to be. Very expensive. At the cost of real life. The journey to oneself can be very painful and not everyone can decide to do it, but the reward at the end of the journey will be what Joseph Campbell called “a sense of the reality of life; in which life experience on a purely physical plane is inextricably linked with the inner essence and reality, and then we are filled with delight from life."

It seems that Rilke also wrote about something very similar:

“… We all lead other people's lives.

Fates, faces, days, worries are accidental, doubts, fears, petty bounties, everything is confused, replaced

we are only masks, we are not given faces.

I think the treasures lie

in cemeteries where life is without joy

hide hidden treasures

armor and crowns and outfits

nobody puts on their outfit

I know: all paths lead there, where the dead treasure lurks.

There are no trees, the terrain is flat, and only one high wall

surround this place like a dungeon

And yet, even though our life flows

cramped and hated by ourselves, there is a miracle - we will not explain it, but we feel: any life lives.

Lives, but who? Do not things live

unplayed melody of minutes

like in the body of a harp, squeezed into the sunset?

Are not the winds that rustle over the river?

Are the trees in their autumn tremors?

Some flowers, or maybe herbs too?

Perhaps the garden is living quietly, growing old?

Or the birds that fly mysteriously

il beasts that flee? Lives, but who?

Or maybe you yourself live, oh God? (Translation by A. Prokopyev)