Neither in our external reality nor our internal reality do things disappear simply because we say they do not exist. When you are about to be run over by a bus, you cannot save yourself by saying, ‘I’m not about to be run over by a bus.’ When you are consumed by emotion, you cannot save yourself by saying, ‘I’m not upset.’
Emotions, like buses, will not disappear when we deny their existence. They go on doing what they are doing whether or not we acknowledge their existence, and, if we do not acknowledge their existence, we cannot deal with them appropriately. Instead, the emotions deal with us in ways which are not appropriate.
Denied anger can burst forth in uncontrolled rage, often against inappropriate objects, like our children.
Denied fear and anger can interfere with the effective functioning of the auto-immune system, and thus make us prey to all kinds of diseases.
Denied fear, anger and murderous hate can reappear in compulsively repeated fantasies which threaten to be acted upon and so have to be guarded against with repeated obsessions. Thus a woman, haunted by the fantasy that she might injure her family, will go on and on obsessively cleaning her house. A man, haunted by the fantasy that he will kill someone, will return, again and again, to a place where he thinks that, while driving home, he has knocked down a pedestrian, and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, he will not be able to convince himself he has not injured anyone.
In our society, many men, both introverts and extraverts have been taught to lie to themselves in order to become ‘a real man’. The lie which such men tell themselves is that they do not have tender, or artistic, or nurturing feelings, and that they never feel afraid. Thus they feel sex without love, anger without compassion, and, since they cannot feel part of the world and other people through their creative and nurturing feelings, they treat the world and other people as objects to be used and abused. Such men can become politicians, government officials, businessmen, criminals, soldiers, terrorists, torturers, and the kind of scientist who believes that all human experience can be understood solely in terms of chemical change.
Insisting that everything is perfectly fine, and resolutely forgetting every bad experience inflicted on us
If ever you have been in a situation where you have had nothing to do for a long time, like being in bed ill or on a boring journey, you will have discovered how all sorts of memories come back to you concerning events which you may not have thought about for many years, if ever. You can see how, if you gave yourself the time and were not always attending to things in the present and planning, or worrying, about the future, you could recall most of your past life. You might not remember names (psychologists say that the name remembering bit of our brain has a capacity for only about forty names, which was all that we needed when, in our tribes or villages, we met not more than forty people in our lifetime) but the events and people are recalled, and those from childhood come back with exquisite clarity. You can be amazed at just how much you can remember.
It is tremendously important that we remember our past life, because it is our past which gives us our sense of identity. If you woke up one morning and could not remember anything of your past, how would you know who you were? Some people do have this experience of forgetting all their past life, and when they ask someone for help, they do not say. ‘I’ve forgotten how to read,’ or ‘I’ve forgotten how to get dressed.’ They say. ‘I’ve forgotten who I am.’
So we need to remember our past. However, what we remember of our past needs to fit in with what we believe is our identity. There has to be a consistency between the story our past tells and who we say we are. If an inconsistency does occur, which do we change, our identity or our history?
I once had two clients, Annette and Mick. Annette came to see me because she was depressed, and Mick because he was depressed and had had such terrible panic attacks that he hardly dared to leave his house. They had never met, but, as I discovered, they as children had had similar experiences which left them with the dilemma, which shall I change, my identity or my history?
When they were five years old, had they been asked to give an account of their identity and their history, each would have said, ‘I live with my mummy and daddy and my brother who is ten. Mummy and Daddy love us very much and they are always kind.’
Then one day Annette and Mick each saw something which destroyed the consistency of their history and their identity. They saw their father, hitherto a kind and gentle man, become enraged with their older brother and punish him.
Annette described to me how her father had suddenly seized a broom and beaten his son around the head and back, and, when the broom stick broke, he pushed the boy to the ground and kicked him repeatedly. When the mother tried to protect her son, the father pushed her away and she fell against a cupboard and split her face open.
Mick saw his father strike his brother across the face and then order him to take down his trousers and bend over. Then he heard the whistle of a cane through the air, the crack of it against bare flesh, and the cries of his brother, which, as the whistle and crack went on and on, turned to whimpers.
How could Annette and Mick reconcile their identity and their history?
Each scene that they had witnessed was horrible and immensely disturbing. Yet, when I asked, ‘What was it about this scene which made it especially horrible and disturbing?’, each gave a different answer.
Annette said, ‘It was my father going out of control.’ Annette was an introvert.
Mick said, ‘It was my brother being shamed and rejected like that.’ Mick was an extravert.
Annette reconciled her identity and her history by changing her identity. She would no longer respond to events spontaneously. She would get everything about herself, and especially her anger, under control. No matter what happened, she would say to herself, ‘I’m not upset.’ She would keep her father’s anger under control by becoming extremely good and obedient. If he should become angry with her, then it would be her fault.
Thus, whenever Annette remembered the scene, she did not feel the helpless fear and anger with her father which she had felt then. Instead she felt guilt. ‘If I had been really good that wouldn’t have happened.’ Not allowing herself to feel anger lest her rage go out of control, she never defended herself when people treated her badly. She married a man who did treat her badly, and she blamed herself for all his misdemeanours. She lived a life of misery until she could cease telling herself the lie, ‘I am not angry.’
Mick reconciled his identity and his history by changing his history. He forgot that he had seen his brother beaten by his father. ‘It didn’t happen,’ he told himself.
For a lie to be effective it needs to contain a kernel of truth and certainty. I suppose this is why when we lie to ourselves we do so in the reality which is most real to us. Introverts’ lies to themselves are about internal reality – ‘I’m not upset’ – and extraverts’ lies to themselves are about external reality – ‘It didn’t happen.’
Lying to ourselves about events in external reality may make external reality appear to be nice and wholesome, but we cannot deal with emotions by forgetting them. Mick might have forgotten what he saw, but the emotion the scene aroused in him stayed with him. From then on he was afraid of his father and did not know why. In dreams and in fantasies he found himself in situations where he was naked and ashamed, exposed to humiliation and contempt. When, in his thirties, some business reverses and marriage difficulties made him lose self-confidence, the fear of exposure and shame turned into overwhelming panic.
For the first few months in. therapy Mick would say, ‘I had a happy childhood. Couldn’t have had better parents. Do people remember much of their childhood? I don’t.’
Therapists, like generals, have to be lucky, and here I was. Mick was just starting to be interested in his forgotten childhood when his brother, who had left home in his teens and lived abroad, came back for a brief business trip and stayed with Mick.