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There’s a tale about an old woman who was out walking late one night when she came upon a girl searching for something under a streetlight. “What are you looking for?” the old woman asked.
“I’m looking for the key,” said the girl.
The old woman joined in the search, but they didn’t find it. And
so she asked, “Where exactly did you lose the key?”
“Over there,” the girl answered, pointing toward a dark doorway
about ten feet away.
Confused, the old woman wondered, “If you lost the key over there, why are you looking here?”
And the response came, “This is where the light is.”
There should be a warning that screams danger when an adolescent girl thinks of herself as a pretty thing, a doll whose reason for being is to please others. And if the problem persists into adulthood, the girl, or someone who loves her, needs to cry out for help. But many people, Kate and her parents included, don’t have that awareness; they’re caught in the spell cast by the female archetype that prescribes such behavior. So Kate continued for so long to look for love in her old way, under the light, when she needed to look in the darkness of her own psyche. Indeed, that was the only place where she stood a chance of finding it. The problem was, she feared the dark. Her fear was so great that she chose death instead, and when that didn’t happen, a deathlike depression.
Create a picture in your mind’s eye of a pretty little child, sweet, compliant, and often pampered. As a woman, she’s still a child who relies on others to lead her, and given the needs of those others, she might be a sexual object as well. In effect, she’s a thing to be indulged, petted, and even abused. That’s the effect of a particular female archetype that has so many of us under its spell. It also describes the severely depressed woman named Kate who walked into my office with her friend one day. The dark that she feared inside was her own rage and the emptiness that lay below.
I remember sitting with her in silence, sensing the simmering anger and the heaviness of her body—indeed, of the very air around her. As is my practice in therapy, I placed some awareness in my own mind/body process and looked for my reactions to Kate. I found some of that same heaviness she felt: sadness is often catching. And I felt my own anger. It was a very old anger that had lodged inside me when I was an adolescent trying to find a way out of another rendition of that old female archetype. And here, sitting right before me in my office, was an example in grown-up form. Over the years I have seen many of these women and watched many renditions of their pain and suffering.
It’s not as though Kate’s parents made a conscious decision to hurt her; like most parents, they wanted only the best for her. However, much parenting is habit-driven, an unconscious pattern that repeats itself from generation to generation. Like her mother before her, Kate’s unique personality, her particular temperament, tastes, or curiosity, were tamped down. No one was to blame; her parents knew no other way. At the root of the problem was the difficulty we all have breaking out of habit-driven behavior.
If he were alive today, Martin Buber would call this habit-driven parenting an example of an I-It relationship; the word It refers to the child being treated as a thing to be used, an object designed to suit her parents or to fulfill the archetype that guided them. Treated as an It, a girl doesn’t develop a self of her own; she feels empty and so needs others to lead her. But she also resents being led. In this sense, she is angrily addicted to the influence of others.
As an alternative, Martin Buber would suggest I-Thou parenting, which assumes a little bit of God in every child, including this girl child named Kate. As a conscious approach to parenting, I-Thou suggests that the challenge of parents is to help their child manifest as a singular being, an embodiment of the diversity that characterizes a sacred world.
Kate’s silence during the first sessions we spent together gave me the time to travel through thoughts like these. I was also able to find the stillness I needed to be present for her. I knew rather quickly that there was no way to relate to Kate with words; she really couldn’t respond in kind at that time. Instead, the challenge was to focus my awareness on her, meeting her eyes when she allowed that to happen, and sometimes smiling my acceptance of her even if she wasn’t looking. And we breathed together.
Slowly, ever so slowly, in psychotherapy and with the help of medication, Kate came out of her depression. At first it was a matter of just accomplishing the basics: eating, sleeping, and moving her body several times during the day. Gary took her for a walk every morning and Maggie made food for her. Every afternoon her son played on her bed, whether she was awake or sleeping. At times, when the waves of depression ebbed, she and I explored the story she was living and how it had become another kind of death. But for a long time her world was very dark, and we could do little but wait.
So it was truly a miracle when, at long last, she heard herself say, “NO.” This was no fleeting sound; it came as a loud, insistent push, much like a surge of electricity. Not only was there something going on inside, but Kate was aware of it. The idea of getting up to greet Gary came with a very clear NO in her mind and the powerful surge of an angry feeling in her body. The combination woke her up. Her trouble felt real to her. She couldn’t deny the reality that she was furious at her husband.
In therapy, this was the starting point, a foundation from which we
could build. Once, when she felt that anger during a session, I asked
her to close her eyes and find it in her body. She said it felt like a
searing pain in her chest. As part of the process, I then suggested she
keep her awareness trained on that pain, watching for some change, be
it in location, in intensity, or even in quality—it could even change
into some other feeling. Indeed, that’s what happened. After a while,
the searing pain in her chest faded and a certain kind of flutter emerged
in her stomach. That was fear. It was a fear of Gary, certainly, but as
we soon learned, it was also a fear of her own emptiness, that gnawing
hole she felt inside her stomach. This was a significant step on the path
toward healing.
Imagine being in a serious depression. On the continuum of awareness,
this is at the very low end. Thinking is confined to the concrete, the
tangible. The world is gray and feelings are blunted. Life contracts to
the most minimal of repetitive behaviors. No sunset, no baby’s smile,
not even a lover can hold one’s attention. When Kate was seriously
depressed, she didn’t experience any mood or emotion, and there
was nothing much to think about.
Only a little higher on the continuum is what we call being on automatic.
Within this state, much of life is made up of habitual behavior. Getting
up, brushing our teeth, going to work are all accomplished with very little
awareness. Sometimes summers come and go, babies are born, grow up, leave
the house, and we’re barely aware of it. Kate was on automatic when
she lived with Gary. Even her complaining was habitual; it had no energy
behind it. She forgot about it in the next moment. Most of us get lost
in automatic living for periods of time during every single day.
At the high end of the continuum of awareness are those exquisite moments when we are experiencing focused or one-pointed awareness. We really see the baby’s smile, hear her laugh, feel her tiny heart beat, taste the sweetness of her new skin. When this happens, time itself slows down. Experiences like these become high points in life. As Kate moved out of her depression, she had moments when the trees outside her window caught her attention, her son’s laughter opened her heart, and she could receive Ken’s love.
Given where we are on that continuum, our six senses (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling, and, in meditation, thinking) take in more or less information. At one end of the continuum, it’s as though our eyeglasses are dirty, so very little information gets in. Somewhere in the middle, our glasses become cleaner, and we experience more of life. But it’s still minimal; new information has to be very intense to grab our attention. At the other end, with new glasses, it’s possible to see very clearly. The world becomes brighter, more alive. With heightened states of awareness, not just sight but all our senses are open and vibrating.
We can all increase our capacity for one-pointed awareness. It can help us know our emotions. For this work, it’s helpful to realize that emotions are composed of both thoughts in the mind and feelings in the body. Knowing both is important, because thoughts by themselves can be thoroughly confusing, while feelings in the body tend to be grounding. Stub your toe, and you know for sure that it hurts; think about stubbing your toe, and you might hear yourself drown in self-blame. I should have watched where I was going. Why am I so clumsy? If this happens, the pain in your stubbed toe can get so scrambled with your blaming mind that you end up in a muddle.
Being aware of the difference between feelings in the body and thoughts in the mind is certainly valuable, but being grounded in feelings as they are expressed in the body is priceless. By way of example, Kate’s awareness of the NO she felt in her body when Gary came home became a touchstone. Over time she realized that her NO emerged rather frequently when Gary was around, and that she got angry in response to his abusive behavior. Then she became aware of the fear that came along with her NO.
Now Kate could name her trouble: she was in an abusive relationship. And she could name two of the emotions her trouble triggered: anger and fear. All this existed. It was real. Of that she was sure.
There are less dramatic ways to gain insight into your emotions. You can observe yourself watching television or a movie. Notice, for instance, what happens when you’re watching a horror film. Do your muscles feel tense? Focus on that tension and ask yourself, Am I afraid? Am I angry? Is it a combination of the two? You can also ask, Is this muscle tension constant, or does it change as the music changes?
Watch your body while looking at a news report on terror. Perhaps you’ll detect a flicker of discomfort in your stomach. What word would you use to label the feeling? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? Does it go away after the show is over, or does it hang around and enter into your dreams at night? These are experiments that ask you to use awareness to learn more about your own particular body sensations.
A greater awareness of the body sensations that are part of an emotion can help you feel centered in your own experience. Then it’s easier to act on your own behalf. For Kate, it was a first step toward the dissolution of a bad marriage. And then she found another man to love. It appears that her story therefore has a happy ending. Instead, I would say it has a happy intermission. She came a long way from being a woman who tried to kill herself to the vibrant woman she is now. Questions still remain: Will she stay on the path toward wholeness, or is Ken the next man in whom she will lose herself? At the end of the story she tells, Kate is optimistic about her future; unfortunately, it may also be that she is still looking in the wrong place for the key to her happiness.
Nevertheless, Kate found her way out of a deep depression, left an abusive
marriage, reared a thriving child, and found someone who could love her.
Each is evidence of the strength this woman found in herself Nevertheless,
Kate found her way out of a deep depression, left an abusive marriage,
reared a thriving child, and found someone who could love her. Each is
evidence of the strength this woman found in herself and predictive of
the good things to come in the future. Kate is on the path to wholeness
and still has a way to go.
