D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
August 2010
Thirsty for Love
Are you "shrinking" yourself to get more love? Has it worked out well for you?
By Bina Breitner
Of all the psychological paradoxes we invent, perhaps the most destructive is: "If I hurt myself, I'll be safer and get more love."
That's ridiculous, of course. How could hurting yourself bring you more love? It doesn't — but a lot of people learn to believe it could. Here's how it works.
Let's say our need for love is our "thirst." Our families are the "well" from which we get water to soothe our thirst and nourish us. Now let's consider a child whose family only provides about a third of the water she needs.
The child knows she's thirsty — that's a fact. So she makes up an imaginative explanation. Like all children, she doesn't know the difference between the fact and the explanation she creates. For example, you can explain the sun's rising and setting (a perceptual fact) with the Greek myth about Apollo riding his sun-carriage across the sky every day. Or you could explain it with all that stuff about the planets moving around the sun in space. A child doesn't know which would be the more realistic explanation. Actually, I don't either. I just take the experts' word for it. Apollo sounds a lot more likely.
This child invents a plausible (but inaccurate) explanation for her thirst: "I'm getting as much water as I deserve." It's not a happy thought, but she feels better, because her reality (her thirst) is acknowledged, and because the world now makes sense — at least she has an explanation.
But with her explanation, she's moved from having an external problem (insufficient water) to having an internal one (she isn't worthy of having enough water).
What can she do? The occasional child shrugs and say, "I don't need any more." Even at age four, that child is already an ascetic, minimizing his needs. He's in charge of his thirst, and it is his enemy.
Our child takes the more common approach. Since she doesn't deserve a full portion of water, she has to improve herself. What can she do, how can she change, to get the water she needs?
Notice that it's up to her. She has become the central figure, and she is in charge. She no longer feels helpless, and she has hope. She's still thirsty, but things are looking better.
For the ascetic child, needing less, well... it's a great idea, but how can anyone be healthy with one-third the normal amount of water? There are limits to how much anyone can reduce his needs — but a child doesn't know that. He shrinks himself down to "wanting" less and feels his deprivation and resentment turn into a sense of fierce power. "I can do without," he says, with pride in his voice.
The child who believes she deserves only minimal water ends up in a similar place, but with shame instead of pride. She, too, is distorting and beating up on herself. "Don't do it that way!" "Be more self-reliant!" "You shouldn't have said that!" "Why didn't you know what she wanted? You're so stupid!"
This anger at herself is part of her effort to fit in, to belong, to please, to get more love. She's a long way from an accurate understanding of her circumstances, but her reasoning is still plausible. So she perseveres.
She gets better at reducing herself and her needs, because she's paying full attention to becoming the child "they" want, the child to whom they would give a full portion of water. She silences her feelings, learns to repress her perceptions, becomes increasingly pliable. She takes her cues from others, and blames herself if she steps out of (their) line. It's as if she were being subjected to the Stockholm Syndrome in miniature: The oppressor with whom she comes to identify may have no intention of oppressing her, but she doesn't know that.
She still needs more water. Nothing has really changed. Apparently she hasn't improved enough. She needs to focus! She hasn't suppressed herself cleverly enough to fit in, to be what her parents want and need their daughter to be. She's the problem, and, oh dear, she's more of a problem than she'd realized. The spiral has intensified: If she deserved more water, she'd get it. If she isn't getting it, she must not deserve it. She has to try harder! Blame, fury, dissatisfaction and suppression of herself become normal.
And we're there: This child believes that if she can twist herself into some particular format — if she can diminish herself in the right way — she'll be more loved.
How this self-distortion expresses itself depends on the child's environment. The family gives him clues about how he should be:
Rose's family was burdened by life, so she tried to need as little as possible. Sam's family was insecure; they wanted their son's success to help them feel better about themselves. Andy's family distrusted the world and wanted a son who stayed close and rejected social life with them. Linda's family was permeated by grief and wanted a daughter who was never boisterous or joyous. Louis' family was deeply lonely and wanted him to love and console them. Rachel's dad was a "star," so Rachel needed to be passive and bland — a foil for her performing father. Bill stayed helpless so his super-mother could keep mothering him.
In principle, it doesn't matter what harm the child is doing to himself; the sorry point is that the child learns to believe that hurting or distorting himself will get him the love he needs.
Of course, we can see that the child's explanations are off the mark. The well has provided only one-third of the necessary water because the well was limited. The child was fine. True, he wasn't getting enough water — but that was never his fault.
So, what can he do to stop harming himself? First, he can understand that maybe he got it wrong. (I like the bumper sticker that says, "Don't believe everything you think.") Then he can consider that he invented an explanation making himself responsible for a very good reason: because even feeling like a failure was better than the anxiety of feeling helpless. In fact, he was helpless, and that has to be faced. But he was not undeserving. And he's not helpless today.
Then he can move his parent(s) out of the mythic role of Parent. Father is actually just Jim. Yes, he's also Father. But he's also Jim, and Jim is one more guy doing his best, which doesn't happen to be good enough for his son. He doesn't know how to provide more water. He probably didn't get enough water from his own father. No one is to blame; it just turned out that way.
This simple reality is hard to accept if you haven't had enough water from the well. It requires a few big shifts in how you understand the world. You have to shrink your parents down to human size — not just in day-to-day life but in your internal worldview. The Wizard of Oz turns out to be a guy playing with mechanical gizmos. What a loss of someone you can worship and count on for help when you're far from Kansas or in trouble with the Wicked Witch. You're on your own? Oh, no!
Your parents have been caught in their own family legacies; their marriage is so-so (or they couldn't make it work and split up); they were so self-involved they didn't even know you were getting just one-third the water you needed. You have to revise "who they are," and that's a lot of work. Can you forgive them? Can you become interested in who they are as individuals, aside from their being your parents?
You have to accept the shame of your mistakes. You were really clear about where the problem lay (yourself), and you were so wrong! How can you have been so misguided, so gullible, so inadequate in your understanding? Can you ever trust your perceptions again? This "reality" business feels like a moving target.
And now you have to admit that, at least in these aspects of your life, you don't even know who you are. You were so busy adapting yourself, trying to get more love, that you've never really known how big you are and what you look like.
Remember the inmates from the movie of The Shawshank Redemption who were finally let out of prison? They had no idea how to navigate life on the outside. Brooks (James Whitmore) hanged himself. The narrator (Morgan Freeman) was luckier because he had a good offer from Andy (Tim Robbins), another world to join. If you've been in your own kind of prison, how are you going to fare "on the outside," where decisions and choices have to be based on your own familiarity with yourself? You can't just keep following your sense of what "they" want. Now you have to figure out what you want.
I understand why few people take on this process outside of therapy. I also understand why people take it on only slowly, if at all, even with the support of a counselor. This is a deep transition.
Still, I would invite people to consider that hurting or shrinking themselves served a crucial purpose once upon a time, when there was only one well in sight and it didn't provide enough water. Yes, they erred in believing they were the problem. Yes, they've been underestimating themselves for years. But they figured out a way to provide explanations, meaning, hope and a sense of control for themselves in an environment that didn't provide enough. I say, "Bravo." But then I would ask them whether mistreating themselves is still their best bet for getting the love and compassion they need — and deserve. There are better ways.
Bina Breitner, MA, is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) in private practice at 808 W. 8th St. in Silver City. She can be reached at (575) 538-4380.