I know a woman struggling with having an affair. Not the actual "having", but the idea of it. She ruminates about the man in question day and night. Should she, shouldn't she. She is married, has a daughter and the man she is fantasizing about is also married, though apparently he has made it clear that he is more than interested in her. The attraction is mutual, and there are all sorts of innuendos and near-misses -- a brush against the hand, a bump in the hallway -- all day at work.
She tells me the only reason she has been struggling with turning the idea into reality is because she has been held back by her ethics. She had been raised to believe that her word was her honor and that commitments were to be held sacred. Her early home life was devout if not technically religious. She was torn between her desire to "let go" and have fun and an innate sense of right and wrong. She was also raised to be a perfectionist -- which ultimately ruins a good sense of duty and honor -- and made to feel that everything was her responsibility, even when it wasn't. As a result, she feels internally twisted, pressured, as if there were knots all along her circulatory system. In truth, she enjoys very little unless her mood is enhanced by drugs and alcohol.
She asked me in near anguish, "Why can't I just be selfish like everyone else? I just wanna have fun for one minute. I know I will feel awful later, but I need something now."
I noticed two things in her question:
One, was that she seemed to be equating enjoyment with selfishness -- that in order to be happy one had to become selfish. It would not be hard to make that assumption in our culture. Additionally, she seemed to have an underlying belief that selfishness -- literally putting the "self" first -- was something to aspire to, or worse, that there would be something worthwhile to gain by being selfish when everything in my personal and professional experience has taught me precisely the opposite. To my understanding, she was confusing self-care with self-centeredness.
The other thing I put in the form of a question:
"Do you know anything about addiction?"
She tilted her head, wondering why I asked something so seemingly irrelevant.
I said what she was saying reminded me so much of what addicts say when they need a fix. There is a moment in every addict's life in which this very profound turmoil becomes a conscious battle: Do I do what I know is right -- it coincides with my values, it reflects long-term gain and health -- or do I do what I feel like doing for short-term gain even though I know it will go against my beliefs, cause me and others pain, and otherwise complicate my life emotionally, mentally and fiscally?
Do I choose a full course meal that requires some forethought and preparation, or do I pop open the emotional Twinkie? It may look like food, it may even taste like food for a moment, but it's little more than an intra-psychic shot of dope that leaves us still hungry, empty and wondering what just happened. It makes me think of the first (and last) time I ate cotton candy. I remember so vividly the anticipation of all that pink sweetness only to find out that once I put it in my mouth it disappeared and made my teeth hurt.
This twinkie phenomenon has occurred more and more often in my office, so much so that I'm noticing a trend. I don't know why, and I have no studies that indicate anything notable. I do know that heroin is making a monstrous comeback, though. Perhaps they are both indications of something more profound and pervasive.
A Fast-Food/Fast-Feel Culturehttp://thenextosama.com
As usual, when I am presented with a situation like this in people I look to both the internal motivations and the cultural supports for those motivations. Without the supports, many of these fancies would remain nothing but fancies or whims. They would not have the social buttressing to stay in place or to so smoothly and easily perpetuate the imagined behavior, like having an affair as opposed to having a moment of fantasy.
The internal motivation is simple to identify in most cases. A person might need relief, sex, food, support, love or belonging.
What does our culture do with these basic needs?
Still reeling from the "if it feels good, do it" ethos of the '60s, our social milieu says go get what you need -- whatever it is, however you must. Who cares if you destroy your own life so long as you don't really hurt anyone else? One problem here is that more often than not, hurting oneself does actually hurt others in so many ways, both hidden and obvious -- the emotional toll on those who care about us, the societal cost required to pick up hospital bills, the price of divorce and custody battles, insurance, police involvement, etc. This has bred a self-indulgent, self-involved couple of generations that is hard for me to fathom.
I was raised to work and to value not only the result of that work, but also the effort and process itself. I loathed dependency. I liked having my own. So I started working as soon as I could. When I was thirteen I started with filing in an office where my mother worked. Throughout school, I took on what I could find for the summers or after classes: secretarial, camp counselor, cashier, bra salesperson at Macy's 34th Street, waitress or whatever it took to pay my bills, get through school and have some cash to go to a movie. It was expected of me, both by my parents and by myself. And before I went to that movie or spent that cash, my own responsibilities were attended to. Period. Please understand, I was never deprived and had many blessings in my life, for which I'm eternally grateful. But there were no free rides.
A case in counterpoint:
Someone else I know whose judgment is usually fairly good forgot to use birth control, got his girlfriend pregnant, then got married before either of them had a job or career path. After the wedding he decided he needed a new car and a new home. Why not? That's what people do when they start families, right? That's what the people on TV do.
Would he be paying for it? Nope.
Did he want it? You bet. His plan? Get family members to take care of it. If I had gotten pregnant out of wedlock I would have had my head handed to me on a platter, not a spacious condo.
Worse, he is so good at making the situation look dire, it seems like the family is going to do exactly what he wants. So he will have his short-term needs -- more space, sweeter transportation -- met, while his more serious and long-term needs -- individuation, maturity, responsibility and self-respect -- are allowed to atrophy. He has substituted twinkies for food, quick satisfaction for nourishment, entitlement for autonomy.
My thoughts? Only one: Ye gads.
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Zen enjoys the 'letting go', appreciating the 'high' when it comes and returning to the valley when it leaves. This is the poiesis of the craftsman, each piece of wood is different to his body, the 'feel' in his hands, each moment is different, but not controlled.
re 'ghost in marble', this is the no-space between horse and rider. It is the non-dual out of which 'two' emerge. Also, two opposites, love-hate, can be recombined into it. Yesterday, an inmate who has so much hate he has psoriatic arthritis, age 28, withdrew into his self-righteous (lopsided) part and tried to hate-destroy me. As soon as I could, I did a short meditation, doing a 'backflip into eternity' (C Castaneda) to concentrate on the Ground Luminosity, combining 'my' energies with his intrusive energies, his put-down. Within a few minutes I saw a flash of red (his k*//ing hate) earthy, mixed with white (descent of Self), to produce pink (heart, balance). This flash came 'up' from the 'nothing', e.g., a seed is planted in the earth, grows, and rises. The Ground Luminosity is the moment of conception, thus symbolically the 'star' below the feet (but not that exact symbol used in this meditation; ‘no’ symbol was used). The flash of 3 red/white/pink is the first 'form' that rises from 'nothing'. It is watched, as in Zen, but not reacted to, so it disperses, not having caused thought or emotion in me. Like a going back in time, to change the event itself into ‘nothing’. (continued).
Nihilism is to say there is no meaning or purpose in the universe, so I must adore God (passive nihilism, Dante) or become godlike and choose to do whatever I wish (Nietzsche). The garden-variety addicts you mention are not choosing the godlike responsibility--they say 'oops', I made a baby' and then play the victim role, inviting others to take responsibility.
The moralistic stance is to believe in the Axial (a good outside the world, as believed by Buddha and others). No one has improved their behavior by being lectured at, and there is likely no external good or its derivative, the mythical soul. If you think about your early work experiences, it was the joy of doing them, the meaning, now, not the 'good' to your character, later, that was important?
The third choice is both a) the Kantian courage to resist the madness of crowds or he*oin and b) the courage to leap in and knowingly EXPERIENCE chosen other events (Dreyfus and Kelly, p. 220).
Depth therapy regresses the patient to three years old, when they were spontaneous and they had not been hypnotized by society to believe some little man in their head was capable of controlling their behavior. The goal is to learn to ‘play’ (no linear goal) without destroying two families with an affair.
I got out Watts' book because Lawson complimented me, inadvertently, by asking me to write linearly (see my permalink, yesterday). After 40 years, I must be becoming a better therapist (read this as 'eccentric' :) and more creative (linking of ping pong states) if someone can spot it on Hufpo.
-what did you do?
Sometimes one tosses the books into the dustbin. Theory has really no place in ping pong. This does not deny the importance of introspection which is part of the complex pattern of interactions encompassed by ping pong as a metanymy for our nonlinear lives.
You evidently read my permalink on accepting 'my' near-criminal BPD 3 y.o. and 'allowing'/working with this shadow-Double as an equal, or dominant, partner as 'I' go throughout life.
Introspection, yes, but on what? The goal of 'concentration' in meditation is to realize the conditioning from society in its imposition of a false sense of ‘my’ ego (For Your Own Good, Hidden Cruelty in Child-rearing and the Roots of Violence, Alice Miller, and her earlier books, such as Prisoners of Childhood). Zen and Tibetan Dzogchen, as well as the Diamond Sutra (Skillful Means by Pye) say there is an 'end' to meditation and to Mahayana Buddhism, and to continue further is the self-hypnotism of a false 'peace'. The end of introspection comes when I realize there is no individual 'I', just an interconnected object in a field of (inner and outer) relativity. When I walk the dogs, I allow 'insights' (introspection) from the day's activities, but who ‘lectures’, who listens? The after-death state, which is interwoven with this one (samsara = nirvana) occurs when the inside becomes outside, when 'introspection' is now experienced as outer 'events', sort of, as synchronicity.
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Neurotic behavior is 1) the attempt to control others (e.g., the therapist/parent) and to simultaneously 2) attempt to avoid responsibility (to make the therapist cure 'me'), to be irresponsible, to have an affair, to get a woman pregnant and have mom and dad buy me a house.
The problem is that poisonous pedagogy (book by Alice Miller?) convinces us that we have a 'nice little boy' in us that could behave if he wanted to. This later becomes the idea of the soul, which started with the Greeks and their system of idealism and logic.
Kids rebel against this necessary conditioning by society—to teach them to control themselves--by going out of control (having a destructive affair). This is discussed in Psychotherapy East and West, Watts. (continued).
Looking to the outside to build the inside… same song, same dance for those in your examples. The grasping at external sources of immediate satisfaction has got to be related to many of the “selfs” being deficient or absent.
Sadly, they will be more susceptible to the tides of trepidation we all encounter, and will more likely suffer self-generated defeat, not to mention setting poor examples for their kids and thereby potentially transferring the need for “Twinkies” into the next generation.
Your question about addiction started me thinking about the function of the habit component of everyday behaviors; the difference between habituation and addiction… there must be a cumulative effect producing addiction-like responses and dependences rendering any differences virtually moot for a Twinkie-like addiction. Both psychological and physiological responses reinforce the habit, while supplanting awareness and the possibility of growth… the ultimate displacement of values.
I love you statement about entitlement vs autonomy, because those who embrace the former suffer the illusion of the latter, whereas those who strive for the latter, never need the former.
I think we may agree a substantial contributor is the ubiquitous message fomented within pop culture that says we begin in a deficient state, fearful of not growing up, filling up, or measuring up without the stuff it offers. This focus, in the absence of parental nurturing builds the habit of twinkiefication… which requires another “Ye gads!” :)
Lawson
embrace the former suffer the illusion of the latter, whereas
those who strive for the latter, never need the former..."
As usual, Lawson, right on. And pithy, too!!
There, that was just a whiff of Twinkie for me.