Letting Go and Taking the Chance to be Real

Letting Go And

Taking The Chance To Be Real

Sherron Lewis, Lmft and Shelley Stokes, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2017 Sherron Lewis, Lmft and Shelley Stokes, Ph.D.

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-63568-707-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63568-708-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

The world’s literature and art is replete with unending efforts to engage, reveal and free human beings from personal life experiences that are sensed at various levels of awareness as inauthentic, non-real, characterized by guilt and shame, that are painfully unfulfilling, leading to chronic depths of emptiness.

The authors of Letting Go and Taking the Chance to Be Real, Sherron K. Lewis, LMFT and Shelley J Stokes, PhD, have added their informed, sophisticated, empathic and emotionally sensitive personal knowledge and communication style to this literature.

They have achieved a remarkable integrated blend of advanced clinical theory and knowledge, research findings in the development of children, personal wisdom from lives lived, and a quality of expansive compassion for the struggle many are confronted with to be authentic, to discover and to be themselves.

Lewis and Stokes provide the reader with necessary clarifying background concepts, along with illustrative and illuminating examples, that speak in a personal, poetic, and emotionally meaningful manner. Their style of writing and addressing this emotionally and psychologically centrally important issue assists the reader to apply the information to themselves in facilitating a self-discovery process. They offer examples of practical efforts to pursue this endeavor, along with heart felt proffered emotional support and encouragement such an engagement requires in order to be meaningfully engaged in.

Through a unique melding of scientific, artistic, and poetic explanatory and experiential language, the authors bring the core concepts and complexities of this subject matter vividly alive for the reader. To engage this offering is to enter the illuminated emotional world of personal struggle in ceasing to be that which is essentially false and to approach and embrace one’s true or real essence.

This book is of value to both mental health professionals and to people in general as it makes the underlying complexity of the subject matter remarkably accessible and understandable. It is a most valuable and worthwhile contribution to the long history of trying to assist fellow humans to realize and move beyond their misattuned and traumatic childhood environments and discover a much more vibrant, vital, creative and affirming long hidden gratifying self.

Errol F. Leifer, Ph.D ABPP ABN

Clinical and Neuro-psychologist

Fresno, Ca.

"Without knowing it, all of us have a particular secret negative belief about ourselves that feels so devastating, it can take us down an unbearable dark hole of emotional pain. And we each have a particular and opposite set of compensating behaviors which form the architecture of the false, idealized mask that we show to the world… Our core negative belief—which is the very worst of what we feel about ourselves—is our particular primary negative self-concept, which organizes our entire compensating mask …Finding out what our particular core pain belief system is, and dismantling its unconscious hold on nearly every aspect of our behavior, is the task of emotional, psychological and spiritual transformation. To do this we can look for ongoing themes of frustration in our everyday life, listen to the negative, self-negating words we repeat in our thinking, and take note of our reoccurring dreams of lack." (Intuitive creativity/understanding your core pain and false self)

Preface

Several years ago, a dear friend and colleague of mine, Jodie, drove me to Los Angeles to see a family member who was terribly ill. On the way, she asked if I would like to hear The Velveteen Rabbit (by Margery Williams, 1922) read by Meryl Streep, which she had recently purchased. I found this suggestion to be charmingly playful and spontaneous and said that I would "love to." As the CD began to play, a whimsical sort of music pulled me into a place of unfathomable resonance. The emotions I began experiencing were somewhat perplexing, and the best way I could describe what I felt was a profound sense of peace accompanied with unexplainable sadness. The arrangement of music that had been orchestrated together with this wonderful story of a stuffed rabbit, who becomes Real, left me not knowing whether to laugh or cry. The following is an excerpt from this story:

…What is REAL? asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?

Real isn’t how you are made, said the Skin Horse. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.

Does it hurt? asked the Rabbit.

Sometimes, said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.

Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, he asked, or bit by bit?

It doesn’t happen all at once, said the Skin Horse. You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

I suppose you are real? said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

The Boy’s Uncle made me Real, he said. That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.

The Rabbit sighed. He thought it would be a long time before this magic called Real happened to him. He longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.

There was a person called Nana who ruled the nursery. Sometimes she took no notice of the playthings lying about, and sometimes, for no reason whatever, she went swooping about like a great wind and hustled them away in cupboards. She called this tidying up, and the playthings all hated it, especially the tin ones. The Rabbit didn’t mind it so much, for wherever he was thrown he came down soft…"

After arriving home, I purchased a copy of this CD. I could hardly wait to get alone so that I could listen hoping to discover its meaning for me. This continued for months as I sobbed from the depths of my being yet with little understanding of why it was impacting me in such a way.

My entire life I believed that I was unlike others because I felt that I was somehow flawed. I remember being seven years old and feeling ashamed of how I looked and spoke. I would listen carefully to the more popular girls speak and then rehearse how I might sound intelligent and appear more appropriate. I did the best I could with the hand-me-downs I was given, which thankfully contributes to my present artistic creativity. I would wash and then repair the clothing for best appearances, and I somewhat passed enough to not be made fun of.

As I grew into an adolescent, I thought perhaps the reason I was different may have to do with the dysfunctional family I was a part of. Therefore, I spent my teens and twenties, observing others in a further effort to appear proper and put together. While raising my own children, I was a bit obsessional about my need to have them wear matching attire and appear well groomed.

Finally, in my middle forties, I came to understand that what I needed was not to be proper, wear matching clothes, or fit in, but rather what I did need was to unlearn the ways in which my wounded father and stepmother had trained me to perceive myself. I began to desire truth about how to love and accept myself. This guided me toward a deeper work, which enabled me to understand that it was not the outside of me, but the inside of me that needed my attention after all of these years.

A large part of the false self I had so diligently designed in order to survive was no longer working for me. The story read by Merle Streep, combined with its whimsical music, was part of what directed me to further embark upon a decade of intense self-excavation, which resulted in the writing of this book.

May the eyes of your understanding for the unique and wonderful being you truly are be deepened.

Sherron Lewis

June 12, 2016

Section one

The Trance

(http://www.nedandaya.com.)

The Beginnings of the Trance

States of Trance

The Abused or Neglected Inner Child

Reflections on the Trance and on Conscious and Unconscious Process

The Self Goes into Hiding

Chapter One

Introduction

Shelley Stokes, PhD

Now I become myself.

It’s taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people’s faces.

—Mary Sarton, Now I Become Myself,

Collected Poems, 1930–1973

Who are we really? The images we have of our selves are derived largely from reality (as we experience it) and to a lesser extent from fantasy. Looking back over our lives, we can recognize the various separate self-images that reflect our sense of who we are as these have changed over the years. Such images represent, in effect, who we wish to be as well as who we are (cf., Masterson, 1988). Thus, we may ask ourselves, not only who am I? but also who have I been? There is, however, a core sense of self which carries the continuity of these various images over time and strives to integrate them into a present whole—that which we experience as our real self. It is the

…vital, authentic, subjective core which acts as a source of authentic self-expression and … [is] … the center of meaningful subjective experience. (Mitchell & Black, 1995; Winnicott, 1965)

In everyday language, it might be said that our "real self" is who we truly are—that gut feeling pulling us toward something that we may suppress a lot or ignore for many reasons (e.g., fear of ridicule, loss of support from others, fear that expressing it will lead to failure, etc.).

In the psychological literature, the term real when connected with the self is synonymous with healthy or normal and reflects a self that is capable of internally initiated activation and mastery of reality. In this sense, it can be differentiated from a false self that is defensive and largely fantasy (rather than reality based).

It is thought that rigid self-destructive behavior patterns that lead to feelings of failure, lost hopes, and despair are evidence of the operation of a defensive false self. Living creatively, soothing oneself in the face of setbacks and obstacles, identifying unique wishes and expressing them in reality are said to be evidences of real-self functioning that has a quality of continuity and relatedness over time.

The capacity to express a (healthy) real self is a developmental achievement (Masterson, 1985, 1988). It involves capacities for self-esteem, self-efficacy, and agency, in addition to capacities for closeness, intimacy, creativity, self-soothing, and repair. It is a self that begins to develop in early childhood and articulates through experimenting and testing in the environment through both early and later relationships in life.

Only when firmly grounded in a strong real self can we live and share our lives with others in ways that are healthy, straightforward expressions of our deepest needs and desires, and in so doing find fulfillment and meaning. (Masterson, 1988, p. vii)

In contrast, for many of us, it may come as a painful surprise to realize that many of our needs for self-affirmation were not met in our early development—that, perhaps despite their positive intentions, those we turned to in childhood for psychological and emotional support failed to meet many of these basic needs. It may be even more painful to realize that, in many instances, it is likely that they never would have nor will. We may further discover that we now have turned to others to fulfill such early needs only to find that they cannot; that they cannot make up for WHAT EARLY ON WE MISSED—SUPPORT FOR BEING FEARLESSLY REAL.

The Development of a False Self

Support for our developing sense of self may have been so lacking that the expression of our own wishes, needs and interests felt like we were doing something wrong, or that we were being selfish1 or being bad. In such circumstances, as Lewis (2016) put it, It is as if the child’s real self, in its early developmental stages, goes into the closet.

This closeted, buried (or impaired) real self is unable to accomplish the task of finding its fit with the environment. A defensive false self (sometimes referred to as a mask) emerges to protect it from feeling bad, but at the cost of a truly meaningful, fulfilling and authentic life. A false sense of self emerges, and as Masterson notes, this

…false self, … induces a lack of self-esteem as the person has to settle for rigid, destructive behavior that … leads to feelings of failure, lost hopes and unfulfilled dreams, and despair. (1988, p. vii)

Because we feared withdrawal of love or support for our own wishes, desires and real feelings, we may have begun to focus much more on the needs of others at the expense of our own. We, now, as a result, may find ourselves feeling unsatisfied, frustrated, and neglected regardless of how hard we try to please. And in trying "so hard to be all things to all people that we are no longer sure who we are. We may ask,

Is this the real me or what I’ve learned to be? … Am I wearing a mask…? (Littauer, 1986)

Such struggle is reflected here in Jean-Paul Sartre’s work which Masterson comments on in The Search for the Real Self:

I had no scene of my own … my own reason for being slipped away; I would suddenly discover that I did not really count, and I felt ashamed of my unwanted presence in that well-ordered world … My truth, my character, and my name were in the hands of adults. I had learned to see myself through their eyes … When they were not present, they left their gaze behind … I would run and jump across that gaze, which preserved my nature as a model grandson … I was an imposter … exposed by a lack of being which I could neither quite understand, nor cease to feel. (Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words)

As Masterson noted, Sartre’s own insightful account of his childhood years vividly describes how his grandparents’ and his mother’s inability to acknowledge his emerging individuality, as well as their need to idealize him inappropriately, led to a severely impaired real self (p. 210). Such children sense that they are in a state of falsehood, but do not know what to do about feelings of nonauthenticity. They try all the harder to become what they are supposed to be, as if their feelings of uneasiness come from an improper realization of their role (Golomb, 1992, p. 14). They, thus, act out of a false sense of self.

The tragedy is that when acting out of the False Self, we simply go along with others, denying ourselves, doing what is expected or required, rather than focusing on what is personally meaningful. If pervasive, an adult false self adaptation of compliance develops which is residual from a childhood of responding