Re-enacting My Past

My shrink tells me to go back to those incidents in my past where I was hurt and devalued, and imagine, or do a mental re-enactment of how that incident could have been better.

For example, when I was about 6 my father came in after church, I was getting my church clothes off, and he decided he would teach me how to read “shaped notes.” [See http://tooninginonmylife.blogspot.com/2010/08/shaped-notes.html] Clearly, my father had no clue about how children learn, or when they are ready to learn certain concepts. There are age appropriate lessons, and then age inappropriate lessons. Teaching a six year old to read shaped notes is similar to teaching algebra to a kid who hasn’t learned to add and subtract yet.

When I didn’t get it in the first 5 minutes of instruction my father got mad and ended up giving me a dozen lashes with his belt.

Now how might that have gone better?

Instead of teaching me shaped notes, he could have taught me a [VBS] vacation bible school song with hand motions:

This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
This little light of mine. I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Hide it under a bushel NO I’m gunnuh let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, all the time.

Or he could have put me on his back and played horsy with me.

What message would I have gotten if he had taught me a VBS song, or played some game with me? I would have learned that my daddy thought I was fun to be around. I’d have learned that he thought I was a neat kid just the way I was. I would have gotten the message that I did not have to learn something hard to deserve my father’s attention. And by not being belted for failing to perform it might not have occurred to me that failure, pain and punishment all go together.

The next step, I think, is that I have to extrapolate. I first imagine the better way things could have happened, and then I internalize the positive messages:

I not only could have been valued just as I am, I am valuable just as I am.
Failure is just a way of trying something and learning what works and doesn’t work. Punishment, pain, shame, embarrassment do not go with failure, especially not during the learning years. So what is supposed to be going on inside me? If I could have been valued, and delight could have been taken in my vary existence. Had that happened I might have grown up delighting in myself.

That seems logical. I feel I was treated as inferior and defective as a child and I grew up feeling like my inferiority is not just my perception, it is an absolute fact. IF my dad had treated me as a valuable delightful being, then theoretically I might have valued myself. I might have taken delight in myself. I can conceive of that, but I can’t imagine that.

Here come my troubling thoughts: Hypothetically, most of us agree that a baby has value period. Babies don’t have to earn value, they are just valuable.

Why do we think this? I think we generally agree that all babies have value because babies have potential. You can look at a baby and imagine that this baby might be the next Paul McCartney, or the next Dr. Salk, or the next President of the United States. If we looked at a baby and knew they would be the next Ted Bundy, or the next Joe the Plumber, or the next Leroy Jones: garbage collector, well, we might not value that child too much.

We value the potential contribution, but as the child ages and the ability of the child (or lack of ability) becomes apparent, well, our defense of the child diminishes in direct proportion to the inabilities of that being.

It is nice to think that unconditional love exists, but does it?

I understand that I might hate myself less had I been delighted in more at the beginning of my life. No one can really know the limits of their potential. I have taken on tasks and at some point, I’ve given up, but I’ve never given up because I had nothing left to give. I always give up before I’ve reached total depletion. I have been on empty but known there were a few fumes left. Whenever I stop, I always believe I could have done just a little bit more. I give up because I choose to give up, and because I give up early, I never know where my total depletion point is located.

Since I have never gone as far as I can go, I can’t know how far I could have gone. My view of myself determines when I reach my throw up my hands and give up point.

In my childhood, my family members spoke of themselves as if they knew themselves fully. My father would say, “I’m not mechanical” and by that he meant he had no mechanical ability, so he would never attempt to fix anything, he would never try to understand how something worked, he would never assemble a bookshelf in a box, or install a ceiling fan. my father labeled himself as being NOT MECHANICAL and that label locked his potential mechanical ability behind a door and that was then sealed shut by a brigade of bricklayers.

I remember saying I thought I would like to be a lawyer and my father said, “You’re not a good reader. Lawyers have to read a lot. You could never be a lawyer.” I received the label, “I’m a poor reader,” and from that point on I just didn’t try to do anything that required a lot of reading. My dad said, “You’re not good at math,” and I accepted that as a fact. Therefore, when I took algebra if I couldn’t instantly understand something I didn’t sit quietly and study the material, and I didn’t practice problems until I could do them. Why should I? I’m just not a math guy.

But what if I had grown up believing that I could do anything? What if I believed I could learn math if I wanted to learn math. What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a good reader? What MIGHT have happened if I had believed I could become a math guy? How would my life be different now, had I thought there was no skill, and no profession that was too difficult for me? If I’d grown up believing that I could do anything, and be anything if I just applied myself to learning the material and practicing the skills, how might my life be different today?

If you grow up getting these “I can’t” messages, then you end up grown up and there are more things you can’t do, than things you can do.

No, it is worse than that. You grow up believing that you can’t do anything, and if there happens to be something you do well, you will dismiss that skill, you will deny your abilities, down play your successes, and (like me) you will become a full time self deprecating loser.

When I left home, I had NO PLAN for my life. I had no career notions because I didn’t think I was smart enough to do anything difficult. I loaded trucks, and had no ambition to order the supplies, or to learn to be a driver, because that was beyond me. I washed dishes in a restaurant, and never once considered waiting tables, or learning to cook. I stocked shelves in a grocery store but had no thoughts of ordering that stock, or managing a store, or owning a store.

I went to college because I was homeless, and starving. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I would have joined the army, but that was during the Viet Nam War and I wasn’t too interested in killing people and even less interested in being killed. I realized that collages have dorms and cafeterias. If you go to college you have a place to sleep, and you get three meals a day.

In college I discovered that I could do things I had previously believed were impossible things for me to do. I took a math class and passed it. I studied things that required a lot of reading, and I comprehended what I read.

Now this may sound stupid, but a success now and then did not fix my over-all problems with low self esteem. Actually, LOW self-esteem is not the right term, it should be NO-self-esteem.

So, IF I go back and pick the more memorable traumas of my past, and IF I do mental re-enactments and see how I could have valued myself, loved myself, seen myself as normal instead of a worthless loser do I then become OK?

I probably don’t understand the whole concept because when I see the past was unfair, that I deserved a better past, just means I have confirmed the hurts and unfairness of my past. I may understand WHY I hate myself, but I don’t stop hating myself.