After 2 years of “talk” therapy, it was clear that straight talk therapy would not cut it. I had a serious blockage. I knew what it was, but I simply was unable to move past/through it. The block was this:
If I show you who I am, truly open myself up to you and let you see me and then you reject me/leave me, that will destroy me.
This fear kept me from revealing my true/authentic self which kept me depressed.
My therapist sent me to art therapy and it worked like magic! I don’t know about y’all, but I thought art therapy was about drawing symbolic pictures or sculpting something symbolic that we would then analyze to get to the bottom of my psychic block. That was not my experience at all. The (psychic) release was all energetic. It manifested using chalk pastels in which I intensely drew spirals on a piece of paper. That’s it. It was the intensity and the energy in that activity while talking about the blockage that did it. As I was spiral drawing, I said how I couldn’t let you see me, if you rejected me it would destroy me, etc. As I drew/spiraled, I could sense myself approaching the blockage – the threshold of this belief – and then sensed myself crossing that threshold as I suddenly realized – I would be there. You couldn’t destroy me because I wouldn’t reject me, I would be there for me. You don’t have the power to destroy me because I would be there for me. I knew it immediately; I crossed over and knew that everything had shifted in that moment.
I’ll try to explain how I made sense of this event using Robert Kegan’s Adult Learning and Development theory. The question is why I say the rejection would “destroy me”. At this stage in my development, I was in what Kegan would refer to as the instrumental stage or Piaget would call the concrete operational stage of development which is characterized by the self-centeredness and self-seeking of one who can only take on a single perspective and that being their own perspective (no one else’s).
This stage is all about me and me getting my needs met. Others are seen as facilitators or inhibitors of getting those needs met – relationships are transactional. Adults in this stage of development could be (mis)perceived as being more mature because they may appear to be self-sufficient, independent, autonomous, taking care of themselves. Those things can be true, but their actions and behavior are not motivated by an integrated set of personal values (which characterizes higher stages of development) acquired from a multi-perspective mindset, rather, their motivation remains grounded in a single perspective – their own. For whatever reason, they have not been forced (by their social environment) to see the world through others’ eyes. Their actions and behaviors are governed simply by their individual needs and wishes. Those in this stage can be seen as fairly independent – autonomous, because they are not about “mutuality” and relationship.
Prior to this instrumental stage, is the stage in which young children and their wants and needs are more “merged” with others – their caregivers. The boundaries are not clear. Think about a baby whose needs are merged with their mother. Babies don’t see their wants as needs as distinct from the provider of those needs – initially they are not clearly differentiated. And they are dependent on that provider for their survival and wellbeing.
Unfortunately, for me this earlier stage correlated with a very challenging time in my family. Due to my parents’ incapacities – lack of maturity of my mother and distraction by my father – I was severely neglected. My older sister (3.5 years older) was left to care for me, which she mightily resented. This led to some calamitous consequences. I determined the most effective way to ensure my survival and wellbeing was to shut it all down – not to have wants and needs. This led to a game I began to play around 4 years old – the game of “let’s see how long I can go without talking” which eventually culminated in my thinking I was invisible. In sum, the way I navigated this stage in which I was to be dependent on others for my well-being was to become invisible and essentially (figuratively) non-existent.
I detail this entire story/transition in a paper I wrote in graduate school that I’ve attached for anyone interested in more theory-based analysis of this transition.
To further explain, I need to describe a little more of Kegan’s theory. Differentiation and integration are evolutionary biological terms that refer to the way in which cells develop through the process of meiosis and mitosis. Kegan describes these in more human psychological terms as yearnings for agency and autonomy (differentiation) contrasted with yearnings for connection and communion (integration). Kegan writes these vital, dichotomous, yearnings experienced by all humans may very well be the internal motivational drivers of evolution. More specifically, “Our experience of this fundamental ambivalence [between the two yearnings] may be our experience of the unitary, restless, creative motion of life itself.” (Kegan, 1982, p. 107). Each of Kegan’s developmental stage “subject-object” balance alternately reflects a tendency towards one or the other of these yearnings.
This is all to say that, according to Kegan’s developmental theory, the stage in which I was to move into following the instrumental stage was one of more connection, community – relationship-oriented stage. Consciously or unconsciously, I remembered the way I navigated the earlier more relationship/ communal stage was to become virtually non-existent. I sure as fuck didn’t want to do that again. I was not going to reveal myself to you (let you know my wants and needs) and give you the opportunity to reject me – sending me back to invisibility (destroy me) – fuck that! I was stuck. I couldn’t see a way to maintain my integrity/myself AND be in relationships with others where there was mutuality, i.e., where I could begin to see the world through others’ eyes, not just my own singular viewpoint, and allow myself to be influenced by others. Because in my view, to see myself through others’ eyes meant not to see me at all.
How did this transformational shift manifest in my life? You’ll have to keep reading to find out.
