Simple things are best ~

The Cycle of Life:

Although I am an atheist I do believe that if there were a god that we should not blame him for the situations that we, ourselves, create. God, as a supreme energy, would want to give us complete free will - that is the existential issue that we all face. When I talk about a ' no-choice ' being a choice I mean that we commit sins of omission as well as commission.

Our faith in that energy for good and for wisdom is compromised by our fear and our sense that we deserve better. We blame god for things that we are unable to let be. We do not trust ourselves to be open to change and possibility and so we do not hear 'god' when he asks us to forgive. The life of Christ as described in the Gospels asks us to turn away from the Old Testament thinking of ' might being right ', or that retributive righteous anger. It asks for us to forgive even while we exercise the caution that comes from not forgetting.

The Old Testament thinking is what binds and constipates us. We see it in the fundamentalists of all religions. But especially in the Judeo Christians and Islamic leaders who are presently arguing in the Middle East. We pray for our anger to be paid for in the 'blood' of others. We want someone to pay for doing us wrong.

And of course they can't - nothing can replace those three years of energy leaking out of your family. Nothing can get that energy back. But if we allow for forgiveness then it is not us making the judgment against others - but we are, like Jesus Christ, allowing for others to see the value and freedom that ' the good ' can bring. And it takes so little effort too --- all we have to do is answer to ourselves about what we want ..... really, truly want.

I don't believe that the devil turns us away from accepting or acting in the good. But I do believe that our fear makes us afraid to act and to accept and work forgiveness. I feel that your anger at Mark became confused with an anger at your faith for not protecting you. But maybe that same anger inhibited you from seeing the situation developing - and in allowing yourself to trust yourself in forgiveness of Mark .... as you see, feel and experience him on a daily basis.

The anger cloaks like the fog you used to talk about.

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A newborn child cannot see anything beyond their mother. So they interpret the world through the mother's skin, eyes, ears and mood. Almost in the same way as they did in the womb.

The last quarter of the second year the child is starting to individuate. As they learn sounds they begin to interact with the world on their own. As they move farther afield they pick up their own responses and their own experiences. The beginnings of a self referral system which is consolidated in the child by looking back at the parent for affirmation and validation. First sign of trouble and they expect mother/father to take care of it.

This process continues until the child is around six years. At this point we see the first lie - the child is taking control of their reality and making it theirs by articulating something that is from their thought not the parents. We also see the beginnings of the first love affair - the beginnings of genuine libido. The child will ' fall in love ' with the opposite gender parent.
This process reaches a peak at 9years when the child feels that they are the center of the Universe, that everything belongs to them and they experience jealousy, seeing all adult relationships and conversation as a betrayal of their primary partner.

At puberty the child begins to separate off from the parents and family. Little by little the adolescent begins to take their own decisions based on the knowledge bank that has been internalized over the years and experiences. More risks are taken. Love affairs begin to take place with people outside of the family --- first with a love object, then with an older brother/sister and finally with someone their own age .... at this time the person is 17/18 and should be able to individuate further by ' leaving home' and creating their own families ( work, school, friends, roommates, love, marriage, children etc ). The original family unit now becomes the family of origin and an extension of their main, created family.

At 21-25 there is another hormonal change. Often, if the person has had depression , panic attacks, or any other issue when they were around 15-17, then they will see a reoccurrence at this point. This is the last of the throes of adolescence. A realization that they are adult, that some hopes may not be realized and a hunger to acquire the external marks of success - degree, job, career, house, marriage, kids etc.

This process of breaking away is accomplished by such natural ways of distancing, rejection of the binding ties that cause anxiety and guilt, and, dysfunctionally, through various means, including substance abuse, geographic separation, overworking, or periodic silences between individuals in a relationship. "Ultimate forms of distance are cutoff, divorce, or suicide" (Gilbert, 1992, p. 55). The other common patterns are: marital conflict, spouse dysfunction, and child dysfunction. Conflict in the marital relationship often is used in order to create emotional distance from the spouse (Kerr, 1981).

One unintended, positive by-product of such conflict, however, is that it can protect the children from becoming the focus of parental anxiety. Anxiety can also be reduced by one spouse consistently capitulating to the demands of the other. Over time, and with heightened anxiety, such compromise will eventually impair one spouse's ability to function, manifested in physical illness, emotional illness, or some other acting-out behavior. In a similar manner, anxiety could be manifested in symptom development in a child. Furthermore, depending on the family's pattern of functioning and the level of anxiety, all three of these nuclear family processes could be present in one family system.

Skowron & Friedlander (1998), defined differentiation as "the ability to distinguish thoughts from feelings and to choose between being guided by one's intellect or one's emotions" (p. 235). Differentiation describes the measure or ratio of individual energy tied in relationships. At lower levels of differentiation, a greater percentage of energy is bound in relationships. With higher the levels of differentiation, a greater percentage of energy is reserved to direct one's own functioning (Kerr & Bowen, 1988). Differentiation refers to one's ability to adhere to one's own inner convictions, regardless of others' support, while also refraining from pressuring others to change their beliefs and actions (Kerr, 1981).

Bowen developed an illustrative model, called "the scale of differentiation", to convey the idea that individual differentiation exists on a continuum, from 0 to 100. One hundred was seen as theoretically attainable, but realistically impossible. However, he also cautioned that this scale should not be equated with psychiatric diagnoses, since symptoms can occur in both higher differentiated and lower differentiated people. The difference is that more differentiated individuals will have a quicker recovery, and shorter course, whereas less differentiated individuals are less adaptable under stress and thus experience more emotional and physical symptoms (Skowron & Friedlander, 1998).

Differentiation should not be confused with selfishness, since a selfish attitude may define self boundaries, but fails to respect the boundaries of others (Kerr, 1981).