Why love matters - a conversation starter

In that video I spoke of giving away the whylove matters card. I imagined this confidence came with me reading Sue Gerhardt's book.

Yet chapter 13 of http://www.becoming-human.com/chapter13.html written 2005 long before I heard of Why Love Matters I had written of two encounters. One was with Tui a four year old, the other with Raquel then aged eight. And I remember an encounter with my grandson Tom, see him now on Facebook, then aged say ten in which, after a long walk, he offered that I understood him better than anyone else.

So maybe I was unwittingly onto Human Givens years ago.

Sue Gerhart explains that the infant's brains develops in the first two years of life depending on the quality of the care they receive in that time. The prefrontal cortex is stimulated and interconnects more powerfully when a child is demonstrably loved. The advantage of positive development is increased confidence, an ability to empathise with others and a sense of resilience

This is the easy part with the infant learning to realise the potential of her fundamental human needs and to cope when things are a bit squiffy.

"Neglect can lead to increased anxiety, insensitivity and aggression". That's what happened to me but only recently have I seen that my becoming less than human was by default since my parents did the best they could, they knew no other way.

No more than I did in relation to my sons Andrew and Stephen and Cynthia their mother; I was out of my depth, drowning rather than waving whilst appearing confident and seeming to know what I was about.

To move from a state of increased anxiety, insensitivity and aggression where we are less able to manage our feelings and tend to try too hard and take on too much in a sort of cop out for being a not relating person.

To a woman like Julia in the video Sue Gerhardt's insight into a infant's early development seems normal.

Yet to some women whose grown up daughter is a disappointment that same insight can prompt a defensive if not a guilty response.

Those of use who missed out on the vital first two years of developing a viable prefrontal cortex and as a consequence never did learn to manage our feelings and found intimate relationships tricky are probably left with an abiding sense of inadequacy.

It is imperative to realise we were not born that way.

Want more then go to http://uglyfeelings.blogspot.com/ You may feel with Stevie Smith that you're drowning not waving. But perseverance is the name of the game so stay with it.

A confident mother will help the distressed infant to learn to manage her feelings rather than making a fuss. In making a fuss she is asking for help to make sense of it all

So maybe making a fuss is an early warning alert that all is not well, an antidote to assuming that all is well.

We see Julia as a normal person whereas I, a spoiled child, was abnormal. I became pretentious pompous bombastic and ostentatious. Using one larger than life grandfather as a role model I imgined I was an important person, a man of some standing; others seemed to recognise me as such and for too long I got away with it.

The wasteful and depressing affect of such a bull in a china shop is often allowed since others in the system are fearful helpless passive and deferential. Those who suffer such indignity become, by default, subnormal. "Like salt that's lost its savour it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under the foot of men".

It's one thing to give up smoking or cocaine or being a workaholic or trying too hard or striving for perfection or always being nice but all that is small beer compared with giving up pretention, that mark of our status.

The real difficulty in our culture is that our social addictions seem normal, easily excused or explained. And always we hear "let sleeping dogs lie..it will get better on its own". In any case these's no real problem. It's a sort of endemic disease

Moving from such a state of increased anxiety, insensitivity and aggression where we are less able to manage our feelings and tend to try too hard and take on too much is a tall order. It means shifting cultures and this can feel like being pulled through a hedge backwards.

But to recover and then flourish as normal people and not slip back into old habits we have to reduce our emotional dependency on what have become outdated and redundant values.

Beg borrow or buy a copy of Sue Gerhart's book. Flip through it until you see a word or phrase which grabs you; or start with pp110-111 and read of brittle relationhips that cannot respond flexibly to the ups and downs of everyday experience.

[My relationships were brittle until I was fifty when in a crisis I unwittingly broke the bond of my deference Gradually I started to find a confidence to become a normal person who takes most of the rough with enough of the smooth.]

You'll find that a word, brittle in my case, catches your eye. Relfect on it, discuss it with friends then sooner or later, even much later, you'll realise its significance.

If however we grew up in a emotional wasteland of too little or too much the chances are that we are less than able to manage our feelings and consequently tend to snatch and grab at intimate relationships.

With an awareness of such an inevitable impoverished state and fearful of we tend to try too hard and maybe take on too much and hope our fundamental depression will go unnoticed.

Children born to us can in time, if we will let them, forgive us.

In her story The Progress of Love Alice Munro gives us "We we went on, with the two in the back seat trusting us, because of no choice, and we ourselves trusting to be forgiven, in time, for everything that had first to be seen and condemned by those children: whatever was flippant, arbitrary, careless, callous - all our natural, and particular, mistakes.

This can happen when we no longer aspire to goals and ambitions, nor need to be special nor popular nor someone's favorite nor top cat nor high achuever. So the ball is in our court and with new friends we can slowly become normal people and quit trying too hard.

We need friends to talk to, those worthy of our love and we of theirs. A not-friend, an enemy is somone who acts towards us as a friend would not; such a person may well laugh at or see us as stupid; be wary of them

Using Why Love Matters as a conversation starter one or two people may respond; see how far you can go but don't try too hard.

Or take it with you on the bus or to an event and see if you can talk of it to somone who might hear you out.

.see it any of them pick up and run, new intimacy warmth Mrs Boight new friends no looking at gift horsesyet unsetttling...let sleeping dogs lie' head in the sand, can of worms, risk 4F, kids wellbeing reflects on parents...their autonomy.

They caught my eye, the three of them obviously enjoying each other. As I gave the mother a why love matters card her partner spoke of her having read the book. Great stuff and I felt joined into that family if only for half a minute.

But I sensed she had reservations so ten minutes later on I found the family and quietly asked the mother about her hesitations. I sensed she might want to be an ideal parent. Yes she replied and immediately referred to having such a childhood herself. All this with no fuss or bother in maybe a minute.

So in trying to read Sue Gerhart's book that happy family mother was seized by an overwhelming sense of responsibility towards her infant's brain development and found it disconcerting.

However they let me suggest that Winnicott's 'good enough mother' of which they had never heard might be a useful anecdote to the idealisation which seemed unwittingly to haunt them.

Sue Gerhardt write (p85) 'of neural pathways which encode our implicit understanding of how intimate relationships work'.

Alas it was as though I encoded my neural pathways with stuff which could only handle competitive notions of dealing with others so that I grew up "a stanger and afraid in a world I never made".

More than a regret was a very recent awful realisation that throughout my life I did not relate to other people. I affected them and they me but relating was something else. As the farmer had a wife, the wife a child, the child a nurse and she a dog so the other was subject to me. I could talk all night of those I took for granted but not relate to ('cos my neural pathways were clutered up with notions of who matters most and of my being a very important person).

On reading short sections of 'why love matters' Anna realised that whilst she had read all the books and done the right thing going to clinics she bore children without "a clue of what she was about" and now "having to wake to the parenting role rather late"

And I went into adult life and management without "a clue of what I was about" and "having to wake to the managing role rather late"

so much for education and good advice when neural pathways do not encode an implicit understanding of how intimate relationships work' ..........And we started with Julia, a normal person without pretensions doing what came naturally with Jasmin

Bible stories...our lives, experience is all we have to work on ...raw material .. futility of example...my choice of CSC as role model

Eventually you may well find your it has reduced your reliance on a now outdated belief or tradition. In that way we wean ourselves from what we imagined was the way the world is and start to claim a new autonomy.But that's a tricky experience since old values and beliefs and mental habits hang in there and won't easily let go.Yet normal people are relatively free from 'what ought to be' or 'what God wants' and 'phoney guilt'. So those who've got to make something of themselves or worse still their children could do well to find (unlikely) new friends who are not similarly afflicted. Then through countless conversations find they survive and flourish in a less anxious world.

Rob my ertswhile step son asked how was I.

I spoke of a recent awful realisation that throughout my life I did not relate to other people.......... of those I took for granted whilst seeing myself as an important person.

But he had heard it all before; was I not flaggellating (his word) myself?

This sort of conversation opens up a can of worms, a black hole; or maybe it's a tip of an iceberg and best averted.

So what do I say if and when he asks me..do I tell him some good news which he can easily swallow or risk speaking of something he may find unsettling or disturbing?

Maybe in general we only want the good news and that's why love matters so much if we are to take the rough with the smooth and relate to each other.

Not neccessarily gender related but in broad terms

Men unable to say no - subject to partners or children who make demands etc else cold shoulder as defence,,,don't upset your mother...fear of speaking stright,,,after all I've done for you but ...made or implied too many promises..I was surprised when .........bad person

Women, particularly parents of adults whose offspring are seen as failures or who adopt life styles their parents find difficuly to accept....parents blame themselves. Anticipated by Sue Gerhart pp

Moving into any problematic situation you'll probably find some of those involved are either unable to manage their feelings and find intimate relationships difficult.

Problematic situations usually demand quick fixes but a consultant with this basic understanding may find ways to suggest reflexive ............

Morris West's in his Shoes of the Fisherman (p175) writes

"... yesterday I met a real man. It is a rare experience but always an illuminating and ennobling one. It costs so much to be a full human being that there are few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price....One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a stubborn will in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying."

Try http://www.youtube.com/BecomingHuman09