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Okay, here are a few thoughts on the Zombie Witchdoctor video.
It’s easier, in many ways, to focus on recent past rather than on childhood. There’s a kind of comfort in blaming partners for feelings of helplessness and entrapment. Truly, we could spend a lifetime analysing and harbouring anger over our ex partners and still not get close to the truth.
Everything goes back to childhood, to the children we were. Questioning parental figures was and remains the big taboo. It feels dangerous; we’ve been programmed to self destruct rather than to confront our parents’ dictates.
When just getting to self acceptance feels like an impossible task, we take comfort in that benign sense of narcissism (Alice Miller talked about it). We know that we’re good for one thing; and this will be different for each person. And yet, it’s never enough, not even close.
How can a person rise above the constant push-pull of an intimate relationship without removing themselves entirely?
Going to live in Nepal as a Buddhist monk seems a desirable option...
Self acceptance springs from trust, but how can anyone or anything be trusted?
In fact, just what is trust?
Perhaps trust is belief in hope.
When we have put our belief in hope in the past, it has always been broken. This pattern is so familiar that it’s ironically amusing.
We hoped that our parents would change. We hoped that we’d be enough for them. But in childhood and adolescence, nothing ever changed. Better to believe in the narrative of being captured and released by the Zombie Witchdoctor. In a certain light, it makes more sense, it allows for some element of personal value. Being wanted as a ‘pretty thing’ is preferable to not being wanted at all. When we’re so used to abuse, we cannot believe that a person might like us for who we truly are, imperfections and all. Suddenly, we are in uncharted territory!
How on earth can some people live in a kind of independent idyll? How is it that they have found peace and wholeness?
It doesn’t seem fair, it feels unattainable. Better to go with the Zombie Witchdoctor reality of predator and prey. This is what we know, what we feel, what we understand.
But if there was something good to hold onto to, it might make a difference; something solid and true.
We must go within and find it. It will be small and fragile at first, like a seedling.
But how can we nurture anything when we have never felt nurtured ourselves?
We have to take a chance.
This seedling is ours, it is part of who we are, yet it can so easily be crushed by fear, by rage.
It’s a challenge, but if we can keep it alive, it will grow; it will become strong...
And we’re back to trust :)
It’s easier, in many ways, to focus on recent past rather than on childhood. There’s a kind of comfort in blaming partners for feelings of helplessness and entrapment. Truly, we could spend a lifetime analysing and harbouring anger over our ex partners and still not get close to the truth.
Everything goes back to childhood, to the children we were. Questioning parental figures was and remains the big taboo. It feels dangerous; we’ve been programmed to self destruct rather than to confront our parents’ dictates.
When just getting to self acceptance feels like an impossible task, we take comfort in that benign sense of narcissism (Alice Miller talked about it). We know that we’re good for one thing; and this will be different for each person. And yet, it’s never enough, not even close.
How can a person rise above the constant push-pull of an intimate relationship without removing themselves entirely?
Going to live in Nepal as a Buddhist monk seems a desirable option...
Self acceptance springs from trust, but how can anyone or anything be trusted?
In fact, just what is trust?
Perhaps trust is belief in hope.
When we have put our belief in hope in the past, it has always been broken. This pattern is so familiar that it’s ironically amusing.
We hoped that our parents would change. We hoped that we’d be enough for them. But in childhood and adolescence, nothing ever changed. Better to believe in the narrative of being captured and released by the Zombie Witchdoctor. In a certain light, it makes more sense, it allows for some element of personal value. Being wanted as a ‘pretty thing’ is preferable to not being wanted at all. When we’re so used to abuse, we cannot believe that a person might like us for who we truly are, imperfections and all. Suddenly, we are in uncharted territory!
How on earth can some people live in a kind of independent idyll? How is it that they have found peace and wholeness?
It doesn’t seem fair, it feels unattainable. Better to go with the Zombie Witchdoctor reality of predator and prey. This is what we know, what we feel, what we understand.
But if there was something good to hold onto to, it might make a difference; something solid and true.
We must go within and find it. It will be small and fragile at first, like a seedling.
But how can we nurture anything when we have never felt nurtured ourselves?
We have to take a chance.
This seedling is ours, it is part of who we are, yet it can so easily be crushed by fear, by rage.
It’s a challenge, but if we can keep it alive, it will grow; it will become strong...
And we’re back to trust :)
