TEREZUM

As I was walking around in my forest I was thinking about a recent book that I have read written by Stephen Grosz. It is called The Examined Life. How we lose and find ourselves. It made me think of the human mind and how much of what we pretend we are is a result of our family system.

This guy is a psychoanalyst. He has spent over 50000 hours listening to his patients. Wow. That can be a sure way to get to know more or to go completely crazy.

The opening of the book starts with something that sounds so natural, yet in real life it seems to elude most of us. There cannot be change without loss. Interesting….most of the times when we cling onto something we believe that it will be the end of us to lose it or to fail to obtain it. But what if trees would behave in the same way? They would never lose their leaves, they would never know the feeling of new sprouts coming to life. Imagine a caterpillar not accepting the next stage: we would have no butterflies.

The book is a gathering of stories from several patients. I was impressed by one story in particular: the disclosure of his homosexuality by a certain professor James. Aged 71 he finally decides to allow himself the reality of enjoying sexual pleasure with men. His wife found out and she allowed it. It turns up that he has always felt an attraction towards men, even when he married his wife. But he kept it in a box. It turns out, after several therapy sessions that James had a cold, distant, angry father who never approved of him. In seeking male love he was healing this part of himself rejected by his dad. Fascinating, right?

I wonder how much of our sexuality is actually decided by our childhood wounds. How if one caregiver rejects us we develop a pattern that will allow us as adults to redo the dynamic, subconsciously hoping for a different outcome. I thought of fetishes and how they might play a significant part in that inner healing, as odd as it may sound.

Nature is a fine example of how change means also loss. There is a lot of violence in nature, a struggle of life versus death, of victory over defeat, of rebirth versus decay. When I look at the tree I know that it is there because of a history, because of a multitude of factors that made his seed germinate in the soil. Why is an oak an oak? I might as well ask why is a man gay? The question entails a profound analysis as it is never about things just being as they are through sheer coincidence or randomness.

The human mind is fascinating. There is a case of a little boy with severe destructive behaviour. I thought that his brutal ways will make even Stephen, an experienced specialist, to give up. I was amazed to read that years later the boy turned out to be ok and function well in society.

I could see how behind every crazy behaviour there is always suffering, despair, a hollow dark void that makes the person develop coping mechanism. Sometimes to behave badly is the only way to feel that one is alive because they do not know another way to gain attention from their peers. There is a lot of loneliness in the soul of someone who is on the couch, waiting for the therapist to help him /her see the light again.

The book is about loss, grief, sexuality, lovesickness, despair, closure, parental envy, fantasiei and lies. It shows a myriad of ways that we people use to deceit others but mostly ourselves. Oh…the things a person would do to forget about their own misery and shame!

And then…after a while…it gets quiet. In the forest. In the soul. In the mind. A long walk always starts with the first step. And it is tedious. But the further you go the more you get close to your true self and the less noise you hear. Healing your inner demons will always happen in silence.