The school counselor at the boys’ school saw this photo of me in the Houston Chronicle and clipped it and sent it home with Peter.  I don’t get the Chronicle anymore, so I hadn’t seen this clipping.  I thought that was so nice of her!

It’s called Adventures in Desperation. It’s an account of my busking experiment. (Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on finding more secure employment, but I still have some time on my hands and I might as well spend it outside.)

Hiyo!

I’ve been so MIA from this blog lately, it’s not even funny. It’s sad to say I’ve completely abandonned the “body” part of this experiment – though if commuting four hours every days counts, I’m still in My acne problems have returned lately, and after unsuccessfully using a product my doctor recommended, I’ve turned to Neutrogena Oil-Free Acne Wash. Just washed my face with it five minutes ago, and so far, my face feels clean, but a tad dry, so I’ll have to remember more moisturizer for next time.

Now on to the drama-rama part – I’m avoiding my problems, namely a paper I have to write for my biotechnology class which I’m TOTALLY avoiding! I just had a half-week break last week, and throughout all that, I managed to avoid doing much on the said paper. It’s so annoying and I know I should just get it over with already, but I don’t want to! (as childish as that might sound ^^”).

*sighs* well, we can certainly tell not taking care of your mind+body+self does have a negative effect, that’s something to note. Hopefully, the winter holidays will bring joy, exercise, a clear face and some recreational reading.

Until next time,
-A

That’s so definite….such a finite ending.  What was really funny, though, was that, in this case, the trail didn’t really end there.  If you went just about a tenth of a mile farther, the top of the mountain awaited.  How often do we accept that the “trail” must end “here,” and don’t go on, don’t think of other ways around or through?

There was a minor food victory today…we got Chinese (we usually do once a week), and I tried the Szechuan Tofu this time…it came with mixed veggies.  Before I ate anything, I automatically took half of it and put it away for lunch tomorrow instead of forcing myself to eat the whole thing.  I know, it’s no ten-mile run or anything, but I guess for me, it’s something.

I’m sorely lacking in anything else worthwhile…today was productive and pretty good, but I started thinking about Puss on the way home and my mood was kind of ruined from then on.  It’s been almost two years.  Sometimes it feels like it was a hundred years ago, and other times it seems like it happened yesterday.  I’m really terrified that, somehow, I’ll forget her.  Today, I promised her that I would make it my mission to do something significant to make sure that other “Kinses” aren’t left without someone to love them and take care of them.  I’m working on a plan for that right now, but I’ll have to leave it at that until later.

Good night:)

1) i’ve been reading lots of papers about anxiety lately.

Some people have an unreasonable high frequency of worrisome thoughts, without any particular cues triggering such fear.

one of the possible cognitive explanation is, we are all planners.
we think ahead, we anticipate the future.
however, when we overdone this anticipation, it creates worry and anxious thoughts..

so..a little friendly, self-help reminder:
focus on the present moment.

2) no pain, no gain.
i would be cheating if i don’t work, don’t try hard, and expect something good in return.
if something is worth trying, you just have to try hard.
so, why give up if you think it’s worth it?
that’s what i have always thought.

but, when you have tried. fought.
hard.
and wondered, what else could i have done? could i have said?

that is when acceptance come in.
time will heal. and teach us all how to accept.

As this month of Cheshvan draws to a close, both the days and nights are ever-darker, and we many of us are yearning for the presence of the soon-to-return moon.

This Monday night, we start to celebrate Rosh Chodesh, the new moon, and Tuesday night is the beginning of the new moon/month, called Kislev.

Kislev leads us into the very darkest point of the year, at which point we light the candles of the Chanukah candles/menorah, which shine all the more brightly for being surrounded by such palpable darkness.

Jill Hammer’s amazing ‘Jewish Book of Days’ reminds us that during this season, although it might appear that nature is simply dead, She is in fact preparing, deep underground, and deep inside every living being, for the coming re-birth and re-flowering in spring.

This is the season of ‘the root’ for all of us – for trees, it is the season to focus their energies on their foundations and sources of nutrition, and for us, the darkness brings introspection and opportunities to connect with our own roots, physical and spiritual.

As the nights are growing towards being their longest, and many of us feel the urge to hibernate, to curl up under our duvets, both physically and emotionally, it is fitting that Kislev is also the month of dreams.

This month we read about the famous dream of Jacob – the ladder between heaven and earth. The ladder is a challenge to Jacob, and to all of us – are we fulfilling our potential to connect with and heal both the immanent/physical world and the transcendent worlds? By ‘transcendent worlds’ I do not mean ‘ghosts and goblins’, but rather those parts of ourselves that we don’t allow into our everyday existence, because they would get in the way of all those things we have to do. Are we making time that is un-cluttered with our everyday hassles, to focus on the more subtle, but no less important, aspects of life?

In a later story, Jacob is re-named Yisrael, by an angel who says “you have struggled with man and with the Divine and you have won”. Yisrael fulfilled his potential, and became an archetype, a name for all Jews, and all beings who struggle with both the immanent and the transcendent for the sake of perfecting the world.

Jacob’s favourite son, Joseph, was also a dreamer, and Breishit (Genesis) relates his dreams in great detail. As his roller-coaster journey of riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches progresses, Joseph overcomes his vanity and his ego-centrism, and learns to project his gift for dreams in the direction of helping other people, which eventually brings redemption to both him and his entire family. The story of Joseph and his brothers holds many essential teachings for anyone struggling with the immanent and transcendent. I’ll try and squeeze a few in here…

In Kabbalah, Joseph is identified with the sephira/quality of Yesod. Yesod means foundation, and it relates to our emotional and physical foundation, i.e. our drive to procreate. If Malchut (Nobility/Synergy) is the ruling aspect of the sephirot, the Number One into which all the others integrate, then Yesod is Number Two that leads to it – the gateway.

Yesod represents a most essential pre-condition for true Malchut – a desire to relate and share for the joy and love and creativity of relationship (as opposed to wanting to control or own something or someone, which is what lands Joseph in the pit). Yesod means letting go of trying to manipulate, learning to appreciate what is, as opposed to what we might think we want, and trust in the journey, as Joseph eventually learns to do.

Through his ups and downs, Joseph is prepared to face the super-challenging test of the sexiest woman in the known world – Potiphar’s wife! Joseph was Potiphar’s trusted Number Two, running his household without any supervision or constraint. The text stresses Joseph’s commitment and loyalty to his relationship with Potiphar. Joseph’s teenage dreams were of being Number One, the Alpha Male, but he had learnt enough about himself and Life by this point to know that NOT everything we are offered is necessarily really ours to take, and sometimes fulfilling our potential means being Number Two.

Through this success, and maintaining his faith through the darkness and confinement that followed this episode, Joseph succeeds in healing himself to the point where is ready to embody Yesod to its highest possible level – as the Number Two of the most powerful man in the world – the Pharaoh (now that is Yesod of Malchut!). In this role, Joseph is given an incredible opportunity to sustain a huge number of people through years of famine, and thus to re-find and to re-complete his own family in the process. As above with the dreams, only by being willing to help others for no selfish motive, does Joseph eventually merit the reward of his own, and his family’s salvation.

At this point, the Torah teaches us that Joseph’s sex appeal was utilised to help save the people from the famine – he literally had the girls climbing up the walls to catch a glimpse of him! Joseph’s dedication to mastering of his own Yesod enabled him to help millions of people, and become a paradigm of true, non-exploitative relationship for all Yisrael.

Joseph is the perfect role-model in this month of Chanukah. Joseph is associated in our tradition with the quality of Chein (grace/kindness/charm) which is related to the word Chanukah, which means Dedication. To be truly dedicated means to utilise all of our gifts, talents, attributes in the service of Life, even our mojo, as Joseph discovered throughout his exotic adventures…

Happy Dreaming!

Love

Daniel

in September 2009 my former land lady decided that she was going to raise rent and requested that we have no visitors after 11 pm. i came to the conclusion that it was time to live on my own. though it was difficult to break ties with my amazing roommate i knew that i was heading toward greater self fulfillment.

i decided to become a minimalist after finding myself with no money and more shit i do not use. i also decided that intimacy is essential in my daily practices.

prior to these decisions i had a few one night stands that left me feeling cold, hurt and empty. my conclusion is that two lines of coke, half a joint, beers and vodka shots was not going to lead to safe quality sex. this seems obvious to most but i did it a few times to make sure this was true. i am not sure where i was lead to believe that i was missing something not having any kind of one night stand. i am certain that there are still many twenty somethings shot gunning tall cans with e running through their blood just to find some kind human connection.  no one is saying that we don’t have a fucking clue what we are doing. no one admitting that we are scared and angry. not only are we having impaired horrible sex, we are  forming negative beliefs that further contribute to our disconnection with humans from these experiences.

i believe that it shouldn’t take us until we are divorced twice with two kids working 9-5 in a cubicle to decide that there is something thoroughly twisted about the way we think about communication, love, and sex. so i made 5 things valuable at this point in my life: intimacy, body movement, music, writing and eating well.

i hope that you take away something meaningful to aid you in your journey towards greater fulfillment.

always yours

Apologies again, dear readers, my work is being particularly demanding on my time so I did not have time to write a post today despite my best efforts.

I will be sure to get something up for Wednesday.

I said I would follow this series from Pastor Mark Driscoll from Mars Hill Church, so here is the second part from their blog. It’s a good section of what comes next, conviction and heart change and some good practical ways to go about it. Enjoy.

“Four Ways to Change Your Life

Heart change – conviction from God and repentance from you
Study – research and fact-finding for how to change your life, which includes reading the Bible and other books, speaking with people you know who have wisdom, etc.
Plan – ongoing, detailed, and prayerful life organization
Action – working your plan and making changes as life requires:
Moleskine – always keep a journal like this nearby to jot notes, thoughts, and convictions in
Journaling – use your laptop to gather the scattered ideas in your Moleskine and prayerfully and carefully add to and consider them
Calendar – take action items from your silence and solitude day and put them on the calendar, as without being officially planned, nothing ever gets done to completion

Most people are good at one or two of these steps. Some have a heart change and do their homework but do not make a plan and take action to change their life. Others have plans and action but are religiously just doing duties because they have not experienced heart change from God. Others move from heart change to action without research and a plan; they mean well but make their life (e.g., health, finances, relationships) worse.

Take some time and be honest with yourself. List each of these steps in order from the one you are strongest at to the one you are weakest at.

Where is your life getting stuck and what can you do to grow where you are weak? Who do you need to talk to and learn from? What do you need to repent of?”

First book — I seem to recall something involving cartoon puppies.

First real books — The Three Investigators, anything by Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew. (Yup; I read Nancy Drew, and I liked it. Happens to me all the time — people forget to say “You’re not supposed to enjoy that!” or “That’s not possible!”, and I do.)

First non-fiction — A red-covered series of well-illustrated books about life during different periods of history. Way cool. Also David Macaulay’s The Way Things Work. (How things work? It’s all about the mammoths, man.)

First tie-in — I read a Doctor Who book very early on, just because it happened to my hand in the library bus, and it had a flashy cover. It was bloody confusing as I didn’t know what Doctor Who was, and who this chap they all called “Doctor” was supposed to be; didn’t even quite realize it was a part of something, a brand. No recollection of the plot.

First time out of my depth — Imagine an Ian Fleming James Bond novel in a stack of Drews and Blytons. Boy that was age-inappropriate and puzzling. (“Ew, what’s that? What’s this all about? I don’t understand anything!” — but I read one of them through. Might have been You Only Live Twice; all I remember about it is wondering if James Bond novels really are meant to end with the main character remaining an amnesiac fisherman in a Japanese village. Didn’t seem right somehow.)

First Stephen King — Pet Sematary. Don’t start with this one. Especially not if you’re way young. Dear empty heavens, it’s the book King himself almost didn’t want to publish because it was so gruesome. (Didn’t touch King again until I was twenty and in the army; the library there had an English volume that had both Carrie and the Tommyknockers in it; brightened those fever-bright days some, it did. Have read, I think, most King has written, since.)

First science fiction — Either Asimov’s Foundation series or then Jules Verne. Then Dune and Clarke. Finding these was terribly random because when you’re young, not terribly good in asking questions, and don’t even have Wikipedia around yet, you don’t get a good picture of what is famous, what incidental, and how much of what author there remains. (Also, remember that not everything that’s written is translated into Finnish, or acquired into a library in a municipality of 2000 not terribly reading-interested people. Not even to mention that Asimov et al. were shelved and scattered in the general section — not the kiddie shelves, that is — and boy are the majority of those books soporific in aspect and appearance.)

First fantasy — I guess it was the Lord of the Rings. (I’m pretty confident that it wasn’t the Hobbit, because the localest library didn’t have a copy of that.) First picked the Two Towers off the shelf, a read bit, wondered why all these people were running around like headless chickens, and then, with my keen senses, observed it was part two. From then on, all was bliss.

First horror — H. P. Lovecraft I think, unless it was Pet Sematary, or a collection of unspeakably gruesome body horror stories that kept me awake when having some kind of a school-related work-sampling day riding with the library bus. The body horror stuff managed to turn me off horror for a few years. (Oh, and on HPL — quickly found out that the reason you read a lot of him is you don’t want to put the book down and turn out the lights. Passed a collection containing the Whisperer in Darkness to my little brother; according to his recall, all was well until the last sentence. Then he put the book down and spent the next few hours not sleeping.)

First bloody-many-volume-series — Eddings (Belgariad, Malloreon) and Dragonlance. Both eventually spiralled into buying the continuations in English because the Finnish translations weren’t there yet, and I wasn’t the sort of a person to ask if they ever would be. I jumped to original Eddings with the Tamuli, and to untranslated Dragonlance with all the non-Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman books.

(I can actually recall the first time I came across Dragonlance. It was, unlike the most of these, not in a library. It was a family holiday into a city in southern Finland, it was a shop that sold used books; and the shelf held three battered paperback ones: the Finnish translations of the Dragons of Autumn Twilight, of Winter Night, and of Spring Dawning. I had no idea what they were, who the writers were (though I remember thinking “Way cool! Written by two girls!” — which, however, was not the case. Sorry, Tracy Hickman.), but they were thick and not at all childish-looking books, and they had serious-looking people with swords and armors and DRAGONS on the covers. And thus I went to my father, whined a bit, and left the shop with the said books. The trip went swimmingly; well, except that after the first night, overoptimistically prepared for with five people and one tent, we bought another. Didn’t much care; I was reading.)

First book in English — I wish I remembered; most probably some Dragonlance novel. (I got a copy of the Shaping of Middle-Earth — one of the History of the Middle-Earth series — very early on; not the best book to start familiarizing yourself with the English language with.)

First book in German — Okay, I’ve read three books in German. Pratchett and Gaiman’s Good Omens, some Discworld book, and a third whose identity eludes me right now. Required two or three years of high school German, and a school-arranged class-trip-for-German-studying-ones to both get the said books, and the necessary fever to read them. Was then on the level that I could muddle through because I had read the same books in Finnish or English (in the case of Good Omens, both) before. Nowadays, I can barely sing along to Rammstein.

Oh, the good old days.

Psycho-geography is fascinating me. Psycho-geography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord, a French situationist and writer, as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” You cannot hide from it in London.  The architecture pervades your existence. The depth of history – the thousands of nuances and stories – is always just under the surface.  All the eyes that have seen what you see, it gives you the feeling that perhaps you have only been lent your vision – that what you see is not somehow yours to keep. Yet these moments, your experiences, they are only your own and these are still, somehow, constantly unique. Literary journalism and psycho-geography have a habit of converging. W.G Sebald, a favourite author of mine, and Will Self lurk on the edges of these fields. Sebald’s classic Austerlitz was placed in The Times Top 100 Books of The Decade last weekend. I have issues with some of the choices but not this one for it is a stunning work. East London is the centre for much of Sebald’s meandering – walking is a tenet of the psycho-geographer – as such I think it a must-read for any out-of-towner settling into the E’s.  The books haunting themes of dislocation, memory and faded grandeur combined with Sebald’s ability to reflect the poignant mundaneness of existence, the ecstatic glimpsed through the soporific, just gives me the urge to walk a thousand miles. I had a wonderful experience walking from Manhattan Beach to LAX Airport earlier this year. I felt I learnt more about LA in two hours than any guidebook could have taught me. That I ended up in handcuffs chatting to LAPD’s finest about the merits of Paulo Wanchope whilst surrounded by shotguns in a squad car on the way to the International Departures Terminal is pure anecdote enhancing frippery. Walking put me in touch with the gleamingly-barren-sprawl-cum-4×4-hive that is LA in a way that a yellow cab ride couldn’t ever dream.

Californian psycho-geography links me with Will Self once again. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate for an hour, yesterday I was gripped by Self for 54mins. This is the man himself defining pscyho-geography for the folk at Google Towers in San Francisco, or you can read his views on Sebald if you prefer…

It’s interesting how life sort of collides all at once. In one week The Uprising was declared, the long-awaited building loan was finally closed – releasing sorely needed resources into the Quest construction process, an old friend – Russ- gave his life to Christ, we heard from a man who was detained & interrogated for months in Iran for his faith in Jesus. It was also a week where I found out that good friends of mine walked away from this mission believing lies and breaking our hearts, I’m watching a new colleague struggle to choose well, watching another friend battle internal brokenness & fear, feeling the attack of the enemy on so many fronts and experiencing the shots on my own life. That’s a week on the front lines in the middle of this great spiritual battle.

It was fitting somehow that we talked this past weekend at Quest about what we’re going to do with our one & only life: will we spend it on selfish pursuits… on us? Or will we humble ourselves, put a towel over our arm and serve the people around us with love? Humility and servanthood are some of the most precious commodities and esteemed values of the kingdom of heaven — and it’s where we have to live, especially if we are to be stewards of The Uprising. Here’s a few things I saw…

• Our worship felt turbocharged from the beginning. The “Stomp” interactive element (where we invited people in the chairs to participate in making music) absolutely drew everyone in. I don’t remember the last time (except for the auditorium opening) where we sang so joyfully during the upfront worship set. It was holy, exciting and electric.

• The arts all the way around were functioning at a different level: worship, Stomp, worship, a great video with Devin’s mis-serves, solid stories, “I am the Church” video, and then Help into Give A Little Bit. It just brought such a winsome energy and joy to the worship experience. Felt like we nailed the right harmonic!

• We are targeting an ancient enemy of this culture when we declare “it’s not about you.” The truth of our collective and individual selfishness (ingrained into us to the point of entitlement) is appalling, but few have the courage to call us on it. Pete’s unbelievably true line rang loud: “Beginning with a self-centered starting point leaves you addicted to not being okay.” Wow!

• The heart of Jesus was selfless servanthood and He makes no apologies for calling us to the same. Beyond the effect it can have in our world, He knows it is the antidote to spiritual apathy that marks the American church. If all of our churches could hear this simple truth & live it out: “The Church doesn’t exist for us; we, as a church, exist for the world,” then our city and world would be profoundly transformed.

• Saw people being grateful for how Jesus has served them through this community.

• I got talk with a college student that spiritually seemed like a malnourished or premature baby. He was a shell of a person, so taken with the love of Jesus he was experiencing here, but so confused as to why it wasn’t living in him. The level of self-protection, self-righteousness, and internal brokenness that people can carry around is hard to believe. We had the privilege of serving him for hours, leading him toward the reality of his need for grace. He’s closer!

• I got to walk over to The Landing several times through the weekend where the different teams were manning the tables, inviting people to come and serve. It was beautiful to watch so many people interested and intent on getting out onto the field.

• I don’t know the whole story yet, but I got to watch from a distance as a friend & long-time Quester, Jody, prayed to give her life to Christ. Everyone who was there tells me it was one of the holiest moments they’ve experienced. The sheer honesty, humility and desperation of her desire to invite Jesus into her heart bowled over everyone who witnessed it.

So it continues! Next week: Making Jesus Famous.  I think it may be one of the loudest weeks we’ve done it a long time — it’s why Quest exists and the Lord has anointed us to do it in a way that’s rare in all the world. Can’t wait.

Actually, I do, because:

“We live in a time in which most people believe there is not much inside them, only what teachers, parents, and others have put there.” Michell Cassou and Stewart Cubley, The Vein of Gold by Julia Cameron

Yesterday during my run (yay!) I pondered the issue of self-esteem. I know mine is lacking, thus this blog and my foolish pursuit of perfectionism: I need others to affirm that what I do is “good”, therefore making me feel “good”. You, my readers, are–besides distant friends–ego boosters. I blog mostly for me, but you all are a big part of it too. I keep an immaculate home because 1) it would drive me crazy and 2) it makes my husband happy and proud and he brags about me to his co-workers and friends. I did The Artist’s Way because I knew that resurrecting my creativity would bolster my self-esteem. And in some ways it did, and in some ways it made it worse. Putting NaNoWriMo on the shelf made me feel horrible–a sort of failure–for so publicly announcing that I would be writing a novel, only to let negative self-talk talk me out of it. I’m digressing. I forget my original point. . . . I guess what I’m trying to get at is, is it ever possible to not care what other people think?

I wonder sometimes if my fixation on others’ perceptions of me is based upon my childhood. We moved every 3 years or so–sometimes less. I attended oh, 8 or 9 different schools from the age of 6-18. That’s like a new school every year. I can only imagine how much havoc that wreaked on the psyche. I used to say that all that moving around was good: that I learned how to be adaptable to new and different environments and I had the opportunity to meet new and interesting people. And that is all true. But what also happened. . . . I think I lost myself somewhere along the way. It sucks being the new kid and the easiest way to make friends and fit in is to, well, conform. You want to be liked. You want to make friends. You lose a little of yourself so that you can become a part of The Whole.

I promise to no longer compromise my self.

Last Saturday, I had dinner with an old friend of mine. He helped me a ton when I first moved to Toronto, not really knowing anyone. Man, how our lives have changed. He’s originally where I also grew up in, went to the boys school across the street (I went to the girls) and we have a similar group of friends and acquaintances.

After having a career in tech here in Toronto, he had to move back to the island and run his fledging family business. It’s awesome really, having the ability to just go back ‘home’ and assume a position of high power, despite not really being there. It’s just being given a ‘gift’ of a CEO job, simply because you’re the owner’s son.

I say that with a little bitterness because it has become such a scapegoat for a lot of ex-pats like myself. I haven’t taken the leap, and I know for him, if he did have a choice, he’d actually want to stay in Toronto. But he didn’t and I know there are tons of other ex-pats who’re actually faced with that choice on a daily basis.

Do you:

1) Go back to the island, run the family business, spend time with your family, parents and all, but live a life filled with gossip and compromises. The environment there is really not suitable for thriving individuality and one would have to subscribe to societal and cultural norms to not cause any ruckus.

OR

2) Stay in Toronto, be by yourself, have a pretty ‘average’ life, quiet, away from everyone, not as much luxuries, but have a sane mind and have the opportunity to actually explore who you are as an individual and perhaps work on it.

I’m currently in the 2) category despite the constant internal badgering I give into with the whole family thing. I’ve lived away for close to 8 years now and sometimes, I just can’t believe the number of moments I’ve missed.. Anyhoo, that’s for another entry.

So the friend and I got into a very heated argument about how our race which is not indigenous in the island may face similar forced extradition as what has happened in neighbouring countries. It obviously struck me as WTF, are you insane.. and truth be told, I was a bit unnerved by this sheer fact. But I made myself make something up in that point and time to mask my uneasiness and lo and behold, it actually made sense.

The truth is, in the island, there’s just corruption spewing out everywhere. Corruption is the way of life, it’s a habit and it’s the reality. My friend tried to foresee the possible situation that a radicalist may assume power and that it only takes one to actually sweep everything away. My counterargument is the fact that.. I don’t want to sound too callous here, but how easy it would be for corruption to steamroll this radicalist. He’d be gone in a second.

Anyhow, point of the matter is, the group holds 98% of the economy while only being 2% of the entire population. It’s crazy I know, but it is what it is. Mix that in with some corruption and ta-dah, comes an array of complications which is also deeply rooted in a very colonial mentality, peppered with a dash of ignorance and sprinkled with a lot of natural resources. This.. Just this paragraph alone may actually be a majority percentage of the reason why I’m choosing to live option 2) instead of assuming option 1).

People may come and go, relocate here and there, but corruption and its cronies stay.

I’m putting myself on a blog diet. I think it’s totally necessary to keep me sane.

So for the next 365 days, I will be blogging. Or that’s what the intent of the blog diet is anyways. No rules really, I just feel that I need to do it to declutter the thoughts in my head and to minimize the noise. I’ve been passed on the gift of having so many thoughts in my mind.. okay, let me just stop you there, I’m not starting to display some symptoms of schizophrenia. I just have a lot of thoughts and they’re of really varying scales. I look at something, I suddenly have a thought of it, etc. etc. That’s me, my friends.

Interview granted to Samantha Cleaver for YourTango.com

Q. What are some common ways that a mother’s narcissism can affect her daughter’s relationships?

A. Depends on how narcissistic the mother is. Narcissistic parents fail to recognize and accept the personal autonomy and boundaries of their offspring. They treat them as instruments of gratification or extensions of themselves. Their love is conditioned on the “performance” of their children and on how well they cater to the needs, wishes, and priorities of the parent.

Consequently, narcissistic parents oscillate between clingy emotional blackmail when they seek the child’s attention, adulation, and compliance (known as “narcissistic supply”) and steely devaluation and silent treatment when they wish to punish the child for refusing to toe the line.

Such inconstancy and unpredictability render the child insecure and codependent. When in relationships as adults, these children feel that they have to “earn” each and every morsel of love; that they will be instantly and facilely abandoned if they “underperform”; that their primary role is to “take care” of their spouse, mate, partner, or friend; and that they are less important, less endowed, less skilled, and less deserving than their significant others.

Q. What are the top concerns when daughters of narcissistic mothers start relationships? When their relationships move
forward? When their relationships end?

A. Children of narcissistic parents are ill-adapted; their personality is rigid and they are prone to deploy psychological defense mechanisms. Consequently, they display the same behaviors throughout the relationship, from start to finish and irrespective of changing circumstances.

As adults, offspring of narcissists tend to perpetuate the pathological primary relationship (with their narcissistic parents). They depend on other people for their emotional gratification and the performance of Ego or daily functions. They are needy,  demanding, and submissive. They fear abandonment, cling and display immature behaviours in their effort to maintain the “relationship” with their companion or mate upon whom they depend. No matter what abuse is inflicted upon them – they remain in the relationship. By eagerly becoming victims, codependents seek to control their abusers.

Some of them end up as inverted narcissists.

Also called “covert narcissist”, this is a co-dependent who depends exclusively on narcissists (narcissist-co-dependent). If you are living with a narcissist, have a relationship with one, if you are married to one, if you are working with a narcissist, etc. – it does NOT mean that you are an inverted narcissist.

To “qualify” as an inverted narcissist, you must CRAVE to be in a relationship with a narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him/her. You must ACTIVELY seek relationships with narcissists and ONLY with narcissists, no matter what your (bitter and traumatic) past experience has been. You must feel EMPTY and UNHAPPY in relationships with ANY OTHER kind of person. Only then, and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of a Dependent Personality Disorder, can you be safely labelled an “inverted narcissist”.

A small minority end up being counterdependent and narcissistic, emulating and imitating their parents traits and conduct. The emotions of these children of narcissists emotions and needs are buried under “scar tissue” which had formed, coalesced, and hardened during years of one form of abuse or another. Grandiosity, a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and overweening haughtiness usually hide gnawing insecurity and a fluctuating sense of self-worth.

Counterdependents are contumacious (reject and despise authority), fiercely independent, controlling, self-centered, and aggressive. They fear intimacy and are locked into cycles of hesitant approach followed by avoidance of commitment. They are “lone wolves” and bad team players.

Counterdependence is a reaction formation. The counterdependent dreads his own weaknesses. He seeks to overcome them by projecting an image of omnipotence, omniscience, success, self-sufficiency, and superiority.

Q. How do narcissistic mothers interfere (or get involved) with their daughters’ love/dating lives? How does this compare to typical mothers?

A. The narcissistic mother is a control freak and does not easily relinquish good and reliable sources of “narcissistic supply” (admiration, adulation, attention of any kind). It is the role of her children to replenish this supply, the children owe it to her. To make sure that the child does not develop boundaries, and does not become independent, or autonomous, the narcissistic parent micromanages the child’s life and encourages dependent and infantile behaviors in her offspring.

Such a parent bribes the child (by offering free lodging or financial support or “help” with daily tasks) or emotionally blackmails the child (by constantly demanding help and imposing chores, claiming to be ill or disabled) or even threatens the child (for instance: to disinherit her if she does not comply with the parent’s wishes). The narcissistic mother also does her best to scare away anyone who may upset this symbiotic relationship or otherwise threaten the delicate, unspoken contract. She sabotages any budding relationship her child develops with lies, deceit, and scorn.

Q. Are there any statistics that you know of that would shed light on how many people are dealing with either narcissism or a parent with narcissism?

A. According to the DSM IV-TR, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is diagnosed in between 2% and 16% of the population in clinical settings (between 0.5-1% of the general population). The DSM-IV-TR proceeds to tell us that most narcissists (50-75% of all patients) are men.

“The lifetime prevalence rate of NPD is approximately 0.5-1 percent; however, the estimated prevalence in clinical settings is approximately 2-16 percent. Almost 75 percent of individuals diagnosed with NPD are male (APA, DSM IV-TR 2000).”

From the Abstract of Psychotherapeutic Assessment and Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorder By Robert C. Schwartz,Ph.D., DAPA and Shannon D. Smith, Ph.D., DAPA (American Psychotherapy Association, Article #3004 Annals July/August 2002)

Narcissistic Injury

An occasional or circumstantial threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist’s grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof).

Narcissistic Wound

A repeated or recurrent identical or similar threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist’s grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof).

Narcissistic Scar

A repeated or recurrent psychological defence against a narcissistic wound. Such a narcissistic defence is intended to sustain and preserve the narcissist’s grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof).

Narcissists invariably react with narcissistic rage to narcissistic injury.

These two terms bear clarification (also see note):

Narcissistic Injury

Any threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist’s grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof).

The narcissist actively solicits Narcissistic Supply – adulation, compliments, admiration, subservience, attention, being feared – from others in order to sustain his fragile and dysfunctional Ego. Thus, he constantly courts possible rejection, criticism, disagreement, and even mockery.

The narcissist is, therefore, dependent on other people. He is aware of the risks associated with such all-pervasive and essential dependence. He resents his weakness and dreads possible disruptions in the flow of his drug: Narcissistic Supply. He is caught between the rock of his habit and the hard place of his frustration. No wonder he is prone to raging, lashing and acting out, and to pathological, all-consuming envy (all expressions of pent-up aggression).

The narcissist’s thinking is magical. In his own mind, the narcissist is brilliant, perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and unique. Compliments and observations that accord with this inflated self-image (“The False Self“) are taken for granted and as a matter of course.

Having anticipated the praise as fully justified and in accordance with (his) “reality”, the narcissist feels that his traits, behavior, and “accomplishments” have made the accolades and kudos happen, have generated them, and have brought them into being. He “annexes” positive input and feels, irrationally, that its source is internal, not external; that it is emanating from inside himself, not from outside, independent sources. He, therefore, takes positive narcissistic supply lightly.

The narcissist treats disharmonious input – criticism, or disagreement, or data that negate the his self-perception – completely differently. He accords a far greater weight to these types of countervailing, challenging, and destabilizing information because they are felt by him to be “more real” and coming verily from the outside. Obviously, the narcissist cannot cast himself as the cause and source of opprobrium, castigation, and mockery.

This sourcing and weighing asymmetry is the reason for the narcissist’s disproportionate reactions to perceived insults. He simply takes them as more “real” and more “serious”. The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. He is hypervigilant. He perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection: nothing short of a threat. Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.

Most narcissists react defensively. They become conspicuously indignant, aggressive, and cold. They detach emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. They devalue the person who made the disparaging remark, the critical comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist’s expense.

By holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant – the narcissist minimises the impact of the disagreement or criticism on himself. This is a defence mechanism known as cognitive dissonance.

Narcissistic Rage

Narcissists can be imperturbable, resilient to stress, and sangfroid. Narcissistic rage is not a reaction to stress – it is a reaction to a perceived slight, insult, criticism, or disagreement (in other words, to narcissistic injury). It is intense and disproportional to the “offence”.

Raging narcissists usually perceive their reaction to have been triggered by an intentional provocation with a hostile purpose. Their targets, on the other hand, invariably regard raging narcissists as incoherent, unjust, and arbitrary.

Narcissistic rage should not be confused with anger, though they have many things in common.

It is not clear whether action diminishes anger or anger is used up in action – but anger in healthy persons is diminished through action and expression. It is an aversive, unpleasant emotion. It is intended to generate action in order to reduce frustration. Anger is coupled with physiological arousal.

Another enigma is:

Do we become angry because we say that we are angry, thus identifying the anger and capturing it – or do we say that we are angry because we are angry to begin with?

Anger is provoked by adverse treatment, deliberately or unintentionally inflicted. Such treatment must violate either prevailing conventions regarding social interactions or some otherwise a deeply ingrained sense of what is fair and what is just. The judgement of fairness or justice is a cognitive function impaired in the narcissist.

Anger is induced by numerous factors. It is almost a universal reaction. Any threat to one’s welfare (physical, emotional, social, financial, or mental) is met with anger. So are threats to one’s affiliates, nearest, dearest, nation, favourite football club, pet and so on. The territory of anger includes not only the angry person himself, but also his real and perceived environment and social milieu.

Threats are not the only situations to incite anger. Anger is also the reaction to injustice (perceived or real), to disagreements, and to inconvenience (discomfort) caused by dysfunction.

Still, all manner of angry people – narcissists or not – suffer from a cognitive deficit and are worried and anxious. They are unable to conceptualise, to design effective strategies, and to execute them. They dedicate all their attention to the here and now and ignore the future consequences of their actions. Recent events are judged more relevant and weighted more heavily than any earlier ones. Anger impairs cognition, including the proper perception of time and space.

In all people, narcissists and normal, anger is associated with a suspension of empathy. Irritated people cannot empathise. Actually, “counter-empathy” develops in a state of aggravated anger. The faculties of judgement and risk evaluation are also altered by anger. Later provocative acts are judged to be more serious than earlier ones – just by “virtue” of their chronological position.

Yet, normal anger results in taking some action regarding the source of frustration (or, at the very least, the planning or contemplation of such action). In contrast, pathological rage is mostly directed at oneself, displaced, or even lacks a target altogether.

Narcissists often vent their anger at “insignificant” people. They yell at a waitress, berate a taxi driver, or publicly chide an underling. Alternatively, they sulk, feel anhedonic or pathologically bored, drink, or do drugs – all forms of self-directed aggression.

From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to suppress their rage, they have it out with the real source of their anger. Then they lose all vestiges of self-control and rave like lunatics. They shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts, and air long-suppressed grievances, allegations and suspicions.

These episodes are followed by periods of saccharine sentimentality and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the victim of the latest rage attack. Driven by the mortal fear of being abandoned or ignored, the narcissist repulsively debases and demeans himself.

Most narcissists are prone to be angry. Their anger is always sudden, raging, frightening and without an apparent provocation by an outside agent. It would seem that narcissists are in a CONSTANT state of rage, which is effectively controlled most of the time. It manifests itself only when the narcissist’s defences are down, incapacitated, or adversely affected by circumstances, inner or external.

Pathological anger is neither coherent, not externally induced. It emanates from the inside and it is diffuse, directed at the “world” and at “injustice” in general. The narcissist is capable of identifying the IMMEDIATE cause of his fury. Still, upon closer scrutiny, the cause is likely to be found lacking and the anger excessive, disproportionate, and incoherent.

It might be more accurate to say that the narcissist is expressing (and experiencing) TWO layers of anger, simultaneously and always. The first layer, of superficial ire, is indeed directed at an identified target, the alleged cause of the eruption. The second layer, however, incorporates the narcissist’s self-aimed wrath.

Narcissistic rage has two forms:

I. Explosive – The narcissist flares up, attacks everyone in his immediate vicinity, causes damage to objects or people, and is verbally and psychologically abusive.

II. Pernicious or Passive-Aggressive (P/A) – The narcissist sulks, gives the silent treatment, and is plotting how to punish the transgressor and put her in her proper place. These narcissists are vindictive and often become stalkers. They harass and haunt the objects of their frustration. They sabotage and damage the work and possessions of people whom they regard to be the sources of their mounting wrath.

A Dream (Night of May 8/9, 2009)

Throughout my dream life, Nazism (the regime, its operatives, and its visual manifestations) represented my mental health disorder, the rot that is my being.

In my dream, a squadron of high-ranking Nazis invades my rented apartment with the aim of confiscating my collections (mainly books I had packed in cardboard boxes and stashed in what passed for storage space in my real abode in Israel many years ago). The physical premises in the dream are a combination between my parents’ house and the apartment I shared with my first wife. In other words: they represent the entirety of my life.

As they roam my home, fingering objects and evaluating them, I desperately try to explain to the them that I have abstained from other expenses to be able to afford my prized possessions. They ignore my pleas as they boisterously participate in the hustle and bustle, climbing up and down stairs and calling to each other. It then occurs to me that I envy Hitler who remains untouchable despite his vast library. Despite the dire circumstances, I am still hopeful that my things will be returned to me, unmolested, once the misunderstanding that is at the base of these ominous proceedings is cleared up.

Thus, even in my dream, I realize how my disease is set dead against everything I love and cherish: my privacy, my person, my learning, and the accumulated goods that make an existence. My narcissism is all-pervasive, hideously energetic, tyrannical, and unfair. It is a malignant manifestation of my self-destructive and self-defeating urges.

A senior Nazi orders me to join an SS doctor-officer in his rounds as he compiles an inventory of tangibles in the neighborhood. There are two of us detailed to this ostensibly pedestrian mission: myself and a street-wise and resourceful child whose face I never see, but whose presence is clear. His cheer and acumen immediately render him my competitor. It is clear that only one of us will survive.

This impish child is my True Self and to outlive my disorder (my Nazi tormentors), I have to eliminate him. The only way to come on top is to demonstrate to our indifferent slavemaster how profoundly and overwhelmingly more intelligent I am. I want to make it worth the SS officer’s while to keep me alive, even as he sacrifices my co-worker. In other words: terrified by my sickness, I choose to become the False Self.

I have a stomach-churning four-pronged epiphany right there and then: (1) This ordeal is not going to end soon; (2) I have to make it to the end of the War (another 2 years, as the dream inexplicably takes place in 1943); (3) As death is administered randomly and off-handedly by the Nazis, my chances to survive are not good; (4) I am ill-equipped to cope in an environment that values practical, or somatic skills above intellectual achievements and capacities.

The three of us proceed from one backyard to another, taking stock of all the physical objects in them. As we progress, I commit a mistake and the SS man notices it. Endowed with the gifts of gab and blarney, I assure him that it was intentional and that he has nothing to worry about, he can leave it all to me. “If this happens again, feel free to torture me!” – I protest to his bemusement. He seems skeptical, but doesn’t put a bullet through the back of my skull, as I dreaded he would.

The tour ends at a familiar site: the lane of semi-detacheds, among which is my grandparents’. The entire row of dilapidated houses (in reality, long demolished) is enclosed within a wire fence. The objects strewn in the weed-grown backyards are borrowed from my childhood. The door to my grandparents’ unit is ajar. The great commotion inside indicates that this is the Headquarters of the Nazis (read: where my disease originated). My streetwise and resourceful colleague enters it and at first I can hear his voice, but then it ceases. I know that he is dead.

The SS-officer turns to me and says: “It’s time to complete the ethics chapter of our report”. I seethe inside: “The hypocrite! What do the Nazis have to do with ethics?” Something in me, a sliver of sanity, rebels against the inane demands of my disorder and is revolted by its confabulated fakery. I flip through the notepad that we have used to take the inventory and mutely indicate that it has run out of empty pages. The officer dives into an inner vest pocket and emerges with a cheap, blue plastic-bound diary. He searches for an empty leaf. As he turns the pages, I notice handwritten comments about the genocidal activities of various “gangs”.

Next I know, the SS doctor is holding a baby in his arms, examining it in a clinically-aloof but thorough manner. The boy is deformed: the skin on the right side of his face is covered with a patchwork of purplish scales; his lips are bumpy; his eyes wander aimlessly, unfocused and dim.

The doctor takes meticulous notes and then rises from his crouch, the baby cooing, still in his embrace. He enters my grandparents’ house, I hear a shot and the baby’s pale body is hurled on top of a heap of still corpses in the garden.

Two Dreams (Night of November 6/7, 2006)

I dreamt that I am a child. I am surrounded by family members who pay scant attention to me. They go about their bustling daily lives and I merely exist on the fringes of their awareness. Suddenly I notice a pure white bird, a cross between a seagull and a quail or a magpie. It is strutting on a cabinet shelf, turning itself into an impeccably shaped ball and rolling with brio among the statuettes and vases. I finally succeed to draw attention to myself by pointing to this magical bird and its nigh-impossible exploits. The fowl does nothing of value or utility – but it still garners narcissistic supply for me. This bird is my pathological narcissism.

Seamlessly and gradually, the bird metamorphoses into a swallow – plain, grey, small, and inconspicuous. Still, it is far more clever and useful than its erstwhile transformation. It fulfills functions: it cleans the house, it turns electrical appliances on and off, it even communicates, perhaps via telepathy.

Despite the fact that the sparrow – the drab adult incarnation of the flamboyant seagull-quail – is helpful and charitable, the adults around me reject it cruelly and consign it to the weather-beaten porch, behind a glass partition. The swallow is baffled; why is it being so punished? It tries to prove its merit by sweeping clean with a broom the entire balcony. To no avail.

I point out to the adults how incredible this tiny bird is and how productive. “See how it has scrubbed the verandah sparkling shine!” – I implore. But they are uninterested. I stare at my hyper-intelligent bird, deeply pained and sad. I know that I will never ever have a bird like this again: so clever, so industrious, so functional. I can communicate with it from now on only through a glass darkly. And one day she surely would be gone.

When narcissists grow old, society forces them to let go of major facets of their hitherto unbridled pathological narcissism. This coerced transfiguration makes them very sad, angry and bitter. Narcissists find it difficult to give up their narcissism. They are shocked by the fact that they no are no longer able to attract attention and adulation to themselves (to their magic birds). They then realize that their True Self (the child) is immature and helpless and their False Self (the bird) is a social outcast.

In my second dream, there was a black kid. He inhabited a tiny cubicle, crammed to the ceiling with books, amongst them, prominently displayed, my tome, “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited”. This leads me to believe that this child is I, the author. But why black? And why a child? I am a white, middle-aged male.

Blacks were discriminated against, excommunicated, and persecuted throughout their sad history as slaves in the Americas and as natives under colonial administrations. I feel like that: a freak, shunned by one and all and victimized by “normal people“. My True Self (that does the dreaming) is an immature child.

The child is despondent and depressed. He shuts himself in his room and refuses to eat or drink and, most alarmingly, won’t even touch his precious books. A procession of adults gently force themselves into his living space in order to cheer him up. Among them is a white cheerleader (adolescent girl), beating a drum and blowing a trumpet and a colored magician with a top hat. They represent my defense mechanisms: narcissism (the cheerleader) and magical thinking (the magician).

The child in the dream is instantly reassured and uplifted by their presence. He says to himself: How wonderful for any kid to be surrounded by such support and love. My defense mechanisms, including my pathological narcissism, keep me alive. I need them in order to survive and function. By ignoring them or trying to suppress them, I place myself at risk.

The Sad Dreams of the Narcissst

I dream of my childhood. And in my dreams we are again one big unhappy family. I sob in my dreams, I never do when I am awake. When I am awake, I am dry, I am hollow, mechanically bent upon the maximization of Narcissistic Supply. When asleep, I am sad. The all-pervasive, engulfing melancholy of somnolence. I wake up sinking, converging on a black hole of screams and pain. I withdraw in horror. I don’t want to go there. I cannot go there.

People often mistake depression for emotion. They say: “But you are sad” and they mean: “But you are human”, “But you have emotions”. And this is wrong.

True, depression is a big component in a narcissist’s emotional make-up. But it mostly has to do with the absence of Narcissistic Supply.

It mostly has to do with nostalgia to more plentiful days, full of adoration and attention and applause. It mostly occurs after the narcissist has depleted his Secondary Source of Narcissistic Supply (spouse, mate, girlfriend, colleagues) for a “replay” of his days of glory. Some narcissists even cry – but they cry exclusively for themselves and for their lost paradise. And they do so conspicuously and publicly – to attract attention.

The narcissist is a human pendulum hanging by the thread of the void that is his False Self. He swings between brutal and vicious abrasiveness – and mellifluous, saccharine sentimentality. It is all a simulacrum. A verisimilitude. A facsimile. Enough to fool the casual observer. Enough to extract the drug – other people’s glances – the reflection that sustains this house of cards somehow.

But the stronger and more rigid the defences – and nothing is more resilient than narcissism – the bigger and deeper the hurt they aim to compensate for.

One’s narcissism stands in direct relation to the seething abyss and the devouring vacuum that one harbours in one’s True Self.

I know it’s there. I catch glimpses of it when I am tired, when I hear music, when reminded of an old friend, a scene, a sight, a smell. I know it is awake when I am asleep. I know that it subsists of pain – diffuse and inescapable. I know my sadness. I have lived with it and I have encountered it full force.

Perhaps I choose narcissism, as I have been “accused”. And if I do, it is a rational choice of self-preservation and survival. The paradox is that being a self-loathing narcissist may be the only act of self-love I have ever committed.

The Narcissist’s Clarion Call

Background

This dream was related to me by a male, 46 years old, who claims to be in the throes of a major personal transformation. Whether he is a narcissist (as he believes himself to be) or not is quite irrelevant. Narcissism is a language. A person can choose to express himself in it, even if he is not possessed by the disorder. The dreamer made this choice.

Henceforth, I will treat him as a narcissist, though insufficient information renders a “real” diagnosis impossible. Moreover, the subject feels that he is confronting his disorder and that this could be a significant turning point on his way to being healed. It is in this context that this dream should be interpreted. Evidently, if he chose to write to me, he is very preoccupied with his internal processes. There is every reason to believe that such conscious content invaded his dream.

The Dream

“I was in a run-down restaurant/bar with two friends sitting at a table in a large open area with a few other tables and a bar. I did not like the music or the smoky atmosphere or other customers or greasy food, but we were travelling and were hungry and it was open and the only place we could find.

There was a woman with other people at a table about 10 feet in front of me that I found attractive, and noticed she was noticing me as well. There was also another woman with other people at a table about 30 feet to my right, old with heavy make-up and poorly dyed hair, loud, obnoxious, drunk who noticed me. She started saying negative things to me, and I tried to ignore her. She just got louder and more derogatory, with horrible rude and jabbing comments. I tried to ignore her, but my other friends looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to ask: ‘How much more are you going to take before you stand up for yourself?’ I felt sick to my stomach, and did not want to confront her, but everyone in the place was now noticing her confrontation of me, and she was almost screaming at me. I couldn’t believe no one was telling her to stop it, to be civil, to be nice.

I finally looked over at her and raised my voice and told her to shut up. She looked at me and seemed to get even angrier, and then looked at her plate and picked up a piece of food and threw it at me! I couldn’t believe it. I told her I wasn’t going to take one more thing, and to stop it now or I would call the police. She got up, walked towards me, picking up a plate of popcorn from another table, and upended it flat upon the top of my head. I stood up and said: ‘That’s it! That’s assault! You’re going to jail!’ and went to the cash register area by the door and called the police.

The police instantly appeared and took her away, with her resisting arrest the whole time. I sat down and someone at the table next to me said: ‘Now you can open up the dam gate.’ I said: ‘What?’, and he explained how the woman was actually pretty powerful and owned a dam and had shut the gate down years ago, but that now she was locked up we could go open it up.

We piled into a truck and I was led into a cavernous room and shown a small room with a glass wall in it and a big wheel, a control valve. I was told that I could turn it whenever I wanted. So I started to turn it and the water started flowing. I could easily see it through the glass, and the level on the glass rose higher the more I turned the wheel. Soon there was a torrent, and it was thrilling. I had never seen such an incredible roar of water. It was like the Niagara falls flowing through the huge room. I got frightened along with being thrilled, but discovered I could lessen the water with the valve if it got to be too much. It went on for a long time, and we whooped and laughed and felt so excited. Finally, the water grew less no matter how wide I opened the valve, and it reached a steady flow.

I noticed the pretty woman from the grill way across the huge area, and she seemed to be looking for someone. I hoped it was me. I opened the door, and went out to go meet her. On the way out, I got grease on my hand, and picked up a rag on the table to wipe it off. The rag had even more grease on it, and so now my hands were completely covered in grease. I picked up another rag on top of a box, and there were wet spark plugs stuck with globs of grease to the underside of the rag, lined up in order as if they used to be in an engine and someone stuck them in this order on purpose, and some of it got on my clothes. The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them, but I left without going to meet the woman, and we went back to the grill.

I found myself in a tiny room with a table in it and a picture window looking out into the area where everyone was sitting and eating. The door was open into a back hallway. I started to go out, but a man was coming into the room. For some reason he frightened me, and I backed up. However, he was robot-like, and walked to the window and looked out to the dining area, making no indication that he even noticed me, and stared blandly at the people having fun. I left and went out into the dining area. I noticed everyone staring at me in an unfriendly way. I started for the exit, but one of the policemen who had arrested the woman from the night before was off-duty in plain clothes and grabbed my arm and twisted me around and shoved me face down on a table. He told me that what I did to the woman was wrong, and that no one liked me because of it. He said that just because I had the law on my side and was in the right didn’t mean anyone would like me. He said if I was smart I would leave town. Others were around me and spit on me.

He let me go, and I left. I was driving in a car alone out of town. I didn’t know what became of the friends I was with. I felt both elated and ashamed at the same time, crying and laughing at the same time, and had no idea where to go and what I was doing.”

The Interpretation

As the dream unfolds, the subject is with two friends. These friends vanish towards the end of the dream and he doesn’t seem to find this worrisome. “I didn’t know what became of the friends I was with.” This is a strange way to treat one’s friends. It seems that we are dealing not with three dimensional, full-blown, flesh and blood friends but with FRIENDLY MENTAL FUNCTIONS. Indeed, they are the ones who encourage the subject to react to the old woman’s antics. “How much more are you going to take before you stand up for yourself?” – they ask him, cunningly. All the other people present at the bar-restaurant do not even bother to tell the woman “to stop, to be civil, to be nice”. This eerie silence contributes to the subject’s reaction of disbelief that mushrooms throughout this nightmare. At first, he tries to emulate their behaviour and to ignore the woman himself. She says negative things about him, goes louder and more derogatory, horribly rude and jabbing and he still tries to ignore her. When his friends push him to react: “I felt sick to my stomach and did not want to confront her.” He finally does confront her because “everyone was noticing” as she was almost screaming at him.

The subject emerges as the plaything of others. A woman screams at him and debases him, friends prod him to react, and motivated by “everyone” he does react. His actions and reactions are determined by input from the outside. He expects others to do for him the things that he finds unpleasant to do by himself (to tell the woman to stop, for instance). His feeling of entitlement (“I deserve this special treatment, others should take care of my affairs”) and his magical thinking (“If I want something to happen, it surely will”) are so strong – that he is stunned when people do not do his (silent) bidding. This dependence on others is multi-faceted. They mirror the subject to himself. He modifies his behaviour, forms expectations, gets disbelievingly disappointed, punishes and rewards himself and takes behavioural cues from them (“The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them”). When confronted with someone who does not notice him, he describes him as robot-like and is frightened by him. The word “look” disproportionately recurs throughout the text. In one of the main scenes, his confrontation with the rude, ugly woman, both parties do not do anything without first “looking” at each other. He looks at her before he raises his voice and tells her to shut up. She looks at him and gets angrier.

The dream opens in a “run down” restaurant/bar with the wrong kind of music and of customers, a smoky atmosphere and greasy food. The subject and his friends were travelling and hungry and the restaurant was the only open place. The subject takes great pains to justify his (lack of) choice. He does not want us to believe that he is the type of person to willingly patronise such a restaurant. What we think about him is very important to him. Our look still tends to define him. Throughout the text, he goes on to explain, justify, excuse, reason and persuade us. Then, he suddenly stops. This is a crucial turning point.

It is reasonable to assume that the subject is relating to his personal Odyssey. At the end of his dream, he continues his travels, continues his life “ashamed and elated at the same time”. We are ashamed when our sense of propriety is offended and we are elated when it is reaffirmed. How can these contradictory feelings coexist? This is what the dream is about: the battle between what the subject has been taught to regard as true and proper, the “shoulds” and the “oughts” of his life, usually the result of overly strict upbringing – and what he feels is good for him. These two do not overlap and they foster in the subject a sense of escalating conflict, enacted before us. The first domain is embedded in his Superego (to borrow Freud’s quasi-literary metaphor). Critical voices constantly resound in his mind, an uproarious opprobrium, sadistic criticism, destructive chastising, uneven and unfair comparisons to unattainable ideals and goals. On the other hand, the powers of life are reawakening in him with the ripening and maturation of his personality. He vaguely realises what he missed and misses, he regrets it, and he wants out of his virtual prison. In response, his disorder feels threatened and flexes its tormenting muscles, a giant awakened, Atlas shrugged. The subject wants to be less rigid, more spontaneous, more vivacious, less sad, less defined by the gaze of others, and more hopeful. His disorder dictates rigidity, emotional absence, automatism, fear and loathing, self-flagellation, dependence on Narcissistic Supply, a False Self. The subject does not like his current locus in life: it is dingy, it is downtrodden, it is shabby, and inhabited by vulgar, ugly people, the music is wrong, it is fogged by smoke, polluted. Yet, even while there, he knows that there are alternatives, that there is hope: a young, attractive lady, mutual signalling. And she is closer to him (10 feet) than the old, ugly woman of his past (30 feet). His dream will not bring them together, but he feels no sorrow. He leaves, laughing with the guys, to revisit his previous haunt. He owes this to himself. Then he continues his life.

He finds himself, in the middle of the road of life, in the ugly place that is his soul. The young woman is only a promise. There is another woman “old, with heavy make-up, poorly dyed hair, loud, obnoxious, drunk”. This is his mental disorder. It can scarcely sustain the deception. Its make-up is heavy, its hair dyed poorly, its mood a result of intoxication. It could well be the False Self or the Superego, but I rather think it is the whole sick personality. She notices him, she berates him with derogatory remarks, she screams at him. The subject realises that his disorder is not friendly, that it seeks to humiliate him, it is out to degrade and destroy him. It gets violent, it hurls food at him, it buries him under a dish of popcorn (a cinema theatre metaphor?). The war is out in the open. The fake coalition, which glued the shaky structures of the fragile personality together, exists no longer. Notice that the subject does not recall what insults and pejorative remarks were directed at him. He deletes all the expletives because they really do not matter. The enemy is vile and ignoble and will make use and excuse of any weakness, mistake and doubt to crack the defence set up by the subject’s budding healthier mental structures (the young woman). The end justifies all means and it is the subject’s end that is sought. There is no self-hate more insidious and pernicious than the narcissist’s.

But, to fight his illness, the subject still resorts to old solutions, to old habits and to old behaviour patterns. He calls the police because they represent the Law and What Is Right. It is through the rigid, unflinching, framework of a legal system that he hopes to suppress what he regards as the unruly behaviour of his disorder. Only at the end of his dream he comes to realise his mistake: “He said that just because I had the law on my side and I was in the right didn’t mean that anyone would like me.” The Police (who appear instantly because they were always present) arrest the woman, but their sympathy is with her. His true aides can be found only among the customers of the restaurant/bar, whom he found not to his liking (“I did not like … the other customers…”). It is someone in the next table who tells him about the dam. The way to health is through enemy territory, information about healing can be gotten only from the sickness itself. The subject must leverage his own disorder to disown it.

The dam is a potent symbol in this dream. It represents all the repressed emotions, the now forgotten traumas, the suppressed drives and wishes, fears and hopes. It is a natural element, primordial and powerful. And it is dammed by the disorder (the vulgar, now-imprisoned, lady). It is up to him to open the dam. No one will do it for him: “Now YOU can open the dam gate.” The powerful woman is no more, she owned the dam and guarded its gates for many years ago. This is a sad passage about the subject’s inability to communicate with himself, to experience his feelings unmediated, to let go. When he does finally encounter the water (his emotions), they are safely contained behind glass, visible but described in a kind of scientific manner (“the level on the glass rose higher the more I turned the wheel”) and absolutely controlled by the subject (using a valve). The language chosen is detached and cold, protective. The subject must have been emotionally overwhelmed but his sentences are borrowed from the texts of laboratory reports and travel guides (“Niagara Falls”). The very existence of the dam comes as a surprise to him. “I said: What?, and he explained.”

Still, this is nothing short of a revolution. It is the first time that the subject acknowledges that there is something hidden behind a dam in his brain (“cavernous room”) and that it is entirely up to him to release it (“I was told that I could turn it whenever I wanted”). Instead of turning around and running in panic, the subject turns the wheel (it is a control valve, he hurries to explain to us, the dream must be seen to obey the rules of logic and of nature). He describes the result of his first encounter with his long repressed emotions as “thrilling”, “incredible” “roar(ing)”, “torrent(ial)”. It did frighten him but he wisely learned to make use of the valve and to regulate the flow of his emotions to accord with his emotional capacity. And what were his reactions? “Whooped”, “laughed”, “excited”. Finally, the flow became steady and independent of the valve. There was no need to regulate the water anymore. There was no threat. The subject learned to live with his emotions. He even diverted his attention to the attractive, young woman, who reappeared and seemed to be looking for someone (he hoped it was for him).

But, the woman belonged to another time, to another place and there was no turning back. The subject had yet to learn this final lesson. His past was dead, the old defence mechanisms unable to provide him with the comfort and illusory protection that he hitherto enjoyed. He had to move on, to another plane of existence. But it is hard to bid farewell to part of you, to metamorphesise, to disappear in one sense and reappear in another. A break in one’s consciousness and existence is traumatic no matter how well controlled, well intentioned and beneficial.

So, our hero goes back to visit his former self. He is warned: it is not with clean hands that he proceeds. They get greasier the more he tries to clean them. Even his clothes are affected. Rags, wet (useless) spark plugs, the ephemeral images of a former engine all star in this episode. Those are passages worth quoting (in parentheses my comments):

“I noticed the pretty woman from the grill (=from my past) way across the huge area (=my brain), and she seemed to be looking for someone. I hoped it was me. I opened the door, and went out to go meet her (=back to my past). On the way out, I got grease on my hand (=dirt, warning), and picked up a rag on the table to wipe it off. The rag had even more grease on it (=no way to disguise the wrong move, the potentially disastrous decision), and so now my hands were completely covered in grease (=dire warning). I picked up another rag on top of a box, and there were wet (=dead) spark plugs stuck with globs of grease to the underside of the rag, lined up in order as if they used to be in an engine (=an image of something long gone) and someone stuck them in this order on purpose, and some of it got on my clothes. The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them (=he laughed because of peer pressure, not because he really felt like it), but I left without going to meet the woman, and we went back to the grill (=to the scene of his battle with his mental disorder).”

But, he goes on to the grill, where it all started, this undefined and untitled chain of events that changed his life. This time, he is not allowed to enter, only to observe from a tiny room. Actually, he does not exist there anymore. The man that enters his observation post, does not even see him or notice him. There are grounds to believe that the man who thus entered was the previous, sick version of the subject himself. The subject was frightened and backed up. The robot-like person (?) looked through the window, stared blandly at people having fun. The subject then proceeded to commit the error of revisiting his past, the restaurant. Inevitably, the very people that he debunked and deserted (the elements of his mental disorder, the diseased occupants of his mind) were hostile. The policeman, this time off duty (=not representing the Law) assaults him and advises him to leave. Others spit on him. This is reminiscent of a religious ritual of ex-communication. Spinoza was spat on in a synagogue, judged to have committed in heresy. This reveals the religious (or ideological) dimension of mental disorders. Not unlike religion, they have their own catechism, compulsive rituals, set of rigid beliefs and “adherents” (mental constructs) motivated by fear and prejudice. Mental disorders are churches. They employ institutions of inquisition and punish heretical views with a severity befitting the darkest ages.

But these people, this setting, exert no more power over him. He is free to go. There is no turning back now, all bridges burnt, all doors shut firmly, he is a persona non grata in his former disordered psyche. The traveller resumes his travels, not knowing where to go and what he is doing. But he is laughing and crying and ashamed and elated. In other words, he, finally, after many years, experiences emotions. On his way to the horizon, the dream leaves the subject with a promise, veiled as a threat “If you were smart you would leave town.” If you know what is good for you, you will get healthy. And the subject seems to be doing just that.

 Metaphors of the Mind

The Dialogue of Dreams

Treatment Modalities and Psychotherapies

I still owe you a little flashback on my shopping goodies from Hamburg. Next to all the Christmas presents I bought, I also treated myself to some basics. Some basic blacks. I was not necessarily in the hunt for them, but I often end up with plain, classic clothes. So here are my newest additions.

BDG Skinny Denim from Urban Outfitters

and

An new running jacket from NIKE.

Besides, I also got some simple black ballet flats, which were on sale and are already stored for next spring. There is no way, I will be able to wear them again this year.

I hope you will all have a good start in the new week and stay tuned since soon there will be pictures of my (wrapped) christmas presents, before I will send them on their way to the US! 

Molly Barker, founder of GOTR International

Check it out: Molly Barker is featured in a Q&A on the Fit Bottomed Girls Web site. Fit Bottomed Girls: Keeping a Lid on the Junk in the Trunk, is a Web site/blog launched in May 2008 by Jenn and Erin. As it turns out, Jenn is running the Disney World Marathon in January 2010 to raise money for GOTR through GOTR Sole Mates, which is how she got the idea to profile Molly on the site.

According to the founders, Fit Bottomed Girls exists “to make working out and eating right fun and accessible to women of all shapes and sizes, no matter where they are on their fitness journeys. FBG isn’t about being perfect, but about being real, laughing at yourself often and really enjoying a balanced and sane life.”

The site features multiple weekday posts with fresh fitness content for real women and girls (and even the guys) interested in increasing their health through physical activity and sensible eating. The blog offers workout DVD reviews—including both new releases and Retro Reviews—fitness news, new product information, personal accounts of their exercise endeavors, tidbits on healthy food, workout music suggestions and playlists, and fitness humor.

In a nutshell, we at GOTR Atlanta LOVE this Web site and the associated blog, so much so that we’ve included them in our “Blogs We Follow” section. If you have any suggestions for other sites and blogs we should be adding, please send them to me at gotr.smpr@gmail.com.

A world within a world. The world of the self can be just as rich, deep, and varied as the world of human affairs. But an entirely private world must be experienced as a deprivation from the public world.