27 Aug 2010
Selective Memory
Having endured the worst, wettest August since the Iron Age, London is awash with Autumn leaves & howling winds. People mutter climate change but within my memory bank, August was often like this as a kid. Memory can be selective. The same happens in relationships when you scour over the past like Somerset professors on Time Team, scraping away with a trowel to find the jewel to make all the emotional pain worthwhile.
When you are knee deep in self-help books, in recovery or therapy it takes a while to dig deep, to find the innocent perfection that occurred before life became scarred, disappointing or laden with guilt.
One thing is sure – doing it alone is difficult, many read books or attend group but few do the exercises as a path to emotional progress.
Sharing pain, fears and selective memories in the beginning of any therapeutic process is like having a romance with the mind . . it’s light, new and inspiring. After a while the concentration wavers, remembrance becomes painful and fight or flight turns up with a smirk to test your nerve. In her latest book THE NEW CODEPENDENCY Melody Beattie writes, in the chapter called Healing What Hurts :
" As codependency hit the mainstream, people not in recovery talked about ideas such as self-care and limits. We recognised that if a problem or illness – from Alzheimer’s Disease to a spinal cord injury – affects one family member, it affects the whole family too. What affects one part affects the whole. Support groups for caregivers spread like wildfire. Caregivers need care, too. Internet groups and chat rooms have been added to the list of resources. ( There wasn’t a self-help section when Codependent No More first came out ). Groups, therapists, treatment centres, support and information saturated society – from OPRAH to the newsstands. Less self-help? There’s never been more. "
The first point of reference in self-care is to ask for help and stay the distance. Journey on and avoid selective memory. Looking back over an unhealthy relationship past, it’s easy to use selective memory to convince that it " wasn’t that bad ". Many codependents air brush over truth, romanticise the pain and people please, rather than experience solo abandonment. This is what I call " can’t leave/can’t stay " bungie jump relationships, because when partners hit the wall of denial and fear they bounce back to a space of familiarity. Even one saturated in low esteem.
The easiest way to begin healing the hurts, in my experience, is to find another person in therapy, recovery or in groupwork. It’s harder to be in denial when you hear someone else telling your story.Then it’s more likely that the light bulbs will come on, when you realise the patterns of pain you can’t let go of. It’s hard at first to get into a group of like minded memory hoarders but the truth is it’s painful because the game is up.
Healthy relationships avoid babysitting, parenting and distorted truths.There is no point clearing the wreckage of the past, only to create another archaeological dig decades later. So it makes sense to tell the truth faster, to find your voice, your emotional equality and create a union worthy of remembrance. Today’s New Codependencies and attachments in the Internet age are as plentiful as self help groups so it makes sense to combat one with the other.
Do our memories get better or worse with age?
Selective Memory…
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Mental Disorders 101
August 29th, 2010 at 1:51 ampermalink