Overgiving

We are told that giving is a good thing, and it is. Giving allows other to receive. And giving feeds the heart of the giver as well as the receiver. Yet life is not black and white, and sadly even something that is inherently good can be bad when balance is lost.

What can make sincere, heartfelt giving "too much?" And what is the hidden cost of "over giving" to the giver and to the receiver? I have had to reflect on this question very deeply and very personally recently. And it has been painful, sobering, humbling and absolutely essential for my growth and learning.

Let me tell you a story. As a child, I was born into a family of well-meaning, but deeply traumatized parents. Both of my parents had their own stories. My mother was a "motherless daughter." She lost her mom to mental illness when she was only 12, upon the birth of her younger sister. With her own mother gone, my mother had no choice but to step up and pick up the slack. She was a loving, nurturing presence to her younger sister. But the void within her own heart and soul remained, and was passed on to me when she became a mother to her own daughter.

My mother, a kind and gentle woman, suffered from depression, and likely undiagnosed bipolar disorder. When she was depressed, there was a huge void. And I became the one who had to pick up the slack, because if I did not, bad things would happen or the void would remain and become unbearable. As a young child, I would go into my mother's room at night because she had fallen asleep with the light on and a cigarette burning by the bed. I would turn off the light and put out the cigarette so that my mother could sleep peacefully and so that we all would be safe. My mother did not want to cook when she was depressed. So, I picked up the slack and became an accomplished cook by the time I was 12. I even wrote my own cookbook. What I could not possibly have realized was that a young girl like me should not have been having to pick up the slack, and that I was not being given the experience of receiving some basic experiences one deserves to receive as a child.

There was a second level to the dynamic. I was always a generous, loving, kind, well-behaved girl, who pitched in, did what needed to be done and rarely complained. When my mom was ailing, I would help, pitch in, step up. This included offering compassion and emotional support as well as doing practical tasks. And there were many times when I felt more like her mother than her daughter. And at times she really needed these things from me. However, there were also moments, when she got angry that she needed these things from me and that I so ably provided them, and she would turn on me. I would be hurt, devastated and confused. I was just trying to be a good person, a loving daughter. Why would my mother push me away, reject me and be angry with me after I gave her the best that I had?

As a child, I was in a double bind: my mother's struggles created a very dark hole, and I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. Do nothing, and I would watch my mother suffer, risk the house burning down, and live with the never ending tension of a person struggling who could not find their way to the light. Do something and I might ease her pain in the moment, prevent a cigarette-induced fire and forge a kind of loving connection, but I would risk having my head chopped off when she realized I was providing things a child should not have to provide...and perhaps she felt guilt or shame that she could not provide these things to me.

While there is an axiom that it is better to give than to receive that axiom betrays us. While giving does open the heart, and giving helps us for love for those we give to, when there is not a balance of giving and receiving, relationships get profoundly out of balance. Someone who chronically receives can take the giver for granted, and can even resent their rock solid presence because it casts a shadow on their own conduct. Though frozen and at times paralyzed, my mother was a good person and it hurt her NOT to be able to give, even though at times she just could not.

Sadly, what became ingrained in me was an instinctive pattern to fill voids before me and pick up the slack in relationships when the other person was struggling, challenged or asking me to help out since they could not do so. I wanted to be kind. I felt badly for the person and their struggle. I wanted to be helpful. But when the relationship dynamic became founded on my picking up the slack, the give and take needed for a mutually fulfilling relationship ceased to be. And without meaning to or even realizing it, I was denying the other person the opportunity to step up, to take up space, and to want to make themselves a better person because they cared about me. Coming to realize this truth has been heartbreaking. And essential.

By over giving, I was not allowing myself the space to receive love--from myself as well as others. I was not even aware that I SHOULD be receiving love in return, because it was such a foreign experience for me as a child. I remember in my early 20's, a healer I saw invited me to shower myself with the same abundant generosity I showered others with. I became more and more skilled at loving myself. But this one particular blindspot, the over giving part, remained elusive to me up until present day.

The lesson? If another person is struggling, if someone is NOT living up to their part of an important relationship, there is a time to pick up the slack and there is a time to just sit in the void. Maybe a plan does not get made. Maybe a bumpy moment stays bumpy. But the person who is struggling or confused or taking things for granted has the space to struggling, unravel their own pieces and step up to the plate...or not. I have learned that I must step back, rather than step forward, and just let, rather than do. And only then can someone I care about who cares about me have the space to CHOOSE to be a better person. And only then can a person have the space to do their work and struggle and learn and come forward in their own way and time.

I realize how important it is for a child to be held and loved and protected in a healthy give and take, so the child learns when to give and when it is truly their turn and birthright to receive. Then the child learns how to give space, let, be, and dance with the flow of the universe, which ultimately wants to bring us love.

Bridging the Gap Within: A Key to Connection

"I love you just the way you are, there's nothing you need to do. When I feel the love inside myself, it's easy to love you." --From "I Love Myself the Way I Am" by Jai Josefs

A client of mine recently shared with me a reading from a book that pointed out that the greatest cause of pain in relationship is disconnection. When we open our hearts to intimacy, we seek to stand in a space of connection. What we often don't realize, however, is that in order to stand in a space of connection with another person, we need to first stand in a space of connection with self.

If we look inside and find a disconnect in our relationship with self, we may unearth the root of an experience of disconnection with a loved one. Bridging the gap within through exploring what prevents us from being fully connected to self is the foundation for creating space for sustained connection with another person.

Our culture teaches us to look outward to others to make us happy, to take care of us, and often to define ourselves in relationship to them. There is a place for this in moderation, but if we don't first learn what makes us happy, learn how to take care of ourselves, and define ourselves on our own terms, it is hard to be fully present, happy and grounded in our relationships. When things get messy or go awry, we are quick to blame rather than point the finger internally and ask what we are contributing to the mess.

Relationships are a system. There is my relationship with myself, your relationship with yourself, and the "we" which is a living entity, like an oversoul, that both you and I are responsible for cultivating. If any one of these three parts is not fully attended to, a sense of disconnection, and often pain, can result. If we are not aware of the three players in the system, it is hard to identify where a sense of disconnection originates. If we have an internal gap within ourself, then it is hard to sustain the connection with you or the "we."

How do we learn to bridge the gap within? Here are some important practices:

1. Learn to develop an introspective practice. Meditate. Journal. Draw. A practice that encourages you to dig deeper into your senses, thoughts and feelings, allows you to become more aware of your inner experience and connect more deeply with yourself.

2. Make time for introspective work daily. Introspection is part of self-care. And if you develop a daily introspective practice, you are making space for your deeper self. Just as asking a partner "how was your day?" builds relational connection, asking yourself, "how am I feeling today?" builds connection with self.

3. Slow down and look within as you go through your day. If you find yourself moving through your day with a fast pace, it is valuable to slow down and look within. If we go too fast, we may factor self out of the equation as we do for others and focus on what needs to be done.

4. Become more familiar with your internal landscape and create space to presence and experience whatever you are thinking and feeling. Being able to just "be with" whatever we are sensing, thinking and feeling without judgment, helps us "be" with ourselves. This creates more internal space, which then gives us more space to be present with others.

5. Remove judgment of your internal experience. We may not like feeling scared, sad, vulnerable or angry, but all of these feelings are perfectly human. For us to be whole, it is important to embrace of just "be with" whatever we are sensing, thinking or feeling without judgment. Being able to be scared, sad, vulnerable or angry allows us to embrace more of our full humanness, and have space to embrace these qualities in others. 6. Become more conscious of when you feel connected to yourself and when you feel disconnected. When you feel connected, how does your body feel? What do you feel in your heart? What are your thoughts like? When you feel disconnected what do you notice in your body, thoughts and heart?

7. Learn how it feels when you are spacious and grounded. If you are aware of how you feel when you are spacious and grounded, it is easier to notice when you are not. Learn what helps you stay spacious and grounded, and what distracts you.

As you develop your interior landscape, and experience more spaciousness and grounding, you will feel more connection and wholeness within. And this internal spaciousness and connection will help you experience and sustain connection with others you care about.

Anxiety and Abandonment

Have you ever experienced the "push me-pull you" dance in close relationships? Once "new relationship energy" has dissipated, do you find yourself getting close to someone, only to find them pulling away. Or have you been on the other side of this see saw, finding yourself distancing as a person you care about has come in close, perhaps too close for comfort? Most all of us crave intimacy, but it can also be a scary proposition. Relationship experts Calista Luminaire and Lion Goodman write, "Anxiety is the uncomfortable body sensation associated with fear, uncertainty, instability or feeling unsafe...When infants are uncomfortable or afraid, they cry out, expressing their need to be cared for. If their needs are not attended to, they feel anxious." They note that in adults, the feeling of anxiety has its roots in the same primal part of the brain. They write, "Anxiety is a subconscious rattling of the nervous system signaling, 'I need care now!' If you're not certain whether you'll be care for, you feel upset or nervous.'" If when you are scared, you are responded to with love and care, you will feel safe, and your anxiety will "melt away." If your partner has a negative response, including criticism, judgment, rejection or withdrawal, your anxiety will quickly escalate into the red zone. Your primal fear of abandonment button will be triggered, and you may experience the same kind of fight or flight response that comes when something is a threat to your survival. Your partner, who is having their own parallel red zone response, then distances further, and the two of you descend seemingly separately, but actually together, into a downward spiral. Somehow, instead of being two people dancing on an equal playing field, one person has become the "distanced"and the other person has become the "pursuer." Both roles feel pretty horrible, and relationship breaks down. The distancer feels overwhelmed by the anxiety of the person needing closeness at a very primal level. The pursuer feels unsafe, rejected and abandoned. Becoming aware that this dynamic of anxiety and abandonment is starting to play out in an intimate relationship is the first step in breaking the downward spiral, and helping get your footing back on solid ground. If our primal needs for safety, comfort, reassurance and security had been met when we were small, we would feel safer as we opened our hearts and started to form emotional attachments with other people. But when these primal needs were not met or not met consistency, attachment triggers anxiety and abandonment, with an intensity equivalent to questioning our very survival. Important learnings are: 1. We are all human and many of us have unmet needs around attachment and security. 2. If we can get in touch with our own anxiety around intimacy and attachment, we can start to learn what our own inner child needs to be safe and secure. 3. If we feel frightened of someone else's anxiety or need for closeness, likely our own attachment fractures are coming to the surface to heal and transform. 4. The better able we are to have compassion for the scared, anxious inner part of us, be it the part that is afraid of being abandoned or the part that is afraid of being smothered, the better we can manage our own anxiety, whether we are the pursuer or the distanced. 5. The better we understand ourselves and our reactions, the more compassionate we can be with our partner and their reaction. 6. The better we know what we need, the more able we are to translate it into something doable in the here and now. If you tell someone, "I am feeling anxious and would feel a lot better if you held me for 5 minutes," that is giving them a doable task that can make a difference. It is also a contained task, so the distancer will not feel smothered. Learning the steps of the dance of intimacy takes courage, time and often good coaching. It is well worth the personal growth and relational effort to become skilled at this dance!

Letting People Matter

Have you ever experienced a relationship where your partner said again and again that s/he loved you, yet left easily, and in a heartbeat without looking back? This kind of experience leaves the one left behind feeling confused, hurt, angry, shocked and just plain displaced.

If a loved one is able to leave that easily without remorse, it suggests that they were not entirely attached to their loved one. If someone is truly emotionally attached to a loved one, they cannot leave in the blink of an eye. Leaving would create great pain, and a sense of profound loss which they can anticipate emotionally,and as a result, they are far more motivated to work through emotional difficulties to make a relationship work.

Truly loving someone means letting the person matter. Many avoid this depth of heart opening and intimacy, because losing a loved one from this depth of attachment creates tremendous pain. So, many people protect their hearts and never let themselves open into full emotional attachment, and therefore, never truly let their loved one really matter.

Many people suffer from attachment disorders. Many people have had parents who cannot open into full emotional attachment with their children. As a result they experience chaotic attachment, where sometimes the parent seems to love them, be present to them, be with them, pay attention to them or listen to them, and other times, the parent is not present, is self-absorbed, in unfairly angry at the child, does not pay attention to the child, does not listen to or hear them or overpowers the child with their own wants and needs. If we have not had the experience of a secure, constant, deep emotional attachment when we are young, it is very scary and difficult, if not impossible, to build a secure, constant, deep emotional attachment as an adult.

Letting someone matter requires have a sense of depth and security within our own heart. We need the room in our hearts to let someone in and hold them in the moment and over time. Choosing to MAKE someone matter through conscious actions and thoughts takes a sense of consciousness and a strength of heart. Conscious thoughts and actions, regular rhythms of communication, and regular times together accented through healthy times apart help create a container that holds both the relationship and both people in the relationship.

This kind of container is needed to give space for both the relationship and the people in the relationship to grow. It is a sad paradox that many people are afraid to get boxed into a relationship for fear of losing their freedom and not being able to grow, when in actually, a healthy container holding a relationship allows for both connection and independence, and ultimately personal and relational growth.

When relationships are treated less consciously and intentionally and more randomly, the relational container has holes that leak out energy and the individuals and the relationship may not feel as safe, solid or held.

When people come from backgrounds that lack emotional constancy, there may be comfort in the familiarity of chaos and a fear of the constancy/commitment of a stable, lovig bond. Being able to develop and sustain intimacy requires a sense of trust,constancy and connection that is nurtured through actions and invested time.
If this is unfamiliar, we need experiences that introduce us to the reality that true intimacy, while vulnerable, can also be safe, nurturing and secure.

To really love someone is to both LET them matter, and to act in such a way that you MAKE them matter.

Copyright 2011 Linda Marks