Love and Fear

How we interact with our children depends very much on what we think children are. If we believe that children are the “work of the devil,” then we will feel obligated to be all over them at every little hint of misbehavior. We will need to “put the fear of God in them,” to keep them in line, because as the old saying goes: “If you give them an inch they will take a mile.”

If our view of children is that they are “all light,” and if left alone they will only express goodness, compassion, and consideration for all living things, then we might feel obligated to not interfere with their process and decision making. Our approach to parenting may be very “hands-off.”

My view is that children have the seeds of both heaven and hell within them, and what gets watered depends very much on our capacity to see more deeply than their behavior. In order to support their full potential, we need to keep refining our understanding: “What is a human being? And how does one develop?”
With deeper insights into the developmental process we will be better able to provide an optimal holding environment for our children and help them reach full human maturity. In this post I will explore one of the ways that I am currently looking at the driving forces in development.

Children, even big children like us, seem to have two primary forces at the center of their psyche. One is the inherent drive of maturation. A fundamental observation in biology, the scientific study of living organisms, is that some hidden force moves life towards ever increasing levels of complexity. It does this through a spiraling process of integration. Things differentiate from other things, then these different parts become linked together into a coherent whole which is the process of integration. There is a baby growing in my wife’s belly right now (Welcome little one!). Inside of her, this baby is maturing through this process of integration where cells are differentiating from each other — first as ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm; later as blood cells, muscle cells, liver cells, neurons and so on — and will be on-goingly linked up into a functional human body. The fact that this occurs at all is absolutely amazing! And that is just the physical level of this process. In time, a new level of integration will begin to occur; a distinct emotional system will begin to emerge and will undergo it’s own process of differentiation and integration. And later a psychological level of organization will manifest and mature. And then the capacities to be part of a larger social group will emerge as the maturing child begins to learn how to navigate the different feelings and perspectives of multiple family members and become integrated into a broader “we.”

An important part of this force of maturation is our instinctual drives that move us toward various forms of nourishment such as food, water, safety, and the loving touch of people we are attached to. These impulses are not the “work of the devil,” but rather orienting motivations necessary for our maturation. They need not be removed (nor can they be removed) from our psyche, but rather more heartfelt layers of our humanness need to be added to these instincts as we mature so that we continue to transform ourselves beyond egoic and self-centered expressions. These more “enlightened” qualities require modeling by the people children most wish to emulate: their parents.

The other primary force at work in the psyche is that of resistance. Resistance, which is driven primarily by fear, is the movement of closure and protection rather than the movements of openness and expansion that characterize the force of maturation. The job of resistance is to preserve the status quo, to retain whatever gains have been made so far, and defend them as if your life depends upon it (which sometimes it does, but much more often it does not).

For many of us engaged in the work of self-transformation, resistance is a negative thing. It is what holds us back from being open and engaged in the wider fields of life and love. We know that our fearful patterns are mostly not representative of reality and we work hard to get out from under the suffocating effects of fear, resistance, and defensiveness. I have held this view for most of my life, but in the name of moving towards wholeness and integration I propose we step back and take a look at why resistance and the psychological defenses born of fear develop in the first place. Then it may become possible to include them in a wider and more compassionate embrace, and liberate all the energy tied up in “resisting the resistances.”

If there is danger in an environment it is a good idea to protect oneself or get out of there (fight or flight). We are built with a system that detects threats and mobilizes actions to help us survive (neuroception of safety). This is the very beginning stages of resistance and this is a good thing. Over time, our minds remember situations and people that have been dangerous in the past and will develop defensive strategies to deal with the perceived threat. The strategies that we adopt to deal with perceived threats usually involve internal manipulations of our experience as well as outward behavioral reactions. Let’s look at an example.

If a child who wants to be held by his mother experiences repeated episodes of her getting angry and distant with him every time he cries out for her, then he will learn that feelings of “neediness” are dangerous and develop resistances to this thread of emotion within him. Separation-distress is one of the most difficult of all primary emotions to tolerate. Over time he will cut himself off from feeling this difficult emotion, though the desire to be close to important others will still be operating at an unconscious level in him: closeness is a fundamental need for humans and all social mammals and is deeply wired into our brains. Children who develop resistances to this avoidant form of attachment tend to shrug off everything with a smug, “I don’t care……..whatever……,” and act like they don’t need other people. Many of them become bullies and attack anyone showing vulnerable feelings because unconsciously they see these feelings as a danger to their self-image which is explicitly “not vulnerable.” But here, resistance has done it’s job. It has forced the brain, mind, and body of the child to adapt to the life circumstances in which he lives. To not develop these patterns of defense would leave him at risk of provoking his mother into a rage and physical abuse, or into abandonment. The intelligence of his system get’s the message: “Back off……….this is not going to work here.” This provokes defenses that not only support his drive for physical safety, but also preserve some level of connection with his mother. It is the best option under the circumstances.

The downside is that these patterns of defense, these resistances in the psyche, oppose processes of maturation. Where maturation wants to open towards a new experience with aliveness and vigor, resistance dampens down our vitality and says, “Better play it safe.” Where maturation wants to see the truth of what lies deep in our psyche, resistance says, “Trust me. You don’t want to look down there.” Where maturation wants the infinite mystery to penetrate into awareness and to feel carried along by it’s dynamic intelligence, resistance would much prefer to stay a small and isolated person full of “self-sufficiency.”

He who is not busy being born

Is busy dying.

Bob Dylan

Take home: When we look at our children and their behavior through the eyes of maturation and resistance, our understanding will spontaneously move us toward a wiser and more loving relationship with them. Our focus naturally shifts towards aligning with Life’s deeper intentions and a desire to minimize the creation of un-needed defenses and resistances in their evolving psyches. This liberates them to be more fully themselves, in the moment and across the life-span.

Try: This week, several times a day, ask yourself the following question:

“In this moment, am I opening in Love or closing in fear?”

The answer does not matter. We have both within us. But your awareness of your state of consciousness is, in itself, a holding environment that re-engages the force of maturation.

Click here for more how all of this relates to Basic Trust and Inherent Value.