The Invincible Vulnerability of the Mature Heart

“Adaptation is the heart of the discipline that works and the cost of the discipline that does not work.”

Gordon Neufeld

One of the signatures of American culture is our fight. Our “never give up” and “never say die” attitude pits us in a constant battle against reality. Even the New Age movement continues this thread with ideas such as “you create your own reality.” While it is true that we often limit ourselves through identification with negative self-images and beliefs, and concepts like The Secret can help people challenge those limiting beliefs, it is not true that we can simply wish any reality we want into existence. In fact, compulsive attempts to do so beyond the first several years of life indicate the presence of narcissism and an arrest of development. Our culture is great at producing high-drama stars that shine brightly in the early decades, but our discomfort with vulnerable emotions has left us with relatively few wise elders.

One of the three primary threads of the maturational process as laid out by Gordon Neufeld is that of adaptation. The adaptive process occurs when we come up against a reality in life that we are powerless to change, we recognize the futility in fighting any more, and we allow our hearts to be moved to sadness and disappointment. This is an intelligent and natural process that is built in to our nervous systems and is the primary way our emotional vitality — the dynamic process at the center of maturation — is preserved. Let’s take a look at a useful model that Gordon uses in explaining some of these processes: the traffic circle.

Picture a traffic circle with entry/exit points at 12, 9, 6, and 3 o’clock (we are traveling counter-clockwise around this circle). When we want something, energy arises in our system that can be called frustration. (There are of course different energetic tones here that can range from pure and open motivation to very foul and discombobulating feelings of intense drive, but for now let’s just call the energy that drives us towards a goal frustration.) Frustration enters the traffic circle at 12 o’clock and starts to travel around toward 9 o’clock. During this chunk of time, we are working on accomplishing our goal: let’s say, getting “just one more cupcake” before bed. If we are successful (ie. If daddy is home with us and is in a splurgy kind of “IT’S FRIDAY!!!-mood”), we exit at the 9 o’clock position on the circle — change — and relax into the enjoyment of getting our way and licking that delicious icing off the top of the cupcake. If the answer on this occasion is “No…you can’t have another cupcake tonight,” we may try a classic, heart-wrenching, “Plleeeeeaassse…” If the parent decides that this is one of those times where the child needs to sink into their feelings of futility, then they put up a clear boundary: “NO is my final answer, sweetheart.” At this point the child has two options. If she feels this wall of futility clearly, and she feels safe enough to sink into her vulnerable feelings, then she will exit the circle of frustration at the 6 o’clock position — adaptation — and experience the sadness of not getting her way. This is the place where the parent must sense the child’s limbic system making the shift from frustration to sadness and then step in and become an embodiment of compassion; a holding where she may cry tears of disappointment or simply slump into your arms. If the child can not sink into her loss, the frustrated energy will likely intensify into acts of aggression (the exit at the 3 o’clock position). Only a mature individual with healthy integrative functioning can avoid getting aggressive in the face of a futility that just won’t sink in.

So there you have the basics of the traffic circle analogy: frustration drives us to affect change in the world. If change can not be affected, then it is healthy to be able to find our feelings of disappointment around not getting what we want. This is the way we develop resilience in the face of adversity. If we are not taught this lesson as a child, we will tend to remain in repetitive cycles of frustration and/or aggression in trying to get our way in life. This is one of the qualities of narcissism and evidence of developmental arrest.

Here are a few more points about the adaptive process:

• It is not enough for the futility to register cognitively for adaptation to occur; it must register emotionally. The good news is that children are capable of adaptation very early on in life. (Note: This is not the same as the more superficial process of accommodation where children are forced to change themselves, to behave in ways that are acceptable to the parents to “get the food and get the love.”)
• The “tears of futility” are directly related to specific events and have a natural dynamism to them: we move from mad to sad, followed by a stillness or spaciousness, and then some element of emergence arises where we re-engage with the world from a state  that is more lighthearted, open, and clarified. This is a distinct process from the more “stuck” states of melancholy, despair, depression, or “whiney” tears.
• The registering of what does not work and then resting from that pursuit is vital in eventually finding out what does work. This is a key element in the development of resourcefulness in the face of adversity. We must let the futility sink in fully first before coming at it again for the process of adaptation to occur.
• When we survive these tussles with the more vulnerable feelings in our psyche — sadness, powerlessness, and loss — we are developing our capacity for resilience in the face of difficulty. Our capacity for self-regulation increases with every full cycle of the adaptive process that we survive.
• The primary fruit of this process is the maintenance of the emotional vitality that drives maturation.  And in full maturity, it’s the soft heart that flowers with the deepest elements of our humanity: acceptance, compassion, tenderness, love, and wonder in the face of the great mysteries of Life.

“If you’re really listening, if you’re awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders.”

Andrew Harvey

Take Home: Adaptation is a key process in human maturation. It provides us with the capacities of resourcefulness, resilience, and the ability to rest from the pursuit of futile endeavors. The ultimate fruit of adaptation is that we maintain contact with our soft, vulnerable, yet invincible heart: a heart that can hold the enormous suffering of life with unwavering equanimity and compassion. We should do all we can to support our children in this essential process.

Next week we will look at the specifics of how to support the natural process of adaptation in everyday life.

Try: Reflect on what you see in the world around you. Do you recognize people in situations who simply will not accept reality and instead get more frustrated, more angry, and more aggressive with others in an attempt to get their way? Are their times and situations where you yourself are not adaptive? (It is certainly true for me.) What are the conditions that promote aggression in you personally? What conditions support you finding your feelings of futility and fully feeling your sadness around something that does not work the way you had hoped? Journal your observations or share them with your partner or a friend.

Learn more from The Essential Parenting Home Course which has over 2 hours of recordings describing exactly how to help your child become adaptive and develop resilience. Listen to Week 1 FREE!

Gordon Neufled’s DVD series, The Power to Parent is an excellent resource for more detail on the adaptive process.