Heroes in Business - Splits Neglect Grudges/Patterns pt. 2

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Guided Self Healing Fearless Living: Review of Patterns. Universal themes- Splits, Multiples, Neglect and Grudges with Dr. Andy Hahn  www.lifecenteredtherapy.com 

Hi, my name is Dr. Andrew Han, and I want to welcome you to the seventh episode of our podcast, Guided Self-Healing, Fearless Living. And this episode is a continuation of the sixth episode, which is about patterns, which are deep universal themes. And in this episode, what we're going to do is we're going to review what patterns are, and then what the categories are, and the patterns we described last time, which are called single center patterns. And we're then going to go on to what we call major energetic patterns, which are profoundly important for our healing and our growth.

So again, so what are patterns? And as I said before, patterns are deep universal themes that affect our healing. And we said in our last episode that there are three categories of these patterns, what we call single center patterns, what we call major energetic patterns, and what we call identity patterns. And if you heard our last episode, I'm going to just review for you. Why we care about patterns is that they hold many, many different experiences often, so that what we think is the problem may not be the problem, but it may be a symptom of a deeper problem. And if we can find out what that deeper intention is, what that deeper problem is, we may be able to transform many seemingly unrelated things all at once, which is, of course, a great thing to be able to do. So that's it.

And last time, if you recall, we talked about what we call single center patterns, which are traumas that affect the head, which is about beliefs, the heart, which is about emotions, and the belly, which is about boundaries. and the belly, which is about boundaries. And just to recall, we had said that our hope with the head center, which is about beliefs, is that what we believe is in alignment with what we know in a deeper level. And we can have our belief with discernment and compassion and understanding and being engaged from that belief in a way that's in alignment with life. That's what happens when we're aligned. And of course, when there's a trauma to the head center, what we believe is not in alignment with what we know. And we are judgmental about the belief.

So let's again look at this. And I think I gave the example of, let's suppose I said, I believe I'm unworthy of love. And then of course we say, well, I know on a deeper level that everybody is worthy of love, but I don't believe that I am. And because of that, I feel ashamed of myself, or I feel anxious, or I feel judgmental, or I feel comparative to other people, or I can't understand how this could have happened to me or any of these things. So what we want to do is we want to work with that belief. And if we're doing that, the way to do that is not to transform the belief, which I'm going to tell you, because there are ways to transform the beliefs when the beliefs are brought in to protect you from something worse. But if your beliefs come out of trauma, it's not to transform the belief,

it's to transform the judgmentalism. And I'll tell you why. If I say to you, I'm unworthy of love, and you say, oh, come on, Andy, you're worthy of love, everybody's worthy of love. Now I got two problems. The first problem is, I still believe I'm unworthy of love. If you tell me like, you know, you know, not to believe what I believe, then you're asking me to lie to myself. Because I believe it. And having you tell me not to believe it may not help me when I own it. In fact, now I have the problem also of trying to say to you, you know, I can't even trust my own reality because this is what's true for me and you're telling me that I'm lying to myself. So what we want to do is we want to go to a place where instead of denying the belief, what we do is we transform our judgment about the beliefs and

we say, even though I believe something, in this case, I'm unworthy of love. Nonetheless, I deeply and profoundly love, accept and respect myself. That is what we can do for any kind of belief. So if you want to work with this, find a belief that you have judgment about. Find the sensations in the body

that you associate with that belief you have judgment about bring all your attention there and let it share its story about why in this case it whoever it is believes they're unworthy of love and then if you want to help them more than just hearing their story you're going to do a practice where you uh it. And you say, even though I believe I'm unworthy of love, I deeply and profoundly love, accept and respect myself. And you can do that, you can make that even better. If while you're saying that, you can tap in a half moon around your ears, which you won't be able to see unless you're watching this as a video, but you can tap in a halfesthetic, real and imaginal. So you're opening up to this new reality, which is that even though I believe something, I can love, accept, and

respect myself. Then we go to the heart. And as we said before, the heart is about feelings and emotions. So when my heart is aligned, I'm feeling whatever it is that I'm feeling in the current moment, and I'm at choice about expression. It's not that I'm reliving an echo of something else and I put someone else's head on the person I'm with, but I just see them for who they are. And I have whatever experience I'm having in the present moment. So I get to feel it and I'm at choice about expression. What do I mean by that? Let's suppose I did something that made you angry in the present moment, like you're saying, you know, whatever you're saying about me right now, and I'm making you upset.

You could be aware that you're angry at me, that it is really in the here and now, and not that I'm catalyzing or triggering something else. And you can be a choice. So if you're my student, you might say, you know, I'm not going to interrupt what's going on right now. I'll wait till later. Or you might say, it's really important to do this because it might serve myself and everybody else, but you'll be able to be discerning about what to do here, right? So let's suppose our hearts are traumatized.

It means one of three things happens. Either we deny the feeling, right? Well, it's the saying with anger again, we deny the feeling at which point we say anger, anger doesn't exist in my vocabulary, because we have the trauma around it. Or we transform it into something else. And we might laugh, or we might cry and say, I'm sad, but really what would be being would be anger, but the anger is unacceptable. Or we would displace it and not know that you're angry at me, but go home and yell at your animal or yell at your child or something, because it's not okay to be angry at me. But it may be okay to be angry at somebody else who has less power.

but it may be okay to be angry at somebody else who has less power. So we want to be able to clearly work with that so that you can have your feeling be at its appropriate place at the appropriate person and not a reaction or reliving of something else. And then the third center, the belly center, is about boundaries. And as we said before, boundaries are about being master of your own ship. It's about being able to choose what goes in and what comes out. And when your boundaries are what we call permeable, right, then you get to choose what comes in and what goes out. then you get to choose what comes in and what goes out, whether it's about boundaries in general or boundaries around a particular person or people or boundaries around a content like money or ESP or whatever it would be or experiencing other people's pain. You get to choose what comes in and what goes out. And the problem is when our boundaries are traumatized,

one or both of two things happens. They're either too rigid or they're too porous. Or to put it differently, we let in too much. We don't let in enough. We let out too much or we don't let out enough around whatever it is. And I think what we had talked about was therapeutic boundaries for those of us who are therapists, right?

So if we let in too much, it's called burnout, right? Because we take on other people's problems. We let them in and we can't stop it and we get burnt out. And if we let out, that's if we let in too much. If we don't let in enough enough it means we won't let somebody touch us you know we won't be able to be compassionate and empathic we won't let them we'll stay back and removed and just observing them right

if we let out too much, what that means is we're going to use our clients in some way. If we're therapists, we let out too much. The simple version of that would be if someone said, you think you've got a problem, boy, do I have a problem? You start talking about yourself. The more perhaps insidious is when you use them, your clients for your own gratification, perhaps insidious is when you use them, your clients for your own gratification,

whether it is for, you know, sleeping with clients or not helping them, but continuing to say you can, so you can keep your practice high and take money from them or whatever it is, right? It's like you are using them for your own needs and not to be there of service. If you don't let out enough, it means that when someone really needs you to reach out to them, something horrific happens, right? And you just won't reach out to them in some way and really give them the sense that you're here with them. Okay, so that's the three centers. So we're going to stop with that. That's where we were. And now we're going to go to these universal patterns

or universal themes that affect all the centers. And they come in two realms. They're called the material realms, which are patterns we can experience through our five senses, like somebody hit me or kicked me or killed me or did whatever, or they come in the non-material realms. However you want to understand those stories. And those stories are stories of events or phenomena that aren't in normative Western reality, but nonetheless are very useful in healing. And when we get to those, which we will in a couple of weeks, we're going to start talking about why that's so. So we're going to start. There are a number of

these universal patterns of the kinds of themes that you find in myths. And let's just start talking about a few of them today. And what I'd invite you to do is see if they resonate with you. And if they resonate with you, you might want to just notice what happens in the body if you want to sit with them. And we'll go from there. So the first patterns are called splits or multiples. And splits or multiples means like it'd be like if we were, if we were a whole and integrated, we would be whole. We would be, our fields would be whole and they would be integrated.

But if we have a trauma to our field, one of a few things happens. The first thing is we could have the experience of not being all here, which could be a split. So it's like a part of us is missing or more often it might be that we are divided in some way. So and the only difference between a split and a multiple is, is it the division is two things or is it more than two things?

It's like you're going along a hole and then you break into two pieces or you break into more than two pieces. That's the only difference. Well, what do I mean by this? Let's say our thoughts are disconnected from our feelings. So it's like we're split at the head, right? And it's like our head is cut off from our hearts. That would be a split.

So you might not let yourself feel your feelings. You might think about them, but not let yourself feel them would be an example or when you're feeling your feelings you might not be able to think at all and be discerning that would be another example or you could have a left right split at which point the assertive aspects of you might be cut off from the receptive aspects of you you might have to like be pushy or aggressive or something or the other side you might be very passive um or if they're split and you're bouncing back and forth you might be passive aggressive and of course when you heal a split what happens is

that you get to be actively receptive and actively assertive and that they're held in that way it's often thought of as being the masculine the feminine but you could say that even the masculine the feminine are manifestations material manifestations of assertive and receptive energies if we think of the biology of that for example So splits or a split could be that your sexuality is cut off from your emotions. I mean, there's so many different ways that you can be split. And so when you're aware of that, if you say, oh yeah, my head is cut off from my heart,

my thoughts are cut off from my feelings, or my head could be cut off from my heart. My thoughts are cut off from my feelings or, you know, my head could be cut off from my body, at which point it feels like I'm just head but I have no energy. Or, you know, my emotions are cut off from my sexuality or my capacity to be actively assertive. I can't receive you if I'm asserting something and if I'm receiving you, I can't assert something. Well, what I want to invite you to do then is just let yourself notice what's happening in the body. When you allow the sense of split, like I'm not all here, or one part of me is split off from another part of me, notice what happens in the body again. Bring your attention to the sensation

that's associated with the split, so much so that you become that sensation from the inside out. And then we're just gonna say to that sensation, what have you come to share about the split? Whatever it is, where are you beginning? What's happening? And you just tune in and walls open up.

So that's splits and multiples the next pattern i want to talk about is neglect trauma and neglect of course uh healed neglect trauma is the sense of like when I need someone, I can kind of count on them being there. And if they're not there, I can certainly say I can care for myself, but not in a way that shuts off from my feelings. It just says that I can be there with and for myself. But when you're traumatized around this, what happens is that you come with a very deeply held experience, which is something like, when I needed you, like my life depended on it,

and I had every reason to believe that you would be there, every reason to believe that you would be there, you're not there for me, or you're not there with me, or whatever it is. That's a neglect trauma. So if you know that, you can just feel that also in your body and notice what that feels like. And the archetypal neglect trauma, of course, would be an infant. And if the infant calls, you know, the infant is hungry. And of course the world revolves around the infant and no one is there. They get upset. You know, it's like, I'm crying and I'm hungry.

You ought to be coming, but no one shows up. And when no one shows up, you continue to cry. And then you might say, what's the next pattern is we're going to talk about, which is a grudge. You might say they're violating my values. I mean, if you could articulate this, you know, when I'm hungry and I cry,

they're supposed to come. So no one pays attention to me. And then of course you'd have to be, you might become pseudo-independent but very dependent all kinds of things can happen there because you wouldn't count on people coming or you might shut down i'm going to tell you something about the parents we're going to talk about today like you die inside we call that dead parts so a lot of things can happen from neglect.

And when I say, you know, I gave you the archetypal example of it, it can show up in other ways too. Like I know a story where a general was going into battle in another lifetime and all of the people or his troops had said of course we will be there with you and when he went into the battle he turned around and nobody was there and it turned out to be a neglect trauma it's like you know when I needed you like my life depended on it and I'd ever reasonably believe you were there. You weren't there with me. You weren't there for me. You didn't have my back. So that was neglect trauma. So once again, I want to invite you to take a moment and to really let yourself notice what happens when you have a neglect trauma. Like I need you notice what happens in the body and let yourself fully experience it and just bring your attention there and hold whoever that is.

The tricky thing with a neglect trauma also, by the way, is it's a non-traumatic trauma, so to speak. It's not like someone did something. It's a trauma of neglect or, you know, a trauma of non-commission. It'd be like saying, you know, you traumatize me and the person says, yeah, I didn't do anything. And you say, that's the problem. You didn't do something, right? So it's not like someone hits you or kicks you

or screams at you, which is something you can point to. It's the not doing that's in the neglect trauma. You were supposed to be there for me you were supposed to pick me up and you didn't show up that's a neglect trauma right so it is uh it's a trauma of omission not a trauma of commission it's active omission but it's like what you didn't do and of course in a neglect trauma all of these traumas you're going to see, all these patterns that we're talking about are really in some way relational dynamics. It's not like if you want to do something else, if you want to have it be an identity trauma of some kind or an archetypal, you know, if you want to think about archetypes, you could say, well, I'm the neglected one or I'm the neglector or I'm whatever. But you'll notice here that there's a relational dynamic.

You take in all sides of this. So if you've had a neglect trauma, you're likely to be neglected in life or you might be a neglector or whatever because we're playing out the whole relational dynamic. So that's the next kind. The next one I want to deal with is grudge. And a grudge, we have a sense of a grudge. A sense of a grudge is sort of like, well, you're not going to let me play. It's my ball. I'm going to take my ball and go home. So a grudge is about a violation of values, a real violation of values. But the problem in the grudge is the way you act guarantees that you will never, ever, ever have what you wanted in the first place.

Or to put it differently, I bring the basketball, but I'm a little kid. And, you know, the bigger kids take my basketball because they don't have one, but they don't let me play. So I say, great, I get my basketball back finally. And I say, I'm never going to go out and play again. But then of course you have a different problem, which is the way you act guarantees that you can't have a new experience because you're going to just keep acting and acting in a way that proves your point that no one will ever play with me. But of course then you never reach out. So your action then guarantees the result. And so what I want you to do then

is just notice what happens in the body when some value of yours is violated and you act in such a way that guarantees that it will continue to be violated feel what happens in the body um um i'll tell you one of my favorite stories about a grudge which isn't even mine but from one of my favorite stories about a grudge, which isn't even mine, but from one of my favorite teachers, a man named Dick Olmey, who started something called self-acceptance training. And if you want to read about Dick, one of his students wrote a book called Walking in Beauty. He was one of the original people who was both a shaman and a gestalt therapist. And he was just a very egoist, beautiful man.

But he told a story of a person who came into him who was constipated, literally constipated, meaning that he had problems with his stomach, but also constipated in life. And it turns out the story was that he was this man who was now in his 50s, as I recall, this is 30 years ago, but I remember the story, at least mostly, was in the car with his father, and he had to go to the bathroom, and Dick says, number one or number two, and the man says, number two, which of course would make sense if he was constipated,

you know, physically and like, you know, he always like, you know, he would hold himself in and back, right? So he needs to go to the bathroom. And dad says, hold it, we'll be home soon. Cause dad's rushing and not paying enough attention to his son. And they pass, you know, a gas station. And the boy apparently says, dad, I really need to go.

And dad says, hold it. And they pass another gas station. Apparently they pass three gas stations. And finally, this boy, who I think is like six in the story, I don't remember, five or six or something, poops in his pants. And then his father yells at him, like, couldn't you have held it till we got home or whatever and shamed him and so what he does is he uh pulls back in uh and like um really literally becomes constipated he had not sort of really remembered the story and sort of like, you know,

stayed constipated energetically in his life also, you know, like, because of course you wouldn't want to let anything out under those circumstances, literally or figuratively. So what do you do when you have a grudge pattern? And what you do is you do anything at all you can to change the behavior, because anything would be better in your imagination. And in your imagination, you can do whatever you want. So Dick says, we don't quite do it this way, but we'll give it a sentence. He says, all right, on the count of three, I'm going to invite you to do something and quite do it this way but it will give you the sense he says all right on the count of three i'm gonna have you i'm gonna ask i'm gonna invite you to do something and just do it so it

goes one two three and then he says i want you to imagine that you're shitting all over your father and shitting and shitting and shitting on him until he's totally covered with shit and apparently the man does this and then I don't know, I think this is my language for it, but he apparently gets a shit-eating grin on his face. Pardon the language, if that is not language that works for you, but nonetheless, probably very apropos here. And apparently all of his constipation went away

and all of his being constipated in life and not sort of going for anything, but having to keep himself pulled in also transformed in that moment, which I believe knowing Dick. So this is the idea about a grudge, but you know, the other thing about grudges is to say that couples often play out neutral grudge patterns. You know, it's really, it's one of the things that is the best way to create a divorce and help,

you know, because, you know, they bring their grudge patterns into their marriages and then they project onto their spouse and put somebody else's head on the spouse's shoulders and play the whole thing out and i remember this very vividly when i was first working with grudges um because i had seen this couple i going to give you one side of this, but the grudges are always interlocking. But this was when I was first working with grudges many, many years ago. And I remember this very vividly today. And they came in because the husband had slapped the wife very hard. And they were both, it was totally out of character for him. And they were both stunned and she was scared and they were both very large

people. But so they came for therapy and we, first of all, made a contract around safety, but she didn't feel so unsafe, but she was feeling, because they had been married for many years and nothing like this had ever happened before. But, you know But she was still feeling very anxious and he was feeling horrified. So we did this grudge pattern with him and it's very moving.

And you'll see, I mean, I'm just only gonna tell you one side of this one because I remember the other side of it vaguely, but not anywhere as powerfully as the one with the husband's side so um what happened is that uh he was an electrician he was a very big sort of uh man's man kind of guy. And he had to go out and work for his comp because he had fallen when he was doing something.

And they had a baby. And so she went out and worked while they were going through all of, you know, whatever was going on around his disability stuff and everything. She had to go and work. They didn't have very much money. And so he stayed at home taking care of the baby, which was not what he was so good at,

but he was trying his best. And she walks in one day and just gigglingly, or that's how she saw it, like, you know, sort of said, oh, that's a sort of stupid way to do that. But she was being playful and he goes off and slugs her, which was stunning when she said that. Well, that's a kind of stupid way to do the diapers. Let me show you. And he slugs her. So I say to him, well, okay, if you could have had it be exactly what you wanted, what would have happened instead? And he said, you know, he said, I, I don't know why I was so reactive, but like, all I wanted to do was say, you know, I see you're really trying and you're doing a good job. And, uh, okay.

So then I said, great. Now what we're going to do is notice what happens in the body when someone sort of you think is calling you stupid and you think they're kind of laughing at you. And he goes into the body and he starts to cry. And he's crying very hard. And he says, I know exactly what this is. I haven't thought about the scene in ages. He said, I'm like a this is. I haven't thought about this scene in ages. He said, I'm like a 10-year-old kid,

and my father's a workman, and I'm trying to help him out. I have this enormous, like, shovel, and I'm trying to move some gravel, and I'm having a really hard time doing it, and I overhear him saying, look at my stupid kid. He can't even shovel. And he's bawling. And his wife is incredulous because afterwards she said, I don't ever even remember him crying and, you know, nothing like this. So then we say, well, what did you really want to have happen?

Of course, it's the same thing. All he wanted was for his father to say, you know, I see you're struggling with this, but thank you so much for doing this. I know this isn't easy for you, but I know you're trying to do what you can, you know, under the circumstances. And I'm so, you know, appreciative. And he wanted the acknowledgement.

So I say to the wife, look, we need you to stand in here and then we'll de-enroll you but right now you're going to be the father and you're going to give him exactly what he wants and they play out the scene again and she says exactly what he needs to hear and he's bawling and bawling and then reaches out for a hug and they hug each other. And it was profoundly moving. I can remember this even from way back when. This is when I was, you know, just really starting to do the work I'm telling you about.

It would have been like, you know, very early 90s. So 30 years ago. But it was the first time I was trying to work with grudges and semantics. And it was the first time I was trying to work with grudges and semantics, and it was deeply moving. So you can also, you know, if it's a couple, it's a very powerful thing to enroll the other one and to transform the original situation and then de-enroll them so they get to be, you know, partners again. So all of this to say that we talked about several patterns today. We talked about splits and multiples and neglect trauma and grudges. And we're going to stop for today.

We'll go through these slowly and what i would recommend you do if any of these resonate for you just let yourself feel the core of it you know i'm not all here or a part of me is split off from another part of me right or when i need you like my life depended on it and i had every reason to believe you'd be there for me you weren't there for me this trauma of omission right i wasn't they weren't there or grudges you know that some value of yours is violated and then you continue to act in such a way that uh guarantees it or mutual grudges where they like a hand in a glove if you're in a relationship so often happens that there are these interlocking stories of violations of values that have really

nothing much to do with your partner they just are here to help you heal we just think we do it we fall in love with people because we fall in love with them and we love them but they also we you know who do we do our deepest work with? It's the people who are closest to us. So having said all that, we're about done for our time today. And I wish you well. And if you want to reach us, of course, our website is lifecenteredtherapy.com. And if you want to reach me, and please do.

I so appreciate people have been writing to me and giving reflections and comments and what's touched them or what they'd like to hear about. I will respond or I'll talk about it on the show. So if you want to reach me, it's A-H-A-N. So it's A-H-A-H-N at lifecenteredtherapy.com. And until our next time, we'll continue our journey on these patterns. I wish you a great day and great healing and great growth. Goodbye.