Psyche: What We Don't See

If I am conspicuously driven, or over-talkative, or overly engaged in shouldering responsibility (or avoiding it), these characteristics that are visible to others probably indicate that I am afraid of seeing - or of feeling - something in my own psyche. 

I may be fending off some fear or pain which I have repressed, banished to unconsciousness, and which now lurks 'behind me' as an unnamed dread.

We often talk about people being ‘their own worst enemy’. Ironically, we frighten ourselves - or allow ego to keep us in the grip of fear - when we accept its false offers of help.

Others can see 'behind' us – we can’t.

It was not till I learned to turn around and look into my own mind, and let my feelings speak to me on their own terms that I began to be able to see, and to feel, what I had always known deep down about how I felt and what my story had really been.

Once banished (censored), some time in childhood, I had lost access to these buried feelings, and it took repeated crises (brought about by my misguided choices) to bring me to the point of humility and the beginnings of insight. 

When people soften, because of difficult events in their lives, those around them sense their increased receptivity, and are freed to respond more naturally, speak more honestly, do less circumventing. There can be more exchange of energy, more laughter, more clarity and realism.

image by Lindy Furby

Unfortunately, people who are allowing their egos to control them may react defensively (or aggressively) to such opening up - which threatens to unmask their own ego.  They may take the opportunity of someone being more vulnerable to jump in with groundless accusations, projections and other kinds of bullying or patronising behaviour.

I have seen myself do this . . .

Ego is predatory and controlling – and it is threatening to a controlling ego to see someone else releasing themselves from their rigid patterns.

When I begin to open up to my feelings, it rocks the boat, requires others to become more honest too. Ego kicks back, and is quite prepared to kick out.

Denial demands collusion from intimates.

If I am in denial, and managing to not-know about my buried feelings, those around me will sense exactly what not to say, what will not be heard, or might provoke a poisonous reaction. Robust ego strategies require other people to cater to them, work around them, suffer them.

Most of us have pretty robust egos - I know I have!

When someone is releasing themselves from some previously denied complex, a whole area of their personality is freed from constraint – it ceases to be a locus of fear. A taboo is lifted.

Others sense the shift, through the natural inner connections of empathy and affection, and the positive effect of self-liberation is that others - if they are willing - are also released from constraint.

The ‘giftie’ of growing self-awareness (Burns: ‘Would some god the giftie gie us/ Tae see oorsels as ithers see us’) relieves others from the self-betrayals they've been required to commit, to cater to our previous obliviousness.

updated 5/1/12