Titanic

"The child must adapt to ensure the illusion of love, care, and kindness, but the adult does not need this illusion to survive.... Both the depressive and the grandiose person completely deny their childhood reality by living as though the availability of the parents could still be salvaged: the grandiose person through the illusion of achievement, and the depressive through his constant fear of losing "love." Neither can accept the truth that this loss or absence of love has already happened in the past, and that no effort whatsoever can change this fact." [italics in original]

                                      - Alice Miller (from Drama of the Gifted Child (location 628-630 on Kindle)

In other words, not only is the unconscious goal of perfection impossible and thus dooms us before we ever begin anything, but this goal's ultimate purpose (of "salvaging our parents' availability" and, consequently, our self-worth) is itself an impossible fiction. Our minds can understand and accept this on an intellectual level, a milestone of personal growth which is difficult enough to attain. But an even more difficult challenge is getting our bodies to believe and internalize it. This is how we truly, authentically change behavior and address deep-seated anxiety: from the source of it.

As Bromberg (2011) explains: "A person's core self -- the self that is shaped by early attachment patterns -- is defined by who the parental object both perceive him to be and deny him to be...." In other words, the primary caregiver's capacity to attune to or match the entire relational dance of the child determines the child's sense of self and subsequent "affect regulation capacities, procedural memory, and so much more" (Ogden, 2015).

This moment-to-moment dance happens over tens of thousands of interactions and establishes "action sequences" that convey our "implicit predictions, expectations, intentions, attitudes, emotions, and meanings" (Ogden, 2015). Degree of attunement depends on many things out of the caregiver's control, including but not limited to the caregiver's own early relational experiences and the temperament of the child.

Whereas "fight" and "freeze/flag/feint" modes are most clearly identifiable, "flight" mode triggers and reactions can be the most difficult and confusing to identify and respond to. When we react to/in "flight" mode in particular, we feed a seemingly unending loop of shame and frustration precisely because it may be invisible. If we play the game of "salvaging our parents' availability", we eventually discover that we can't stop playing even when we consciously want to -- there is no "off" switch.

To this end, I have recently identified and come to use as a metaphor the accidental tragedy of the Titanic. It has helped me understand and find my unconscious "off" switch (maybe less an off switch than a dimmer).

Our Personal Titanic: Symbolism
We all know the tragedy of the Titanic. On April 14, 1912 (the day it hit the iceberg), the Titanic cruised through the waters of the North Atlantic, a beautiful, magnificent, new vessel. This ship may represent our True Self (i.e., our self as it is). It moved freely in the ocean. It began to pick up steam, to really open up. They said it was unsinkable, this vessel on its nascent voyage. And, then, it happened. An iceberg dead ahead. It was unavoidable -- there was nothing the ship, nothing the Captain (representing our embodied mind) could do. The ship collided with the iceberg!

The caretaker of this vessel, the Captain, knew within minutes that the damage was fatal, that the ship would sink without the ability to repair the breach. Titanic carried life: there were 2,224 people on board. These people represent the life of the True Self. Much of this life died, drowned or froze to death, and lies at the bottom of the Atlantic still. Some life survived because the Captain deployed life boats (representing unconscious psychological defenses).

[This is important because it implies that the Captain, not the ocean, is ultimately responsible for the vessel and the life it contains -- e.g., the ocean has no control over the number of icebergs or warm, holding currents it has, if a vessel runs into an iceberg, or how the Captain decides to protect the life on the vessel.]

The ocean itself represents the primary caregiver as it contains not only icebergs but also warm, *"holding" currents -- depending on the character structure of the caregiver and innate temperament of the child, there may be more likelihood of icebergs (or currents) by which the vessel may be hit (or held).

*Note: includes both physical and psychological holding (i.e., seeing/accepting the vessel as it is).

The Titanic's 20 life boats held 705 survivors until a cruise liner (another vessel -- representing False Self, i.e., Bromberg's core self above -- how others need us to be) could reach them two hours after Titanic sunk. Some life was protected by the Splitting life boat, other life was protected by Idealizing/Devaluing, still other life was protected by Denial (of this and other reality), Intellectualization, Projective Identification, etc.

In the False Self vessel, this surviving life remains separated in those life boats (representing dissociated self-states), perhaps for the rest of our lives unless something or someone intervenes to dissolve those walls and integrate this life.

The iceberg in the Titanic metaphor represents a general relational pattern of mis-attunement (i.e., non-seeing/non-coordinating), conditional love (and fear), power/control over, and moments of dis-integrated stasis within a superficial flow. We can think of this as a relational dance set to the music of one reality: the caregiver's reality.

A warm, "holding" current may represent a general relational pattern of attunement (and repair), unconditional love (i.e., Linehan's "radical acceptance"), mutual safety/respect/compassion, and integrated flow. This dance is set to the different music of everyone's reality, where turn-taking becomes imperative (e.g., A Day in the Life rise to G).

Both icebergs and currents can be personified: icebergs, like people, exist mostly under the surface and people, like currents, have a flow that can be respected or interrupted. To come full circle, our lifeboats then become the icebergs when we become somebody else's ocean.

The function of the ocean vis-a-vis the vessel is to literally hold the vessel. The ocean is one part of the vessel's external environment, but a critical one: there may be sunny skies or storms or earthquakes (representing siblings or other key people) that may directly affect the vessel, but these also feed back into the ocean's calm or tumult.

???[In this way, experiencing "love" for a specific person may actually be each person's respective lifeboats/icebergs and warm, holding currents corresponding conversely rather than directly (i.e., there is a warm, holding current in the ocean where you have a lifeboat/iceberg and vice-versa).]???

Unconscious Expedition/Salvage Mission and Pre-emptive Defense
When I engage now (2017) or even have the impulse to engage in *grandiose (illusory achievement, "winning" conditional love), *depressive (fear of losing conditional love), or other reactive behaviors, I travel through time both to the past and to the future, toggling back and forth between past and future in reactive mind.

*Note: I consider both behaviors to be in "flight" on the circle of reactivity. Especially vis-a-vis fear of losing "love" (where "love" := favoritism, status, wealth, conditional safety), we can include impulses or feelings of preoccupation, clinging, rumination, jealousy, competition, pleasing, catastrophizing, and superego projections (i.e., imagining others are judging us).

When I go to the past, I am going on an expedition and a salvage mission (see below). When I go to the future, I perceive and predict a threat to False Self (i.e., ego identity), against which I engage in a pre-emptive defense. It is the past-orientation that I find so fascinating and challenging to understand, so I will focus on that here. However, note that the "pre-emptive defense" IS the expedition and salvage mission.

Expedition/Salvage Mission
The expedition is that I am trying in the here and now (2017) to change the reality of the Titanic's iceberg to a then non-existent warm, "holding" current/flow on April 14, 1912. In other words, I am trying now to get my needs met back when I was an infant/child.

These grandiose or depressive behaviors (and other reactive behaviors) are my locked safe (representing safety) that lies with the wreckage of the True Self at the bottom of the ocean. I fully expect it to contain treasure (representing self-worth derived from parental availability, attunement, and true love when I was an infant/child), even (emotional) life itself.

But when I salvage this safe from the vessel's wreckage and open it, like Geraldo Rivera confidently opening Al Capone's vault on live TV, I shamefully find nothing -- it is empty. The real treasure never existed, not now or when I needed it all those years ago (i.e., when my needs collided with the needs of my caregivers).

Yet I actively try to salvage this treasure from the wreckage over and over and over again by pretending not only that 1) the iceberg was a warm, holding current and 2) I can salvage the treasure today, but also by denying the reality that it wasn't and I can't. Mis-attunement threatens self-worth because as children we (unconsciously) equate mis-attunement to our not being worthy of being seen or accepted as we are -- the wrongness in us is why we are not seen -- so we change ourselves to be worthy.

By the way, others often conspire in this effort to maintain the myth of the perfect or ideal caregiver, thereby creating a heart-breaking social environment of denial and shame that functions both to obscure the true reality of the tragedy and punish "heretical" attempts to acknowledge this reality.

The damage from the iceberg was done under the surface, out of sight. In emotional life, there is no record, proof, or conscious memory that a Titanic ever happened other than residual psychological (mind/body) effects that often remain entirely visible. We only know of it because its traces appear in our relationships to ourselves and others in the here and now, in our bodies (e.g., anxiety, attack self), defenses, beliefs, and reactive responses to perceived threat, or even how we perceive threat. As such, claims of a Titanic are easily deniable and dismissible and often are labeled as disloyal or ungrateful or unloving or self-pitying in attempts to deny its truth in reality.

But, despite any denials the surviving life has already experienced this destruction of the True Self and loss of much of its (emotional) life* -- it literally saw/heard/felt life die and the vessel sink. This memory resides in the unconscious mind/body and is triggered any time there is a threat of death (i.e., threat of annihilation (or dis-integration) of self) through either physical attack (e.g., pain or loss) or emotional attack (e.g., shame or diminishment of self).

*Note: Not everyone experiences iceberg collisions to the same degree. Depending largely on the extent of active repair done by the caregiver or key others, some experience a full blown Titanic while others emerge relatively unscathed with minimal loss of life and relatively few abiding life boats. But, everyone experiences iceberg collisions, loss of life, loss of vessel, and trauma to some degree.

The "Off" Switch
"How many professional ball players do you know who are afraid of losing their father's love every time they step up to the plate?"

"All of 'em!"
                                             - from the movie "Searching for Bobby Fisher"

Just as I can immediately stop judging myself or others when I become aware I am doing so and replace that voice with one of kindness and compassion (or just awareness or breathing), so too can I immediately stop that expedition and salvage mission and replace them with something else.

Reflecting a process moving from a state of clinging to False Self to one of non-attachment, the following recitation can be the "off" switch:

- "I can see the relational dance of the iceberg. I want to dance in the warm, "holding" current, where all are physically and emotionally safe, respected, 'seen' and loved" (e.g., A Day in the Life rise to G)
[THIS IS STATING MY INTENTION]

- "There was/is an iceberg (from my perspective) AND a current (from theirs) => competing realities (e.g., Venom/Spiderman 3 bell tower, 'the truth of my reality cannot depend on their validation')" [b/c their mirror is clouded w/ projections of themselves -- via conditional love I'm either pleasing them and reflecting their best selves back to them or I'm not and they are projecting their worst selves onto me. Either way their mirror (i.e., my reality according to them) is all about them!]
[THIS IDENTIFIES THE EXISTENCE OF CONFLICTING REALITIES, THE CHALLENGE OF HOLDING ONTO MY REALITY/TRUTH, AND IMPOSED REALITY AS THE SOURCE OF THE ICEBERG DANCE]

- "Much of my emotional life was lost to the iceberg and I experienced it -- that traumatic experience resides in my body/mind (e.g., lifeboats/defenses [idealizing/devaluing, splitting, denial], faulty beliefs ['i am not capable of love', 'there never was an iceberg, only a current' => 'titanic was my fault' => 'i am unworthy/worthless' => 'i deserve to be punished'], physical symptoms/cravings [anxiety/reflux, compulsively eating junk food, nail-biting, teeth-clenching, body-tensing]" {these all are not random or independent but rather they inter-connect and work together to serve one function: ignore/avoid/deny my feelings (and needs)/my (lost) life* => my worth -- by redirecting attention away from my worth and toward playing the expedition/salvage game -- and achieve one goal: preserve my connection to them (e.g., by protecting their reality)}
[THIS DESCRIBES MY BEHAVIORS AS ORGANIZED STEPS IN THE ICEBERG DANCE, WHY I DO THEM, AND THE ULTIMATE GOAL THAT POWERS THE ICEBERG DANCE]

- "There never was a treasure (i.e., Self-worth and emotional life) in that safe (i.e., preserving my connection to them/protecting their reality --> winning and fear of losing conditional love) -- it was never there. But, there was variable Self-worth and, consequently, safety AND suffering (e.g., affect phobia, sugar or other chemicals as anxiety mgr --> addiction/root canals/diabetes, muted or faux/scripted life, deadness)"
[THIS HELPS ME DISTANCE FROM THE ICEBERG DANCE]

- "We most react to cumulative attack (including stress, fatigue, hunger, illness, injury, expectation of attack, etc in addition to psychological diminishment), not to threat itself. However, emotional dying and death do not kill us -- we are always whole no matter what life was lost => we can make death and dying our partner -- we can seek out and proactively want the struggle (i.e., emotional dying and death) for learning and growth (e.g., send ki forward, extend ki)
[THIS TURNS TOWARD MY INTENTION -- TO DANCE IN THE CURRENT -- BY UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF REACTION AND LIMITS OF ATTACK/THREAT ON INTEGRITY OF SELF AND SUBSEQUENT WORTH]

- "I have constant and universal worth and I never was "unworthy" or "worthless" -- "Titanic" was not my fault nor was anyone to blame (e.g., 'Fearless' toolbox/retaining wall) -- There was an iceberg -- Love is available to me (though it wasn't in the past). Nothing that happens in my inner or outer worlds can affect Self-worth -- its value is constant across time and space and living beings => 'take Self to zero' (Gandhi) -- disappear --> TAtR/Respond/Dance in the Current"
[THIS FULLY EMBRACES MY INTENTION BY UNDERSTANDING IMMUTABLE INTRINSIC WORTH ENABLES ME TO 'TAKE SELF TO ZERO' AND DANCE IN THE CURRENT]

*Note: Life = breath = feelings and needs -- if we have physical life we have feelings and needs. Lost life is those moments that we ignore, avoid, or deny our feelings and needs.

Emotional threat and attack may be real, both today and in the past. There is real, tangible diminishment of self that we can experience today. There is real, tangible apathy, disinterest, and being taken apart from others and oneself that we can experience today. But, there is something not real, that does not exist: past attack and threat brought forward (in our minds) to the here-and-now. But, however real the threat and attack may be, emotional death and dying do not kill me!

There was real threat. There was real death. There was real fear. But they happened in the ancient past. My situation then, as a child, is completely different than it is now, as an adult. For example, I was alone then to confront those very real dangers and losses. But, I am not alone now. True love was not available to me then but it is now, no matter what I or others do. My need to be "held" and my needs for survival/life, love, safety/security, dignity/respect, and belonging were real, as was my complete dependence on my parents and others to meet those needs.

And, I have those same needs now, among others. But, I have different agency now to meet my needs -- I am not now the completely dependent child I was then. I have different agency now to not only stop recalibrating my worth but also cultivate my intrinsic value that was there all along.

Conclusion
If life boats represent reactive defenses that function (later as character/personality structure) to save/protect early life, and the effects of these defenses (e.g., grandiose/depressive "flight" behaviors that we often think of as "living") in later life are no longer life-promoting, then how do we square this dichotomy? It is this paradox that is so confusing and difficult to deal with in real-time and illustrates the idea that our survival strategies as infants/children become maladaptive over time.

We are literally doing opposite things at the same time: we "brace ourselves" or "batten down the hatches" when we clench teeth or cast eyes downward or hunch shoulders or otherwise close or tense our bodies to expected attack (i.e., punishment) -- this continually tells us that the iceberg (and accidental tragedy) did in fact exist.

Meanwhile, at the very same time we engage in grandiose or depressive (or other, such as attack self) "flight" behaviors designed to deny this reality and help others do the same. For example, in my experience clenching teeth both braces/protects AND attacks/hurts self (i.e., safety AND suffering). Again, it's the maladaptive nature of defenses that originate to protect but evolve into suffering.

We can be aware of the overall dynamic so we are 1) not left in emotional turmoil before, during, and after every interaction with people who trigger us, and 2) able to participate without suffering, even with people who are difficult for us to be around. In fact, we can better tolerate our own anxieties and be more present with others at the edge of their tolerance range if we can understand the true nature of any danger (i.e., true or "false" alarms) we may experience.

We can also see when others adopt grandiose or depressive behaviors or play on these impulses in us -- we can understand their purpose (e.g., seek the "treasure", "flip" to regain their own "perfection equilibrium", etc), see their suffering, and not take it personally.

Next...
I think I may post some songs I wrote a few years ago that have been resurfacing in my mind lately. Several are about immigrant torture survivors seeking asylum in America. I wrote them to make sense of my year-long social work experience with them. I've always recognized that these songs are eerily reflective of much of these relational dynamics, but never knew why. Maybe because of the trauma connection (i.e., big T and little t traumas)? Stay tuned!