Your Defenses Are Useless
Posted by lizashaw at 6/18/2008 10:45 PM and is filed under Using pain to grow and develop your Self 
Today, I had an e-mail conversation with a client about some recent insights he had into the "suffering" he has endured as a response to painful childhood abuse. He has struggled for most of his life with an internal "Critic" which he describes as eternally cynical and always waiting in the wings to tear him down, discount his successes, and ultimately prove his utter uselessness on the planet. I could certainly relate to this struggle. Yes, even (maybe especially) therapists are not immune to the negative internal chatter that undermines personal progress and leaves us feeling stuck in self-regenerating cycles of depression, inaction, disappointment, and perceived failure... which leads to more depression, inaction... you get the picture.
My client shared a breakthrough he recently had: his realization of the hidden "payoff" -- or benefit -- to the Critic's internal and eternal rant. This was no small insight, since up until now, he believed the Critic was no good and had no purpose except to sabotage him -- just as the abusers had. But this conclusion never left him empowered, because it made no difference -- no amount of judging the Critical part of himself ever stopped his negative self-talk . In fact, concluding that the Critical part of him was "bad" only set up a vicious internal power struggle, like a tug-of-war between the Critic and the Authentic Self. Time and again, he found himself “trying to change,” and for a while, he would make some progress. But, the Critic always rose up when he least expected it and attempted to destroy any peace of mind or progress that had been made.
Today, my client made huge progress in really reversing this cycle. He realized that when he criticizes and tears himself down, he gets to "preemptively strike." To prevent anyone else from hurting him now, he does the hurting first. (Never mind that it is also he who is the victim of this -- minor detail --not that important to the Critic, because the illusion of control over the hurting is the hidden payoff, and it weighs much heavier than the cost of the resulting pain. And, he admitted, the pain of being hurt by himself is far less risky than any potential pain he could suffer at the hands of another.) Today, my client said he felt weary and tired of defending himself from this internal "ghost." He admitted defeat, stating that today, all of his defenses seemed useless. And he was right. In realizing this, he began to have a victory over the Critic’s perceived “control” over his life. Below is a portion of the email I wrote in response to my client’s insight that his defenses were useless. I wanted to share it because I think it has a wide range of applicability -- most of us have some version of this “inner Critic,” and most of us have developed survival skills designed to get us through life but not to really enjoy it.
Your defenses are useless. I am glad you finally get that. They are the leftover response you created to attempt to deal with pain from your past. But there is no such similar abuse going on anymore. The defenses you developed are outmoded now. They were minimally useful even back when you first created them, because they served only as a distraction. The preemptive strategy of hurting yourself before someone else hurts you, did not actually prevent your being abused at all. You still went through everything you went through. It was a temporarily successful distraction from what was happening. But it did not stop what happened. Your defenses made no difference in what you had to endure. You did not have any impact or power to change it, no matter how much you preemptively attacked yourself. This just gave you the illusion that you had some kind of control over a situation which was terrifyingly out of your control.
So, consider that the "payoff" we talked about may simply be an illusion of control, when there really is absolutely no control possible. During the abuse, you developed this as a way to get through something which was not tolerable any other way. But do you see that it was merely a distraction? A survival strategy? It was not actually successful at preventing any of what happened. I think it is really important that you face this: that no matter what you tried as an attempt to defend against it, it all still happened. This is a concept in that book you read a long time ago, about naming it and claiming it. Claiming it means that you look directly and honestly at what really happened, finally admitting it to yourself that despite all of your attempts to defend yourself, none of it actually worked. They have been a huge distraction, to keep you from looking directly at what really did happen -- to keep you from actually looking at it and "being with" your pain, defenses gone, just "being with" what it had been like to be treated the way you were treated and feeling your pain, unmasked, undefended, just being "present" to it.
It makes sense that you created this defense to distract from the pain. The pain was unbearable. And you probably thought it would last forever if you let yourself feel it. So, your preemptive strikes kept you from feeling your actual pain. But it was a distraction. It was not, in and of itself, a productive or successful defense at all, since what it attempted to defend against was not successfully avoided. The defense didn't work. And you are finally admitting that to yourself, all these years later! Since you are seeing for the first time that your defenses are useless, (that it was only an illusory distraction) doesn't it naturally follow to see that the Critic is not effective -- that nothing the Critic says or does works to protect you from or prevent pain?
In fact, the illusion of controlling the perceived threat of potential pain from outside of you is actually the one and only cause of your continued pain NOW. Now, can you see that the voice of this self-injurious part of you is definitely not “the Truth?” If it were, its methods would work toward its end. You would, once and for all, be free from pain and suffering.
Now, you can either continue to distract yourself from your pain, or you can let yourself finally and honestly feel it. If you choose to feel it, you will grieve a great deal, but you will most likely find that the pain does not, in fact, last forever. Bringing Presence to your pain allows for pain to transform. Eckart Tolle describes this as "conscious suffering" in the book "A New Earth." Being present to our suffering allows us to stop avoiding it, and therefore, stop avoiding everything else in our lives. Being conscious through our suffering (instead of distracting from it) allows us to use it as a tool for our growth and our spiritual releasement.
When it comes to suffering, we have two choices: suffering will either keep us unconscious, trapped in the infinite vicious cycle of denial, defensiveness and then trying to survive life and "get better" but ever doomed to repeat the suffering (because we are unconscious victims of the suffering), OR, suffering can cause the resurrection of our very spirit -- the initiation into our total Salvation. It can wake us up in our otherwise unconscious lives and allow us to finally GET IT that we are not our pasts and that we have not only survived, we can now be conscious in every area of our lives and create thriving lives. We learn to be conscious by getting practice in being conscious to what we have been avoiding through our so-called defenses -- our pain and suffering. Consciously suffering is the best way to learn to live consciously.
So, we all have a choice about what to do with our suffering. NOW that you know about the choice, you can be "Response-Able" over which one you choose. But just remember that you are at-choice here. Nobody is victimizing you NOW.
My client shared a breakthrough he recently had: his realization of the hidden "payoff" -- or benefit -- to the Critic's internal and eternal rant. This was no small insight, since up until now, he believed the Critic was no good and had no purpose except to sabotage him -- just as the abusers had. But this conclusion never left him empowered, because it made no difference -- no amount of judging the Critical part of himself ever stopped his negative self-talk . In fact, concluding that the Critical part of him was "bad" only set up a vicious internal power struggle, like a tug-of-war between the Critic and the Authentic Self. Time and again, he found himself “trying to change,” and for a while, he would make some progress. But, the Critic always rose up when he least expected it and attempted to destroy any peace of mind or progress that had been made.
Today, my client made huge progress in really reversing this cycle. He realized that when he criticizes and tears himself down, he gets to "preemptively strike." To prevent anyone else from hurting him now, he does the hurting first. (Never mind that it is also he who is the victim of this -- minor detail --not that important to the Critic, because the illusion of control over the hurting is the hidden payoff, and it weighs much heavier than the cost of the resulting pain. And, he admitted, the pain of being hurt by himself is far less risky than any potential pain he could suffer at the hands of another.) Today, my client said he felt weary and tired of defending himself from this internal "ghost." He admitted defeat, stating that today, all of his defenses seemed useless. And he was right. In realizing this, he began to have a victory over the Critic’s perceived “control” over his life. Below is a portion of the email I wrote in response to my client’s insight that his defenses were useless. I wanted to share it because I think it has a wide range of applicability -- most of us have some version of this “inner Critic,” and most of us have developed survival skills designed to get us through life but not to really enjoy it.
Your defenses are useless. I am glad you finally get that. They are the leftover response you created to attempt to deal with pain from your past. But there is no such similar abuse going on anymore. The defenses you developed are outmoded now. They were minimally useful even back when you first created them, because they served only as a distraction. The preemptive strategy of hurting yourself before someone else hurts you, did not actually prevent your being abused at all. You still went through everything you went through. It was a temporarily successful distraction from what was happening. But it did not stop what happened. Your defenses made no difference in what you had to endure. You did not have any impact or power to change it, no matter how much you preemptively attacked yourself. This just gave you the illusion that you had some kind of control over a situation which was terrifyingly out of your control.
So, consider that the "payoff" we talked about may simply be an illusion of control, when there really is absolutely no control possible. During the abuse, you developed this as a way to get through something which was not tolerable any other way. But do you see that it was merely a distraction? A survival strategy? It was not actually successful at preventing any of what happened. I think it is really important that you face this: that no matter what you tried as an attempt to defend against it, it all still happened. This is a concept in that book you read a long time ago, about naming it and claiming it. Claiming it means that you look directly and honestly at what really happened, finally admitting it to yourself that despite all of your attempts to defend yourself, none of it actually worked. They have been a huge distraction, to keep you from looking directly at what really did happen -- to keep you from actually looking at it and "being with" your pain, defenses gone, just "being with" what it had been like to be treated the way you were treated and feeling your pain, unmasked, undefended, just being "present" to it.
It makes sense that you created this defense to distract from the pain. The pain was unbearable. And you probably thought it would last forever if you let yourself feel it. So, your preemptive strikes kept you from feeling your actual pain. But it was a distraction. It was not, in and of itself, a productive or successful defense at all, since what it attempted to defend against was not successfully avoided. The defense didn't work. And you are finally admitting that to yourself, all these years later! Since you are seeing for the first time that your defenses are useless, (that it was only an illusory distraction) doesn't it naturally follow to see that the Critic is not effective -- that nothing the Critic says or does works to protect you from or prevent pain?
In fact, the illusion of controlling the perceived threat of potential pain from outside of you is actually the one and only cause of your continued pain NOW. Now, can you see that the voice of this self-injurious part of you is definitely not “the Truth?” If it were, its methods would work toward its end. You would, once and for all, be free from pain and suffering.
Now, you can either continue to distract yourself from your pain, or you can let yourself finally and honestly feel it. If you choose to feel it, you will grieve a great deal, but you will most likely find that the pain does not, in fact, last forever. Bringing Presence to your pain allows for pain to transform. Eckart Tolle describes this as "conscious suffering" in the book "A New Earth." Being present to our suffering allows us to stop avoiding it, and therefore, stop avoiding everything else in our lives. Being conscious through our suffering (instead of distracting from it) allows us to use it as a tool for our growth and our spiritual releasement.
When it comes to suffering, we have two choices: suffering will either keep us unconscious, trapped in the infinite vicious cycle of denial, defensiveness and then trying to survive life and "get better" but ever doomed to repeat the suffering (because we are unconscious victims of the suffering), OR, suffering can cause the resurrection of our very spirit -- the initiation into our total Salvation. It can wake us up in our otherwise unconscious lives and allow us to finally GET IT that we are not our pasts and that we have not only survived, we can now be conscious in every area of our lives and create thriving lives. We learn to be conscious by getting practice in being conscious to what we have been avoiding through our so-called defenses -- our pain and suffering. Consciously suffering is the best way to learn to live consciously.
So, we all have a choice about what to do with our suffering. NOW that you know about the choice, you can be "Response-Able" over which one you choose. But just remember that you are at-choice here. Nobody is victimizing you NOW.
Allowing conscious suffering would be similar to purposefully touching a live wire without a protective buffer. The preemptive strikes would act as the grounding device albeit not effectively. I understand the rationale behind this. Pain we cause ourselves is nothing compared to the pain caused by others.
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Amy,
Human pain is inevitable. Defending against the pain is actually a prolonging of the pain, and this is the cause of suffering, because it distracts from the spiritual lessons and personal growth. Conscious suffering is the only way to alleviate your pain and grow from it, thereby, eventually moving out of pain and not continuing to re-experience the same pain again and again, repeating the past.
The empowering paradigm that I draw these ideas from, states that we are very powerful in the face of our pain -- most of us just don't know how to harness this power. What others do to us does not actually cause our suffering. Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. We can either grow from it, or allow it to continue to victimize us. I choose a context that gets me out of continually being a victim.
Thank you for your comment.
Liza
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