Very early on I characterized my mother's decision to give full custody to my father when they divorced as "abandonment." I was nine months old at the time. In reality, she was neither innocent nor guilty of abandonment. My parents did what they did and it resulted in the best arrangement they could work out. They were imperfect parents to be sure. Unfortunately, the idea that I was abandoned was pretty ingrained in my psyche and has been reinforced all my life. I am a victim, goes the mantra. It did not help that my mother was rather distant with me when I saw her on weekends. The result is I grew up with an irrational fear of rejection or abandonment which has distorted every relationship I have ever had.
Ironically, I married someone I thought would never reject me, probably for that reason alone. Unfortunately, she helped me realize my worst fears when she divorced me with a coldness and vindictiveness I had never imagined possible. In retrospect, I realized I was the one who had set the divorce in motion. She did not reject me. She was merely playing the role in which I had cast her. Tragic as it was, it was inevitable that I would play out my abandonment scenario with the mother of my children. Like a self-fulfilling prophesy, I was destined to end up in a broken marriage. What breaks my heart, of course, is that my kids had to experience the separation of their parents, as I had. Fortunately, the experience has made me more determined than ever that my children not experience the loss in the way I had. I think it was my having children that has motivated me to question the validity of the surefire method I had come up with to insure no one could ever get close to me.
So what did I do about it? First, I had to stop the blame game I was playing with myself and others. But how? I had to really look at all the stories I had attached to the events of my childhood. "Abandonment" and "neglect" were only as "real" as I chose to make them. Second, I had to realize that I was actually causing the scenarios of rejection in my relationships because I believed no one could live up to the ideal love I longed for from my mother (who, for whatever reason, did not have the ability to give me). So I had to ask myself, am I stuck having to accept that I can never have a healthy, mutual, nurturing, compelling, joyful, romantic, enduring love life because I did not have a healthy model in my childhood?
I felt an intense emptiness in my relationships. Was I deprived? Yes. But what could I do about that now, so many years after the fact? What could I realistically have the right to expect from a relationship, given my dysfunctional background? I sought out and found many surrogate mothers growing up and had looked for love in all the wrong places as an adult, bouncing from one unhealthy relationship to another, trying to find the perfect mommy I could never have. After years of banging my head against the wall, I finally realized this strategy was not working for me.
It was time for a new way forward. Perhaps it was not so much about my need to be loved by others as it was about how well I could learn to love myself. Or perhaps still more importantly, it was about how much I was willing to love and give love to others.
How could I be expected to trust partners who came along, open-hearted, claiming to love me, flaws and all, when I was incapable of loving them unconditionally in return? Was it hopeless? Was I just too far gone, a bundle of ego needs and irrational defense mechanisms? I realized, sadly, that I had never loved anything or anybody. Love was a frightening affair for me. Would I ever be willing to risk it all, even if it meant being rejected again? I could have said, "I have been burned so often that it is not worth the effort." But I forced myself to realize I was the one who was doing the burning. This was a painful realization; one that made me hate myself all the more, which certainly did nothing to help the situation.
So how could I take responsibility for my actions without beating myself up? How could I convince myself that I was really lovable when deep down I knew I was not? Of course, I realized intellectually that everyone is lovable. That is how we are created. I do not love my children for anything they have done but because of who they are at their core. So what really happened in my childhood to convince me I was unlovable? Yes, I was not loved and appreciated as a child.
Yes, in fact, the people I looked up to abused and betrayed me. Yes, I deserved better. But how did their bad behavior make me so unlovable? What actually made me accept my being unlovable as "real?" I carried into adulthood deep feelings of guilt and shame for things I did or somehow failed to do as a child, even though I would never expect my own children to live up to such a high standard of integrity. Everyone knows a child is not responsible for his or her actions. If we are very lucky, we are taught responsibility throughout our childhood by caring parents.
So there I was, all grown up, needing to somehow rescue this little boy, this inner child, from all that guilt and shame. I needed to forgive him and absolve him of his "sins." He could not take care of himself, after all. I had to help him, right? In fact, I needed to help him at all costs, at all times, because he was still not able to do it for himself. No matter how many positive affirmations I repeated and how much Behavioral Cognitive Therapy I did, I was still not happy or fulfilled. Nothing was good enough for my voracious inner child; words just seemed so hollow, after all. I needed to actively do something incredible to protect him. I had to become more than his parent; I needed to be his Lord and Savior.
I realized that that is what I had been doing: playing God. I had developed an array of elaborate defense mechanisms to protect my poor, helpless inner child at all costs? So one day it occurred to me that perhaps the time had come for this damaged child to grow up and stand on his own two feet. Protecting him was definitely not working. I realized I wasn't very good at playing God.
In fact, all those defense mechanisms I created lead directly to the Personality Disorders that were holding me back. But the question remained, how could this "inner child" survive without my divine intervention?
It was at this moment that the words, "there's no place like home" popped into my head. I realized there is a place, a peaceful inner consciousness, beneath the chaotic world of the "inner child," of which I had always been aware but which I had denied or taken for granted. Perhaps on some level I didn't think this place really existed because that would just be too easy. I had been revering my helpless inner child, raising him up, going to bat for him, flattering him, admiring him, molly coddling him, re-parenting him, protecting him, indulging him, enabling him, when in fact he was not really the source of my strength and power. The veneer was beginning to crack.
Perhaps I was not really my inner child after all. Perhaps the inner child was just an invention, a tool used by psychologists to help people personify their feelings. It wasn't real. Could this imaginary creation actually have been the culprit who was usurping my strength and power, even my very identity? My therapists had been telling me for years that this wounded inner child was broken and needed to be fixed. I had been dragging this worn out pitiful thing around for years, like the Velveteen Rabbit.
At that moment I began to connect to a deeper consciousness at my center which doesn't need anything to be. It is the true me, the self beneath the so-called "inner child," beneath the ego and the defenses. We can call it the self, God, the universe, whatever you like. I will call it my true self, at least for now. That we feel the need to attach a name to it is one of the fundamental problems we face in the world. But that's another article for another time. I realized I had been confusing the notion of the inner child with this other, deeper consciousness at my center, which has no need for protection. My experience of this inner self tells me it is not in any danger. It is truly powerful because it does not hunger for power. It is invulnerable because it is defenseless. In fact, I think it's the part of us we use when we draw and paint (yet another article).
In yoga the master speaks of a self that has no needs, that just is, separate from the mind and body. We experience it as our consciousness, a knowing, that does not require language or thought or meaning to exist. It feels as if it has always been there and always will be. Maybe it will or maybe it won't. I do not presume to know. But one thing is certain, it is there right now.
Could it be that my inner child is actually a petulant spoiled brat who has been plying my ego for sympathy, manipulating my mind to "protect" him, playing the poor pitiful victim, creating a smoke screen, blocking access to my true center, where there is a deep, calm presence that is the true source of my strength, precisely because it does not care about abstract notions such as "strength" or "abandonment?" My "inner child's" persistent fear of abandonment had been holding me in its vicious web of ego needs since I was a baby. Is it possible that it was my inner child that knew I was unlovable? Could he have been wrong? Was I being held hostage by a figment of my imagination?
This specter could not continue to run rampant if I ever hoped to find happiness and acceptance and fulfillment. My inner child's gig was up. Fortunately, I began to focus inward, into this deeper knowledge. My yoga practice is all about acceptance, diverting the focus away from my ego-needs towards this true inner self. One way to do that is to bless another during difficulty or stress. So I wondered if love and belonging might be a skill that could be practiced. Was I capable of giving blessings, loving unconditionally, being generous to others without the promise of reward? I began to realize the answer could be yes, if I could learn the discipline of managing my inner child, along with my ego and defense mechanisms. When I said "I hate myself," to whom or what was I referring? I think I was expressing a natural resentment of the cat and mouse games my capricious inner child had been playing with me all my life. My true self doesn't even know what hate is. So I stopped hating myself.
I have to keep reminding myself, moment by moment, day by day, however, that my inner child and the elaborate defenses my mind has created to protect him are not who I truly am at my core. They will rear their head again and again until I train them not to. Ultimately, can experiencing my self as separate from my mind and body produce happiness and fulfillment? Interestingly, I do not think the true self would ask the question. So at least for this moment, I will quiet my inner child and not expect an answer all at once. Patience is just another manifestation of the mental discipline that will one day set me free.
Since 1980, Robert Maniscalco's exquisite maniscalcogallery.com/portrait-painter.htm oil portraits and fine art have become part of over 850 distinguished private and public collections throughout North America. Born in Detroit in 1959, he is the son of internationally renowned portrait artist Joseph Maniscalco, with whom he apprenticed during the early 1980's. He moved to New York City in 1986 where he continued his studies and professional activities. In NYC he also worked as an actor and director on numerous stage, film and TV projects. He returned to Detroit in 1997 after a three year residency in New Orleans. In Detroit he founded the Maniscalco Gallery, which showcased many local and international artists. As host of Art Beat, the critically acclaimed PBS series on Detroit Public Television, he explored the creative process with his celebrated guests. He now lives in Charleston, SC, where he continues his work as an artist, writer and teacher.
If you enjoyed this article you may also enjoy reading Point of Art by Robert Maniscalco, advice and inspiration for the serious artist and maniscalcogallery.com/essays/fishfly.htm The Fishfly, a psychological thriller about Daniel Michael Spinelli, who has located the man who sexually assaulted him as a boy. Now, he is on a murderous trek into the dark inner sanctum of New Orleans society to avenge himself upon his assailant.
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