Neglect, trauma or abuse in our formative years will inhibit our development at all levels, but particularly in the realm of responsibility.
This happens because – as I referred to above in the post on Assertiveness and the Very Hurt Person – it is too dangerous for us as children to take the risk of making mistakes and/or assertively ask for our needs.
Learning responsibility involves taking risks. And the price paid for not learning to take responsibility is considerable. When we do not feel responsible we do not feel fully grown up emotionally, even though we may be grown-up physically and mentally.
Lack of emotional growth causes sedimentation of core beliefs that are unfavourable to our healthy development, central to which are lack of confidence and even lack of respect for self. When we do not measure up to our own expectations of ourselves as humans we suffer deep existential angst.
Our inability to fill the responsibility vacuum is so intense that it causes us acute pain. We ease this pain using substances that we ingest into our bodies which dulls our awareness of the emotional pain. Such substances, of course, cause us further pain which we also have to ease, sliding into a downward spiral of low self-esteem and self-worth.
Because we are human, however, underneath all this pain and irresponsibility we actually yearn to be responsible but are restrained by the core beliefs which have been laid down at such a very young age (and bolstered throughout formative years). Alan Jenkins’ book, Invitations To Responsibility, referenced in the previous post, (footnote [1]), gives a very good account of this process.
And if we are addicts we most likely started out on the road to addiction in our teens – a time of our lives when there is a societal expectation to grow up and be responsible.
It is in the light of these realities that we select our most appropriate modality.
Meeting people who they are, and allowing their intelligence, innate creativity and wisdom to flower in a safe and trusting environment, where they can take emotional risks, will be very invitational in respect of their natural human tendency towards responsibility.
And anyway, responsibility will happen because of the work being done by the root foundations described in the Chapter on Universal Theories.
And part of our success as practitioners will come from the fact that we are some way impacted by the work as I described half way down this post – Secondly. I believe that the best results follow from us being impacted but not too impacted – and the modality must allow for that too.
None of us practitioners like to see others suffering – it causes us discomfort and probably touches into our own suffering. But if we couldn’t handle it we’d be in other jobs.
So our modality will also need to be one that encourages people to look (generally) forward. While, of course, looking back is important, it can be that too much looking back dampens hope – a very important component of healing emotional pain.
Hope also enables responsibility – it precedes the confidence that gives us the courage to take the risk. And as we said above, part of the development of responsibility involves risk-taking.
Whether they are conscious or unconscious, memories of unhappiness are very real but can be an unnecessary burden that serves merely to trap the individual into thinking that there is no hope.
The skilled practitioner will balance the looking-back and looking-forward in the very hurt person so that one does not dominate the other to the detriment of growth!