When Rachel Wannamaker walked into Seth Greenbank’s chemistry class, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Her hair framed her face like satin curtains. Those eyes, an ocean blue, drew him in so deep he couldn’t think of anything more important than being inside them.
It wasn’t courage that prompted him to invite her for coffee at the end of class. He couldn’t have stopped himself any more than feathers can make themselves fall straight.
The grace he saw in her fluid gestures turned out to represent the real thing. She had an internal graciousness as well. He couldn’t resist her. He fell so hard in love with her that he never hit bottom. They married a few weeks before he shipped out to Vietnam.
He never once had the slightest worry that she would leave him. He trusted her absolutely. He didn’t feel heroic exactly, but he was giving up years of his life to a miserable experience for the sake of his country so he thought he was racking up credits with both God and woman, namely Rachel.
While he was keeping faith with the traditions of manhood, the people of his country were abandoning ship. The populace was so against the war, and the politicians promoting it, that many forgot to stand behind the young men who had no choice about being there.
Rachel continued to write him letters of love and encouragement, but she also wrote of incomprehensible activities at law school, such as protest rallies and a petition she had drafted to emphasize the illegality of the war he was fighting. She loved him personally, but she hated what he was doing and saw it as having no value.
These things made no sense to him. When his tour was over, he returned to a country he didn’t recognize and a wife he couldn’t understand. He could hardly find traces of the girl he had kissed good-bye in the poised woman who greeted him at the airfield. While he had been pining for her in the mud and terror, she had converted herself into a powerhouse who fearlessly challenged any person or institution that stomped on the little guy.
They stumbled along for several years, producing two children, a mortgage, and a suburban lifestyle. Then, after a decade of accusing him of not participating in the marriage, Rachel filed for divorce, and he was out on the street.
She had never been sexually unfaithful to him, but she had abandoned him by becoming a different person with foreign perspectives. Her mind had become unfaithful to him.
Seth was shell-shocked after the divorce. It took him a few years to establish a routine that satisfied him. He set up his own accounting business and got involved with a ham radio group. With the social activities of the ham group and his daughters on alternate weekends, his life was full enough.
Then Becky Race came to work for him. She was a pint-sized bundle of energy topped with flyaway brown hair. After a while they began dating. He could tell that she was a bountiful person, and she was obviously crazy about him. She was an incredible cook and gentle with his daughters. After a while it just made sense to marry her.
She continued to be the same person after he married her. If he was waiting for her to prove herself, she came through like the Red Cross. She was kind, womanly, generous of heart and energy, especially toward him.
He had no complaints. She had only one. She could feel that he held his heart in reserve.
He knew he could trust her. He knew she was devoted to him, but he could not let his heart out of its box. He couldn’t risk the carefree, spontaneous joy of loving when its amputation had brought him such darkness. Occasionally she would do something that would so touch him that he very nearly felt himself open. But he would clamp down on the impulse and harden himself again.
When Seth was seventy-eight and sat in the shadows of the funeral home, with his Becky cold and silent amid the flowers, his heart broke a second time, as much for the loss of years of loving as for the woman who was gone.
• • •
For many of us, our first exuberant love ended badly. We were young, innocent, unskilled, and we didn’t know how fragile love could be. That first heartbreak laid us low. We had never imagined we could hurt so excruciatingly and not have a visible wound.
Some of us react to that situation by making a decision, often an unconscious one, to guard our hearts from then on. We might love again, but never so wildly.
Similar results can be spawned by other situations. Being failed by someone we’ve wholly trusted or boundlessly needed can be shattering. No matter what age we are when this happens, it can set the parameters for how much we will dare risk again—not only with that person, but with anyone.
When we withdraw ourselves from the possibility of a repeated calamity—by walling out certain feelings (or a certain intensity of feeling), or by not allowing ourselves to repeat such trust, need, or love again—we take ourselves into a fortress, a defended state of being. Even if the original loss happens when one is so young as to be not fully conscious, a defense can still be erected.
A defense can be a state or an action. We are in a defended state when we stand behind some sort of unilateral protection in order to prevent a feeling we can’t bear to experience again. Defensive actions are discussed in Chapter 5.
We take pride in our sentience, justly so, but instinct and survival have lives of their own seemingly separate from our great thinking brains. We can make a sincere decision to be more open or to let in joy—and our intention can be powerful—but if an approaching shadow looks anything like what hurt us in the past, we may fend it off without conscious thought. There are ways for us to reset this programming, and these ways are not violent, but they do take commitment and patience.
• • •
Like most babies, Helen came into the world receptive to whatever would happen. From the get-go she had emotional as well as physical needs. Being fed, diapered, and warm was good but not enough. She also needed to be held, cuddled, and embraced. She needed to feel safe and connected to another human being.
Her psyche reached through the mists in search of an answering heart, as if she had a cord that needed to be plugged in. Unfortunately, Helen got a mom without an outlet. Mom herself had a cord that needed to be plugged in. A little baby teeming with needs was not her best companion.
When little Helen ran into the house with blood gushing from a cut, Mom ran out of the house and called a neighbor. Helen got a black eye from the neighborhood bully and Mom asked what she’d done to provoke it. When she was playing with her older sister and her sister fell and broke her arm, Mom blamed three-year-old Helen for the damage (for forty years).
Helen’s mom wanted to be taken care of herself. She resented Helen for presenting these pesky needs and for creating situations that demanded something of her.
Deep down inside, Helen was in pain. Needing this Teflon-coated woman hurt way too much, so her psyche decided not to need ever again.
For the next forty years, Helen went through life on automatic. She made great decisions. She married a good man, found a comfy life, and was popular, but she went through half a lifetime without feeling.
Her stockade covered extensive ground. Not only did Helen stop needing, she also blocked contact with her inner self. She felt no joy, no sorrow, no peace, no thrill, no heart-expanding happiness, no grief. She did not reach out for emotional connection and didn’t take it in when it was offered to her.
As children we may opt for a defended state if our circumstances are dangerous, hostile, nonsupportive or dismissive. Emotional abuse or exploitation, emotional neglect or abandonment, lack of support for the natural stages of development—any of these can cause a complete reordering of our systems in the direction of self-protection.
Let’s look at a simple behavior that is a natural part of childhood—asking questions. If Franna is ridiculed every time she asks a question, what do you think will happen?
• She’ll ask more questions.
• She’ll ask fewer questions.
• She’ll stop being curious.
She’ll ask fewer questions, perhaps even stop asking questions altogether. The risk is that her mechanism for self-protection will expand beyond the mere voicing of questions to the very process of questioning. She may even resist her sense of wonder, blocking her curiosity and interest in the unknown.
We are geniuses at survival. Whatever is inside us that leads to an experience of pain, betrayal, or abandonment, we can lock away. If we get rebuffed when we seek affection, we may stop seeking affection. If we are treated harshly every time we assert ourselves as a separate and individual human being, we may fear being different except when aligned with some person or group that validates our differentness.
Gerry’s teenage years were a trial. His cold, harsh father got deeper into drink and lighted on Gerry as a target for his rage. Glen was capable of cuffing Gerry if he set the trash can down two inches to the right of the usual spot, or if he forgot to pick up a piece of homework from the dining room table.
As Gerry moved into adolescence with its accompanying agenda of rebellion, he approached dangerous territory. His father most definitely would not stand for jeans that bagged like old socks or hair that stuck out sideways.
So Gerry did an interesting twist. He got straighter. He began wearing tailored shirts and pressed slacks. He holed up in the library and became a serious student. He was burning with rage and hatred toward his father, and he turned it into a deadly competition. He would beat his father economically.
He was only moderately smart, but doors will open for determined persistence, so he was offered opportunities and he took advantage of each one. Eventually, by age thirty-five, he reached his true goal. He beat out his father educationally, economically, and socially. He had a bigger house, bigger car, nicer furniture, and a wife without dark circles under her eyes.
He could have relaxed at that point. He could have enjoyed the life he had built. He did not. Rage and hatred still fueled him, and he defended himself from both his own internal violence and the ancient violence of his father by continuing the race, by working obscene hours that caused him to miss the growth of his children, by tricky manipulations that cut off competitors at the knees. He did a lot of damage in the name of profit, long after he had any need to worry about the bottom line.
Samuel had a very similar father. He too had no room within his home to become a separate person, but he made different choices. His internal furnace also burned rage, but deep down he felt little and weak, even when his muscles bulged out an extra large T-shirt. He aligned himself with a group of bullies and became one too. Together they harassed obvious weaklings such as innocent girls; lone, younger males of other races; and inexperienced teachers. He got nervous when he was alone, so he spent all waking hours with his gang.
As an adult, he continued to cleave to one group of men or another, eventually settling with a bunch of drinking buddies at the bar. He still stoked his rage and he still felt helpless, and he bullied his wife and son.
Gerry and Samuel caused different types of harm, but harm they did. Their efforts to protect themselves from being bullied went beyond blocking positive experience and sabotaging intimacy. They also turned their anger against others.
Gerry’s damage was more subtle and global. He’d make a decision and thirty families would lose their homes. Samuel’s damage was local and obvious. He terrorized his wife and child, and an occasional teenager with a beating or a rape. Neither man understood the roots of his rage nor the extent of the ruin it caused others.
You can set boundaries to protect yourself from another person’s defended state. Before deciding on what type of boundaries to set, first assess your own risk. Some defended people are dangerous: they defend themselves by attacking others. If you, your children, your home, or your possessions would be endangered by setting verbal boundaries, that in itself tells you a great deal. If it is not safe for you to speak to someone, you can have little hope of working out a healthy relationship with this person. Create a physical boundary—through distance or by relocating—and insist on genuine, sustained change and proof of rehabilitation before you’ll consider putting yourself in their range again.
No matter how bad someone else’s childhood may have been, it’s still not okay for them to hurt others, either physically or emotionally, with a mean action or cutting remark. A person who does this is exploiting you, and their relationship with you, by using you to discharge their own bad feelings.
Some of us have a tendency to put the other fellow or our relationship with them first. However noble this may feel, it is not healthy—for you, them, or the relationship. Instead, you must make yourself a priority over the relationship. Put yourself (and the safety of your children, if any) first. Do not risk further harm. You may have to leave the relationship if you are to have any life at all.
If you live with someone who is defended against goodness and intimacy, joy and fun, but who is not dangerous either emotionally or physically, then you have more options. You have the right to confront them and ask for change. Communicating your personal limit with their defended state—along with examples of how their state has impact on your shared relationship and lifestyle—is an appropriate boundary for you to establish.
You are not required to adjust your life to accommodate a defended partner. You do not have to let another person’s defended state curtail your own experience. If the other person continues to cling to their defenses, you still get to choose a full, pulsing existence. Protect your joy. Continue to choose life.
If you are the defended one, therapy with a skilled professional is the fastest route to joy. There are also programs and classes that teach you to do it yourself. Some of these, particularly twelve-step programs (if you are fortunate enough to be addicted or compulsive about something), are miraculously effective, and have a great track record. (Although it is difficult to have an addiction, many in recovery come to feel grateful for it, because it has been the reason they have found a new way of living. Twelve-step programs offer a way to correct unskilled behavior and the principles taught there can be used to reduce a defended state.)
When you weigh the cost of going it alone versus seeking help with an effective program or therapist, remember to factor in the expense of time. How many years have been lost already? How many more are you willing to sacrifice?
Think about how many months it would take you to build a house singlehandedly, compared to having the help of friends and using a good do-it-yourself book. The process would be speedier still if you worked alongside an experienced contractor.
When it comes to psychological change, going it alone can take decades. Contrast that with the following options, each of which will bring positive changes the first year. With an effective program (one without professional supervision), joyous living can become a habit within five to ten years. A skilled professional can guide the way to transformation in three to seven years. Combine a good program with professional help and it’s possible to turn around in two or three years. (All this is assuming you pitch in, tell the truth, and make an effort.)
Boundaries give you safety without making you miss out on the good stuff. Compare the difference between boundaries and a defended state in the following example:
As Perry walked toward the building he was already mad. These mandatory get-acquainted parties were a waste of time. He never met anyone interesting at them.
He walked in and headed for the punch table so he’d have something in his hand, then settled at an empty table in the corner. He watched with a surly eye while other people greeted each other. He saw only fakes, social climbers, and women looking to snare a man.
An attractive young woman approached his table. “Mind if I join you?” she said.
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She sat down. “What’s your focus here?”
“Programming.”
“Working with any interesting projects?”
“Nope.”
“I’ve been studying the Norami system. It’s incredible. Moves data like lightning. I’m having so much fun learning it, but it’s taking me a long time. It’s so complex.”
“I found it easy.”
She blinked. “What do you enjoy doing outside of this place?”
“Not much.”
“Sorry I bothered you.” She rose and walked swiftly away.
In a defended state, we may sabotage even the most rudimentary interactions that would allow a relationship to begin by avoiding others, discouraging eye contact, answering questions curtly, revealing nothing, showing no interest in the other person, misinterpreting offers of friendship, and flatly contradicting conversational offerings in which the content is not so important as the effort to reach out.
As Barry walked toward the building he was nervous. These mandatory get-acquainted parties were great for extroverted people, but he knew he wasn’t one of them. He walked in and headed for the punch table so he’d have something in his hand, then settled at an empty table in the corner. He watched the other people greeting each other so easily. He wished he was good at it.
An attractive young woman approached his table. “Mind if I join you?” she said.
“No, save me from my terminal shyness.”
She smiled and sat down. It was a very sweet smile. “Are you shy?”
“I’m so shy, Barbara Walters would run out of questions in three-point-five minutes.”
She giggled. It was a charming giggle. “What’s your focus here?”
“Programming.”
“Working with any interesting projects?”
“You bet. I’m knee deep in Y Three K.”
“Y Three K?”
“I may be shy but I believe in planning ahead.”
She laughed outright. He thought getting her to laugh would be a worthy vocation.
She said, “I’ve been studying the Norami system. It’s incredible. Moves data like lightning. I’m having so much fun learning it, but it’s taking me a long time. It’s so complex.”
“I love that system. It’s worth taking the time to learn it. If you run into snags, I’d be glad to help. What do you enjoy doing when you aren’t here?”
She scooted closer. “I love gardening. How about you?”
“I’ve always wanted to learn to garden.”
• • •
With boundaries we need not unilaterally shut out people or possibilities. Setting boundaries gives us the option of letting in the people who may become meaningful to us.
Boundaries can be used in two ways—by limiting the actions of the people who have hurt you, and by including the people who’ve shown themselves to be trustworthy. In other words, boundaries prevent harm and allow benefit. Barry demonstrated the inclusive aspect of boundaries by being responsive to an appropriate opening comment from the young woman. Perry, on the other hand, shut out a potential relationship by his defended actions.
Boundaries discriminate. In contrast, defenses have the unfortunate characteristic of closing out the good as well as the bad.
With a boundary toolkit, you pay attention to actions that discount you and limit such interactions with dispatch. It’s your first date with Max and he dismisses your stance about dialectical determinism. This is a red flag. Disagreement is fine. Differing opinions add interest. But to brush off your opinion as inferior is not okay. His response is a warning for you to watch for a pattern of dismissal, disregard, or disrespect. If you notice such a pattern, you can back away from the relationship or see how he handles it when you set a boundary. For example, “Are you aware, Max, that you tend to dismiss my opinions? Please treat my ideas with respect.”
Before you call your rejecting mother, you remind yourself to thicken your boundary. If she makes a rejecting comment, you either make a firm statement that sets a boundary or end the conversation immediately.
By taking yourself out of situations in which you or your choices are being negated, you send your psyche the message that you are taking charge of self-protection and that it need not be on automatic red alert.
You will also help yourself replace defendedness with boundaries by letting in good people. When a friend proves trustworthy, see that friend again. Risk a little more. Notice when you are treated kindly. Pay attention when someone offers you trust. As you become more discriminating about the people you let in, the spaces of your life will fill up with positive people, and you’ll have less room for the harmful ones.
Years ago, we controlled weeds on our lawns with a poison so pervasive that it threatened the extinction of certain birds. Now we have weed control that is very specific in action. We used to wipe out all the bacteria in the body to fix an inflamed finger. Now we use antibiotics very carefully. We have learned that large-scale drastic measures cost more than they are worth.
Being defended is similarly expensive. Take a look at what your defended states have cost you. What opportunities, experiences, people, and joys have you missed due to defendedness? Make a list.
With boundaries, you can protect yourself in specific and mindful ways instead of walking around armed to the hilt. You can limit your exposure to uncaring people and nourish contacts with the people who have the potential to become dear.