With half an ear following an episode on philosophy a night some time ago, some phrases in the discussion, due to a thought I need to follow-up anyhow, cought my attention:
Looks to me as if there was something about that, especially in this context:
When persons have closed up to never trust again to prevent feeling betrayed, they get into the well. known 'control mode'. They get cought in the funny idea that if they control, either themselves or the other, nothing bad can happen to them. They go that far that they get into believing they can control the elements, nature and whatever. Funny humans, indeed.
Most wonderful persons sometimes close up forever to avoid any kind of disappointing experience and therewith cut themselves also off from the chance to experience trust and what may come out of it. It's a cold world without trust. There are so many events that are beyond human control .... no matter how much people would like to plan and know what they get in advance. At a point, any of us will have to face the experience that in the end there is nothing we humans really can control.
It is a lonesome life to fully 'control' feelings to possibly experience, and it is a high price to control oneself and others, circumstances and feelings all the time just for avoiding any situation of experiencing the strong emotion of possibly being 'betrayed'.
It suppresses both life and feelings because these two are directly interconnected. Where humans loose connection to their inner feelings by constantly controlling them for the sake of supposed (!) 'reasonable' decisions, they also loose the ability to feel at all; the ability to feel themselves and therewith, to feel others. They disconnect internally and externally at the same time, and I guess that is the main reason why humans on this planet are hustling around but never get things done in sustainable ways.
Emotionality directly connects to empathy; by actively and constantly controlling emotions, by giving them no place or space, humans loose empathy not only for themselves but for anyone around them.
When we enter this world it is natural to trust because we are born so completely helpless, so vulnerable literally that such we have no other choice but to trust. Born into whatever environment we trust in the persons who are our caretakers, our closest persons, and we don't wish to admit that they could disappoint or betray us ... because, literally and seen from the little animal perspective that we are as children, we would have to die in an environment where we can not feed ourselves or predators are only waiting for us.
We as nestlings are unable to survive on our own, we depend on a symbiosis with our caretakers. Often not realized as such, one of the deepest cutting experience for children is to be left alone or behind, especially at an early age, having not one or even better, more persons to totally trust that those will sense what they need when they need.
Emotional absence causes this fear in the very same ways as physical absence. For a child, both being fed and protected as well as knowing someone senses its direct needs are equivalently important.
Where children get no feedback on their emotional needs, they literally starve from inside.
If we think about that it was quite common not too long time ago to leave babies crying for 'strengthening' their lungs (or will, what an absurde idea), and put this into context that for a child it is a most frightening experience to be left alone, we can imagine what generations have done unconscentiously to their children. Sometimes there also simply is no way for caretakers to be there for children when they need, for instance when they have to deal with their own surviving in one or the other way (and if you observe cautiously you will find that even in our societies of affluence nothing different is happening at this moment). For the children that we all are, these contexts are not rationalizable as children are emotions only at that stage. Only later we can face again our fears and overcome. That is what most time of our lives is about - to become what we were meant to become when we came into the world.
Now have in mind that generations of children have grown up that way and could not know it any better. But that fear, that feeling of being frightened of being left alone, was never taken from them. If you read this text with opened senses and emotionality you might get to feel as and with the children - and with the child you and almost all of us have been. If you read it only superficially and still reject that feeling you don't want to feel you will not know what it is about.
I strongly believe that all children had had that trust when they were born. Especially generations where caretakers were due to whatever reasons disabled to provide availaibility and emotionality are definitely inflicted.
Is it a hope that experiencing betrayal and learning to deal with it is inevitable at a stage?
Our caretakers are not perfect as no one can be perfect, and many times even the most loving parents are cought in their own needs and often rarely know how to fill up their own gaps and holes, or how to make a living. They give us birth, accompany us for a period of time in our lives but are not bound to us as nestlings forever nor do they have the right to do so.
They have to let us go as we will have to let go our children - and they have to disappoint us, in the best case in good ways when in the meantime they have provided us with the preconditions and abilities by a strong and functioning personality to make it ourselves in life.
Where they did not have or develop such themselves, they also can not pass such on.
Then we have to track ourselves and find what we have been lacking.
It is not only inevitable but simply necessary that we are to leave this symbiosis at a point if we want to become adult and own, unique beings.
We can for long times live on our own, manage our days, our lives, our professional commitment .... and such learn to know what we are capable of, where our limits and where our borders are, too. We such can live as parts within a whole, have a lot of 'kind-of-relations' and peers which are never put at test because they remain superficial relations only, and they in turn rarely test us when we emotionally keep the distance and don't let them in, either.
Thus, we imagine that we live a life while we take care that we carefully exclude any unwanted feelings, such also never really touching the whole and what life is about. Such, we also never grow beyond our very first programmings.
Despite we collect many, many people around us, despite we gather merits or fame in profession, in groups or in society, there comes a point where we will find ourselves ... honestly ... alone.
People come to live in parallel groups, in parallel societies and universes where over all the time they come near, they fulfill functions for one another, they compensate, they run for hypes; they even spend a lot of time with one another but honestly, they never meet.
They become only 'functions' to one another. Objects. Paralleles that never meet or even touch.
The only way to go for more than that and meet, again, is taking the chance to open up and trust when it is given - no matter how vulnerable we will make ourselves.
It would be wise to take care that the person we choose is someone who will know to handle that gift of trust he or she is given.
If someone is trustworthy we will not know before we try. We need to open and take a risk. The risk is being vulnerable ... again. Ready to deal with the possibility to again feel betrayed and re-awake the memories we have from childhood ... such overcome and heal it.
So when in times where everyone is busy only to care for him or herself, a special opening crosses our path - how would we react?
Would we try to keep it away, control the situation, and reject when we get challenged to deal with our very first experience of having felt betrayed?
Or would we be ready to forgive, to see the weaknesses we all have, all our human incapabilities - and take them into account, lovingly and benevolently?
Would we be ready to give away that 'full control'?
Would we be, again, ready to open up, and freely trust ... fully and committedly, and to put ourself into the position to once again become as vulnerable as a child?
In principle that's it, just a word on that kind of people who without giving any signs first that they are worth our trust do 'demand' us trust. There is always something wrong. What you wish for yourself give yourself first, as a quote says. So if you want to be trusted act in a way that is trustworthy, too, and also give trust yourself. It is a mutual thing.
Persons who demand you to trust but don't trust themselves keep the full control in their hands and the situation only by this is unbalanced from the start. They know how to place a carrot in front of your nose and then encourage you to go for it while they themselves don't move.
Trust can be given freely but it is evident that people whom we give our trust must be and act trustworthy, too. When we are trusted freely, it is ours to adequately respond.
And if someone who has by experience no good reason to trust nevertheless trusts in you - be aware that you are highly honoured.
Being trusted in turn becomes a chance to show we are trustworthy.
Not everyone is yet there to give also what they themselves would like to share. For getting ready people would need to get ready to look at and overcome their very own first betrayal in childhood, to realize and accept vulnerability and imperfection but also to lift the masks and defenses that are so commonly used.
The more we are unveiling old illusions we cling to because they made us feel secure, the more we become able to distinguish and choose for our very own lives ... and if that is only for learning to accept that at a point we also have to let this phase go, as a next theme is we have to realize that we simply have no control.
It takes courage and at the same time, it shows and grows the courage.
All we are is born from how we face and deal with preconditions we meet, not from how we have learned to swallow them.
Wishing to anyone including myself the ability to truly trust persons who are worth it. And wishing to those who are not able or ready ... to just waste some thoughts on it.
It is only the quality of your life it is about.
Lyn
For an interesting philosophical journey and if you feel for more, check out http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/ if you like so.
Inspired by my friend C., and a for me myself as well as a little bit dedicated to my friends B. and D.:
"Lynnie, you know I can listen to you and be there for you but this I can not take away from you. You need to get over this all by yourself and you know that a next time you need to be as open as that, again. "
Blessed be the wisdom of the heart and the heart that is there when it is needed. Thanks, C.
Where there is no trust there is no betrayal. Betrayal is experienced only where there was trust at first.
Someone whom we don't trust can disappoint but can not make us feel betrayed.
['trusting can be betrayed, or at least let down, and not just disappointed',
Annette Baier, philosopher, 1986.]
Looks to me as if there was something about that, especially in this context:
Thus, people who rely on one another in a way that makes betrayal impossible do not trust one another.
Stanford Enyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) on 'Trust',
Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn McLeod
When persons have closed up to never trust again to prevent feeling betrayed, they get into the well. known 'control mode'. They get cought in the funny idea that if they control, either themselves or the other, nothing bad can happen to them. They go that far that they get into believing they can control the elements, nature and whatever. Funny humans, indeed.
Most wonderful persons sometimes close up forever to avoid any kind of disappointing experience and therewith cut themselves also off from the chance to experience trust and what may come out of it. It's a cold world without trust. There are so many events that are beyond human control .... no matter how much people would like to plan and know what they get in advance. At a point, any of us will have to face the experience that in the end there is nothing we humans really can control.
It is a lonesome life to fully 'control' feelings to possibly experience, and it is a high price to control oneself and others, circumstances and feelings all the time just for avoiding any situation of experiencing the strong emotion of possibly being 'betrayed'.
It suppresses both life and feelings because these two are directly interconnected. Where humans loose connection to their inner feelings by constantly controlling them for the sake of supposed (!) 'reasonable' decisions, they also loose the ability to feel at all; the ability to feel themselves and therewith, to feel others. They disconnect internally and externally at the same time, and I guess that is the main reason why humans on this planet are hustling around but never get things done in sustainable ways.
Emotionality directly connects to empathy; by actively and constantly controlling emotions, by giving them no place or space, humans loose empathy not only for themselves but for anyone around them.
When we enter this world it is natural to trust because we are born so completely helpless, so vulnerable literally that such we have no other choice but to trust. Born into whatever environment we trust in the persons who are our caretakers, our closest persons, and we don't wish to admit that they could disappoint or betray us ... because, literally and seen from the little animal perspective that we are as children, we would have to die in an environment where we can not feed ourselves or predators are only waiting for us.
We as nestlings are unable to survive on our own, we depend on a symbiosis with our caretakers. Often not realized as such, one of the deepest cutting experience for children is to be left alone or behind, especially at an early age, having not one or even better, more persons to totally trust that those will sense what they need when they need.
Emotional absence causes this fear in the very same ways as physical absence. For a child, both being fed and protected as well as knowing someone senses its direct needs are equivalently important.
Where children get no feedback on their emotional needs, they literally starve from inside.
If we think about that it was quite common not too long time ago to leave babies crying for 'strengthening' their lungs (or will, what an absurde idea), and put this into context that for a child it is a most frightening experience to be left alone, we can imagine what generations have done unconscentiously to their children. Sometimes there also simply is no way for caretakers to be there for children when they need, for instance when they have to deal with their own surviving in one or the other way (and if you observe cautiously you will find that even in our societies of affluence nothing different is happening at this moment). For the children that we all are, these contexts are not rationalizable as children are emotions only at that stage. Only later we can face again our fears and overcome. That is what most time of our lives is about - to become what we were meant to become when we came into the world.
Now have in mind that generations of children have grown up that way and could not know it any better. But that fear, that feeling of being frightened of being left alone, was never taken from them. If you read this text with opened senses and emotionality you might get to feel as and with the children - and with the child you and almost all of us have been. If you read it only superficially and still reject that feeling you don't want to feel you will not know what it is about.
I strongly believe that all children had had that trust when they were born. Especially generations where caretakers were due to whatever reasons disabled to provide availaibility and emotionality are definitely inflicted.
Is it a hope that experiencing betrayal and learning to deal with it is inevitable at a stage?
Our caretakers are not perfect as no one can be perfect, and many times even the most loving parents are cought in their own needs and often rarely know how to fill up their own gaps and holes, or how to make a living. They give us birth, accompany us for a period of time in our lives but are not bound to us as nestlings forever nor do they have the right to do so.
They have to let us go as we will have to let go our children - and they have to disappoint us, in the best case in good ways when in the meantime they have provided us with the preconditions and abilities by a strong and functioning personality to make it ourselves in life.
Where they did not have or develop such themselves, they also can not pass such on.
Then we have to track ourselves and find what we have been lacking.
It is not only inevitable but simply necessary that we are to leave this symbiosis at a point if we want to become adult and own, unique beings.
We can for long times live on our own, manage our days, our lives, our professional commitment .... and such learn to know what we are capable of, where our limits and where our borders are, too. We such can live as parts within a whole, have a lot of 'kind-of-relations' and peers which are never put at test because they remain superficial relations only, and they in turn rarely test us when we emotionally keep the distance and don't let them in, either.
Thus, we imagine that we live a life while we take care that we carefully exclude any unwanted feelings, such also never really touching the whole and what life is about. Such, we also never grow beyond our very first programmings.
Despite we collect many, many people around us, despite we gather merits or fame in profession, in groups or in society, there comes a point where we will find ourselves ... honestly ... alone.
People come to live in parallel groups, in parallel societies and universes where over all the time they come near, they fulfill functions for one another, they compensate, they run for hypes; they even spend a lot of time with one another but honestly, they never meet.
They become only 'functions' to one another. Objects. Paralleles that never meet or even touch.
The only way to go for more than that and meet, again, is taking the chance to open up and trust when it is given - no matter how vulnerable we will make ourselves.
It would be wise to take care that the person we choose is someone who will know to handle that gift of trust he or she is given.
If someone is trustworthy we will not know before we try. We need to open and take a risk. The risk is being vulnerable ... again. Ready to deal with the possibility to again feel betrayed and re-awake the memories we have from childhood ... such overcome and heal it.
So when in times where everyone is busy only to care for him or herself, a special opening crosses our path - how would we react?
Would we try to keep it away, control the situation, and reject when we get challenged to deal with our very first experience of having felt betrayed?
Or would we be ready to forgive, to see the weaknesses we all have, all our human incapabilities - and take them into account, lovingly and benevolently?
Would we be ready to give away that 'full control'?
Would we be, again, ready to open up, and freely trust ... fully and committedly, and to put ourself into the position to once again become as vulnerable as a child?
In principle that's it, just a word on that kind of people who without giving any signs first that they are worth our trust do 'demand' us trust. There is always something wrong. What you wish for yourself give yourself first, as a quote says. So if you want to be trusted act in a way that is trustworthy, too, and also give trust yourself. It is a mutual thing.
Persons who demand you to trust but don't trust themselves keep the full control in their hands and the situation only by this is unbalanced from the start. They know how to place a carrot in front of your nose and then encourage you to go for it while they themselves don't move.
Trust can be given freely but it is evident that people whom we give our trust must be and act trustworthy, too. When we are trusted freely, it is ours to adequately respond.
And if someone who has by experience no good reason to trust nevertheless trusts in you - be aware that you are highly honoured.
Being trusted in turn becomes a chance to show we are trustworthy.
Not everyone is yet there to give also what they themselves would like to share. For getting ready people would need to get ready to look at and overcome their very own first betrayal in childhood, to realize and accept vulnerability and imperfection but also to lift the masks and defenses that are so commonly used.
The more we are unveiling old illusions we cling to because they made us feel secure, the more we become able to distinguish and choose for our very own lives ... and if that is only for learning to accept that at a point we also have to let this phase go, as a next theme is we have to realize that we simply have no control.
All we are is born from how we face and deal with preconditions we meet, not from how we have learned to swallow them.
Wishing to anyone including myself the ability to truly trust persons who are worth it. And wishing to those who are not able or ready ... to just waste some thoughts on it.
It is only the quality of your life it is about.
Lyn
For an interesting philosophical journey and if you feel for more, check out http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trust/ if you like so.
Inspired by my friend C., and a for me myself as well as a little bit dedicated to my friends B. and D.:
"Lynnie, you know I can listen to you and be there for you but this I can not take away from you. You need to get over this all by yourself and you know that a next time you need to be as open as that, again. "
Blessed be the wisdom of the heart and the heart that is there when it is needed. Thanks, C.
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