Reflections on 'Relational Hope...' (an excerpt)
I want to explore territory that is often referred to in terms of ‘low-self esteem’, which I think can more usefully be understood in other terms. For me this label is too generic for the pattern it attempts to describe.
So I want to draw out a few specific qualities I feel are in play. It is a phrase that emerges from the lips of those who, in many ways have substantial, healthy regard for themselves. And they say it with resignation, dismay, a sense of the impossibility of altering it. The specific type of ‘low self-esteem’ that interests me concerns what we expect from others by way of responsiveness and care.
When I feel into the shape of this, what stands out is what I will call a lack of ‘relational hope:’ Many of us are unconvinced that it is fruitful or wise to bring our needs to others. Experience has shown us otherwise. We have lost the capacity to lean and to rely. We either never learned how to do so safely, or at some point got so burned when we made ourselves vulnerable that our impulse to openly seek care has gone underground.
Those of us who suffer from this kind of ‘low self-esteem’ often project a blend of strength, confidence and self-respect. Yet we have a tendency to form relationships in a way that does not seem to fully respect ourselves, or to include our own needs.
We set up bad deals for ourselves. And as adults, we tend to make some kind of resigned peace with this, living reluctantly from a resilience that rarely includes ‘leaning’ substantially on others, feeling ‘held’ or ‘loved’ by them – at least not in a way we can relax into....
We do not lack faith in the richness or value of relating per se, our problem is more specific and insidious: We do not sense our needs have a place in the natural order of things. We don’t believe that others want to respond to us. We (think we) know that they will turn from us if we show up in our authentic needs, that there is ‘no point’ in expressing our longings. We do not believe the world wants this of us, approves of us in this position of need.
And because we feel our needs are burdensome, irritating ‘interruptions’, we only lean when things have already gone too far: when we are desperate, when we are angry, when we are out of oxygen and cannot go on. And this pressure is often a disaster, provoking the exact response we dread. Others sense our tension, feel the restrictive intensity of our demand, and their hearts don’t open to our plea: they feel pressured, put upon, manipulated.
We do not yet know how to relate from a position of easy dependence, to express our needs of others softly, in quiet relational moments, where there is space inside us for their ‘no.’
when we are low in relational hope, (continued...)
the defence of GRANDIOSITY – and the struggle to receive...
Something else happens to us as we learn to ‘give’ and be the 'one who cares'; we grow an identity around it, and this becomes a destiny. For the ego, feeling competent is hugely gratifying. We are rewarded for our capacity and take great pride in it; yet the more of it we do, the more its patterns take hold, and the more they dominate, the more destructive they become.
This is one of the reasons I feel the language of low-self-esteem doesn’t fit. We are more likely to feel inflated than weak, to take a lonely pride in our strength and independence. When we park our longing and our hope, we nourish a sad, compensatory grandiosity in place of the warm surrender of being small.
This becomes habitual ‘ego-activity’ we develop a taste for. Nourished by inner vanity, a quiet sense that we are uniquely capable or strong, we grow used to invulnerability. We come to depend on being invisible in our vulnerability. And this invisibility holds us together. This can take slightly different forms in different genders. It may arise as a Stoic, self-reliant martyrdom, a kind of knowledge that cherishing is for others; that they are expected to be strong, to be the providers and not the provided for. That childhood has passed.
Blindspots…
Our ‘identity’ as givers is not always particularly accurate. It is not that people never do things for us, it may be that we do not know how to depend on them, to perceive or meaningfully digest their sacrifice.
We have become so convinced our needs are irrelevant to how the world flows, we do not even notice support when it is there. Emotionally we don’t know how to, in a way that is restful or soothing. Even if people do look after our needs or look out for us, we tend to underestimate it, because something in our capacity to receive is broken.
In some ways we become highly particular in our capacity to receive. We don’t know how to rest, from time to time, into care, and allow someone else to be strong enough to hold us.
We struggle to fully digest or savour the care that is there, because, ontologically we don’t believe it could be. We are hard to give to in a way that satisfies either party. We may not have the neural pathways or the beliefs to savour support, to relax while it is happening. We need it so desperately, we are highly tense and ‘closed’ in the vicinity of it. Self-holding dominates our musculature, our emotional rhythms, our nervous systems.
All the places in our lives where we are actually held, contained, protected and supported, we may not fully take in because our longing and wounding lies elsewhere. We are so convinced we are an afterthought. It shocks us to be taken into consideration. Yet we are often taken into consideration more than we know…
Learning to receive: awakening ourselves to the luxury and loveliness of it wherever it is available to us, is one of the ways we begin to dissolve this structure....