Why do those young girls do that?

Why do those young girls do that​?

2009

Revised

By Dr. Brian Lynch

These issues have always been important, but since originally writing this they take on new meaning with the rise of social media and most recently the rise of artificial intelligence and its ability to deceive in the wrong hands.

This is sparked by something I saw on T.V. It was a common story. On a talk show, there was the mother; middle-aged, single, overweight, and worried about her 13 y.o. daughter. The daughter dressed somewhat provocatively and looked at least a few years beyond her years.

The discussion was over the girl’s relationship with a much older man she met on the Internet. The mother was frantic that the girl was going to go down the same path she had gone down.

The issues are not uncommon and there are several: 1) the idea of someone this age having a relationship of any kind let alone someone much older, 2) the issue of privacy, and 3) her sexuality.

This is not about sex, at least primarily. No, all the participants are ships passing in the night. A lot of “don’t”: “Don’t dress like that.” “Don’t do what I did.” “Don’t talk to those people on the Internet”. And “Don't have sex.”

If you listen to the young women it does have little to do with sex. It has to do with the fact that someone is interested in her. She feels recognized. She feels she is somebody.

The sad fact is she too is a ship passing this man in the night which makes it all the more tragic. Why? Because she really does not realize her sexuality. All she knows is that she feels good due to this man's interest. Interest makes us feel wonderful.

All we want is for someone to be interested in us.

She loves her mother and her mother loves her but telling people not to do something no matter the interest in them sends a message of no interest. Why? Because my interest is not your interest.

We first and foremost, know that the mind is “positive”. The mind wants to go with the flow. It wants to accept input as reality, as true. To say “no don’t do that” makes the mind work very hard. It is the old “pink elephant” problem. I tell you not to think of a pink elephant. It is then impossible not to think of a pink elephant. The mind has to do double the work. It has to think of the pink elephant and then think about not thinking about it.

If, however, I ask you what you want, what your goals are, and where you want to go, I might get a lot further. There might be a conversation in which I can advise and share instead of scolding.

But back to sex. We mistake sexuality for our feelings. Sex is a drive. A drive we need to learn about through feeling about it. We presume these young women know what they are doing as they “act the part.” Many do. Many are quite sophisticated. But to know you have to really talk to them and respect them. Most do not have much of a clue and sexuality. They are taught that they are their bodies and not much else. But if I can so seemingly “effortlessly” gain others' interest, what power and how easy it is to accept the lesson?

Of course, life is strewn with the aftermath of divorce, poverty, and single parenthood when all I wanted was your “interest.”

When the interest is only linked to sexuality, it can lead to feelings of guilt and shame once things have gone sour. And they will go sour. Again ships passing in the night. The girl wants to feel the joy of someone’s interest where the sex drive is predominant in this male and in this case, driven by his unfortunate sexual formation from early on. For the girl when the relationship fails sex can be forever linked to a bad feeling instead of interest and joy.

And why? Because somehow I missed it from those who raised me.

But too, it is complicated by the family image I have. Where that is, do I belong in the cosmos? Our answer is often only what we know and that is to follow “the tribe”, the family. No matter the problems I see in my parents “This is who I am” and I must be the same. In fact, to do differently would humiliate them and me.

The Black Hole of Shame

The Black Hole of Shame

By Brian Lynch, M.D.

What is a “black hole?” Albert Einstein predicted the existence of black holes and later doubted that prediction. It turned out that he was right, they do exist. They are large objects in space that have powerful gravitational fields, so powerful that everything that comes near them falls into them, even light. It is hard to distinguish them from the black space around them.

I am not the first to think of shame, in its intense form, as causing a person to become a human black hole. Many times I have noted that when we feel bad, and feeling bad can be expressed as feeling a sense of shame, we can only move through a series of possible activities that are remarkably restricted and those activities are, we can "withdraw," we can "attack" ourselves or others or we can "avoid" and all these can be envisioned as such:

Now envision a circular rail connecting the four poles of this “Compass” that enables the person to go from one pole to another in a clockwise fashion starting at “withdraw.” Now imagine the train that is taking the person around this rail going faster and faster. The faster the train goes the more centripetal force there is holding the person in and like a black hole everything that comes in contact with this force will be drawn into the circle.

It seems at times that all the love and interest in the world one might heap on the person is of no avail, it simply gets sucked up into the black hole of shame. Why shame? Because shame is the fuel for the train, shame that turns to guilt and embarrassment and being ashamed for even existing. Nothing matters but the pain of my shame. I cannot see the pain I cause others as mine now has become so great and it continues to feed on itself. It sucks up all the air in the room, all my ability to comprehend someone else is blocked.

This is the toxic shame that should never have been as shame is not meant to be toxic. Shame is meant to be a friendly reminder that something is out of place. Shame is that feeling that things are not going right and we should pay closer attention and fix the problem. Not that we should turn away or blame ourselves or someone else for the problem. These “solutions” only delay getting back to life’s pleasures; back to love, friendship productive work. Yes, easier said than done but true.

This is not to say it is easy or that pain is not incapacitating. People do not choose this pain. I hope that at least now we can write about it and understand it and that reading about and understanding it will empower some to be able to control the pain. How? We can begin to take action on the fact that it would be impossible to have such excruciating pain without the fact that the pain has to have a cause. 

What is the cause? It is the desire for something in the positive as intense as the pain we are suffering. The pain is proportional to the desire that is not achieved. Just as powerful. Take the first step to regain that which you lost. The pain gets better.

Copyright 2009

Getting well is tough. Getting well emotionally is tough. It can take years. II

Getting well is tough. 

Getting well emotionally is tough. 

It can take years. II

 Brian Lynch, M.D.

It is often said you have to be “ready” to get help.  “The person is not ready.”

I deal with many people that are addicted to drugs and in this area of treatment, it is very common to say that the person was or was not ready or not ready to change.

If one is not ready to get help what can anyone do to?

An important perspective to take to help anyone is that why should the person think they need help when the reason they are having trouble is not their fault?

Yes, there is the “abuse excuse.” It is the only excuse. People are “bad” because they have been treated badly. There is a great deal of “proof” now that this is indeed fact. There is in fact an “abuse excuse.”

At some level, we know that we have been harmed and many of us know that we have been severely damaged. Now what are our responses to this harm? 

We have been able to classify these responses into some generic reactions. It seems that humans can only do one of five things we can try and run away from the problem, we can abuse ourselves even to the point of suicide, we can lose ourselves in addiction, we can blame others, and hate others. Finally, we can face the problem, and the pain, and try and solve the problem.

Now, if you have been harmed it is very hard to see the need to “solve” the problem as you did not cause the problem. But then what? Well, what we do not know is that we are simply left with our pain and if left with our pain and with the four not-so-good responses mentioned above. These not-so-good responses will throw us into more confusion.

Basically, the logic here is that most people do not have much of a chance if the abuse is significant. I like to say how do you get a “positive” out of a “negative?” Well, for the most part, you don’t. 

 Many give the retort “Well I had it bad and I am ok.” I say you're not ok just because you say that it. Yes, we can overcome adversity because we want to connect but the argument is like saying a wiring system in a house is always going to work without being maintained. That you can abuse it all you want and the current will flow. Not true. So too with humans, human interest will not continually flow if it is abused sufficiently.

So it is quite a thing to “be ready.” Magnificent in fact. The person is having a birth. They somehow are able to birth into an independent world. How this can take place is somewhat miraculous. They have to trust themselves in what is a completely unknown world. Indeed “Better the devil you know than the angle you don’t.” That is until it isn't.

Joy, love, kindness, and trust have to be lived and experienced. Because you have enjoyed them does not mean that person next to you has any concept of that experience. And so why should they trust you or me if we ask them to change?

Once again staying the course, not punishing, not being negative, not confirming their world is the only way to help.

Copyright 2009


References:

Tomkins, Silvan S.: Affect Imagery Consciousness NY: Springer Publishing Company, 1963.

Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson Paperback (March 1994)

W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393311090

How To Get Where You Want To Go Brian Lynch, M.D. 2000 PageFree

Getting well is tough Getting wel emotion is tough It can take years. I

Getting well is tough. 
Getting well emotionally is tough. 
It can take years. I

By Brian Lynch M.D.

I hope I can be of some help here through a simple thought. I speak a lot about “feelings”, and “emotions”.

In psychology, we have been missing a valuable tool that has been right under our noses. I have just mentioned it and it is our feelings. We live in a world of images and we get caught up in those images. These images can control our lives.

In psychology, we often focus on those things that make us feel bad. We have all experienced unpleasant moments in our lives. Many of us have experienced horrible moments. All types of abuse have been experienced by any number of readers. To name them might only serve to upset some.

Some abuse is intentional. Sometimes things happen to us and we are just there. That is horrible things happen and nothing at all was intended. For example, maybe we were in a natural disaster or were in a war, or were exposed to someone else’s violence. Mostly we were little and had no control. No control at all over what was going on.

What stays with us is the picture, the video clip, and the image. This is “trauma.”

I say that what we do not understand is that the image has feeling behind it. What are we feeling when we are experiencing the video clip?

Think of going to a movie. Movies almost always have a score. The music accompanies the movie. Most of the time we are not aware of the music except subconsciously.

This is the way we live most of our lives We are, unfortunately, often controlled by traumatic images that are driven by fear, terror, shame, disgust, contempt, startle, and rage that we pay no attention to. No attention at all to feeling because we are so focused on the “image.” The image is always there. The image continually recalls the negative emotion and moves us to act in ways we have learned to act from very early times. Usually, these actions are quite “dysfunctional.” They often control our lives.

We feel that much can be done if we focus on the feelings instead of the image.

The image, unfortunately, will never go away. What can change is how we feel about it. If we get “interested” in the image we will start to move aside the negative feeling and start to “understand” what went on. Understanding leads to healing. We, in short, replace, anger, fear, shame, contempt, and disgust, with interest.

Copyright 2009

References:

Tomkins, Silvan S.: Affect Imagery Consciousness NY: Springer Publishing Company, 1963.

Shame and Pride : Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson Paperback (March 1994)

W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393311090

How To Get Where You Want To Go Br

“A Sept Forward and Three Back”

By Brian Lynch, M.D.

Why is it that we do not progress in life? Why is it that we might take a step forward, maybe three and fall back? Is it that the world is just overwhelming?

That is an important question. Many times it is just overwhelming. Presently we are in very difficult economic times. Is there any individual’s fault? Not entirely and often not at all. One lost their house and they “did everything right” or everything they could.

But we do come from a family; we do have an inner psychological world that can play tricks on us.

Some years ago a teacher of mine said to me, “You know Brian it is often very difficult for children to do better than their parents.” I understood this to have a great deal to do with shame and humiliation. That it might be understood by all that it would be humiliating to the parent if the son became more than the father. Many works of art demonstrate this. The father does everything to sabotage the son’s efforts to leave the farm or not stay on at the family business. “What boy you think you’re better than me?”

Shame can “bind” us to the family. We can feel it is wrong or bad to improve ourselves. We see a better world out there, but if I leave will I not hurt my parents? Will I not disrupt all the family? After all, it is “the family.” Even those that do leave and are successes oft times will struggle for years with guilt and addiction because of their betrayal. If these thoughts seem insane they might just indeed be the basis of a great deal of what we call “insanity."

We know and see the “the good” and the healthy, but we cannot bring ourselves to achieve it for to do so would be to break the bond with our primary caregiver. With that which was the healthiest and loving and giving, to begin with. But what happens when we quickly learn “the family” as a whole is not so loving and healthy? There are many types of intelligence and any one of these can inform us that there is a “better life over the hill” but again “how do I leave this life for that life?” “Who is my guide? Who can be my guide?” Today I would think it is more and more difficult to find those guides as “pop culture” is devoid of “heroes”, for the most part, and the act of “humiliating” others in public is now taught nightly on Television.

Who do we turn to, to be taught to be interested in each other?

So it is quite a bind; I continue terrible, brutal family traditions of abuse and unhealthy habits all the time knowing there is a better way. I continue this out of “love.” But this love, although it is genuine and healthy at its core, as these are your primary caregivers it is now a love based greatly on guilt. There needs to be a new birth through, yes, interest, and self-interest to bring about a rebirth. Today it seems we have to be our heroes and find like-minded souls, like-minded heroes. They do exist. Then we can return to the family and not change them, but be their model, their “hero” even though they at first might “hate” us for it.

Brian Lynch

Copyright 2008