For the regular readers of our blog, it will not come as a surprise that we are big fans of the work of Gabor Maté. Marianne has been a Compassionate Inquiry-student (CI) for the professional training since February this year, after doing the short course last year. Now that she is in the midst of the learning process, she is in regular contact with other CI-students who share about their experiences and the impact the training and the approach have on their personal development.
Last week, a blog was shared by one of the students, Janis Isaman, on the website Elephant Journal, where Nicole Cameron is the managing editor. With Janis’ permission, we share the text here. We start with the first half and add a few considerations at its end; next week, we will share the second half.
>>>>>>
Facts vs Feelings: What I learned from a year of studying with Dr. Gabor Maté.
I heard myself saying: “I feel like I’m two.”
My throat was dry, and I could feel a column of heat in my chest. A flush of pressure rushed to my ears and they felt like they needed to pop, like I was on an airplane. The pit in my stomach seemed to swallow my body.
I was on the phone with a friend who had served me the news that he wasn’t available to talk.
I have no recollections of what else I said, as the sensations of my body swallowed me whole. I spent the entire next day assessing, analyzing, and being anxious about it. I didn’t understand that I was triggered.
But that was all about to change as I embarked on a year of professional studies with Dr. Gabor Maté.
One of the most important things I garnered from my time in the training is this:
The story doesn’t matter.
Our culture teaches us to tell stories. When someone hurts us, we translate the events to text, even if we speak them out loud: “and then he said,” “and then what happened is,” “and then, I mean you won’t believe this…”
We typically turn our lives into scientific diaries of details and facts and events, much of which is filtered through the lens of proving that we are right or defending ourselves so that we can be more correct than the other person.
I didn’t viscerally understand that stories are not facts. And that perceptions of what happened are not feelings.
Perceptions are interpretations, and storytelling requires us to take no responsibility for our coping mechanisms or triggers.
With Compassionate Inquiry, Dr. Maté’s therapeutic approach, I learned to approach my emotional experience as though it were a visit to the doctor. I practiced analyzing myself and my experiences through the sensations in my body rather than in my brain.
I learned to ask myself important questions, like:
>> What is happening for me?
>> What is the quality of my skin? What sensations are present in the abdomen? The chest? The spine? The back? The neck? The face?
>> Do I feel a temperature change? Where is the sensation? And what is it? Is it burning? Searing?
>> What is the feeling I am experiencing? And finally: what do I make that mean about myself? How old is this memory? How old am I?
These astoundingly straightforward questions, this approach, changed the way I relate to myself, my body sensations, my emotional experiences, and my triggers.
I, like many my age, was raised to mitigate my emotions. Intelligence and rational thinking were the prize tools upon which to earn favor.I remember screaming when a spider climbed on me. I was on my tricycle on the cement pad behind the house. The Daddy Longlegs tickled my left leg, but when I looked down upon it, it seemed to occupy a quarry of my leg.
Fear overcame me and I froze, feeling and watching the giant spider make its way toward my torso. I started to scream. Bloodcurdling.
My dad dropped his tools from across the yard and ran over. When he discovered it was only a spider, he blew it off and told me, “It’s only a spider. Don’t make so much noise next time.”
He never asked me why I was screaming or what was happening in my body. He never validated that a spider scares a lot of people, especially children. He never bore witness to my fear.
So by age three, in order to win favor and stay alive by way of affection, food, and shelter, I learned to ensure that my emotional reaction was never larger than the story itself.
I became a gifted storyteller. Words and precision mattered to me. A single incident on a date could weave a yarn for dozens of minutes or portions of hours during drinks out.
I took writing classes, and became obsessed with continuing education. Facts. Certifications. The solidity of the written or spoken word held my grip, as it was the way I could access my experiences and connect with others.
No one had ever told me that the story didn’t matter.
>>>>>>
The story… a fascinating way of looking at what happens.
Janis speaks about how her father was not able to put himself in her shoes and truly recognise and acknowledge what her emotion was, how scared she felt by what she perceived as a huge animal crawling onto her body. He focused on the story, on the facts of what happened from his perspective, which was very different from his daughter’s perspective and her feelings. With this, Janis makes a crucially important point. The little three-year old girl she then was, was fully dependent on the care and comforting from her parents. To understand the world and to learn how to regulate herself, it was necessary for her to be allowed to express and feel welcomed with all her emotions, such as anger, shame, joy, sadness, and in this case – fear. If there is room for all of the child’s emotions, the child will get the experience that the world is a safe place and an event with big emotions is bearable: ‘name it to tame it’. If that learning process unfolds well, emotional states will become something transient. They can be intense, but they pass.
If, upon upsetting events, the child does not experience calm and stable safety from regulated adults (sometimes called ‘buffering protection’), the states meant to be only temporary become embedded in the child’s body and being. It is sometimes described as ‘states become traits’. If we often feel unsafe at an age where our brain is still fully developing, we may create mental default settings like (but not restricted to) alertness, mistrust, withdrawal, or aggression. These arise to protect us. If we feel not safe expressing all our emotions, because they are not noticed by our primary caregivers or because they are dismissed as ‘overreacting’, we find other ways of handling tough situations. Our urge to survive may lead to behaviours that, again, are aimed at securing our safety under all sorts of circumstances, but that are detrimental in the long run. We may become inclined to please others, so that they remain friendly and do not become hostile (which would threaten our safety). We may subconsciously decide that the needs and views of others take precedence over our own. That may lead to the belief that manifesting authenticity is both risky and arrogant (which, again, would threaten our safety). And as functional and protective all of this may be when we are dependent children, later on it usually becomes dysfunctional, getting in the way of smooth interactions with 0thers, of enjoying challenges, of feeling joyful and trusting in this world.
Next week, we will read the second half of Janis’ experience, in which she focuses on the bodily sensations.