Breadcrumbs…
Vera had had intense days with a training that had asked a lot of her. The trainers had been present dedicatedly and had paid attention to everyone’s needs. In an impressive way, they had brought in both a lot of energy and a lot of calmness. She looks back at it with a lot of satisfaction, but there is also a lot to reflect on and I have time to listen to her. I have been in conversation with her before and the confidence between us gives a safe vibe to our conversation. She fires away immediately.
On the last morning of the training, Vera had looked around and felt touched as she saw how all the participants were chatting with each other. She herself had also been pleasantly in conversation, but then she had sat alone for a while and unexpectedly all the experiences of the training had merged into one big inner spectacle. The insights screamed for attention: ‘Do you realise this? Are you aware of that? Don’t you think this is special? Have you let that get through to you? Do you see how this is related to what you had discovered earlier?’ She sits opposite me, looking somewhat defeated, and says: “I feel that there is a link between my life history and my feelings about what is currently happening. I felt it that morning too, but I could not put it into words. I could only feel tears welling up from my toes. I felt short of breath; I sat with my eyes closed and felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid that I would fall apart into a thousand pieces. I needed all my attention to keep my breathing in order and make room for those tears.
The sounds around me seemed to disappear. I sat there with my eyes closed and was aware of everything that came to mind, until suddenly I felt a hand on my back. I just knew it belonged to one of the trainers; I recognised the energy that emanated from it. I took a quick look and saw that I was right. I was encouraged to breathe more deeply because my breathing was so high in my chess. I tried that, but it was difficult. I felt completely overwhelmed by my emotions…” The hand had remained on her back for a while; then she received a kiss on the top of her head and was left to herself again; the trainer walked away.
Vera thinks and is silent for a moment before continuing her story: “On the one hand, I felt uncomfortable being in the middle of everyone, but I knew that the training was intended to gain insights, so I didn’t want to run away from it, but I also do not want to pretend any longer that I am strong and can handle anything. What happens and how people respond to me… that often affects me so deeply. They regularly seem to think that I can handle it all, because I don’t immediately fall over, but I am much more sensitive than people generally realise and there are certain dynamics I am no longer willing to accept anymore.” She sounds fiercer. She tells about a number of people with whom communication has been difficult for some time. She has recently looked into various forms of passive aggressiveness. Someone pointed this out to her some time ago and she wanted to know more about it so that she could investigate what it meant and whether she was guilty of it, as that person claimed. Now that she has learned new things, she can recognise elements of it more quickly and pays more attention to how she communicates. “I have noticed how often passive aggression and gaslighting occur. I find that difficult and I am shocked and sad about my own role in it and about what I did not notice. I can see better now how as a child I used to be treated that way so often that I came to think it was normal. I did not always communicate well, but I also often tolerated how I was treated. That really has to stop; I don’t want to do that anymore and I don’t want to be the target of it anymore either…”
The tears well up and Vera brings up her expectations of relationships and friendships: “Some say you shouldn’t have expectations because that only leads to disappointment, but I think that’s impossible. Things like reliability, responsibility, reciprocity, vulnerability, openness and attention… these are essential to me. I experience these as human values, but certainly also as social needs! I want to be able to count on that.”
We are silent together and suddenly she realises something: “I can actually remember so little of moments in my childhood when my parents were really happy with me and for me. It did happen occasionally, but it was so sporadic, not nearly as often as what I try to give to my own children… I just settled for what little there was in terms of attention and emotional availability… I got that from both of them to a very limited extent and I am becoming increasingly aware that this is why I long for it so much in friendships and love relationships. For far too long I have satisfied myself with a bare minimum there and that has led to many feelings of loneliness…”
I look at Vera and my thoughts go to the theatre play the day before, in which the interviewer had asked the guest at the beginning about his definition of freedom. The guest replied: “If you don’t long for it, then you are really free.” There was mock laughter in the large, packed hall; the suggestion came up that we could all go home, now that the greatest lesson had already been delivered. The interviewer fell somewhat silent and the guest had continued with a grin: “A child who romps outside and plays in the meadow near the ditches and can go wherever they want… such a child does not speak about freedom, because they simply ARE free. Only when we lack things do we start to crave them and they become needs, concepts that we want to define, but as soon as that happens, you already know what is going on. Someone who is or wants to be the ‘connector’ in a family or a group has had a place and a role earlier in life or in a previous life in which there was little connection. Now, in this life, in this environment, an attempt is being made to make up for that, to do things differently. We are, as it were, living the dynamics that we previously missed; that is why we are here.”
The performance had lasted almost three hours, but these opening lines had been the most important of the evening for me. I had taken them home and now recognised them in Vera’s words. We explored it further and I dropped the term ‘breadcrumbs’. That is a word used for relational dynamics in which someone so incredibly longs for connection, security, and genuine, loving attention that every little bit of those values is received as if a banquet is being served, when there are merely breadcrumbs. They do not satisfy the hunger, but give just about enough to fuel the hope that sooner or later there will be a richly filled dinner table. And the more vulnerable and hungry we are, the more likely we are to conveniently ignore the red flags of such an interaction pattern. It is sometimes called ‘intermittent reinforcement’, a severe form of emotional neglect or actually emotional abuse. I know that dynamic all too well, so I now recognise it in Vera’s words. We mutually mirror one another and that connects us.
We discuss some more and she indicates that she has gained clarity about the coherence between her wishes, the way she deals with them and what she tries to tolerate in dealing with others. Of course, it also comes up that once again she is in the middle of the tension between ‘attachment’ and ‘authenticity’ and, as a result of the pain of the past, attachment is often still being given priority. Guarding your boundaries, respecting your values… a young child cannot do that, but as adults we have an (emotional and health) role in this and she is now on the brave path of self-care for this.