The Next Phase of Healing: Allowing myself to be nurtured

There is a popular saying that claims that the squeaking wheel gets the grease.   The role of the Drill Sergeant is a huge squeaking wheel in CEDRIC philosophy, and it’s true that since this is the part of the problem that is the most vocal and apparent, it is what garners all the attention. I have come to view the role of the Drill Sergeant as the canary in the coal mine, in that if I have an inner voice that belabours and berates me, it is a sign that all is not right, and that there is a inadequacy of my self-esteem, which should be balanced enough to keep the negative internalizing at bay.

If most are like me, they’ve misunderstood and compounded the harm of this enormous squeak of this wheel by giving it credence for years, without really recognizing its value. Years of trying not to hear the harsh, hateful criticisms that blindsided me made me exceptionally good at one thing. Denial. I could block it out like I blocked out the immature noises my son made as a child, but was I doing myself any favours in this solution? In hindsight, I see that the answer to that is ‘hardly’.

In Gavin de Becker’s book ‘The Gift of Fear‘, he speaks of how our responses to threats are hardwired in us to protect us. He gives an example by showing how we listen to the protective instincts within ourselves when we get behind the wheel of an automobile. We look around us and subconsciously take in signals from others that indicate to us wether the car beside us is going to switch lanes or the vehicle ahead of us is about to turn right or left, but Becker says, the minute we get out of that car and shut the doors behind us, we turn off that instinctive personal radar and cease to listen to its warnings.

This phenomena of recognizing our protective reflexes in one situation yet negating them in others is very interesting to me. When I’m driving, I don’t hear the Drill Sergeant at all. I simply do what I have to do with him kept busy keeping the car where it should be, I guess. Maybe that’s why I enjoyed driving so much, it gave me a break from the relentless diatribe.

In Michelle Morand’s book, ‘Food is not the problem – Deal with what is‘, Michelle says that the Drill Sergeant likely uses the same tone of language and respect or disrespect as we experienced when we received when we were traumatized or forced to endure a difficult life passage. In my case, I know this explains why my DS sounds so much like my mother, with her clipped British tones to the never-ending German accent. She was very angry at her own life and would direct that rage at me whenever she decided I had let her down again. Now, I see that I am a textbook case for Michelle’s message and in a way, I’m lucky to have found someone who can help me to internalize a new kind of self understanding in order to move on. In a way, I feel like I’m being untangled, unscrambled, like the funhouse mirror is becoming less wonky and I can now trust my internal perceptions without the doubt that was generated by such a diminishing canary. (more…)