January 2019
Perception is an interesting thing. Most of the time we see our world as
we have become accustomed to seeing it. This is generally useful as it means we
are not having to work hard at living life, but can assume a lot of things and
then get on with making sense of the novel.
Our responses to what we perceive can
largely become part of a well-oiled machine, which is not to say that this is
necessarily good. In families, old patterns of behaviour in interactions
between members and beyond that to interactions with other people who simply
remind us of a family member, can be practically set in stone in a destructive
manner. For example, a little girl is bossed around by her older sister who has
been given the care of the younger one because mother is ill. The older sister
has always been angry at having to be “mother” to her sister and forced, more
or less, to give up her own childhood. The younger one doesn’t really know any
difference. Mum is sort of there, but not as a comforter when she is hurt. “Mother-sister”
is unreliable (she’s angry, after all), but who else is there? Father works
away, and there is no other family nearby, and so the little one has to depend
on this person who feels good/not good. When she grows up, she meets a man who
is good and not good. He is familiar, but still not quite known. He behaves
unpredictably and erratically, he is there and then he disappears and returns
to surprise her, and then goes, and then comes.
Every time the woman meets with her older sister, she feels attacked and
sort of depleted. She notices that afterward seeing her sister she eats a lot
of sweets even though she isn’t hungry and even though she is now pre-diabetic.
She attends psychotherapy sessions and starts to notice the patterns of behaviour
in her own life as well as that in the man she’s with. She breaks up with him
and at the same time, builds an understanding her sister more. She starts to
notice that as her perceptions of that woman’s behaviour change, so are her
reactions changing. She doesn’t feel the same imploded feelings so much and
doesn’t consume massive amount of ice
cream in the way she used to.
The process of psychotherapy interrupts
not only tired old modes of interaction that are not working, but brings
insights that create an ongoing capacity to change how we respond to others in
the world. This, though, doesn’t mean everything is hunky-dory. As anyone who
has experienced how it is to stop reacting as one has traditionally done within
families and other groups, one’s non-reactions disturb the machinery of the
family system and certain others can become belligerent and nasty. My
suggestion when such things happen is to walk away and leave the antagonist to
fight their own shadows. I’m reminded of the martial artist who, when the
opponent lunges aggressively at them, simply steps aside. The opponent topples
over. Neat.
In time, the perceptions of other people
in response to us change as we change and how they behave towards us changes
too. Family and other social systems are not immutable, but fluid and flexible.
What once was, doesn’t have to be forever. Our perceptions change according to
how we direct our attention, and that changes practically everything.
