Inner Bonding
Internet Village
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Elisa Elisa had been working with the Inner Bonding process for a few years and had done much healing around her past abuse issues and with her family, especially her abusive mother. Her work and her relationships were going well. From the outside, it looked like Elisa had everything, but inside she felt anxious, empty and sad much of the time. When she was with others, she frequently got angry and irritated at them about minor things. She found this especially disturbing because it was exactly the way her mother had treated her. Elisa clearly heard her inner voice asking for what it wanted (such as less stress and more sleep), but she didn't respect its wishes or take responsibility for her feelings of anxiety, sadness and emptiness. She also heard the voice of her spiritual Guidance, yet she rarely asked it for advice and even more rarely took action on what she was told. As to her wounded Inner Child, Elisa knew that she existed and needed her love, yet she persisted in hating her. When Elisa looked at her life, she was completely mystified at her inability to love herself and to take meaningful and loving action on her own behalf. She was truly stuck. Elisa attended one of my five-day Inner Bonding intensives to try to break through her stuckness. On the fourth day she was working one-on-one with me and feeling frustrated with her lack of progress. "I hate my wounded child," Elisa told me. "I think she is bad. I don't want to love her. I can't love her. I know I should. I know I'm supposed to. I know no one else can do this for me, but I don't want to." As I listened to these words, something in Elisa's voice and manner suddenly struck me -- she looked and sounded like a rebellious adolescent secretly gloating over the fact that her parents could not make her do what they wanted. "Ha, ha, you can't make me" was the feeling I picked up -- one of the six symptoms of the Resistance Syndrome. "Elisa," I asked, "Do you feel resistant?" "Yes!" she shouted. "That's exactly what I feel." Knowing her background, I was aware that Elisa was brought up by an extremely controlling mother. "Elisa, what do you think your mother wanted from you the most?" "She wanted me to love her," she promptly replied. "So you did everything she wanted you to do, you gave in to her control, except in this. She could not make you love her. Is that right? She could not control you in this area?" "That's right! I remember being seven and deciding that I would never love her. I knew that no matter what she did to me, she could not make me love her. And it was not just her she wanted me to love. She wanted me to love my sister and be loving in general. She wanted me to be a sweet, loving girl." "So this is where you took your stand against being controlled? This is where you said 'No, you can't make me?' " "Yes!" Elisa's hands tightened into fists. "She could make me do everything else, but she couldn't make me be loving." "So in order for you to be loving now to your Inner Child, you would have to give in to your mother's demands? You would have to let her think she has won?" "Oh my God! That's what has me stuck! I can't be loving because my mother will think she has control over me, and I can't stand that thought." "So you would rather be miserable than let your mother think she won?" I asked softly. Elisa was silent for nearly a minute. Then she looked directly at me and said, "That is exactly what I've been doing, but I didn't realize it. And you know what? I don't want to do that anymore." "What if your mother thinks she has finally gotten control over you?" "Well, that makes me feel kind of sick inside, but it would be better than being irritated and angry so much. Yes… I think I can live with her thinking she has control over me." "Maybe you've been in a power struggle with your mother all this time without even realizing it -- one that you seem ready to let go of. Do you think that by resisting being controlled by your mother, your life has been controlled by the power struggle?" "Yes," Elisa said. "I see that now. It's like I've been controlled by my own resistance!" Excitement had flooded her cheeks with color. "This makes so much sense. I feel like a door is opening in me." I saw the shift in Elisa as she sat before me, and I knew that this insight would profoundly change her ability to love others. But Elisa would have to address a second part of her resistance before she could fully heal. "Elisa," I continued in a gentle voice, "Being a loving person also means loving yourself. And that means loving your wounded Inner Child, the part you keep saying you hate." "Oh, yeah. The bad part." She frowned. "What does that have to do with resisting my mother?" "Well, the part you call 'bad' is just like your mother -- angry, irritated, controlling. Really loving yourself means dropping any judgments you have made about yourself and your mother and healing that wounded child, the child who got so hurt by your mother yet learned to be like her in many ways. You have been very resistant to loving this wounded part of yourself." "I get it. Because my mother tried to make me love her, I resisted, and that meant resisting loving any part of myself that was like her. The thing is," Elisa continued, shaking her head, "I do love my mother, even though she is still controlling sometimes. And I really am just like her sometimes. So I guess I can learn to love that part of me if I don't have to resist her control anymore." She let out a deep breath. "Whew, I feel so relieved!" Elisa's face broke into a radiant smile I'd never seen on her before. She was shining, bubbling over with joy. When I saw her the next morning, she was still exuberant, laughing, hugging other people in the workshop, overflowing with joy. Her soul was beginning to taste freedom after all those years of bondage to the power struggle inside her. Resisting control, instead of loving, had been Elisa's savior, her God, albeit a false one. Now she was free to choose the path of love, the love that truly is God. Watching her from across the room as I sipped my tea, I realized that Elisa looked like she had just been let out of prison.
Annette I was working with Annette at a five-day intensive. Annette had not used Inner Bonding before, but she had sought out many other forms of healing for her misery. Like Elisa, she was stuck. As Annette sat with me on the second day of the intensive, attempting to explore her issues, she kept collapsing into tears -- he helpless, miserable tears of someone who feels like a victim. Looking at her, something did not feel right to me. Here was a very attractive, obviously bright and talented woman in her forties, with an aura of power about her and a loving and generous heart -- yet she was very unhappy. She felt victimized. Something was definitely wrong with this picture. I realized that Annette was resisting something. I asked, "Annette, was one of your parents controlling with you?" "Yes, my mother was very controlling. Everything had to be her way." "Did you give in to her?" "Yes. I was a good girl." "What do you think your mother wanted from you the most?" Without hesitation Annette answered, "To be happy. She used to point her finger at me and say, 'Be happy. Just be happy.' I think she felt if I wasn't happy, she wasn't a good mother." "Were you happy?" "No, I never was." "So you gave in to your mother's control in everything else, but this is where you took your stand. This is where you tried to maintain some sense of self, some sense of integrity. In this one way your mother could not control you. She could not make you be happy." "That's right! Wow! I just remembered throwing stones in the creek one day when I was about ten and vowing to myself that there was nothing she could do to make me be happy!" "So all these years you have been in a power struggle with your mother, refusing to be happy, believing on some deep level that you were maintaining your integrity and sense of self by resisting being happy?" "Yes. I really have. That's pretty ironic!" Annette said, giving me a wry grin. "I'm the one who's suffering from not being happy, not her!" In that moment, I saw the dark cloud under which Annette had lived her life start to lift. I sat there stunned at the seemingly instant transformation. Annette's tears dried up and her wry grin was replaced by a beatific smile that slowly spread across her face, a smile that I would see often during the remaining three days of the intensive. After thirty-odd years of resistance, Annette was finally free to be happy. Neil Neil was a young man in his mid-twenties. His mother, who tried to completely run his life, had always wanted him to be thin, while his highly critical and financially successful father wanted him to make a lot of money. When Neil came to see me, he was immobilized in his life. As you might guess, he was seriously overweight, emotionally shut down and unwilling to find meaningful work even though he had a brilliant mind. Resisting his parents had become far more important to Neil than getting unstuck and taking good care of himself. Unfortunately, recognizing how the Resistance Syndrome was controlling his life did not even begin to free Neil from it, as it had with Elisa and Annette. Instead he made the conscious choice to continue to resist. In Neil's case, resisting his parents -- and thus getting back at them for trying to control him -- was truly more important to him than loving himself. Being right about how awful his parents were, and punishing them for it, was more important than being happy. Brittany Being willing to give up a lifelong pattern of resistance can be very frightening. I saw this clearly in a client named Brittany. Brittany and I had worked together for a number of months and she had done a lot of growing, but now she was stuck. Her friendships and love relationships were not going well and her employer was constantly yelling at her, as had most of her previous employers. Her connection with her spiritual Guidance was sporadic. One of the symptoms Brittany and I had explored at different times was that she seemed to fade out whenever difficult feelings came up. Sometimes she would even fall asleep during her work with me. This, combined with the fact that Brittany had a controlling father, suggested to me that she might be stuck in the Resistance Syndrome. "Brittany," I asked her one morning, "what do you think your father wanted from you the most?" "He wanted me to listen to him." "So you gave in with everything else, but he couldn't get you to listen?" She broke into a sheepish, yet self-satisfied smile. "Yeah. It drove him crazy. He would end up yelling at me, 'Why don't you ever listen?'" "So this was where you drew the line? He could not force you to listen. He could force you to do a lot of other things, but not to listen." Laughing, Brittany said, "Yeah, that's right!" "What does your employer say when she is yelling at you?" Brittany's eyes widened. "I can't believe it -- she says the same thing! She is always saying to me, 'Brittany, why can't you just listen?' It drives her crazy." Again came the gloating, self-satisfied laugh. "What about in here, in our sessions?" I asked. "Do you think I am trying to control you when I bring up difficult issues?" "I guess so," she conceded, shifting in her chair. "It feels like you are invading me somehow." "So you just fade out?" "Yeah, but that doesn't make sense. I'm here to get help." "Maybe resisting what you perceive as control or invasion feels safer. Maybe it's more important to feel safe than to get help." "But it's ruining everything -- my work, my relationships. Nothing is going right." "That's true. But your first priority seems to be keeping yourself safe by resisting control. Until you decide it's more important to be loving to yourself and others -- which means being willing to listen and learn, even if it feels like you are being controlled -- you will keep fading out." "But that's crazy!" "Not to your wounded self. To the wounded part, it makes perfect sense to resist, to hold the line against being totally consumed." "Margie, I feel like going to sleep right now." "I guess your wounded child doesn't like being talked about." "Well, I know I've got to deal with this for my life to get better, but I sure can feel the part of me that would rather fade out, no matter what the cost." Brittany shifted her gaze and stared out the window. After a few moments, she said in a small voice, "The idea of giving up this resistance feels so scary. It feels like I'm going to die." Tears filled her eyes. She looked terrified. The desperate intensity of Brittany's reaction made perfect sense to me, and I have since seen it in many people who are confronting the need to drop their resistance. I think there are three reasons for it. First, if you have used resistance all your life to keep yourself safe, giving up resistance must feel, at first, like opening the door to a lynch mob. Unless you have learned how to set loving limits against being invaded by others, it is just too scary to give up your resistance. In addition, you may have spent so much time resisting that you have no idea who you are other than a person who resists. You may even fear that underneath all the resistance you are empty, dark, full of holes. That you have no core Self, no essence. If so, losing your identity as someone who resists -- even if it's a false identity -- will always feel life-threatening. Finally, because resistance was the primary way you protected yourself from the pain of feeling powerless to prevent invasion, it came to be an addiction. And, as many of us know, giving up an addiction that is keeping our pain at bay (or so we think) feels like dying. Brittany had to face a hard decision. She could give up her resistance and start to listen to other people, thus accepting the fact that she may feel at first as if others are controlling her. Or she could continue to create a facade of safety based on her resistance and her refusal to listen, thereby accepting the fact that she would continue to suffer problems in her work and her relationships. She had to decide which was more important to her: resisting control or being loving. Of course, what Brittany wanted -- what we all want in our wounded self -- was to continue to resist while enjoying the results of being loving. If she persisted in her denial, lying to herself that this was possible, she would have stayed stuck. Fortunately, Brittany chose to move into loving herself. Ted Ted, like Brittany, always had many problems in both his work and his relationships. He had allowed his overly protective and invasive mother to control him in many ways, but had always resisted by being angry and blaming toward her. This pattern continued in all of his relationships. He would allow others to violate him, not standing up for himself for fear others would be angry at him and reject him. His lack of limits was his way of trying to have control over not being rejected. When invaded, he would be furious at the very people whose rejection he feared because he ended up feeling violated by them. He spent his life terrified of "getting screwed," yet always ended up feeling as if he were getting screwed due to not setting appropriate limits. Then he would indulge in fairly violent revenge fantasies towards whoever he felt had violated him. His anger would come out in biting sarcasm that alienated others, leaving him feeling very lonely. "Ted, what do you think your mother wanted most from you?" "She wanted me to love her." "Did she want control over your loving her?" "Yes. That's what it always felt like." "So you gave in to her in many ways but refused to love her, staying angry instead?" "Right! That's what I've done with everyone in my life. I want them to love me so I let them control me, thinking that is the way to get them to love me. When this doesn't work I am furious and refuse to love them. This sounds crazy as I say it. My mother is trying to have control over my loving her and I am resisting her, while I am trying to have control over her loving me and furious at her for trying to control me instead of accepting me!" Ted thought about this for awhile and finally concluded, "I don't think I want to keep doing this. I'm going to make a resolution to be loving to my mother and see how I feel. I actually feel better already just making that decision!" The moment Ted decided to be loving instead of angry and resistant, his heart opened. When his heart opened, the Spirit of love and compassion immediately entered and he felt better. Rachael Rachael came to an Inner Bonding weekend workshop because she is stuck. She is very overweight and has been for some time. She can hear her core Self telling her that she wants good food, but she persists in eating huge amounts of greasy fast food. Not only does she refuse to take care of herself physically, but she refuses to do any inner work. She does not take the time to listen to her inner voice or her Guidance, even though she knows how. She wants her therapist to be the loving parent for her. She doesn't want the job of taking care of herself. Rachael's mother had been a child herself and had expected Rachael to take care of her. Rachael had been the mother to her mother. She had done everything her mother had wanted her to, other than love her. That is where she took her stand. Now she is in resistance to loving herself. She is just like her mother, a child who wants someone else to take care of her, and she resists loving herself in the same way she resisted loving her mother and her mother resisted loving herself. She believes she shouldn't have to do it for herself. Since her mother didn't do it for her, now her therapist should do it for her, and she is furious at her therapist for not accepting the job. Until Rachael accepts that no one else can give her what she missed out on as a child, she will stay stuck. Lizzy Lizzy consulted with me because she found herself immobilized in her life, unable to work, hardly able to leave her house. Lizzy's parents are both extremely invasive. Both are empty people who pulled on her throughout her childhood to fill their emptiness. Both are victims, resistant to taking any emotional responsibility for themselves. Lizzy's parents still persist in pulling on her and making her responsible for them. Lizzy is just like her parents. She has a profound emptiness due to her refusal to open to her Guidance and learn to love her child. She doesn't want to open her heart for fear that she will be more vulnerable to being controlled by her parents, others and God. To her, loving means losing herself. Due to her resistance to taking responsibility for herself, she feels empty and pulls on others for attention and validation, just as her parents do with her. Lizzy has a monumental challenge -- to be willing to love her resistant, angry, invasive wounded self, for it is only in loving this part of her that healing will occur. Until she opens to her Guidance and brings love to her wounded self, she is stuck. But if she loves her wounded self, then she needs to be willing to love her parents, since she is just like them. In order to do this, Lizzy needs to learn to set limits against being invaded, but she can learn to do this only with the help of her Guidance. However, she is afraid that if she opens to her Guidance and her heart is open, she will be too vulnerable to being controlled and consumed by others and by God. Until Lizzy is willing to risk the vulnerability she fears in order to open to her Guidance and love her child, she is stuck. Suzanne and Jason Suzanna came to see me because she was so unhappy in her marriage. She had been married to Jason for thirty-one years and was very confused about why she was so unhappy since she knew that she still loved him. Not only was she depressed, she was sick much of the time and couldn't seem to discover the reason. As we explored, it became apparent that Jason was very stuck, both in his neediness and in the Resistance Syndrome. Jason came from a very invasive mother and an absent father. He had withdrawn early in life to protect against his mother's invasiveness. While he professed great love for Suzanna, his actions were not caring. He was either pulling on her for time, attention, or sex -- being invasive just like his mother -- or he was resisting giving her anything she wanted, especially empathy, caring, and emotional intimacy -- just like he had resisted his mother. Suzanna could not want any emotional closeness or caring from him without his resisting. While Suzanna saw that she was at times controlling, she also saw that Jason perceived that she was controlling even when she wasn't. Suzanna worked hard on letting go of her controlling behavior, hoping that Jason would then stop resisting, but things got even worse. As soon as she pulled back from controlling, he felt abandoned and pulled on her even more for time, sex, and attention, but as soon as she came forward, he emotionally retreated. She found she couldn't even offer a suggestion without his shutting down and resisting. She noticed that Jason could be very giving to others but not with her. She finally realized that he saw her as his mother, no matter what she did. Suzanna asked Jason to join her in doing Inner Bonding work, but he refused. While Suzanna still loved Jason, she finally made the difficult decision to leave the marriage, as much for her health as for anything else. She discovered that soon after she left, her health returned. The energy she had exerted in dealing with Jason's invasive pull and resistance had exhausted her. Jason was devastated. He told Suzanna he loved her and that he knew she still loved him. He could not understand why she would leave. His denial regarding his neediness and resistance cost him dearly. Sonya and Ian Sonya and Ian had a relationship similar to Suzanne and Jason's, but with a much better outcome. They came to one of my intensives, during which Ian recognized his own Resistance Syndrome. He even remembered making the decision early on in his life not do what his mother wanted him to do, no matter what it was. Ian would act like he was complying, but each time he found some way to sabotage his performance. When Ian interacted with Sonya, whom he loves very much, his wounded self was in charge. He would shut down to whatever she wanted from him, which resulted in a total lack of affection and connection toward her. Ian also professed to want affection, yet he pulled away whenever Sonya reached out to him. When she then withdrew, he called her cold. Sonya ended up feeling confused and frustrated. She just couldn't win. When she voiced her frustration, Ian would tell her that it was her fault because she was so controlling. At the intensive, Ian gained a clear understanding of the Resistance Syndrome and how it was affecting his relationship. But I did not encourage him to release it. Instead, I told him to continue to resist but to choose resistance consciously rather than unconsciously. This is the first step out of the resistance trap. When Ian watched himself choosing to resist, he stopped operating on automatic pilot. Suddenly a new choice became available to him. He could choose to resist or choose to act a different way. For the first time ever, he was able to reach out to Sonya with love rather than holding back out of fear of engulfment. There wasn't a dry eye among us as we witnessed their love being openly expressed. Ian learned another crucial lesson that day. He discovered that when he stopped resisting being controlled by Sonya, he started being able to connect with Spirit. He no longer resisted his spiritual Guidance. The Resource that you have requested is reserved for paid Supporting Members only. We want you! In our discussions, chat, advice column, learning center, Creative Expression and Comfort Corner! 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