Beyond Fear. Dorothy Rowe

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СКАЧАТЬ secure job. I’ve got my own house and no money worries. I’m forty-two and I’m in good health. There is no logical reason why I should be anxious.’

      He had been off work for six months. He was so overwhelmed by anxiety that he could not attempt the simplest task. He spent most of his time going over in his mind technical work he had done in past years in the homes of neighbours and friends, trying to convince himself that he had not made any mistakes and that the people living there were not in danger.

      He was an engineer, a practical problem-solver. ‘That’s my job,’ he said. ‘When there’s a problem, they come to me to solve it.’ He liked people looking to him to solve their problems. I asked him why. He said, ‘It gives me satisfaction.’

      At that time the UK was in the midst of a huge strike by coal miners, and this had created a series of problems at his place of work. As he would solve one, another would be created. There was no way all these problems could be solved simultaneously. He felt that he could not afford to let his staff and his superiors see that there were practical problems which he could not solve because that, he feared, would diminish him in their eyes.

      A friend, ‘the most logical and competent chap I know’, had committed suicide. Ken had found him. ‘It didn’t upset me particularly,’ he said. But, in fact, inside he was greatly upset.

      In later discussions Ken told me how his mother, a very strong-willed woman, had insisted that he achieve and that he help people. He had to accept what she said because she had ways of enforcing her orders. He told me how one day, when she discovered that he had lost his best sweater on his way home from school, she had come to the cinema where he was happily watching a film and, in front of all those people, had hauled him home to look for his sweater. The shame he felt then was the shame he feared if, through his own carelessness, he caused the people he had tried to help any suffering.

      He had come on his own. I asked after his wife.

      ‘She says I’m getting her down.’ No, they didn’t discuss things much.

      At that first meeting it was not until he was near to leaving that he said, ‘My sons have their own friends now. They don’t need me any more.’

      Ken was unable to say, ‘I feel that I am alone, abandoned and rejected. I fear I shall disappear.’ In contrast, Ella was able to describe her fear.

      Ella nearly died in a road accident. Four years later she was still weak and shaky and prone to tears. She had not returned to work, and she found driving a car a frightening experience.

      ‘I just want to hide myself away,’ she said. ‘I don’t want people to see me like this. I used to be so confident and in control.’

      She had always had to be competent, but only in the feminine skills of housekeeping. ‘My mother thought that a girl didn’t need an education. A woman’s fulfilment was to be a wife and mother. I won a scholarship to grammar school but she wouldn’t let me take it up. I got married and had a family, but I’ve always done something more. I’ve always worked. But now, I’m back to where I started. I’ve achieved nothing. I’m weak and frightened, and I’m just what my mother wanted, a wife and mother and nothing else. No personal achievement. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it?’

      Ella’s statement that life is about personal achievement is just what an introvert would say, though introverts cover a wide range of activities in what they call personal achievement. Extraverts say that life is about other people, though they cover a wide range of possible relationships with other people. Both extraverts and introverts need to achieve and they both need other people, but for extraverts achievement is to strengthen their relationships with other people while for introverts achievement is what life is about. Introverts need other people to stop them disappearing into their own internal reality and losing touch with the world around them, while extraverts need other people to provide an essential part of their sense of existence.

      When we are small children we are aware that we have certain talents and powers. We may not be able to put a name to them, but we know that whenever we use them we feel an enormous joy. The passionate pleasure of acting creatively and successfully in and upon the world has always given puny human beings the will and power to go on striving in a vast and dangerous universe. As children, if we are lucky, our talents and powers are approved of and encouraged by the adults around us. If so, we can then use our talents and powers to develop and make ourselves safe. If we are extraverts we use our talents and powers to gather people around us and keep them there, and to fill the empty space within us. If we are introverts we develop our talents and powers to gain clarity and personal achievement and to relate our internal reality to the external world.

      However, if as children the adults around us do not recognize or approve of our talents and powers, we are forced to neglect and to deny them and to learn skills which we know are not in us. This leaves us with a sense of feeling ‘not right’, in some way always an impostor. We are left with a sense of longing. We may not be able to put a name to the object of the longing, or we may know the name but be too ashamed to admit it. How could this delicate wife and mother admit that all she ever wanted was to sail her own boat round the world? How could this rugby-playing company director admit that all he ever wanted was to be principal dancer in a ballet? How their families would laugh if they said these things! Perhaps they dare not even admit these longings to themselves. Then all they become aware of are certain passionate dislikes. She ‘cannot stand’ Clare Francis, who was such a brilliant sailor, while he refuses to accompany his wife to the ballet, saying that he has better things to do than watch ‘those poofs’. The prevalence of envy in our society shows just how many children have been prevented from developing their talents and powers and being themselves.

      Both extraverts and introverts need other people. Extraverts need other people to establish and maintain their existence. Introverts need other people to help them gain clarity by setting standards and giving approval. When I was discussing this with Mick McHale, I asked him which for him was the more real, his internal or external reality - what went on inside him or what went on outside him?

      He said, ‘Internal reality is far more real. I tend to believe that far more than my external reality.’ He went on to say that while he wanted approval, when he did actually gain it it no longer meant anything to him. ‘I think the difference is, if I’ve got things sorted out and I know I’ve done a good job, I can reward myself, but if it’s on the periphery of that, if I’m not sure whether I’ve done a good job or taken the right direction, then it’s very important and I really appreciate it.’

      ‘So getting approval makes things more clear for you.’

      ‘Yes.’

      If extraverts are left in isolation they are in danger of being overwhelmed by the emptiness within them. Under stress they continue to perceive their external reality as ordinary, but it becomes dangerous. If introverts are left in isolation they are in danger of retreating into their internal reality and losing the ability to distinguish internal from external reality. Under stress they find that external reality becomes increasingly strange.

      We need other people to help us structure ourselves and our world, but it is other people who threaten the structures we create. When they disappoint, leave, reject or betray us they show us that we were wrong in our expectations. When they criticize and correct us they show us that our meaning structure may not be an accurate picture of what is going on. When they press their ideas upon us or try to force us to be what they want us to be they threaten us with annihilation. We have to learn ways to defend ourselves.

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