Vulnerability in the holiday time--an inevitable paradox

If you have been following along (or are catching up) and identified yourself as an emotional survivor and that you are surviving this holiday season, an inevitable paradox is that we survivors are vulnerable. 

A survivor is about looking, sounding, and presenting as anything but vulnerable.   The survivor wants to look invincible wearing inpenetratable armor for fear of ever getting hurt again.   Some of the armor includes:

• Your pulled-in feelings which you are no longer willing to share with others lest they take advantage of your vulnerability.
• The insecurity and lack of trust you exhibit to others who reach out to show interest or concern to you.
• Your lack of tolerance and apparent lack of empathy for the feelings of people who have their own problems and are in pain. This is especially true if you think their problems compared to your past ones are trivial or less severe.
• The competitive way in which you deal with people always looking out for “who is the winner or loser” in each human transaction you encounter.
• Your inability to warm up to people and your shy and retiring ways whenever you are in a new social situation.  
• Your fear of speaking up in a group of people lest they not accept or approve of you.
• Your desire to be invisible so as not to be hurt or abused in any way.
• Your guardedness and watchfulness in your interactions with people lest they get to know too much about you for fear they take advantage of you with that information.

http://jamesjmessina.com/toolsforcontrolissues/tempersurvivalbehaviors.html

Reviewing the selected items from Messina's list, it is clear that the survivor separates themselves from others by wearing an armor of emotions, space and information.  A survivor looks tough, maintains his or her distance, and intentionally acts like a stranger.

The armor of a survivor is heavy to wear.   While everyone has to put on this armor at one time or another in their lives, it is not healthy to wear for long periods of time.  Long term use causes emotional and even physical damage.  If you go to the above link, Messina has a very well-thought-out list for the long-term consequences of engaging in survival behaviors as a lifestyle. 

While I am not a medical doctor, quite a few of the survivors I have served in the psychiatric hospital presented with Fibromyalgia.  I think that if good epidemiological research was done studying whether there is comorbidity of Fibromyalgia with chronic psychological stress, I would bet they would find quantifiable and statistically significant evidence.  

Nevertheless, this armor that survivors wear can feel heavier at the holiday season.  The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness and joy.  If someone has made a lifestyle out of being fearful and guarded, they are very unlikely to warm up and start being joyful at Advent, Hanukkah, Christmas or even Kwanzaa.  The opposite happens instead--and people feel dreadfully worse.

The reality is that the armor of a survivor corrodes from the inside and not the outside.  Eventually, the reality that we are vulnerable and have needs eats away at us.  We are going to get the picture and make changes to meet those needs or we are going to wrecked by the unfulfilled needs.

Loneliness

The biggest complaint at the holiday season is loneliness.  Some people do confuse loneliness with privacy.  We do prize the right to privacy in the United States, and a survivor can hide behind the claim to privacy, but nevertheless feel painfully lonely.   

Aloneness is a state.   There are times when we need to be alone and have our privacy.  When we do not have any needs and are content, we are ambivalent--it does not matter if we are around people or not.  When we are needy we hate being alone.

The continuum of being alone 

Privacy---------------------------------Ambivalent-------------------------------------------------Loneliness

(Need to be alone)                                 Content with situation                                                      (Need to be with others)
 

I think that when a survivor is lonely, he or she is especially vulnerable.   Staying to yourself while in emotional pain can exponentially increase your pain.  We become strangers from the rest of the world and we lose touch with reality.

The experience of family continues to be the set of eyeglasses through which you and I continue to make emotional judgments and set expectations.   If one believes: I am supposed to have an intact and happy family at Christmas, then that person puts themselves in an unrealistic and irrational place when they do this, and will stay there because they are surviving.  It is my opinion that many people feel lonely and act as survivors based on the standard of family. 

The Challenge of Beginning to Be Vulnerable

After awhile, surviving becomes woefully unfulfilling, and I think that loneliness is one of those cues that tells people that surviving is not working very well . . . or working at a cost.   I think that regardless of who you are, the feeling of loneliness tells you that you are vulnerable, you have needs.

Going back to the heart of the message of Christmas tells us that humanity has a larger need--humankind is sinful and in of a gift in the form of a savior.  Human beings cannot do it all by themselves--that includes saving themselves from their sins.

Whether you consider the Christmas story to be a Joseph Campbell-type myth, an archetype in the theoretical framework of Carl Jung or a theological truth, it goes back to a need and a gift to meet that need.   We as humans are all vulnerable or there would not be the need for the gift.

In my next post . . . 

I will discuss resolving loneliness if your family continues to be unavailable to you.