Echoes of the boy

Some time ago I noticed that, in confrontations, I have a tendency to become increasingly quiet and withdrawn. I saw that in those moments I regressed into a ‘little boy’ and I realised I was reliving a childhood interaction with my mum. As a child, if I had misbehaved, my mum would scold me and she would sharply say the word “quiet” several times. It was an implied threat: ‘cry and you will be punished more’. It worked! I would become silent and still, my eyes fixed on the floor rather than risk making eye contact. This response was so well conditioned in me that, over three decades later, I automatically repeated it any time there was some kind of conflict in my life, particularly when the conflict was with a woman.

A little while back I saw this behaviour in a slightly different context. I was having a difficult conversation with my then girlfriend. In the conversation I kept jumping to conclusions about the things she said. This frustrated her so she would in turn point out where I was wrong in jumping to the conclusion. Over the course of this conversation I became quieter and more withdrawn until I was completely silent and only she was talking. Eventually we both realised the conversation had taken me to a place where I had become emotionally cut off. We stopped, took a break and later reconnected.

That evening, I lay in bed trying to understand why I reacted in this way. Yes, the conversation was difficult but it would be too much to call it a confrontation. As I was thinking I started having flashbacks from when I was a child. Moments when I had let my parents down, when I had not met their exacting standards of me. There were plenty to choose from! I saw that in each of those moments my parents responded in a similar way. With anger. They would angrily tell me where I was wrong, where I had not met the standard they expected of me. What is more, there was no love. The love had been withdrawn and replaced by the anger. In my child’s eyes their withdrawal of love was proof that I had done something wrong. I recall my overwhelming reaction every time was shame of having let them down and fear that I would not regain their love. Being so young, another point of view, that I may not have done anything wrong, that my parents may have been overreacting, was not something I even considered. Instead, to avoid incurring their anger further — to avoid the punishment of love being withdrawn any longer — I became silent and still. I do not say any of this to blame my parents; after all, they were the product of their upbringing. I simply want to demonstrate how these patterns of behaviour settled in me.

As I lay on my bed, it dawned on me that I was repeating this old pattern in that conversation with my then partner and I had done so many times over the years, particularly in relationships. Whenever it would be pointed out that I had done something wrong, or that I could do with improving in some way, I would become that child again who had let his parents down. I would feel the shame of causing disappointment. Fearing a subsequent withdrawal of love I would retreat and become quiet.

Most acutely I felt the fear of that child within. The fear that he wasn’t loved. The desperation that he needed to do something more — to be someone better — in order to earn that love. The unspoken ‘truth’ that he was not good enough as he was; he was not lovable. I sat up and began a meditation where I spoke to him. I told him that he was good enough just the way he was; that he did not have to do anything or be anyone else; that he was loved no matter what. I repeated this over and over again, especially that last phrase. “You are loved, no matter what.” I started crying as that little boy began to let those words in.

After that I became better at seeing that pattern of behaviour arising. If I catch it early, I can stay conscious of the conditioning and not go down that path of withdrawal and silence. It is not easy, as it is deeply ingrained behaviour. Progress not perfection.

The real healing though would come in weaning myself off my need for that love in the first place, whether from my parents, my partner or someone else. My attachment to it is the cause of the pain. The validation I sought from it is what holds me back. Can I find that from within, rather than from someone or something else? I will save that for a later post.

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