Is Ambivalence Making Crazy?

Do I change or stay the same? Do I rebel or conform? Do I leave or do I stay? Do I do it now or later?

Of these 20 possible toppings for my pizza, what are my three choices?

Do you suffer from ambivalence? I do, all the time.  But I am learning to work with it, master it, observe it, appreciate it. Here are some thoughts that will give you some solid ground on which to find both feet walking on the same chosen path - the path of ambivalence.


Ambivalence. This is a word we need to take to heart.  Much of our anxieties would fade if we could accept and understand ambivalence.

Here are two dictionary definitions from the web:

1. The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea.
2. Uncertainty or indecisiveness as to which course to follow.

Take a minute and write down the person, object or idea that you have opposing attitudes or feelings for and a few of the choices you doubt you can make. As you read this post, reflect on these.

To the first definition that uses the word “coexistence” I would say we need to add another perspective — ambivalence is the experience of “rapidly alternating” opposing feelings or attitudes.

Coexistence refers to the soul or mind as space.  Rapidly alternating refers to the time experience of consciousness.  Singularity of interpretation, purpose and evaluation requires a clear sense of place and moment.  Of course, movement in space and time means we changes places (points of view) often and moments, never static,  lead to other moments. The struggle to be certain and constant can never be conquered.

Uncertainty and indecisiveness have to do with a disconnect from confidence in personal resilience in the everchanging experience of place and moment.  And it is not only which course to follow, but which feeling to feel, which truth to state, which good to offer, which harm to avoid.

In our crazy, challenging, over-stimulating world it is so difficult to feel confident in our choices, our feelings, our beliefs, even the impact of our deeds. Do we trust ourselves?  Do we make choices based on instincts or insight or both? What is real and what is not - in the world and in me?

Sometimes my ambivalence is just choice exhaustion. The pizza topping dilemma showing up in a dozen ways everyday - the supermarket, the internet, the closet, the bookshelf, the debit card. Knowing what we want and what we need is so difficult. And so often we are making choices for others -- children, elderly parents, coworkers, organizations.

Sometimes it is the moral perplexity that comes from obsessing about two equally positive outcomes or avoiding two equally negative outcomes.


Sometimes I am just afraid of myself and the interpenetrating feelings of hate and love, fear and need.

One way out of this ambivalence dilemma - not a good way - so I don’t recommend it, is to leave the choices up to somebody else or conform to an external dogma. Another is to leave it up to delay, hoping time will take away choice and leave only one possibility, also not a good choice.  Both of these render you powerless, even unconscious.

That said, there are times I just don't want to choose because I don't care or I am afraid I will override the desires of someone I care about. 

Since I am confident that ambivalence is a trial we must suffer through willingly, the real solution, rather, the resolution, is to risk and embrace the mistake, the regret, the challenge, the celebration.

Don’t let the fear of ambivalence paralyze your will, freeze your feelings or hamstring your thoughts.

Embracing ambivalence offers no safety, no certainty, no clear outcomes.  But it offers the freedom of discovery and the unfolding of potential.  And great lessons in understanding consequences, managing outcomes and surprising yourself.

Let go of fear, doubt and anger around ambivalence. Talk about it with friends.

You need to trust yourself, your coherent sense of self, and the ability of yourself to recognize, integrate and modulate the “gifts” of the wrong choice, the wrong judgment, the wrong call. You can forgive and you can make meaning.

And for the coexisting or rapidly alternating love/hate and fear/need of relationships, these are the two faces of the relational coins. We use them to pay the toll that lifts the gate allowing us to move along the inner path to the maturity that is beyond the dramas and blesses us with confident compassion for both self and other.  I will write about this more as we move toward Inner Pentecost.


To close I offer two film clips that show the positive results of living with ambivalence and making a choice - regardless of outcome. Both these choices lived in the face of both positive and negative outcomes. Of course, Hollywood plays ambivalence to the hilt and loves the happy ending with nothing to integrate.  But ambivalence is always heavy to confront so I wanted to lighten up at the end. I recommend both films for all the corny lessons in risk, growth, trust and values that they offer.

Remember the ending of Dirty Dancing and the leap full of the creative ambivalence of uncertainty and confidence.


Dirty Dancing - Final Dance - Time of my Life by Schutzengerl1205


And then remember the image of risking self expression in Sister Act II.





Relax and embrace ambivalence. 

Temperamental Ambivalence

Your temperamental configuration really impacts your feelings and relationship to ambivalence.  Don't be ambivalent about taking this course. It is no risk in terms of value, enjoyment, and benefit.

Do register for my program on the temperaments:

Learning the Languages of the Four Temperaments

http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/The-Languages-of-the-Four-Temperaments-IY4T.htm

Beginning this Sunday, May 29

I read this insightful quote from the great French novelist, Stendhal. He wrote

 “One can acquire everything in solitude except character.”

Which word in this quote got your attention?

Each temperament will be attracted to a particular word in this quote and base its interpretation and understanding of the entire statement on it.

The choleric will see “character.”

The sanguine, “everything.”

The phlegmatic, “acquire.”

The melancholic, “solitude.”

Which word got your attention?

If the four temperaments were having a conversation about Stendhal’s thought, the word they would all struggle with is “except.” Each temperament will have a different reaction to “except” in relation to the word they identify with.

Let’s look at a more mundane statement. 

"We need to get the dishes done before we can go to the movie."

The choleric sees it all done — a pristine kitchen and a great movie (that he chose.)

The sanguine will rush through the dishes, because she can’t wait to be entertained.

The phlegmatic is still at the table finishing dessert.

The melancholic is thinking they should all leave. He will do the dishes after they have all gone and then sit and read.

Will they understand each other? Will they find social harmony? Will the dishes get done? Will everyone enjoy the movie? Maybe.

If the temperaments are understood, the way they perceive and the way they behave, life works.  Understanding differences, even revering differences, makes social interaction rich with good possibilities.

Understanding temperaments, also, makes self-forgiveness an easier consideration.

I’m offering my course on the Four Temperaments in four sessions beginning next Sunday.

This is the Inner Year course in social wisdom, social grace and social creativity. This is not about having good manners or being polite. This is about understanding yourself and the person you are interacting with. The temperaments are what shape all interactions and all reactions creating social success or social disaster.

All books on etiquette were written to overcome temperament. Manners and politeness mean you don’t need to understand anyone, you just have to conform to convention. No wisdom, grace or creativity needed. So if your social goal is to be boring and bored, you don’t need to take this course. Read a book on manners, instead. (BTW, books on etiquette are usually written by phlegmatic cholerics.)

If you want to have fun, be effective, love and be loved, it all begins in the games temperaments play. This course teaches the games.

You will learn all the reasons to love each of the temperaments and all the reasons to hate them.  And then you will learn all the reasons to just observe them, hear the music that resonates in each and get a feel for the motivating energy behind each.

You will learn how each temperament asks for help, gives directions, and makes love.

You will learn how each temperament relates to authority, neediness, and change.

And then there are the ways the temperaments combine — the singles, doubles and triples. We will look at them all.

Social interaction without the four temperaments would be dull and lifeless. Creative collaboration requires the gifts and challenges that each temperament brings.  Making temperamental differences more conscious as  social wisdom, grace and creativity is the intention of this course.

The choleric will love this course because it provides knowledge and skills for moving toward social harmony, an ideal for the future.

The sanguine will love this course because it is lots of fun and offers lots of ways to experience the variety of the social life.

The phlegmatic will love this course because it organizes the social life and when the temperamental organization is understood, the social life becomes more comfortable and less demanding.

The melancholic will love this course because it offers so much to think about and encourages the deep compassion of universal love.

Register for the course here.




Learning the Languages of the Four Temperaments
http://www.store.lynnjericho.com/The-Languages-of-the-Four-Temperaments-IY4T.htm


If the time does not work for you, you can still take the course.  Each presentation is recorded.  You can listen to the replay online or download the MP3. 

You will receive the slides with the outline of each session prior to the webinar so that you can make notes as you listen.  There are also many valuable handouts to help you understand the differences.

Mother’s Day - A Day of Forgiveness

Cards, flowers, gifts, brunches and dinners, smiles and hugs and sweet words of appreciation, gratitude and love - that’s what Mother’s Day is all about — another sentimental celebration of the ideal.  But what if it were a day of celebrating the shadows of mothering.

This is my 64th Mother’s Day. I am choosing to make it a day of forgiveness.  I want to forgive my mother, forgive my grandmothers and their mothers, forgive myself as a mother, be forgiven by my children, forgive the mothers of all my friends and especially the mothers of the men I have loved, forgive the cultural idealization of motherhood and its disregard and diminishment of mothering.

 

The Mystery of Forgiveness

 

Most of my life I have struggled with the concept, the feeling and the act of forgiveness. Yesterday, I had an epiphany that I want to share with you. I was researching the theories on object relations, a psychotherapeutic approach that places relationships at the central struggle of being human and becoming I.  Of course, the mother is the primary object the infant relates to and separates from. Object relations theory addresses “splitting” in the infant’s psyche.The initial split is the division between “good” mother and “bad” mother — the fairy godmother and the wicked witch.  In this split experience, there is no neutral zone. Neutral comes from neuter - Latin for "not either."

It was reading the words “neutral zone” that set off the forgiveness bells, whistles and sirens.  My relationship to everything and every relationship has been split into good and bad, heaven and hell, friend and enemy, perpetrator and victim with no NEUTRAL ZONE. This has been especially painful and constricting in my relationship with myself, I am either too good or I am too bad for self-forgiveness.

Forgiveness in my struggling soul has always been about the good forgiving the bad and the expectation that forgiveness has this transformative impact on the bad - it disappears.  On the primal level, the bad mother and her bad daughter disappear. But then I didn’t want the bad to disappear I wanted to integrate it with the good and heal the split - be whole, embrace the light and the shadows.  But from the good pole there is no way to integrate the bad and vice versa.

There needs to be the neutral zone.  Relating, forgiving, integrating, reconciling all come into being in the neutral zone. It is not about being good. Being human and becoming I, seeing the being and becoming of another, compassion and empathy all happen in the neutral zone.

Now as a counselor and educator, I live in and provide a neutral zone most of the time.  Where I struggle being in a neutral zone is with my mother, my father and with men I love.  I either struggle to prove my goodness  or I assume all guilt for all wounds and sins and condemn it (and me) or try to fix it.  Martyrdom, anyone?

The good mother we feel one with and adhere to.  The bad mother is the mother that separates from us.  Reactions to that separation are infantile anger, shutdown, shut off or shut out, fear and/or sadness.  And then we grow up with these unresolved, unregulated, unacknowledged feelings but aware of the hope that maybe we will be the good mother we so wanted.

Recognizing these feelings, we can begin to understand the four types (based on the four temperaments) of the “bad” mother in the dramatic story of our childhoods.

the angry mother
the absent mother
the anxious mother
the grieving mother

My mother was never there, she was the absent mother.  She would appear momentarily to charm or to attack and then she would disappear. I felt the glow or the slap of her shimmering light and then the the cold hollowness of her absence. Her primary temperament was sanguine.

The angry mother is always demanding and disappointed because she is suppose to be the ideal mother and the child is suppose to prove it by being the ideal child. Succeed little one. She’s choleric mother.

The anxious mother wants everything to be comfortable and pleasant.  She wants to provide everything for the perfect childhood, so she can relax and eat chocolates with her happy child.  She’s the phlegmatic mother.

The grieving mother will never really connect with her child except in moments of shared suffering.  There is this well of sadness that she seems to be drowning in and the child always feels like a floating device or a life jacket. She’s the melancholic mother.

My mother was a very bad mother - really bad. But when I am in the neutral zone, the land of forgiveness where there is nothing to forgive, I see she really did the best she could. She also had an absent mother.  In the neutral zone I also see that much of my ability to do what I do comes from the wisdom living behind my mother wounds.  She was the right mother for me - the one I chose. It is from the neutral zone that I can see her, see me and celebrate our relationship - she was a bad mother for my story and the best and only mother for my destiny.

With my children, I was too present in their early years as I was determined they would never feel abandonned. Then when I divorced there were times when I was absent, seeking the part of myself that was not mother and not child.

 

Mothering and the Neutral Zone

 

This post is about forgiving mother for not providing a neutral zone.  As a therapeutic researcher, I want to know why my mother (your mother, all mothers) couldn’t provide a neutral zone. Simply, she didn’t have one for herself.  The sin of the first mother, Eve, meant we all have been born into the world of good and bad and need to create our own neutral Eden for ourselves.

Let’s forgive our mothers for not giving us what they didn’t have to give.  Let’s see them from our self-created neutral Eden of compassion.

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, and every day, meet your mother, all mothers, and your children, all children, and yourself in the neutral zone.

As Rumi said

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing
 and right doing

there is a field.


I'll meet you there.


When the soul lies down in that grass


the world is too full to talk about.

The New Inner Year Curriculum

THE INNER YEAR CURRICULUM

If you want to know yourself better, make this and every year 

a year of growing and profound self-awareness

Being Human Courses - A Primer in the Core Experiences of Being Human

Becoming I  Courses - The Fundamental Schooling for Healing, Liberating and Empowering Your Individuality

Inner Winter Curriculum - Destiny

Being Human: The Three Temptations: Addiction, Fantasy and Prejudice
February

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Your Contribution 

The Fundamental Schooling in Recognizing Your Destiny
March

Spring Curriculum - Relationship

Being Human: Understanding Your Own and Others Temperaments
April

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Intimacy 

The Fundamental Schooling in Being in Conscious Relationship
May

Summer Curriculum - The World 

Being Human: Embodiment through the Senses
July

Becoming I: Imagining and Creating Balance 

The Fundamental Schooling in Standing Strongly in the World
August

Autumn Curriculum - Moral Development

Being Human: Encounters Part One — Confronting Your Challengers
October


                           Encounters Part Two — Engaging Your Companions
November

Becoming I:  Imagining and Creating Fulfillment 

The Fundamental Schooling in Living in Time
December

The Festivals

I will be sending out essays with audios offering imaginations for the esoteric meanings   and personal meanings for the major Festivals of the Christian Year.  I hope these will inspire your inner work.

Epiphany

Lent

Easter

Ascension

Pentecost

St. John's Tide

The Transfiguration

Michaelmas

Saints & Souls