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This article is published in the book: "Psych 101 - What you didn't learn in nursing school." by Kathi Stringer Paperback: 320 pages ISBN-13: 978-0615193137 Order |
I Win!
Written by Kathi Stringer
At the end of my therapy session, I looked at the clock and said, “I win!” and my treater admitted it was true, that I had won. Meaning that for the last hour I had managed to keep her away from my feelings under the cloak of intellectual rotations. Her quick response on my way out enquired as to why winning was so important to me. I offered that in winning, maybe I really lost?
In a single moment, she had delivered the ball back in my court. I left.
What did I mean by, “I win?” It was time to mull it over because in the real sense of ‘winning’ I don’t think I won anything. The phrase certainly did seem like a puzzle. At the same time I was engaged at holding true to my intellectual stance. Then it became clear to me.
Winning to me meant to be successful. I was exactly that! I was successful at playing the role assigned to me as a child. One of the characterlogical parameters for this role required the ability to ignore and disregard my feelings. Not to do so was internalized as weak, and weak was to lose.
My impression as a child was that only the weak would cry and express vulnerability. And the strong? Strength was measured by the appearance of an inflexible stance or expressions of anger. Strength adapted the abilities to isolate and eradicate the pitiful whinnying of weakness that manifested as a desire of be loved, touched and held. Absurd! Such thoughts evoked shame. After all, there is shame in weakness. Sissies are weak.
To be strong is to have approval and divert attention away from weakness. Any suspicion that would invite exanimation that would reveal the cry of the all-encompassing longing to be swallowed up in love and nurturing must be thwarted, sidetracked and eliminated. Winning approval in this distorted reality meant to deprive myself of the healthy narcissistic needs of a child to be the center of parental love.
I have played my assigned role successfully, meaning, I have won. Yet how strange, the prize was destroyed in the mechanics that are intrinsic of the game.
The prize was to be loved and held as a diminutive being that is now lost in the past. As the winner, I collect a deceptive and distorted victory, and the swindle escapes accountability.
Now, it is a time for restructuring, reframing, and reorganizing. As a developmentally fixated child, my true-self, I don’t know how. I am a rock. I am an island.
Now the ball is back in her court.