Life lies…

Summer, sun and vacation. Time to be yourself. A little more true, genuine. A little more naked. If it wasn’t for the life lie. The mask * you never take or cast off.

The gape between dream and reality.

In an article in the magazine “Amos” a woman in therapy realized she lived in a life-lie.

”This means that I lived in a reality which didn’t make me happy, but a reality I chose to keep firmly to, because it felt safe.”

But I wonder silently; how did she get help in dealing with this? Only the talk-way?

We have different destinies but many of us have something in common – the self-deception.

The life-lie is something we resort to because we can’t stand the truth.

“A boy living with parents who don’t manage to take care of him can’t say: ‘I live in a hell.’ Even if that’s exactly what he does. Because there is no escape from this situation. Instead he has to create a picture of the reality so he can stand it. Therefore he thinks: ’It’s me it’s something wrong with.’ This isn’t nice, but it’s a solution.”

But what was a way to handle an unbearable situation or a method in meeting the inevitable challenges in life at first is transformed by time to its opposite.

With time, sooner or less, people start to wonder over what life they are living and maybe even if they are living a true, genuine life. Often it has started as agony, diffuse or even unconscious. Somewhere you start to have presentiments (in the best cases I would add), but the head doesn’t want to know. One can start to dream intensely (literally?).

The life lie makes something with us. It steals life. But longing (unconscious, as a diffuse drive, emotion) to live genuinely, authentically will sooner or later catch us up. It can be a tragedy if these come late in life, or even very late. I read about false dementia in people having to deal with truths late in life, brain-tests (scanning?) shows there is nothing organically wrong with them.

A man, Mustafa Can, says that it has been an tremendous relief to pierce or perforate the myth. The truth makes it easier to live. But the way to that point wasn’t easy? He and his parents came as immigrants to Sweden 30 years ago from Kurdistan. Until his mother died the family myth was that they should return to Kurdistan. So they never really settled here in Sweden. Tried to combat the feeling that this was their country and new home. But when his mother died and they took her dead body to Kurdistan to bury her there, he realized that they should never return to Kurdistan, only maybe when they were dead. A life-crisis for him? And he wrote a book over this, as a way in processing?

At the same time he thinks that it’s good he knows how it is to live with a life-lie. The strong dream’s backside is that it’s holding the reality away from us. In the worse cases, and in too many cases, until things are too late.

Mustafa Can says that the mechanisms in the life-lie of the individual and a dictatorship are the same.

“Both are totalitarian. Both want to eliminate all that challenges the vision. Both refuse to acknowledge the facts about what life contains.”

Are these sorts of dreams lacking in contact with the reality? But one HAS seen (even if one wasn’t consciously aware?), the life-lie needs knowledge, but one didn’t like what one saw; that one shouldn’t return, that the choice(s) one has/have done was wrong - or right (one can deny such things too? Not being satisfied with what one has, dreaming and longing for something that isn’t in reach?), and one should be more careful with what one had etc.. Therefore one keep ones eyes closed, keep ones ears shut and is hoping everything shall be okay.

The drama “The Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen is referred to, in which the family-father Hjalmar Ekdahl realizes that his life and marriage is built on a lie. The truth-speaker Gregers Werle mercilessly reveals everything to him. One could believe that what Werle did should suite today’s people educated in settlements much better than that time’s? Isn’t it what we have learned: Talk about it and come to terms! Came to think of Bergman's "Scenes from a marriage" (from 1973/74 already!).

But on the opening night recently for "The Wild Duck" here in Stockholm one could hear whisperings from the stalls:

"Oh no! Stop! Can’t he stop?”

The life with the lie felt so much better. Can’t everything remain as it was?

But I don’t believe in help a la Dr Phil…

And of course the more we have invested in this lie the more difficult to deal with the truth. Think if all our choices in the life-lie’s name has been in vain, even downright wrong? The more the life-lie starts to falter the greater the efforts to “keep it on its legs.”

A life-lie can many times be about things that were never realized, things one didn’t do. But how come? Yes, because one has put something into ones head that this was no idea and that it didn’t matter. Even if one wanted and thought it mattered - and even mattered a lot.

Many don’t want to get the life-lies nearer, realize how and what one has done and is doing. One is afraid of that realizing them would mean that the life would become turned up-side-down. That one has to change job, divorce, move. But that’s not sure; it doesn’t have to lead to any of these things.

One should probably stop, take a break now and then and ask oneself:

“Do I want this? Why am I doing this?”

They also wrote about different life-lies:

• About the family: our micro cosmos, a closed system where we are allotted different roles. If we start to play another role better suiting who we are and have developed to with time, then this threatens the other’s masks. That’s the reason why the power of the family-lie is so strong.
• About oneself: for instance the belief that I am untalented, unworthy, bad. The lie that one is untalented can help one not to risk becoming disappointed or confronted with ones own power. And the confrontation with ones good sides can probably be extremely painful too? Realizing what one has missed during time? So you can stay in the belief you aren’t worthy too, to avoid the pain in realizing the truth.
• About what makes life worth living - the lie as a life-style: self-deceptions can also be collective. About having a nice home, a glamorous job, and yearly journeys to exotic places. Things that are so common so we don’t event think of them and don’t’ question them. Even if time and relations is actually what we want.
• About the relation: We love each over everything else, more than anything else. Sometimes we don’t dare to acknowledge that the relation has died, but create a silent agreement about our life together. For instance constantly swearing each other love…

They also write that life-lies represses everything that doesn’t fit and is drawn to circumstances selling quick solutions – commercially, ideologically or spiritually. One is easily drawn into sects or even cults? One has to watch this. And say no to milieus having room only for one view.

See Miller on “Deception Kills Love.” And Ingmar Bergman and Käbi Laretei on masks.

* The Nordiska Museum in Stockholm has an exhibition now on masks, on their home site it stands about masks:

“A mask can frighten away evil spirits and provide protection against cuts and blows or the gaze of other people. A mask can hide your true identity or create a new one.

Throughout the ages, masks have been used in every imaginable context, from lavish court festivities to rural yuletide pranks and whenever facial protection is needed. The masks most commonly seen today are the Santa masks that come out on Christmas Eve and the horror masks worn at Halloween. Forty or so masks dating from the 17th century until the present day are on show."

Addition May 31: At the Swedish site of Nordiska muséet it stands about masks:

”’Masken hemlighåller identiteter och uppsåt.
Sociala förväntningar sätts ur spel.
Ordningar rubbas - nya möjligheter skapas.
Vad som helst kan hända.
Just därför har människor tillverkat och
burit masker i årtusenden.’

Masker har använts i alla tider och i olika sammanhang: vid hovens fester, vid julupptåg på landsbygden eller som skydd. De vanligaste nutida maskerna är julaftonens tomtemask och skräckmasker vid Halloween.

En mask kan skrämma bort onda makter, skydda mot hugg och slag eller mot andras blickar. En mask kan dölja vem man är eller skapa en annan identitet.

Ett 40-tal masker ur Nordiska museets samlingar visas. Det är skyddsmasker, fångmasker, maskeradmasker, dödsmasker och traditionsmasker gjorda av bland annat näver, koppar, järn, gips, plast och tyg. En mask är gjord av en damstrumpa med hål för ögon och mun och en maskeradmask tros ha använts av Gustav III. Den är av vinröd sammet och täckt av guldbroderier. Maskerna är från olika epoker - de tidigaste är från 1600-talet och den senaste från idag.

En mask
... kan skrämma bort onda makter.
... kan skydda mot hugg och slag eller mot andras blickar.
... kan dölja vem man är eller skapa en annan identitet.
... kan ingjuta mod att testa nya gränser.
... kan göra en person modigare och farligare än annars.
... kan ge känslan av att slippa ansvara för sina handlingar.
... kan vara ett straff.
... kan bevara minnet av en död person.”

Backlash in the society...

Commentators to the article I blogged about in the former posting "Boycott Dr Phil…" defended Dr Phil, and also a Swedish author Mia Törnblom who has written self help books in Swedish which are very popular here at present, she was also mentioned in the article I blogged about. This made me think.

One wrote that many older persons in Sweden think it is the height of the day when Dr Phil is on TV (my comment: no wonder they like these programmes? With a tired and ironic smile. Addition May 23: recognizing things they have experienced themselves and feeling comfortable with that these ideas are preached again probably. What is this form of denial called? Rationalization? Or excusing/justifying: where the person admits to the past but find rationales for what happened).

Are people (we) defending things which don’t challenge their (our) defences? They (we?) are challenged by things threatening their (our) defences? Why “older people” like Dr Phil and his programmes and his authoritarian (?) approach? Confirming the “right” thing in experiences they have endured: parent-figures (authorities) with an educating, authoritarian-who-doesn’t-allow-discussions-approach? And in fact, one of the commentators also wrote about Philip McGraw’s education, and that he uses his title, rightfully (my interpretation). She also thinks that people with a lower education are the one lying in a sofa zapping between channels on TV. Another wonders if the grudge from the author of the article comes from envy.

Here about Marie-Louise Wallin (in Swedish), she is educated teacher, so she isn’t entirely uneducated… See here too about her (also in Swedish). And she must have been working for quite a long time, as she was born 1933? Both as teacher and later as author. And even 75-year old women (with education), or did I count wrong, are apparently lying in their sofas at home zapping between TV-channels too (not only young people with low or no education)?

The whole title to her article is “Boycott Dr Phil – Marie-Louise Wallin has had enough of the self-help religion.”

In fact a leader-writer in a local newspaper here also writes about things paralleling this in a leader with the title ”Two years in each class.” He writes about the conservative thought giving the teacher in her/himself more authority, and about pupils/students and teachers as merchandise (??) on a tax-financed market at the same time as the school-world is becoming more and more segregated and jobs as teacher in some school de facto (or in practice) gets a lower status (I don't like this at all I want to add, and I don't watch Dr Phil of free will either. Maybe that has with my history to do of course. And I don't like the Nanny-programmes either. They also "fit" the trend? And I literally detest them. When I have seen them I have been forced, because I haven't been at home and had the possibility really to choose seeing them or not, being in other peoples' home).

I think the idea the leader-writer Göran Greider would support most is to value the whole idea with pedagogy more and see so headmasters can concentrate on those things (what's done in school and how) instead of those they concentrate on today (money and budgets), something he also writes about.

Our current school-minister refuses to compromise… He is quite authoritarian…

Yes, there is a neo-conservatism in the society, and a neo-authoritarianism. And when people are seen as merchandise everywhere no wonders we have problems? But what is the chicken and what is the egg? Which came first? Why are such ideas so spread today? How is it possible ideas like these, such views on human beings, get such a penetration (?) in the society?

The backlash is also shown in how little one talk about the ideas Miller stands for? And that Miller is hardly spoken about? At least not here or in the circles where I am in…

And that about pedagogy… But can there be a “pedagogy” with true, genuine respect for young people (and grown ups between too)?

Thinking loudly again, searching for something. In the middle of working.

And here Miller on self help therapy (Stettbacher's), and Miller writes quite a lot about other methods, such as positive thinking, NLP, meditation etc. I can't name them all, and now it's time for bed really!! Maybe I should blog about this too?

Something of what I have done today. :-)

Boycott Dr Phil…

A future pianist? Can anyone resist this smile? You just HAVE to smile back, don't you? From mini-concert today.

[Updated in the evening and May 20]. I would want to blog about the article ”Bojkotta Dr Phil” or “Boycott Dr Phil” later. I haven't finished my working-day yet though... See earlier postings with the label Dr Phil "Emotional Abuse as harmful as corporal punishment?" and "The pursuit of harmony.."


One of my pupils playing Für Elise.

Addition in the evening: The author of the article (in a local newspaper here) writes that she laid zapping between different TV-channels when she suddenly saw Philip McGraw.

She writes that she detests him and that she has had enough of self help books. Some years ago she wrote a review on one of his thick books and was met with opposition from both wise and stupid people in her circle of acquaintances.

“What are you complaining about?”

one said.

“Dr Phil not only gives people good advices, he also helps people for whom it has gone wrong in life practically.”

Yes, I know, she writes. But I also know that this man has made a multi billion fortune on spreading his ideas with a pretended godlike infallibility on how we in the west world (each one of us) shall become well adapted and happy [being obedient and keeping quiet?]. Dr Phil is the biggest, and the west world is abounded with self-help books and articles in newspapers in his spirit, because this is something lucrative.

Yes, certainly!

In the developing countries where people are struggling against starvation and deadly diseases advices like the ones in these books are of course meaningless.

The needs for self help seems to be enormous in our part of the world, so when I am critical to them I feel both split and confused when I try to understand why I am so angry she writes.

Yes, I think one can become…

She thinks what the self-help books are concentrating on are given truths: that one can feel sorry for human beings and that our need for comfort is limitless. In these books we shall become pupils to the authors and learn to become safer, wiser, more aware about our selves, more effective, healthy, beautiful etc. etc. Through hard inner will and thought power we shall chastise ourselves, see our flaws and improve. And in this way reach our true inner selves and find happiness.

When we admit to our limits, our guilt, then… See earlier posting on “Psychotherapy as indoctrination...”

Of course this sounds great, she writes. Ideas that permeate the west-word’s philosophy of life and more or less steer our thoughts. Thoughts the super-guru Phil is allowed to cement in our consciousnesses many times a day through million TVs as if these were in-debatable truths to follow.

She thinks it’s a pity that those books contributes to creating and adding fuel to a private-egoism, a focusing on the own self which stands in contrast to human kindness – and socialism (as she writes! Even though I am left-oriented politically, to be honest, I don't think these things HAVE to have with socialism to do I have to add :-) Even though I grew up in a middle-class family where all are well-educated and academics, and we had it fairly well materially).

Addition May 20: The power on many levels, maybe all, is (strongly) interested in dividing and ruling? Not interested in that people genuinely care about each other and truly cooperate? Caring both about themselves in a sound way and about others in a sound way too. What is a sound egoism and what is an unsound? Because of course we probably need to protect ourselves too many times! But protect ourselves effectively and constructively and not self-destructively or destructively, i.e. not harming ourselves or others - or the nature etc. But are the advices and tools we get effective for this? Miller is right: we are in denial about the true roots and causes, and the methods we use in dealing with problems are accordingly ineffective?

Yes, the results are those?

She thinks what’s wrong with those books is that they act as an intermediary in the belief that a human being can develop herself by own power (and will). But she thinks this isn’t possible, because human beings can only grow in interplay with others.

In one of these books (or actually many of them) it stands “love yourself” but life’s great gift isn’t that to love each other (and truly love), and when this happens isn't that a miracle (my addition)? She wonders if those fighting for their careers, their money, their looks and appearances, firmly, hardly encased in the importance of their own selves are the happiest.

She thinks that in those self-help books people seem to be divided in closed ME’s while "the others" serves as usable and preferably admiring objects. About the joy in deep friendship one can’t read, and nothing about goodness human beings between. The self-help human being shall counteract her negative feelings such as guilt and shame. But think of a world without these feelings, how would that world actually be?

She is however hoping that the small children still smiling at us with their teeth like grains of rice (risgrynständer) will understand in twenty years that egoism is a lonely and unhappy state, a state that has to be done something about.

She writes that between Dr Phil, the guru, and a mom a 16-year old pregnant girl was sitting on the TV crying while Dr Phil strictly told the mother that she should have given her daughter sex instructions in time!!!

After this she couldn’t see more and turned the TV off.

When I had read this article this morning and was on my way to work I threw some words down that was triggered (written with deep irony): What weakling are you? Who can’t manage your life? Not keeping things in check and control!!

Writing for a couple of hours after work. Have had three small pianists, they started playing piano a 6 year, and have played four years soon, playing in a quite big wind-orchestra this evening for the first time.

The pursuit of harmony...

I got a magazine “Amos” yesterday, as member of the Swedish church I think (a typically secularized Swede!). In it it was an article “Jakten på harmoni” (my free translation: “The Pursuit of Harmony”). There it stood that the soul is our latest project. It stood about the duty feeling well (!!! Can be used as oppression). In the article it was pictures of people training yoga...

I have meditated, trained Feldenkreis, taken massage etc. It isn't wrong in itself?? But if happiness becomes like a prescription then there is something wrong?? And can this lie in the power's interest? People smiling, happy, satisfied?

One of the last years a book by Thomas Johansson, a Swedish professor of social psychology, in (my amateur translation) “Makeover mania – about Dr Phil, plastic-surgery and the illusion of the perfect self” came. I have it and started to read it, but thought he was a little too Freud-influenced somewhere so I haven’t finished it.

But now when I am skimming it I read at page 226 (my fantastic translation again):

“The self-help industry is hardly a strong force for radical societal change or for drastic transformations in the sphere of intimacy. The outlook and perceptions which are presented rather have as goal to stabilise, preserve and defend the prevailing order. Possibly one could see the self help industry as an institution whose aim is to uphold the societal norms, defending and making clear a certain moralistic order. The advices and instructions we get are often about keeping the family together, strengthening the marriage, maintaining inequal relations, achieving/performing [be clever!! Which also can be forbidden, at least for some! You shall but you shall not, double-bind. The extremely trouble-making perfectionism!?], praising success [and the less successful can draw something over them, if they have little or maybe even no success when it comes to recovery too!?? Are treated with contempt for weakness even by so called enlightened, even if they don' harm any other person!? What is that? Bullying?] and caring about our health.”

Confusing? You shall, but you shall not!?

Johansson is VERY critical to Dr Phil…

In the end of the article in Amos a psycho therapist (CBT) was interviewed. She says that all emotions/feelings are needed for us to be/feel safe/secure. Many are trying to change their person with the help of coaches and therapists, but noone can make oneself a new soul. This therapist is warning people for all traps those who are seeking a more harmonic life can meet.

-Now there are coaches for everything,

she says. And that's really true!

And she thinks (which is true), when you are in psychic imbalance you are even more easily fooled…

Harmony isn’t about permanent luck (but this can be misused too by the environment). But it’s a big difference to being permanently unhappy.

What I thought was interesting was the last paragraph in the whole article saying something in the style:

-Is it our duty to be happy?

-No. But self help books tell people that it is dangerous feeling bad. But we need ALL our feelings. The negative too, as shame [do we need shame??], guilt and fear to be able to protect ourselves.

A healed, recovered person won’t be happy all the time, because life isn’t like that? But a healed, recovered (or not hurt) person handle difficulties life always will contain better, more constructively, not hurting neither herself NOR others?

A good helper/therapist helps her/his client finding her/his own way? Without prescriptions or following a hand-book? And a good helper need to be very self-aware for not projecting her/his own things on the other person?

And once again, I think Miller is right (my translation):

If one uncritically cling to old methods' alleged infallibility (and she includes regressive techniques here AND primal therapy) and blames the client for failures, you inevitably land in the same fairways (waters) as the sect-guru, who also promises entire liberation. Such promises only produce self-destructive dependence which stands in the way for the individual’s liberation.

Addition: see this blog about the book mentioned above (both in Swedish and English).

Five cute girls (in our grade three, thus they are 9, or turning 10?) had concert for me today!! Yesterday evening one of my pupils phoned and said:

-When can you come? -???

At first I didn't know what she meant and probably looked like a question-mark!! :-) I was watching TV, about a problematic dog, and I was rather interested in seeing how they handled the cocker spaniel, so I was really in another world answering the phone at the TV.

When I had the last lesson with her on Monday she said she was going to play with four classmates who plays clarinet, a piece that is in her book too, in C major, on Thursday (which means today). She should thus learn this accompaniment in three days only.

-Hmmm,

I said,

then I have to learn you two variants of this piece! For sure.

Because I wasn't sure in what key they played, and tried (hard) to remember how I should transpose it. "Was it up or was it down??" My pupil was quite sure they had said that they played "c, c, c..." in the beginning.

Today they should play it for their class she said. I wondered at what time, and said to her mother that she could maybe send a text-message on my mobile to inform me. But my pupil phoned instead, radically.

When I had time going and listening to them they had already played for their class, so they had a private, extra concert for ME!!! Wow!! Not bad! :-) (And I had transposed the piece right! And x played the bass-notes in the chords, in b-flat, in both hands). Watch their hats!!

And watch some really hungry music-teachers in this slide-show too!! Ice-cream eating on the photos, after a LATE Easter-lunch, with inlagd sill (herring - again, but not fermented this time!! :-) Thank god!??) in four forms/shapes, cooked potatoes, meat-balls and knäckebröd with butter and hard cheese. But no vegetables!! I would have liked AT LEAST tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce (??), but also carrots to the herring!! :-)