Plass / Cofield Relational Soul

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9651-6
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 189 Seiten

What does loneliness tell us?'Be it chronic or acute, slight or significant, loneliness is proof of our relational design. At the core of our being is this truth-we are designed for and defined by our relationships,' former pastors Plass and Cofield write. 'We were born with a relentless longing to participate in the lives of others. Fundamentally, we are relational souls.'Our ability to make deep and emotionally satisfying connections rests on the capacity to trust, and we all know trust can be difficult. Early-life relational 'programming' and patterns of attachment can serve as blueprints for relationships later in life, whether good or bad. But no matter our conditioning, God is out to reclaim and restructure the deepest terrain of the human soul by helping us shed our reactive 'False Self' and put on our receptive 'True Self.' Through spiritual disciplines and a conscious participation in the love of the Father, Son and Spirit, we transform our self-awareness and our connection with other people.Authored by counselor Dr. Richard Plass and spiritual director James Cofield, The Relational Soul brings together concepts from psychology and spiritual formation. Each chapter includes introductory stories and practical 'If this is true, what about you?' questions to help readers engage in relationships in more life-giving ways. When the presence of Christ and community connects with a soul that is open, we witness the miracle of transformation.

Dr. Richard Plass is president of CrossPoint Ministry in Jeffersonville, Indiana, a ministry designed to cultivate spiritual formation in the lives of leaders. After serving in pastoral ministry for twenty-five years, he obtained a PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in counseling.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Plass, Richard

Cofield, James

Leseproben

2

Attachment

Learning to Relate Starts Early in Life

Chad and Elaine had been married for eighteen years. Even though they had a lot going for them, they felt they had reached a plateau. Elaine felt their relationship was stale because they weren’t spending enough time together. Chad agreed that he and Elaine weren’t close, but he didn’t know what they could do about it. Busy with two teenagers and a “surprise” who was beginning kindergarten, their days were full. Chad was an executive in a national firm, and Elaine’s work kept her away from home many nights.

Elaine summarized things this way: “After eighteen years I thought we would be closer and in a different place emotionally. But we just have a routine with our kids and friends. We are stuck.” Chad’s take was that Elaine was never satisfied, always wanted something more and complained too much. Yes, he wanted to be closer, but this was about as good as things could be in light of their demanding jobs, the care of their kids and their involvement in their church and community.

Their emotional frustration led to a typical relational pattern. Elaine would reach a threshold and express the frustration of her loneliness to Chad. He would nod, say something about how he wanted more but that everyone was busy. Then he would withdraw. Eighteen years of this relational dance had turned Elaine’s frustration into anger and resentment. “For years I’ve reached out to him. He listens, but nothing changes. He does things for everyone else but doesn’t really reach out to me. I can’t live like this any more.” She wanted out. Chad was sad. “I try to connect more with her but don’t know how. I think she’s too idealistic. I love her, but she wants more than I can give.”

The Early and Enduring Connection Center

Chad and Elaine loved God, their kids and each other as best they knew how. They were serving in their church. Neither was emotionally involved with someone outside the marriage. But for both something big was missing. It was the ability to connect deeply at an emotional level in a sustained way. The trouble was that neither knew how to change. Both sensed that their full schedule wasn’t the real reason for their distance. Something deep inside seemed to keep them from what they longed for with each other. Elaine would pursue Chad out of desperation. Chad would try to respond positively but then would emotionally withdraw even when he really didn’t want to do so.

What was happening? As you might guess, their early memories of life help provide the answer. Elaine’s parents were good people but inconsistent in their care. Sometimes they made her feel special and other times they were very much emotionally unavailable. She had always been a good girl and tried to do whatever she could to keep the affection that seemed to come and go. Chad’s parents seemed distant to him. Because of their divorce when he was very young, they were preoccupied with their own lives. He had learned to make it on his own without their emotional involvement in his life.

Learning to relate starts at least as early as the day we are born (and probably in the womb). Our way of entering into and maintaining our relationships (not just marriage) is one of the earliest psychological structures formed in us. We come into the world neurologically wired to make connections, to attach to others. When our early connections are healthy, we will find it easier to connect well as adults. To the extent our emotional attachment with our primary caregivers is lacking while we are children, we will find our relational capacity limited as adults.

It is virtually impossible to overstate the significance of our learned relational attachment system in the early years and its profound influence on our relational experience as adults. . This was the lesson Chad and Elaine began to learn.

We are able to attach to others because our souls are relational permeable. God designed us to absorb the presence of others, especially when we are young. Two primitive instincts are in service of the infant’s attachment design. First is the sucking instinct. It fosters a bond with the mother whereby the child absorbs both the physical and emotional needs of the young soul. Second is the instinctual search for the gaze of another’s eyes. Looking for and locking on to the eyes of another also fosters a bond. These instincts build the neural network that compels the infant’s connection with others.

The attachment system is so significant and comprehensive that it literally organizes and influences the development of other critical neurological systems in the body. Our feelings, will and memory come under its domain in the first months of life. When our cognition comes online later, it will also be under the influence of our attachment system. In other words, the attachment network compels us connect with others, and it eventually controls we connect with others.

Four Relational Patterns

In the 1970s John Bowlby pioneered the study of early attachment. Since then there has been a great deal of research that has identified four basic patterns of attaching: avoidant, ambivalent, scattered and stable. All of us learn one of these basic patterns early in life, and it becomes the way we tend to engage relationally throughout our lives. How we learn to relate in childhood will influence how we relate as an adult—unless or until the adult makes an intentional, hard-fought shift.

Before looking at each of the four patterns, we need to highlight one crucial reality. . Trust is born and nurtured in the infant through the consistent and reliable care of the primary caregivers. Trust is the critical, nonnegotiable element required for learning to attach well. Mistrust interrupts the growth of the healthy giving and receiving necessary for appropriate relational connection. Simply put, without the ability to trust oneself and others well, intimacy is blocked. Notice how the capacity to trust plays out in the four patterns.

Avoidant attachment pattern. When the primary caregivers are consistently , a child learns to avoid trusting others. The learning is not conscious, but it is profound. When mom or dad routinely fails to show up emotionally, a child experiences the pain of anxiety. Over time the child learns to defend against the pain by avoiding others emotionally. He unconsciously begins to feel it is better to be distant than disappointed.

A person with an pattern of engaging and connecting keeps a certain distance in even the closest of adult relationships. There is a basic and underlying distrust of others because they probably will not show up when most needed. A person does not become too dependent lest he (or she) suffer again the anxiety and frustration of others not being emotionally present. If an individual doesn’t open his soul deeply to another, then he cannot be deeply hurt by another. He can only trust himself.

This is the attachment pattern Chad learned. His capacity for intimacy was inhibited because intimacy requires the capacity to trust one’s heart to another. Chad wanted but struggled mightily to do so. His way of relating, which he learned early in childhood, would have to change if he was going to be deeply available to Elaine.

But something even more profound began to occur to Chad. It slowly dawned on him that his pattern of relating to Elaine was his pattern of relating to God. Yes, he was committed to God like he was committed to Elaine. He covered the functional bases of going to church and serving his family and others. But in both his relationship with Elaine with God something was missing. Chad stumbled onto the principle that governs all our relationships—. Or to quote the apostle John, “If we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?” (1 John 4:20).

Ambivalent attachment pattern. When the primary caregivers are consistently , a child learns to avoid trusting herself (or himself). When there seems to be no reason for mom’s or dad’s erratic emotional availability, even though they may be consistently present, the child has no other choice than to assume the changes in the parents are due to a major flaw in her soul. She learns to trust others but doesn’t learn to trust herself.

When a child’s attachment need is provoked but not satisfied deeply because the parent’s presence proves unreliable, she typically becomes clingy and dependent. She doesn’t want to risk losing affection and approval. The loss would only prove her to be untrustworthy. Thus she becomes externally focused, desperately looking for someone to attach to who will consistently be emotionally available.

As a person grows into adulthood there will always be an exaggerated yearning for something more from others. There is an ill-defined sense of self and thus an overdependency on others for a sense of identity. Naturally, intimacy is diminished because true intimacy requires two individual persons, not one person psychologically making up for the other’s deficiency. A person has to have a basic level of trust in oneself to...