Chapter IX

Chapter IX
Hot Spots and Trigger Words

    Robert S. McGee states that our constant desire to be loved and accepted is the symptom of deeper needs that will often determine our behaviors and can be the primary source of our emotional pain. That desire is our own need for self-worth.

    As I was studying in Search for Significance I found a list of words and phrases that paralleled my own life. I wrote out these parallel words and phrases and added notes of my own feelings as I wrote. I believe we all need to do this as we search into ourselves and what brought us to where we are. The words and phrases are in bold.

    Most of the statements that I made were answered in the present tense, as I viewed them at that time. I saw them and understood then I was able to speak of them in the past tense. I again in this chapter have left my original notes intact so that you might follow my recovery step by step.

    In the following pages I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned when I joined a class and was introduced to the book Search for Significance by Robert S. McGee. I will be reviewing his work with his name in each case. Robert S. McGee states that we humans develop fancy ways to block out our pain and to gain significance. We are perfectionists who suppress our painful emotions, then drive ourselves to succeed. We say harmful and hurtful things to people who hurt us, then we punish ourselves for lashing out at others.

    I have never spoken unkindly to either of my parents, but I have retaliated with cutting remarks to my former wife Julie and to My Lady and her children to the point of behaving like a child after enduring their rejection and cutting remarks. I have pushed and driven myself in countless business ventures over the years only to see one after another fail. Sometimes self destruct, sometimes Julie my wife of twenty-three years destruct, but I always whipped myself and lashed out at others. Robert S. McGee states that we do our best to make clever statements so that people will accept us. I listened to sales tapes, motivational tapes, read book after book until they were ingrained in my mind. This is why when Pastor Wayne at our first meeting asked me to pray, I told him no.   I said, I know all the right words to say, I whipped off a prayer like I would have if asked to pray in church.   I told him that right now my prayers are short one-minute prayers because I do not want to use flowery words, not even to God. Robert S. McGee states that we help people so we will be appreciated. I have always been the last one out of church suppers, and social functions so that I could help clean up. I will probably continue to do this, but only because it needs to be done. The things I did for my children and others was because I loved them and really did love to please and make them happy.

    Robert S. McGee states in Search for Significance that anyone who lives only for the love of others affection will only be momentarily satisfied. In spite of our efforts to please we will never find lasting fulfilling self significance, if we feel we must always prove ourselves to others.

    I might add; if after trying everything in our power to please someone they in turn put a condition on their love they will be using their love as a controlling tool. If used to get what they want from us before we will be accepted. It is a shout, loud and clear we are unacceptable. Now since we have not only been programmed that we may fail, but that if we do we will lose the love of the one we love and be rejected, what hope do we have? The price is too great. It is totally unobtainable. The statements: ( If you loved me you would......................................! ), ( If you loved me you wouldn’t.......................................................! ), are as binding as any chains that could be put on anyone.

    I made daily lists and studied many tapes on time management. If everything or a lot got accomplished I felt great but if someone screwed up my schedule or things happened I could and would sometimes lash out in destructive anger. I felt fulfilled if I was using my time effectively, but always strove to accomplish more. When I did have stress I would only try harder. I rarely was able to relax and enjoy life and my mind was constantly thinking of things I had to do. I carried 3x5 cards in my pocket in case an idea came to me so that I could write it down so I would remember to enter it into my day-timer later. I was constantly striving to accomplish something. My family and my relationship suffered because I was always striving to reach goals. A lot of anger was lashed at loved ones for dashing my goals. There were times when I had a legitimate right to be angry, but most of the time I was in the wrong. The anger in me for failing one more time would be displaced. When you look at situations with blinders on it is hard to see objectively. When I felt that it was hopeless I would regress, put up my day-timer (book of lists and goals) and try to figure out how to justify or how to get my ideas through another way. In a week or two at the most I would just get up and go again.

    High on my list from a list of statements written in Search for Significance, Robert S. McGee states that I need to evaluate myself with their test, which included some of the following statements:

* I experience failure in many important areas of my life.
* I worry.
* I have had unexplained anxiety.
* I am a person compelled to justify my mistakes.
* Many areas exist in which I feel I must succeed.
* I become depressed when I do fail.
* I become angry with people who interfere with my attempts at succeeding and, as a result, make me appear incompetent and dumb.
* I am very self critical.

    The above test had to be answered with numbers as to where they fit into my life. The number one was for the word always through to seven for the word never. The scoring from the questions above gave me the answer as to where I was as stated by Robert S. McGee. All of the above statements were answered, always.

    Experiences of failure dominate your memory. They have caused you to be depressed a great deal, you need to experience a deep healing in your self concept and in you relationship with God, and your relationships with others in your life.

    Anxiety and fear of failure often caused me to condemn myself while causing others to disapprove of me, thereby causing a severe blow to my self-worth, which was based on personal success and approval. If my failures are great enough or occur often enough, it can harden into a negative self concept in which I expected to fail at almost everything I try. This negative self concept goes on continually and leads to a downward spiral of anxiety about my performance and fear of disapproval from others.

    To gain my father’s approval I told him what he liked to hear, exaggerated the truth, and worked hard to be a success.

Avoiding People
Many people react to their fear of rejection by avoiding people or hiding from places where they will feel they may receive rejection, thereby avoiding any risk of the feeling of being rejected. Some people avoid others overtly and spend most of their lives alone, thereby hiding what they feel may be the cause of their rejection. Many people deal with their fear by having numerous shallow relationships, but keeping them surface relationships only. (I feel this fits me to a tee. I have had only two close friends and still hid my secret from them. The only person I ever opened up to was My Lady, who I told several hidden secrets to. When I was rejected by her it was the worst blow of rejection I have ever felt in my life. This was before she knew of my fall.) Most of these people who keep their relationships only shallow may actually spend most of their waking hours in the company of people and be considered socially skilled. They may know well how to make friends easily and seem gregarious but their friendships (like my own) never are deep ones. Their friends never really get to know them because these people (like myself) hide behind a wall of words, false faces, smiles, and activities. These people are usually quite lonely in the midst of all their so called >friends.

Inability to Give and Receive Love

One result of my fear of rejection is that I became unable to give and receive love. I have always found it difficult to open up to reveal my inner thoughts and needs because I felt others would reject me if they knew what I was really like.

* I spend time trying to determine what people think of me all too often.

    The statement that fit the scoring from the statements I checked above by Robert S. McGee states that the fear of rejection forms a general backdrop throughout my life. Probably few days go by in which this fear does not in some way affect me.

    In yet another test in Search for Significance I was asked to check with an a _ all the phrases that pertained to me from a list of statements. I included the statements that I checked of the ways fear and rejection affected me most.
_Inability to give and receive love.
_Susceptible to manipulation.
_Needed to be in control of all situations.
_Defensiveness.

    I checked defensiveness three times signifying to a greater degree of how I am. We crave love, fellowship, friendship and intimacy and we turn to others to meet those needs. I now understand that was what I did as a young boy. I learned that people who are hurting are more likely to accept love to fulfill their own needs to ease their feeling of rejection. The fallacy of this is, only God accepts, loves and appreciates us unconditionally.
     Susceptibility to Manipulation

    Those who truly believe their self-worth is based on other’s approval will likely do just about anything to please or to keep the approval of those who are continuing to control them. They believe that they will be liked (and continue to be accepted by those who are controlling them) if they comply with their requests. Many of them end up despising and hating those who manipulate (or try to manipulate) and resent what they feel they have to do for their approval.   The crying for attention, the running out the door, throwing oneself in the grass, running into the bedroom and slamming the door worked for a long time for my first wife, but then it just began to disgust me. The bargaining to get something you want, the if you loved me you would do such and such, repulsed me. My answer was always the same, I love you, don’t measure my love by what you want.   It took years for me to see it. I can now see change or else as also a manipulation to the max.

Anger, Resentment, Hostility
    Anger usually is the most common response to rejection.   I could not show any anger to my father in fact I really don’t ever remember being angry with my Dad when I was young, even when he told me my tree house looked like a shit house, I believed him, my father never lied) or our response to our fear of rejection. I spent years building a case against my first wife in answer to her allegations and to justify myself after she left me. I had saved notes and letters for years to expose her faults to prove how wrong she was only to turn full circle to prove who I was. I was the seventh plant from the sun.

    McGee states we may vent out anger in a destructive explosion. Or we may use sarcasm to express our anger in a more indirect way (this is what I did with Julie for years and I was very good at it with cuts to the quick. I did not do this with My Lady. It was revealed to me in a study group Search for Significance with God’s help I changed before I married My Lady).

    In Search for Significance McGee states that: Defensiveness, my fear of rejection had caused me to run from any type of confrontation. But I have, over the past three years become more willing to look at myself. I began to join class after class. I wanted to look, I wanted to change. I just still had not found the root until I have been able to deal with all areas of my life. Including what was behind the false face.

    In Search for Significance Robert S. McGee states that there are: