We Are Not Broken: The Intersection Between Psychotherapy and the Dharma
Lately I have found myself at the intersection of psychotherapy and the dharma (I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, so I don’t tend to call the concepts herein “Buddhism”). The insights from both schools of thought help me live a more balanced, fulfilled, and present life.
The dharma contains the concept of emptiness, which doesn’t mean nothingness. In fact, it is said that emptiness is the source from which everything arises. Put another way, form and emptiness co-arise, therefore one cannot exist without the other. A famous psychotherapist (Winnicott) described emptiness as fear of breakdown; this is very familiar territory for anybody who feels a sense of abandonment from early caregiving, also known as attachment wounds or developmental trauma. When we human beings encounter this emptiness, it can propel us forward in wanting a better life.
Sometimes, we get a little lost along the way. That’s where the introspection of therapy or meditation can be helpful. If the trauma is deep enough, having contact with another human being can be critical as we lean into the discomfort of facing the ways our needs were unmet (especially in early childhood). I have never met anyone who doesn’t have frozen needs (read more about frozen needs here). Frozen needs form when a developmental need is not met during a critical period of brain growth. It becomes difficult for the brain to notice that the adult version of those same needs may be met through mature agency (or even may already be met in adulthood), because the feeling of early deprivation interferes with their ability to notice their current situation.
Recently, I came up against some frozen needs of my own. When I was a toddler, I was already the oldest of three children. Like most mothers of her time, my mother didn’t have enough adult help to manage three children under the age of three years old. She reached out to the nearest available human for co-regulation and practical support: two-year-old me. As a young child, it seemed like my own survival was contingent upon my ability to be helpful to my mother.
Even in adulthood, I often felt that I was in danger, worthless, or deficient if I was unable to be helpful to others. As I tackled these feelings in sessions with peer counselors, I realized I was trying to prove I was good enough in the present by being supportive to community mates, to my clients, and to the larger world. While that is an adaptive strategy, the feelings of “not being good enough” actually originated in that early childhood experience, and could not be resolved in the present, regardless of how “good” I can currently be. I began to realize how much this significant early event in my childhood had colored so much of my life.
I have long believed that our strengths and our distress patterns are two sides of the same flag. I am a therapist who knows how to hold space for people to understand themselves in a way that helps them have more of the life they want. I am frequently told by humans who love me that I help people be more comfortable when they are having feelings. I know how to read the room and reach out to someone who needs a little extra attention. This superpower originates from closely watching my mother as she parented me and my siblings so that I could do my absolute best to help her and alleviate her suffering. Of course, I often failed to sufficiently support her; I was a toddler.
I want to say a little bit about blame as a step toward self actualization. Often, I have clients who blame their parents or at least have a sense of “why me?” This is a necessary stage of development, similar to the natural self-involvement of young children who are literally unable to realize that other people have needs as well. However, people who stay in the blame stage are trapped in an inability to recognize and accept the reality that parents (usually mothers) have their own needs, and are fallible (and forgivable) humans.
Who among us got everything we wanted and needed as children? Even if we had a “good enough mother” (Winnicott again), there are necessary lapses in us getting our needs met when we are children. As adults, we will continue to encounter lapses in getting our needs met. This is part of life.
If we study the dharma, we are invited to consider that this all-important self, this self that is not getting their needs met, does not exist in any kind of objective way. Only enlightened beings can actually live in objective or absolute reality. I have found it useful to point myself to this truth and question why it’s so important that I be seen, that my needs be met, that I am embraced just the way I want to be at all times, or even most of the time. Under this line of questioning, I usually find that most of my needs are being met and that nothing catastrophic is happening to me in the present moment.
In psychotherapy, when we notice that some of our needs were not met in childhood, it is tempting to assign that as the cause of emotional illness. The dharma invites us to consider that such experiences are a necessary and universal aspect of being human.
Mindful awareness can show us that the self is not a thing we can identify, point to, or rely on: it is always relational, always dependent on a myriad of circumstances both material and psychological, and always in the context of the broad brushstrokes of culture, including capitalism and patriarchy. The dharma also invites us to consider that the many ways we try to defend and bolster up our ego (e.g.: our right to get our needs met) only make things worse.
I have come to understand that blame, in and of itself, will not ever get me where I want to go. It can only be helpful as a stepping stone. When I allow the blame to be temporary, I still suffer the futility of the contrast between my ideals and the reality I experience. However, this pain becomes a precursor to attaining what I actually need. As the wave of blame subsides, the next wave includes seeing where my part in it is. I then have more agency as to where I want to point this one and precious life, where I can best leverage my action for my own liberation, and for the liberation of all.