Ok, it's image week on my blog. I'm going to be away over the coming weekend and not able to get on my blog. So, for some reason I thought it'd be a fun idea to give you a bunch of images this week to ponder while I'm gone. Here's the first one:
We'll call this one the "fish bowl" image. It came about when I was trying to explain to someone how the perspectives, feelings and beliefs she gained when she was growing up remained her "default settings" now even if she didn't find them useful at this point in her life and even if they were inaccurate or damaging to her.
I had her imagine that her family of origin was a fish bowl, a self-contained aquarium that housed her immediately family. Each family has their own fish bowl, and as many, many fish bowls live side-by-side in communities as there are families.
Each fish bowl has a particular water temperature, acid/base ratio, selection of plants/no plants or other decorations. Ideally, these things are well enough suited to the family the bowl houses that each member of the family thrives and develops.
During the first few years of our lives our primary exposure is to our own family fish bowl. We may, as a family, go visit another fish bowl, but for the most part, as children, we live and breathe our family's bowl.
The water temperature, the acid/base ratio, the plants etc... what we live, breathe, see, experience, is what we believe the entire world is about. We believe everyone's fish bowl is just like ours.
It's only as we grow older and start venturing out into the world more (pre-school, play-dates, kindergarten, elementary school...) that we begin to realize that each family has their own, unique fish bowl.
Uniqueness isn't a problem at all. And it can be very good for us to be exposed to a variety of fish bowls over time. In fact, this is one of the things that makes life interesting.
It is, however, a problem when our initial fish bowl has too much acid, if the water is stagnant or polluted, or if the water doesn't have enough oxygen. Human beings are extremely resilient and adaptable. We can adjust to myriad situations and survive, even survive well (though not always without cost to us).
An aspect of recovery is assessing our initial fish bowl so we can get a sense of where our perspectives originated. It's only in doing so that we can make choices about what we want in our current fish bowl. If we don't assess this, or if we don't assess it honestly, we typically end up with a current fish bowl that's an exact replica of what we grew up with (or in some cases, the antithesis- because we are consciously or unconsciously "rebelling" against what we first learned- and this often turns out to be problematic because we are doing it as a reaction, not necessarily as a thought-out, conscious decision about what we want for our lives).
There are a couple of reasons I really like this image. For one thing, it clearly illustrates how immersed we all are in our family or origin, how we literally live and breathe the culture of that family. For another, it shows how essentially private fish bowls are. Many of my clients have come from families that look just terrific to the general public, but in fact, have one degree or another of difficulty. Even if a fish bowl lives right next door we don't always have a true sense of what it's really like (for instance, water temperature, unless it is very, very extreme one way or another, can't be detected by driving by and looking at a fish bowl, right?).
So, there's the first image of the week. I'll have a different one for you tomorrow!
Ok, it's image week on my blog. I'm going to be away over the coming weekend and not able to get on my blog. So, for some reason I thought it'd be a fun idea to give you a bunch of images this week to ponder while I'm gone. Here's the first one:
We'll call this one the "fish bowl" image. It came about when I was trying to explain to someone how the perspectives, feelings and beliefs she gained when she was growing up remained her "default settings" now even if she didn't find them useful at this point in her life and even if they were inaccurate or damaging to her.
I had her imagine that her family of origin was a fish bowl, a self-contained aquarium that housed her immediately family. Each family has their own fish bowl, and as many, many fish bowls live side-by-side in communities as there are families.
Each fish bowl has a particular water temperature, acid/base ratio, selection of plants/no plants or other decorations. Ideally, these things are well enough suited to the family the bowl houses that each member of the family thrives and develops.
During the first few years of our lives our primary exposure is to our own family fish bowl. We may, as a family, go visit another fish bowl, but for the most part, as children, we live and breathe our family's bowl.
The water temperature, the acid/base ratio, the plants etc... what we live, breathe, see, experience, is what we believe the entire world is about. We believe everyone's fish bowl is just like ours.
It's only as we grow older and start venturing out into the world more (pre-school, play-dates, kindergarten, elementary school...) that we begin to realize that each family has their own, unique fish bowl.
Uniqueness isn't a problem at all. And it can be very good for us to be exposed to a variety of fish bowls over time. In fact, this is one of the things that makes life interesting.
It is, however, a problem when our initial fish bowl has too much acid, if the water is stagnant or polluted, or if the water doesn't have enough oxygen. Human beings are extremely resilient and adaptable. We can adjust to myriad situations and survive, even survive well (though not always without cost to us).
An aspect of recovery is assessing our initial fish bowl so we can get a sense of where our perspectives originated. It's only in doing so that we can make choices about what we want in our current fish bowl. If we don't assess this, or if we don't assess it honestly, we typically end up with a current fish bowl that's an exact replica of what we grew up with (or in some cases, the antithesis- because we are consciously or unconsciously "rebelling" against what we first learned- and this often turns out to be problematic because we are doing it as a reaction, not necessarily as a thought-out, conscious decision about what we want for our lives).
There are a couple of reasons I really like this image. For one thing, it clearly illustrates how immersed we all are in our family or origin, how we literally live and breathe the culture of that family. For another, it shows how essentially private fish bowls are. Many of my clients have come from families that look just terrific to the general public, but in fact, have one degree or another of difficulty. Even if a fish bowl lives right next door we don't always have a true sense of what it's really like (for instance, water temperature, unless it is very, very extreme one way or another, can't be detected by driving by and looking at a fish bowl, right?).
So, there's the first image of the week. I'll have a different one for you tomorrow!