Psyche & Soul 9 - LIVING WITH MEANING AND PURPOSE

 Podcast Link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-9-Psyche--Soul---LIVING-WITH-MEANING-AND-PURPOSE-25-eip7u8

“I don’t find any meaning in my life. I wonder why I am living like this. Just dragging myself on from day to day. Sometime I wish I were dead” so said the 28-year old Sunita during a personal meeting with me at a seminar.

Sunita is not the only one who feels this way. There are many like her who find it difficult to experience a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Quite a few of these persons gradually sink into clinical depression and sometimes think of ending their life and even attempt to do so. This is very much true during these days of the Covid-19 lockdown, when things that gave meaning to one’s life may no longer be available.

 

Recent research on health and happiness show that a sense of meaning in life is one of the major contributors to emotional and physical wellbeing. Emotionally healthy persons find life a meaningful adventure. They have something that gives meaning and significance to their life, such as an ideology, a dream, a commitment. According to the pioneering personality psychologist, Gordon Allport, “one of the key challenges to maturity is to invest daily life with meaning—to find or create opportunities to make our lives matter”

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist who has researched happiness and wellbeing for over 25 years observes in her book “The How of Happiness” that having goals in and of themselves is strongly associated with health and happiness. Persons working toward a personally significant goal are far happier than those who do not have such dreams or aspirations. Having goals gives us a feeling of control over our lives and bolsters our self-esteem. It directly influences our physical and mental health. 

When we do not find purpose and meaningfulness, we become vulnerable to the onslaughts of ill-health, both physical and mental. However, when we have these, we can triumph over any tragedy. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the horrors of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, has built up a whole philosophy around meaningfulness. What helped him to escape alive from Auschwitz, while almost all of his fellow inmates perished, was a dream he cherished: his determination to be with his wife again. While the others lost hope, his dream sustained him and enabled him to survive. A central message in his later writings is a quote from Nietzsche” “If you have a WHY to live for, you can live any HOW.” In other words, if we have meaning and purpose, something to live for, then we will face and triumph over any adversity. As the popular song “The Impossible Dream” from the musical “Man of La Mancha” says it: we can “march through hell for a heavenly cause.”  

Trauma and tragedy are part of the human condition. Those who have something to live for will find it much easier to triumph over these. They will be able not only to makes sense of these, but also create something beautiful out of them. Great artists were able to triumph over the tragedies that befell them, because their passion for their art sustained them. These artists have created some of their most appreciated masterpieces in the midst of great suffering. There is, for example, great poignancy and sensitivity in Beethoven’s String Quartets composed during the years of intense pain and anguish.

One research on bereaved parents found that one of the processes that helped parents whose children were murdered to heal from their trauma was making sense of the tragedy that had befallen them. Creating meaning out of the tragedy was for them a transformational experience. Many of these parents would go on to set up foundations in memory of their loved ones that would benefit a large number of parents who have lost a son or daughter, as well as society at large. This reaching out was one way they were able restore meaning and purpose that had been destroyed by the tragic event.

According to personality psychologist Dan McAdams, two dynamics contribute significantly to finding meaning and purpose, especially after misfortune: a) transform or redeem bad events into good outcomes, and (b) set goals for the future that benefit society.

Reaching out to others, making others’ lives significant is one of the major ways that we can bring meaningfulness into our own lives. This is something that we can do even during these days of the Covid lockdown.

We could now take a few moments to ask ourselves: What gives meaning and purpose to my life? ….. If I am experiencing meaninglessness at this time, what is it I can do to create meaning and purpose?

There is a scene in the Gospel of John at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry where two disciples of John the Baptist are walking behind Jesus. After a while, Jesus turns back toward them and asks them: “What do you want?” That is a question that each of us needs to answer from time to time. We could now imagine that scene, place ourselves in the place of the disciples and tell Jesus what we are looking for. We could listen to what he tells us in response and spend a few minutes in his company.

 …… Have a pleasant weekend. Be well. Be safe. Be blessed.

Jose Parappully PhD

Pictures: Courtesy Google Images

Psyche & 5: Need for Empathic and Admirable People Around

Psyche & Soul – 5: WE NEED EMPATHIC AND ADMIRABLE PEOPLE AROUND US

You can listen to the podcast of this post at:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-5-Psyche--Soul---We-need-empathic-and-admirable-people-around-us-17-ehfvpk

Hello, This is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre, Jeolikote, with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

This weekend, we shall reflect on our need to have around us empathic and caring people who mirror our grandiosity, whom we can idealize and to whom we feel connected, in order for us to grow up and remain healthy and happy.

I invite you to imagine the following.

Jyoti is 11 months old – the time when her parents are eager to see her take her first steps. One day her mother takes Baby Jyoti outside into the courtyard, puts her down on the grass, holds her by the hand and coaxes her to take a step or two forward. Jyoti obliges, and holding on to her mother’s outstretched fingers takes a few steps. She then leaves the mother’s hand and takes a few more wobbling steps forward – on her own – as the mother watches proudly with delight. Baby Jyoti then stops and looks back at her mother. She sees her mother’s eyes lit up as her baby girl walks for the first time on her own.

Why was Baby Jyoti looking back? She did that to see if her mother had recognized her great achievement. Fortunately for her, the mother did recognize it and affirmed it, as she beamed back at her, sharing in Jyoti’s excitement.

What Baby Jyoti just experienced is “mirroring” – an experience necessary for healthy emotional development according to Self Psychology, another major contemporary psychological theory.

Mirroring is someone who matters to us holding up a metaphorical mirror in which we can see our “grandiosity” – our feeling of being great, capable, wonderful, beautiful, etc. reflected back to us in the way they respond to us.

Self Psychology, founded by Heinz Kohut, holds that we need frequent mirroring experiences to develop a strong, healthy sense of self – what Kohut calls a “cohesive self.”

Mirroring alone is not sufficient to develop a healthy, cohesive self. We also need people around us to whom we can look up in admiration and feel connected to and count on to provide strength, comfort and assurance. In the language of Self Psychology this is the need for “idealization.” When we have such people around us, we feel stronger and more confident and develop a positive self-image.

Such idealizing experiences helps us, especially as a developing child, to feel vicariously more powerful and more resourceful. It is as if we walk proudly in the shadow of the admired other. Gradually the qualities admired in the idealized other become internalized and strengthen our sense of self.

In Self Psychology these mirroring and idealizing experiences are known as “Selfobject” experiences, that is, self-other experiences. These self-object experiences evoke, maintain and give cohesion and strength to our self. They make us feel stronger, more confident and help us develop self-esteem, so necessary to interact in healthy ways with others.

Missing or faulty selfobject experiences lead to what Self Psychology calls “narcissistic injury”– a great sense of hurt and disappointment, resulting in an experience of fragmentation and emptiness which weaken our sense of self.

Imagine what Baby Jyoti in the example given would feel if the mother were not to notice her great achievement, or indicate some delight in it, if she noticed. Something would have collapsed within Jyoti, fragmenting her emerging sense of self.

Such fragmentation, when experienced frequently, weakens our sense of self, affecting our healthy development and undermining our capacity for healthy relationships. Our self remains weak, fragile, and fragmented. Our inter-personal relations and our professional effectiveness get negatively affected. We would lack the confidence needed to reach out to others in love and when we do, it leads to conflicts and heartaches.

So, to grow with the self-esteem and self-confidence necessary to relate in healthy ways we require mirroring and idealizing self-object experiences in childhood and it is very important that those around us do not cause in us narcissistic injuries. When narcissistic injuries do happen, it is important that caregivers help heal them through empathic responsiveness.

…..

Take a moment to allow experiences of gratifying mirroring and idealization experiences, as well as memories of narcissistic injuries to come into awareness and stay with the feelings these evoke in you.

……

No matter how we might have missed mirroring and idealizing persons around us, we know that we have a God who mirrors our grandiosity and is the kind of person we can idealize. We are “God’s Beloved Sons & Daughters!” We can always glow in the warmth of God’s unconditional love for us.

When we experience a narcissistic injury this compassionate God reaches out to heal us. Through the Prophet Isaiah God tells his people: “as one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you” (66, 13). The psalmist says of God: “He heals the broken hearted, and binds up all their wounds” (147, 3)

This comforting and healing God is with us in the here and now. We could now approach this God with all our narcissistic injuries and brokenness and allow God to touch us and heal us.

We could spend some time sharing with God our hurt and pain, and feel comforted. Imagine God bending down, pouring healing balm into and binding up our wounds. We could then remain quietly in the warm embrace of this healing God for a while and notice what happens to us.

….

Have a pleasant weekend. Be safe. Be blessed…. Bye for now.

Pictures: Courtesy google Images.

EDUCATING WITH THE HEART!

Director of Sumedha Centre, Dr. Jose Parappully, facilitated a two-day workshop for teachers of Holy Cross Convent School and Junior College at Kalyan, Maharashtra on September 20-21, 2016.

The first day’s workshop was for the teachers of the High School and the Junior College. There were 63 participants.

The second day’s workshop was for the teachers of the primary and the pre-primary schools. There were 32 participants.

The title of the workshop was “Educating with the Heart.”

Parappully, former Vice Principal at Don Bosco School, Calcutta, and a  Clinical Psychologist, used insights from Self-Determination and Self-Psychology theories to emphasize the importance of creating in the school and the classrooms an environment which fosters the fulfilment of basic emotional needs such as for relatedness, competence and recognition and for teachers to be mirroring and idealizable selfobject figures in the lives of students, displaying and modelling character and competence, and capable of healing narcissistic wounding through empathic responsiveness.

Parappully used short films and songs to illustrate the insights from the psychological theories and provided the participants opportunities to reflect on their experiences as teachers and share insights with one another in small and large groups.

Participants of both days reported great satisfaction with the workshop. They found it enriching and inspiring. They were able to introspect on the ways they were relating to their students, recognize their failure to be sensitive to their emotional needs, and inspired to pay greater attention to and respond with greater sensitivity to the needs of the students.

Participants felt that the insights gained through the Workshop will help them not just to teach better but to “educate with the heart” through greater emotional sensitivity and empathic responsiveness.