|
Chapter 16 : PETER AND THE STOVE
In order to give more information about the security system, let me tell you a story that I made up. I named the character in the story Peter, after myself. I call it the story of Peter and the stove.
The story begins when Peter is two years of age and is in his home, in his kitchen. The stove is on in the kitchen and it is very hot. For some reason Peter goes up to the hot stove and puts his hand on the hot stove and burns his hand very badly.
Now, if Peter was the average two year old, he would likely never do this again, which suggests that he has learned something from this experience. Therefore, if we were to observe Peter closely before and after the burn experience, we should be able to notice some change in his behavior.
Let me suggest one possible change in his behavior. Prior to the burn experience, Peter was quite comfortable in kitchens. He felt well there and could do what he wanted to there. However, after the burn experience, we notice that Peter appears to be uncomfortable in kitchens. When he enters a kitchen he appears to become stiff, his color turns pale, his heart pounds, his palms sweat - all reliable indicators suggesting discomfort. As he goes further and further into the kitchen, and closer and closer to the stove, he becomes obviously more and more uncomfortable until at some point he will stop approaching the stove or simply withdraw from the situation.
If someone was to push Peter towards the stove or carry him towards the stove, he would do everything possible to regain control of the situation. He would kick and scream and scratch and bite and yell and so on until that person would put him down so that he would be back in control and therefore able to remove himself from the situation. Therefore, with a response like this one, so long as he had enough control of the situation, he would never again get close enough to a stove to burn himself. So let us say that Peter does this now which he did not do before. There has been a change in Peter. How did this change occur? Well, of course it occurred because of the burn experience but my question refers to the mechanism of the change.
Let us assume that Peter lives with his parents. I would be very surprised if two year old Peter's parents sat down with him after the burn experience and said, " Look, Peter. From now on every time that you come into a kitchen we would like you to become uncomfortable. Turn stiff and pale, have your palms sweat, your heart pound, etc., etc."
I have never heard a parent tell a two-year-old anything like that. If they happened to, the two-year-old probably would not understand anyway. If he happened to understand, he would probably ask, " How will I do that? How will I make myself uncomfortable?"
The point is simple. I do not think that someone else will create the behavior pattern for Peter. I think that he will do this himself. But I also do not believe that after burning himself on the hot stove, Peter would go to his room, take out paper and crayons and start mapping out different strategies that he could now use to avoid being burned again on a hot stove. If Peter were in his room he would likely be looking at his hand, crying his eyes out, and that would be about it.
In his mind, work is being done to develop this new behavior but he is most likely totally unaware of this fact. He is very aware of the pain in his hand but he is totally unaware that he is developing a new behavior pattern, even though he is doing this himself. Therefore, he is conscious (i.e. aware) of the pain in his hand but he is not conscious of his own development of the new pattern. If it is not consciously developed, this means that it is developed unconsciously.
So Peter develops this response himself but he does it unconsciously. And of course he will use his own resources to develop it. He is two years old. In fact he is this particular two- year-old. If Peter knew what you and I know about kitchens and stoves, he would never solve the problem in this way. But he does not have greater resources and so he solves it in this manner.
Therefore, working with limited resources he will solve it in the best way that he knows how. Once he has created the response he will lay it down in his brain like a tiny cassette that will get turned on every time that he walks into a kitchen - over and over again.
Now, I do not believe that when Peter walks into a kitchen he says to himself, " Oh, here I am in a kitchen. It is time to become uncomfortable again. I will make myself stiff and pale, make my palms sweat and my heart pound." Not likely. In fact there is a very good chance that he is not even aware that he is uncomfortable there. But, nonetheless, he is uncomfortable there.
What happens here is that through his different senses - his touch, his vision, his hearing, his taste, his smell - he is constantly collecting information. Once he collects the information, he then translates this particular collection of information to mean 'kitchen'. And then he turns on the kitchen response.He collects. He translates. He responds. He does all of this unconsciously. It is all very automatic. So Peter creates the pattern unconsciously and he runs it unconsciously in this way.
The other interesting question is " Where does all of this discomfort come from?"
Peter could walk into the most wonderful and safe kitchen in the world but still feel absolutely terrible. It is not his imagination. He really does feel terrible. However, there does not appear to be any explanation for his feelings within the context of the situation. So where do those feelings come from? They come from the original experience.
He stores those feelings from the original experience and keeps them there as a source of power, a source of energy which he can plug into at any time at all to bring the feelings back one more time to turn on the protective behavior pattern. You need power to run things. This is a discomfort-based system and therefore, he needs a reservoir of discomfort that he can always access. Therefore, he uses, he needs, in fact he wants these uncomfortable feelings there. He does not like how he feels in this situation, but he certainly does not want to burn himself again. And this, of course, was the objective of the exercise - to ensure that it would never happen again. But, as you can see, he gets a win-lose result.
He wins by not burning himself again. He loses by now being uncomfortable every time that he walks into a kitchen. I realize that everybody wants win-win all of the time and nobody ever wants lose-lose. But we do not always get win-win. This is so because of being in a low power position. Peter's power problem is knowledge. He does not have enough of it. Knowledge is a very important type of power. In fact, it is one of the most important types of power. But there are other types of power as well. There is physical power, financial power, legal power, political power, all kinds of power. Whenever a person is in a low power position, they will more likely get lose-lose or win-lose than win-win. And that is what happens to Peter.
In summary, two year old Peter burns himself on a hot stove. As a result of this experience he develops the new kitchen behavior, as explained. He will do this himself and he will do it unconsciously, using his own resources as the power base from which he is working. Having created the response, he will lay it down in his brain like a little cassette. This cassette gets turned on every time that he collects information through his senses that is translated to mean kitchen. He will also do this unconsciously.
He will fuel the response with the original discomfort of his burn experience. This discomfort is the power source to make the whole response run. However, it gives him a win-lose result. He wins by not burning himself but he loses by now being uncomfortable every time that he walks into a kitchen. He develops a win-lose response because of being in a low power, in this case a low knowledge position.
Protection.
I have just provided the long answer to the question, " Why do we carry around feelings from past experiences and then bring them into the present over and over again in response to cues?" It is all about protection. It is our security system. But this is just the beginning of the story for Peter.
Let us observe Peter as he grows up with this new response operating within him. Let us say that he is two years old and his family always eats in the kitchen. He sits up in the high chair. While previously he was comfortable in this situation, he is now uncomfortable and does not know how to solve this problem. He will, therefore, send out messages of distress. However, there is a reasonable chance that he will be punished for his 'bad behavior' in this situation.
This will successfully reinforce his concept of kitchens as being dangerous. His discomfort is not just coming from the inside but now also from the outside. Therefore, the response will become stronger. However, all of this time he is also not burning himself. As he grows up he will tend to avoid going into kitchens. People stay away from places where they feel uncomfortable. We all do the same thing. He will be organizing a whole approach to the world which involves staying outside of kitchens as much as possible. But all of this time he is also not burning himself.
Let us imagine that Peter is now a teenager. His friends decide one summer to work at McDonald's - a big kitchen. Peter will not do this and he does not really know why, he just will not do it. In fact there are probably a lot of things that Peter does not do but he does not even realize that he is not doing them. If someone else recognized what was going on they would likely say, " That's just the way Peter is. Some people are kitchen people and some people are not kitchen people. Peter is just not a kitchen person. That's just the way he is." But, of course, all of this time Peter is still not burning himself.
Let us say that now Peter is older, he meets a woman, and they get married. Somehow he manages to marry a woman who loves to eat in the kitchen - it is her favorite place to eat. Let us say that she is in charge of meals in this household.
Every night she sets the kitchen table for the two of them to have supper at, and every night they end up having an argument about nothing. They are unable to sit down for a meal at the kitchen table without having an argument. They will argue about the color of the sky. Depending on the intensity and the frequency of this response, just one response like this could be enough to destroy their relationship.
But perhaps not. Perhaps instead they now discover that they are always eating together in the dining room. Without even realizing what they have done, they have moved from the kitchen to the dining room because it is more comfortable there. People gravitate to where they are more comfortable. At this point, Peter's wife now has a win-lose situation. She wins by keeping her husband. She loses by not being able to eat with him in the kitchen. If it is worth it she will accept this and if not she will not.
Let us say that she does accept the situation. They can spend the rest of their lives eating together in the dining room having quite a comfortable relationship there within that limit. Dining room - good. Kitchen - bad. For Peter this is easy. He has already organized his whole life around staying out of kitchens and so has no trouble with this situation. For his wife, however, the situation is not so simple. She used to love eating in the kitchen and now she is deprived of this option as a result of being married to this man.
But perhaps she will decide to not accept this situation. Maybe she will say to Peter, " Look Peter, you have a problem. You should solve it." Most likely Peter would deny this. " I don't have any problems. You have all the problems around here." And the dynamic would proceed in that direction.
But perhaps remarkably, Peter acknowledges the fact that his behavior does not make any sense. At this point he would most likely try to figure out what his problem is. He would come up with a variety of possible explanations. "Well it must be work. It's my job. There's just too much stress at work. I just can't handle that job. It's a job problem." Or perhaps, " It's the economy. There's a recession. When the economy starts to turn around I'll start feeling better. You'll see. It's an economical issue." Or, "Maybe it's a seasonal thing. It's wintertime. It's dark. It's gray. The days are short. There's not much to do outside. When springtime comes with the flowers and sunshine I'll start feeling better then. I've got Seasonal Affective Disorder. That's what is wrong with me." Or, "It could be hormonal. It's testosterone. I'm a hot - blooded male. Too much hormonal response. I just can't control myself. It's my biochemistry and that's beyond my control."
In my experience, these would be the types of 'problems' that Peter would likely come up with to explain his behavior. He may not even decide to address the 'problems' that he had identified, but let us say that he did. If they really were problems, he might even solve them but he still has the original problem. His job is better now but he still behaves the same way in the kitchen. If they were not problems in the first place and he tried to fix something that was not broken, then guess what? He has more problems then when he started out!
Realistically, however, he would never figure this one out. But let us say that he did. Somehow he discovers that when he was two years of age he burned himself on a hot stove, et cetera. It all starts to make sense. Well, even then he would still have the problem.
I have met enough people who know exactly why they have their behavior patterns but they still have their behavior patterns. These are very frustrated individuals. They know what is going on. They know that it does not make any sense but they do it anyway. They are stuck in a loop. Over and over and over again. The obvious question is, 'How does Peter get out of his loop?'
Good news. What he can do is go back to the same level of thought that he went as a two year old where he developed the response in the first place - the unconscious level. He can readdress the same issue, which is and was how not to get burned again on a hot stove. The good news is that now he can bring along the resources that he would likely have available to himself as an adult, which he did not likely have and/or did not use as a two-year-old. He could then use these resources in some new way, and so ideally give himself a win-win result, which in this case would be to be able to be in a kitchen comfortably and still not burn himself. Both of these objectives are very important.
By doing this Peter can change the cassette. As a result, the next time that Peter walks into a kitchen a different tape will play. Furthermore, this different tape will play automatically and unconsciously.
(back to top)
|
