“I destroyed your imaginary sphere,” Steve said with a slight air of defiance.
“Destroyed it?” I inquired.
“Yeah. I got really angry and punched it ‘til it collapsed. It’s just a pile of rubble now.”
“OK then,” I said. “let's work on anger then, and get back to the sphere later.”
-
Our minds grab onto the attitudes that other people have taught us, and we use them to define ourselves and define our attitude toward ourselves. The object of the exercise with Steve was to identify his dad’s attitude toward Steve, then tell Steve’s mind to let go of the attitude so it no longer had an effect on him. Once we started, Steve experienced a strong feeling of anger, not so much toward his dad, but because he had to put up with that attitude living inside his head for so long.
Steve recounted that one day several years ago, Steve’s dad told him that he wept the day Steve was born because he didn’t know what to do with a son, since he’d only had daughters before. By Steve’s account, his dad was very passive, dominated by Steve’s mom. His parents had a generally calm relationship, but Steve’s mom clearly “ran the roost”.
“Her brand of humor was sarcasm. It was pretty emasculating. She also had a habit of basically telling me why my interests and ideas were wrong, or dumb, or wouldn’t work. There’s a lot of frustration there.”
-
The different factors underlying Steve's response:
Dad’s attitude toward Steve (that lives in Steve's head)
Steve’s attitude toward Dad
Anger/grief/loss at the amount of time that Dad’s attitude lived in his head
Pain of abandonment
Frustration
