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How necessary is the “Who is proud of whom for what?” game?

I feel strange.  I am face-to-face with some part of my self that can do things some other parts of my self know nothing about.  I was going to back for a few minutes today and write about something I introduced the other day when I mentioned feeling proud for our children (an for our self?).

From the blog post:  Pride in the successes, achievements and accomplishments of one’s child is just another emotion and state of being that abusive parents are deprived of.  The children of these parents are then deprived of having parents who truly appreciate them for the wonderful people that they are.

I was going to return to one of the chapters I skipped in Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life.  He included a chapter on ‘awe’ that I wanted to read this morning because I suspected that the ability to feel awe, an experience connected to the feel good-be good happiness, compassion and connection arm of our vagus nerve system is involved in the experience of pride as well as of awe.

Problem is for me at this moment, I cannot find his book anywhere in my house.  True, I was having problems sorting out what I could believe, accept and understand in Keltner’s writing from what I suspected was grounded in arrogance and bias, but how did I manage to vanquish this book from my sight at the same time I have no memory of doing so?

I have many books on trauma on my book shelves.  Keltner’s book is not among them.  I have searched through every pile of papers, on every table top, every book shelf, in short I have looked everywhere in my house where I could have possibly placed that book once I was done reading it, and the book is nowhere to be found.  I can’t believe I would have either trashed or donated the book without having some memory trace of having done so.  Evidently I really DIDN’T like that book!  Hum…….

So I guess I will have to wing the writing of this post about pride and the vagus nerve as I figure out what I know on my insides about this experience.  Meanwhile, this me of today is very curious about where Keltner’s book is eventually going to make its reappearance in my life!  It HAS to be here some place, but I sure have managed to hide it from myself.

This experience of missing this book makes me wonder how much can we and do we manage to hide from our own self in our life, not even realizing that we are doing so?  I have to wonder at this moment.  How much do we put away, disguise, place ‘out of sight, out of mind’ in our life because our ability to tolerate has diminished something to the point we simply cannot or will not deal with it any more?  (Was I THAT sick of Keltner?)

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So at this point, as I continue down the pathway of “What is pride?” on my forensic autobiographical journey, I call not Keltner as my first witness, but my dear sister, Cindy.  When we spoke about the topic on the telephone last night, she mentioned that from the Christian training she had in her young adult lives, she knows that the word and concept of RESPECT is directly tied in its roots to AWE.

She also affirmed that never once to her knowledge was my mother ever proud of me.  Also, in her memory, she knows of only one single instance where she knew absolutely that our mother was proud of her.  That happened when my sister trained our family’s dog for an obedience dog show and they won first place.  Mother didn’t SAY anything to Cindy, but Cindy knew mother was proud of her.

One of my own questions about pride enters my thoughts right now, though I’ll wait for a moment to consider it.  I find myself wondering, “Is the feeling of being proud of another person tied more to conditional love than it is to unconditional love?  Is there a difference between the experience of feeling proud – really for the other or for one’s own self – based on a conditional valuing based on what a person DOES rather than on who a person IS irregardless of what they actually DO?”

But, first, to finish the thoughts from last night’s conversation with my sister, I have to mention that she told me that in all her 56 years, it has been her observation that the topic of pride is a VERY SENSITIVE ONE to many if not most people.  She believe that all of these people suffer their entire lives from a wound that means they continually ACT in ways that they WANT to create a demonstration of pride for them from their parents.

The saddest part of this is that this lack of feeling ‘proud for’ existed in their earliest years and continues to be a part of adults’ feeling reality for their entire lives – and is rarely if ever fulfilled so that the DESIRE is gone.  As a consequence, people then feel empty in a place that is never filled.  It sounds to me like there’s a wound that never heals about this, a hole that’s always there, a continually unmet attachment need that then affects how a person IS in their body, in relationship with their own self and with others, for their entire life time.

My sister understands for herself that the root of ‘awe’ that is a part of ‘respect’ means that when we hear someone say to us, “That is awesome,” we are really receiving from that person a fundamental recognition of our worthiness based on fundamental respect.  My sister believes that once we lose respect for another person, our relationship with them changes – often instantaneously – forever.  Evidently being able to have respect for another person is somehow directly tied to our ability to feel pride for them.

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If this is true, I have some searching to do in order that I can understand with clarity within my own self how this respect-awe-pride pathway might actually work.  Even though I cannot locate Keltner’s book anywhere in my house, I know he connected ‘awe’ to the healthy operation of the vagus nerve system just as he did embarrassment, genuine D-miles and compassion – or he would not have included a chapter on ‘awe’ in his book.

I already know that something was wrong with the operation of my mother’s feel good-be good vagus nerve system branch.  I can understand that her stress response was “ON” all of the time.  As a result, her “STOP” arm of her vagus nerve system and of her autonomic nervous system (ANS) could never be activated toward true peaceful calmness and connection to others.  She was not safely and securely attached to her own self or to anyone else.

Now I can add her lack of ability to feel pride for me, and just barely for any of her other children, to the list of ‘symptoms’ of her infant-childhood changed growth and development from trauma, abuse and neglect.

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From this point forward in today’s writing I have to make it clear that I think the way I do in a particular way that gives me a bias on the topic that most people do not have – either most fortunately or most unfortunately.  I evidently have some strange immunity regarding the subject of whether other people feel proud of me or not that came from my mother’s abuse of me.

I have written in previous posts that my mother’s demise that led her development down a pathway where she was incapable of experiencing either well-being for her own self or in connection to anyone else happened (I suspect) because of the very traumatic experiences she had with her earliest caregivers as they gave her so-called love that was insanely and unreasonably conditional.  She grew up believing that her personal ‘badness’ caused her caregivers to hate her.  If she could only be ‘good enough’ she could bask in the warmth of their love.

Hers was an environment of terrible and terrifying betrayal.  This betrayal broke her.  I had the benefit of having never been betrayed.  I knew she hated me from the first breath I took.  My mother did not vacillate.  She did not wander away from her first stated course of action toward me from the time I was born.  My mother never swerved off of her course.  In her mind, I was not human.  I was the devil’s child, bad beyond possibility of redemption.

I was never tricked into believing in any way, ever, that there was anything I could do NOT to be hated and abused.  I was never fooled into believing that if I could be ‘good enough’ that she would love me.  I was never given false hope either than I was loveable or that my parents could possibly love me.

True, I am painting a grim picture almost beyond belief.  I can see this even though I know that the picture I am painting was absolutely real.  At the same time I am saying that the absolute devastation of my infant-childhood gave me at the same time the possibility of surviving it as I grew into the person I am now.

I will give you this bizarre yet accurate image:  If we could imagine an infant being born into a world where no air was ever available either that infant would die or it would find a way to endure in spite of the absence of air.  If this is the reality this infant faced, and it did manage to adapt and survive anyway, the concept of ‘air’ and the experience of needing it or of being dependent upon its presence would simply never exist.

Of course we know no human can live without air.  But if we substitute love for air in this image, I can assure you humans can manage to endure without it.  I basically did.  What little bit of love-air I found came from my 14-month-older brother, and very occasionally from contact with my grandmother and father.  Eventually I became an absolute professional at being able to endure and survive on such a pitifully inadequate supply of love-air that it’s almost beyond belief.  But because it was love that I was deprived of rather than of air, my body kept on enduring and growing through its developmental stages because it could adapt to these devastating conditions.

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As a consequence, I cannot conceive of the world the way my sister seems to, or in the way that evidently MOST people do.  I have no ability to imagine ever wanting or desiring my mother or father to feel proud of me.  It is not possible for me to do so.  Therefore, I cannot probably empathize with all the other people who ‘have issues’ concerning their need or desire for this ‘feeling proud’ of them by their parents – or anyone else.

On some levels, having just realized this about my self is very scary.  Yet at the same time the benefit of the pattern of abuse I received seems obvious to me.  Nothing my mother did or did not do to me altered my ability to feel proud of or for my own children.

That’s pretty darn amazing!  I could call this miracle, but I understand that in no possible way are my abilities, as they are so different from my mother’s, a miracle.  My abilities, as are everyone’s, lie within me because they are physiologically possible.  My mother lacked these abilities because they were physiologically impossible for her.

My body-brain-mind-self development did not ever include the possibility of my mother loving me, or with the possibility she could be correspondingly proud of me.  Impossible is exactly just that – impossible.  Only when the POSSIBILITY exists of something happening do we ever wish for it, desire it, hope for it, anticipate it, or expect it.    I knew from the moment I was born there was no possibility my mother loved me, conditionally or unconditionally.  Her love for me or her lack of it was never an issue.  Things were simply the way that they were and that was that.

In other words, the issue of ‘sometimes’ or of ‘some of the time’ didn’t exist for me.  Ever.  My mother did not play the tug-o-war, and I mean WAR, game with me of ‘sometimes I will love you’ or of ‘some of the time I love you’ or of ‘I would and could love you if only……”  She just fundamentally hated me.  How strange, and looking at this from this present moment, how freeing for me this ACTUALLY was.

I did not learn how to conditionally love.  I did not learn how to conditionally BE loved.  At the same time, though I don’t call it a miracle, I will say the blessing of this whole pattern in combination with my own particular makeup as a person was this:  I came out of my infant-childhood completely free to love, and I DO.  How cool is that?  Cool, I would say, beyond words or measure!

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Physiologically, even though I suffer from trauma and abuse in-built anxiety problems of many kinds, my vagus nerve system as it connects with my STOP and GO autonomic nervous system remained able to operate so that I am free to feel a range of emotion that includes the feel good-be good emotions and their corresponding range of options for actions.  My problem lies in that RECEIVING love and affection in all its forms is difficult if not impossible for me to FEEL.  But I CAN feel these feelings for others, and if I had to make a choice, this is the better one.  It means I can offer to others what I never had myself.

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I want to go back for a moment here to the ideas contained in the words ‘respect’, ‘awe’ and ‘pride’ and to very real human experience of and with them.  I suspect that my sister’s thoughts on the root of ‘respect’ might be tied to the Bible’s Hebrew translation into English text rather than to the roots in English of the word itself.  I turn to Webster’s:

RESPECT

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin respectus, literally, act of looking back, from respicere to look back, regard, from re- + specere to look — more at spy

Date: 14th century

1 : a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation <remarks having respect to an earlier plan>
2 : an act of giving particular attention : consideration
3 a : high or special regard : esteem b : the quality or state of being esteemed c plural : expressions of respect or deference <paid our respects>

This description doesn’t go back far enough in its origins for my liking (14^th century).  I’ll follow ‘respect’ back to ‘spy’:

SPY

Etymology: Middle English spien, from Anglo-French espier, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German spehōn to spy; akin to Latin specere to look, look at, Greek skeptesthai & skopein to watch, look at, consider

Date: 13th century

transitive verb 1 : to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes
2 : to catch sight of : see
3 : to search or look for intensively —usually used with out <spy out places fit for vending…goods — S. E. Morison>intransitive verb 1 : to observe or search for something : look
2 : to watch secretly as a spy

This goes back further, to the 13^th century, but this still isn’t far enough for my liking.  I want to find the connections as far back as the dictionary will track them (before the 12^th century) because only then to I feel at rest knowing I am getting at a root image and concept.  I find that both the word ‘look’ and ‘see’ originated in the English language before the 12^th century:

LOOK

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lōcian; akin to Old Saxon lōcōn to look

Date: before 12th century

SEE

Etymology: Middle English seen, from Old English sēon; akin to Old High German sehan to see and perhaps to Latin sequi to follow — more at sue

Date: before 12th century

Under ‘see’ I can follow ‘sue’.  I find we are now moving forward in time to the 14^th century and away from older images in the word, except any reference in word origins to Sanskrit always intrigues me:

SUE

Etymology: Middle English sewen, siuen to follow, strive for, petition, from Anglo-French sivre, siure, from Vulgar Latin *sequere, from Latin sequi to follow; akin to Greek hepesthai to follow, Sanskrit sacate he accompanies

Date: 14th century

The word ‘accompany’ connects to ‘companion’:

COMPANION

Etymology: Middle English compainoun, from Anglo-French cumpaing, cumpaignun, from Late Latin companion-, companio, from Latin com- + panis bread, food — more at food

Date: 13th century

And here I find what makes me happy – a reference to a fundamental image – FOOD!  The necessity for, the procurement, provision, consumption and sharing of this basic element of FOOD is connected to safe and secure attachment in and to the world:

FOOD

Etymology: Middle English fode, from Old English fōda; akin to Old High German fuotar food, fodder, Latin panis bread, pascere to feed

Date: before 12th century

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OK, so I don’t see ‘awe’ in this family of word connections in relationship to ‘respect’.  What do I find if I specifically follow the meanings and origins of this word, ‘awe’?  This is interesting, and not what I would have expected (someday if I find Keltner’s book it will be interesting to see how he defines ‘awe’.):

AWE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old Norse agi; akin to Old English ege awe, Greek achos pain

Date: 13th century

1 : an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime <stood in awe of the king> <regard nature’s wonders with awe>
2 archaic a : dread, terror b : the power to inspire dread

Uh-oh!  Follow that link to pain and find reference to ‘punishment’ and ‘grief’.  So, what about the word ‘pride’ itself?  Can this idea, with roots in our language before the 12^th century, be in any way connected to a sense of amazement and awe at and for another person?  The concepts of ‘pride’ and ‘proud’ are fully RELATIONSHIP oriented, contextual ideas that involve social judgment:

PRIDE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English prȳde, from prūd proud — more at proud

Date: before 12th century

1 : the quality or state of being proud: as a : inordinate self-esteem : conceit b : a reasonable or justifiable self-respect c : delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship <parental pride>
2 : proud or disdainful behavior or treatment : disdain
3 a : ostentatious display b : highest pitch : prime
4 : a source of pride : the best in a group or class
5 : a company of lions
6 : a showy or impressive group <a pride of dancers>

PROUD

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English prūd, probably from Old French prod, prud, prou advantageous, just, wise, bold, from Late Latin prode advantage, advantageous, back-formation from Latin prodesse to be advantageous, from pro-, prod- for, in favor + esse to be — more at pro-, is

Date: before 12th century

1 : feeling or showing pride: as a : having or displaying excessive self-esteem b : much pleased : exultant c : having proper self-respect
2 a : marked by stateliness : magnificent b : giving reason for pride : glorious <the proudest moment in her life>
3 : vigorous, spirited <a proud steed>

Pause for a moment and take a look at the social judgment loading and weight related to this concept.  Look at the synonyms and try to imagine how it is possible that beginning from the time of our birth, as social beings in social interactions beginning with our earliest caregivers, we might move through our childhood and into our adulthood REALLY being able to both understand these concepts let alone being able to negotiate the billions of ways human interactions involve them:

synonyms proud, arrogant, haughty, lordly, insolent, overbearing, supercilious, disdainful mean showing scorn for inferiors. proud may suggest an assumed superiority or loftiness <too proud to take charity>. arrogant implies a claiming for oneself of more consideration or importance than is warranted <a conceited and arrogant executive>. haughty suggests a consciousness of superior birth or position <a haughty aristocrat>. lordly implies pomposity or an arrogant display of power <a lordly condescension>. insolent implies contemptuous haughtiness <ignored by an insolent waiter>. overbearing suggests a tyrannical manner or an intolerable insolence <an overbearing supervisor>. supercilious implies a cool, patronizing haughtiness <an aloof and supercilious manner>. disdainful suggests a more active and openly scornful superciliousness <disdainful of their social inferiors>.

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We have to consider the cultural environment that creates the social context of our human interactions – including the religious underpinnings of our culture.  These look to me to be anything but serene, calm, peaceful, safe and secure waters to negotiate!!  How can a very young child, moving through its age 4-6 stage of developing a workable Theory of Mind, even begin to comprehend what’s what socially?

My guess is that for anyone who has a reason to think about the idea of feeling proud for self or others, or of having others feel proud of them, would benefit from taking some time to explore in the real world, in real time, and in the language of the REAL words we use to talk and think about the topic, how incredibly complex it is.  We need to understand that when considering the idea of ‘proud’ we are considering what really is a war zone with mine fields of explosively emotionally dangerous, if not devastating, concepts.  This idea, ‘pride’ and feeling ‘proud’ deserves a warning:  DANGER ZONE!  HIGH RISK HERE!

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While all this might look like a Pandora’s Box, if I look among the above definitions carefully, I find the words that can best assist me in my thinking about the topic.  They are not the bold-typed words; they are the humble ones:  ‘just, wise’, ‘reasonable’, ‘having proper self-respect’.  Even the word ‘bold’ is up there, having to do with our ability to exercise our courage (within the origins of the word ‘proud’).  These, to me, are the important words related to the healing possibilities of how we can learn to think about our concerns related to absence and presence of ‘pride’.

These words are connected to the center point of calm in our vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system as they connect our experience within our body and brain.  They reside in the quiet, in the place of cooperation and acceptance, not of competition and judgment.  These are not frenetic words.  They are not restless or demanding words.  At the same time, we need to realize that at whatever point in the continuum of the pride-proud spectrum we stand as we consider our potential related losses and our gains, it is our ability to reach that center point on the teeter-totter that truly matters.

THAT point is where, I believe, our hope for increased resiliency and well-being lies, not with our worrying about who has what or who gives what to whom.  In the end, once a pride-proud transaction has occurred, what matters is that we feel safe, secure and attached within our own self with and to those we care most about.  This is an experience of acceptance, or peaceful ‘OK-ness’ in the world.  What matters is the love expressed, felt and shared.

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When I said the other day that abusive parents are deprived of the feeling of being proud of and for their offspring, which then deprives the offspring of the feeling that their caregiver IS proud of them, what we are talking about is actually degrees of love and of attachment as they connect to our emotional experience negotiated in our body-brain by our vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system.

The presence or absence of the positive transactions related to pride-proud happen physiologically just as the shame reaction does.  Both are about ‘rupture and repair’, rejection and acceptance.  Both of these are STOP and GO interactions that share their existence in the same physiological systems that our rest and stress responses do.  We can pay attention to the emotions (and how they feel to us in the body) as we experience them related to both kinds of experiences.

How our earliest caregivers treated us had HUGE influence on how our physiological body-brain developed, but our body-brain-mind-self BELONGS to us, not to them.  My mother’s hate-full treatment of me did not fill me with hate.  Yes, there are many levels of my being that are connected to my corresponding RAGE from being traumatized by her the way I was, but rage is not the same thing as hate.  But even the word ‘hate’ cannot be dissociated from its fundamental root concept in ‘care’:

HATE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kēdos care

Date: before 12th century

1 a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing <had a great hate of hard work>
2 : an object of hatred <a generation whose finest hate had been big business — F. L. Paxson>

Looking carefully at what it says here I have to think about my mother’s hatred of me, and what her hatred REALLY tells me – not about me, but about her:  “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.”

Not even a consideration of the word ‘care’ or of all the actions that are connected to it – including early caregiver interactions that we experienced from infant-childhood (and beyond) is a simple or straightforward one:

CARE

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English caru; akin to Old High German kara lament, Old Irish gairm call, cry, Latin garrire to chatter

Date: before 12th century

1 : suffering of mind : grief
2 a : a disquieted state of mixed uncertainty, apprehension, and responsibility b : a cause for such anxiety
3 a : painstaking or watchful attention b : maintenance <floor-care products>
4 : regard coming from desire or esteem
5 : charge, supervision <under a doctor’s care>
6 : a person or thing that is an object of attention, anxiety, or solicitude

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Over and over and over again I will say that if there is any one single simple idea I can help to introduce to people, especially to survivors who have suffered early trauma and abuse, it is the idea of what I call INFORMED COMPASSION, which is a reason-able response.

Being gentle and kind within our own self as we seek to heal and grow DEMANDS AND REQUIRES of us that we learn how to expand this gentle kindness to a consideration of those who harmed and hurt us.  I don’t think we can grow gentle kindness within our own self while at the same time withholding it from the stance we take regarding others – because this stance we take comes from within our own self.

Compassion comes from the same systems in our body that create our stress and calmness responses.  It is an option we can exercise with our conscious intention, will, awareness and reflective abilities.  Informing ourselves by thinking about the words we use to think WITH is a critical part of this healing process.  It’s a part of our continued growth and development.  It’s a part of our continuing to grow up as we ‘grow out’ an expanding circle of understanding how incredibly complex it is to be a human being, let alone to be one WELL, in multiple senses of this word.

When we think in terms of pride and proud, we are really at the threshold of thinking about our truest concern:  Are we accepted or isolated?  Are we together-with or isolated and alone?  Are we approved of?  Are we deemed and proved worthy of being a part of the whole – which has to do with our very survival?  Because if we follow these concepts far enough back in our language that is what we are really talking about:  To be or not to be.  It’s about living or dying, being built up or being destroyed.

Fortunately, I was so busy growing up with my own survival in mind that I didn’t have time to learn to worry if the same woman who was so busy trying to destroy me was at the same time feeling proud of me for avoiding her destruction.  (Or proud of me for any other reason:  She was not a reason-able person.)  Looking at the roots of the word ‘proud’, it is my ability to recognize what is wise and just, along with my ability to be bold in pursuing what I know in my own self to be GOOD that I have, access and use my own power.

Nothing my mother did to me took these abilities away from me.  Her unconditional hatred of me seems to have been better for me that would have been her conditional love.  The trade-off seems to be that I have the ability to love unconditionally, which means I feel proud of and for my children because I CAN.

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