Images and Symbols: The Glue of Habit, The Lubricant of Change

CHAPTER TWO

Images Can Get Lost In Our "Backpacks"

BY ARLENE F. HARDER, MA, MFT

Chapter - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13

If at the center of each of us there is potential for a life that is emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually healthy, which I believe there is, why is it so difficult to access that potential? Why are the images that control, or at least strongly influence, our behavior, are so often hidden in a fog of limited self-awareness? Why do we do things we know are against our best interests?

I suggest it is because the origin of those images is buried in a backpack we forget we are carrying. Let me explain what I mean. In Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life: Stop Wishing Your Life Were Different and Make It Happen, (page 14), I write:

When we were allowed to leave the house by ourselves, our parents tried to make certain that we would continue to accept their ideas on how we should live. They did this by creating a "container" into which they stuffed all their beliefs, injunctions, and instructions. I think of this container of parents' dreams and goals as an invisible, highly stretchable "backpack" we carried with us wherever we went as children - and continue to carry today.

In this backpack we could find our parents' rules for how to treat others, the kind of education we should have, the religion we should follow, the foods that are best for us to eat, the books we should or shouldn't read, the kind of job that would allow us to reach the potential our parents saw in us, the kind of friends we should have, and the kind of person we should marry.

Then as we ventured farther out into the world, we came into contact with relatives, neighbors, friends, preachers, teachers, pundits, experts, celebrities, and even authors of self-help books who added their opinions to our backpack. This is how you should vote. This is what you should wear. These are the beliefs you should hold. These are the charities you should support. Everyone is only too willing to tell us how to change the way we live if we are unhappy, and how to live even if we are happy with our lives. What is important to note is that accepting, without careful examination, someone else's opinion of how we should live adds more weight than is necessary in this bundle we bring with us everywhere.

Not only is our backpack filled with the opinions and exhortations of others, of course, but we add to it our own dreams, accomplishments, whatever self-assurance we've picked up along the way, values we try to live by, skills, accomplishments, and strengths, all influenced by our temperament. Of course, we wouldn't want to leave out our failures, resentments, regrets, guilt, fears, the memory of traumas and the residue of illness. And we make certain to keep a list of every possession we buy, especially those to which we are attached.

With so much accumulated over the years, we've come to believe that the contents of this backpack define us. By claiming that what we believe, what we own, what we say, and what we do is our "identity," we attempt, mostly unconsciously, to guarantee our place in the world, for no two backpacks are the same.

The ego, whose job it is to protect our identity, has bought into the idea that the contents of the backpack determine our identity. Thus the ego makes certain that the pronouns of "me," "mine," and "I" are sprinkled liberally throughout our conversations. Consequently, the contents of the backpack are very important to our ego.

But what happens when we no longer can stay in our comfort zone, when we find ourselves on a path to change, when we aren't sure what to do next and we can no longer find the answers in our backpacks? What happens when the weight we are carrying becomes too heavy? Perhaps then it is time to sort through the backpack and explore whether the admonitions and beliefs we've been carrying all these years still apply to our lives.

One way to sort through the backpack is to make a logical, rational examination of the beliefs we held in the past and consciously decide whether those beliefs are appropriate today. Often that alone will clear out a lot of the garbage.

Images From Long Ago Can Influence Our Beliefs Today

Yet we too often manage to hang onto a perspective of the world that is no longer accurate. We do this because within our backpacks are stored the colors, smells, tastes, touch and sounds of events, i.e., the senses, or "images," that comprise the core of our experiences and beliefs. If we are unaware of how those images were formed and how they support our beliefs, we can be attached to them and stuck, unable to move in the direction we say we want to go. And our ego, which seems to be particularly attached to our images, has a hard time releasing them.

For example, imagine you realize that you equate receiving gifts as evidence of the love another has for you. You tell yourself, rationally, that someone can love you without showering you with gifts. Yet deep inside of you is an image of which you are barely conscious. You certainly aren't conscious of its power to cause you to feel inexplicably let down when a lover or friend doesn't shower you with presents.

Listing all the rational and logical reasons why people can love one another without a surfeit of gifts may not dissuade your nagging feeling that you're being "cheated" when you don't get what you want. Notice, then, what might happen if, upon examination through the lens of an imagery exercise, you get in touch with the image of a box wrapped in bright yellow paper and handed to you by your father, who stands there with a broad smile on his face. Inside is a toy you have wanted for a very long time.

What makes this image so potent and why is it connected with your belief about gifts and love? Perhaps your father was reserved and found it hard to express his love with words, was often away from home, and tried to make up for his absence by giving elaborate presents.

The physical object you could touch with your hands became for you a symbol of love. At least that is how you experienced your father's love, since he didn't have the ability to express his love in other ways. As you remembered the offering of each present, wrapped with bright ribbon and containing a gift he knew you would treasure, the images of those events in your childhood formed in your mind the definition of love. If a gift meant love, love must equal a gift.

These images and memories are buried deep within your backpack. Before you can disconnect the pleasure you had every right to enjoy when you were a child with the conclusion you drew from the gifts, you may need to bring the images into your awareness. Then you can more easily explore whether your conclusion is true today.

© Copyright 2008, Arlene Harder, MA, MFT