Transcription
Do you have a pattern in your lirance where when you are very stressed about something, you use lirmans as a way to soo yourself? So, it's very much about regulating yourself in fantasy. And if I could give you an example of this, say you are someone who's had an incredibly stressful day. You've had an awful day at work and then at the end of the day, you go home and you immediately jump into a hot shower. You kind of just have that sense of I really, really need to kind of take care of myself physically. You have a hot shower. You come out of your shower. You put your pajamas on. You make yourself something really delicious. You crack open a bottle of wine. You settle down with your glass of wine and your food. And what you're doing is immediately going into fantasy. And you're going into fantasy about lots and lots of lovely things about your limit object. So, you're really enjoying yourself in fantasy. You're really soothing yourself.
Now, you're not focusing on how difficult the day was. You're not kind of trying to kind of ruminates or catastrophize. You're not doing anything like that. You are removing yourself from the difficulties of your day by going into fantasy. Fantasy feels like a reprieve. It feels like a safe space. And when you're in fantasy, you might be in intense sexual fantasy. It might be romantic fantasy. And what you're doing is you're cherry-picking all the very best things about your limit object. All the things that you really adore about them. And you're going over and over that in your mind. You're beautifying them in your mind and you genuinely feel soothed by being in fantasy.
If you're relating to this pattern, this is what we call narcotization. And it's a very common pattern with limits. It's basically created because there's a way in which the difficult thing that you've experienced, the stressful thing that's happened during that day, for example, it just feels like I can't deal with that. I want to avoid it. I want to avoid what's hard and actually feel better by going into fantasy. Um, so if you are resonating with this, then I hope that this video will be useful for you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to describe the childhood pattern that really develops and creates this lirance pattern, this narcotization, and then I'm going to describe what to do about it and how to start working with it because it can be very hard if you have lirance.
When it comes to narcotization, if this is your pattern, it can feel very difficult to let go of it because what that means if you let go of it is that you have to deal with the initial problem. You know, the problem that you don't want to kind of deal with and you are avoiding by going into limitance. So the withdrawal process then is about about kind of coming out of limits which is difficult in of itself but then also dealing with reality. So it's a twofold process in a way and it can be quite painful. So I hope what I have will be useful for you. Okay.
So in terms of describing where this pattern comes from um for those of you who've been to classes particularly the classes that I do on transactional analysis you will have heard this pattern before. So just very briefly for those of you who are new to this um there's a um a transactional analysis called Van Joins. Now I use his work again and again with clients and he what he was doing in his work was he he was describing childhood patterns that create particular personality adaptations. And the one that I'm going to be describing today is called creative daydreamer. Okay, I love the names that he has for these adaptations. And if you have some a creative daydreamer adaptation, it's highly likely that you're going to have a learn pattern that's to do with narcotizing. That's about soothing yourself, trying to comfort yourself. And the way that Van Joins describes the childhood pattern of the creative daydreamer is like this.
So if you're a child with this adaptation in some way your parent or parents will have felt quite tentative to you. They will have felt like they're vulnerable and you as a child if you've been growing up in an environment where you feel that your parents are quite vulnerable in some way you start to feel that you are responsible for them that you have to kind of take care of them. And this is what we call parentification. Now if you've watched my other videos you will know that this is a kind of key part of having an insecure attachment style. very common for fearful avoidant and also dismissive avoidant when you start to feel that you are responsible for your parents. So with the creative daydreamer there is this sense of my parents are vulnerable or a parent is vulnerable and I need to look after them. I need to support them and what you're longing for is if I support them enough they will be able to support me. Unfortunately, what happens is as you care for your parents and as as you look after your parents, it becomes obvious to you that actually they are not going to be able to support you. They're not going to be able to help you. So, what you realize is, oh, I have to I have to manage myself.
Now, you still have a longing for your parents. You still have that kind of desire to be connected to people. So what you do to try and cope with that is that you start using fantasy about another person or other people to try and cope with your own emotion. So you're actually trying to get your needs met in fantasy. And this is really in many ways the beginning of limitance. This is where a child will kind of learn, oh, I feel better if I'm thinking about somebody else. And in your childhood environments, very often the stress of looking after parents emotionally or a parent feels overwhelming to a child. It feels like it's too much. It can be really challenging for a child to be doing that because you're just a child. You know, it's not really shouldn't be your job. But if you have the creative daydreamer adaptation, it does become your job. So you have this sense of other people are too much. Actually, their needs are too much. And when it comes to my own needs, nobody's going to be able to meet my needs. So I withdraw and I withdraw into fantasy because that's where I can feel that I actually get get what get get what I need, you know, when I'm thinking about somebody else. So you are learning to soo yourself in fantasy and it's as I said it's a very common pattern this pattern and you can see absolutely how that will be connected to the description that I gave gave you at the beginning of the video of someone who when they are stressed when they've had a difficult day at work. They're not seeking help. They're not seeking support from somebody else. They're trying to manage their feelings by going into fantasy.
So what do you do if you have this pattern? Well, it's very much about pulling you out of the dream state, which is what lumens really is. It's this kind of like revery that you're going into this euphoric recall. We have to pull you out of the dream state and get you kind of really located in reality. Now, being in reality, as I said earlier, it's going to hurt. It's really going to be painful because you you're not being soothed anymore and you have the original original difficulty that's caused you to want to go into fantasy. So say I have that stressful day as as an adult. I have a stressful day at work and I think to myself actually you know what it's really important that I don't go into limrance. I know that I'm in recovery from liance now. I I really need to stop the process. So what will probably happen to me is I will try and stop going into fantasy and then I'll feel really bad because going into fantasy makes me feel better temporarily of course but it does make me feel better and also so I'm not I'm not in limrance. I'm stressed because I'm not in limus and then I have to deal with the fact that I had a horrible day. And really, if you have a creative daydreamer adaptation, you have never really wanted to have to deal with the horrible day. I don't know any of us who do actually, but you know, you you don't want to. You don't want to. And also you don't have an awful lot of experience of dealing with difficulties because what's happened to you in childhood is that you've learned oh if I just go into fantasy if I withdraw from other people as a child you often believe this I think that thing will just take care of itself you know which it doesn't it never does take care of itself but this is the kind of belief that you have from childhood if I just if I just kind of ignore a thing hopefully it will go away now of course it's not going to go away it's really Not.
So, one of the things that's very important when I'm working with a client who has this particular adaptation is that when they start to come out of limrance, it's really important that they have co-regulation. That's being soothed by another person when they come out of limrance. Because unlike someone who's anxious preoccupied, what you're learning if you're anxious preoccupied is to actually say no to the co-regulation and learn to self-regulate. when you're coming out of limans, this is the thing that you're frightened of. But with this particular pattern, and it's usually clients who have fearful avoidant attachment or dismissive avoidant who have this particular pattern, like I was saying, it's important for you to learn to co-regulate actually ask for support and help from another person because what's happened to you in childhood is that you stopped doing that. It's felt like I can't do that. You know, it's I'm not going to get my needs met so I have to withdraw and meet them on my own. So when you come out of limmerance co-regulation is really really important for you. I do suggest that people do this in sessions with either their therapist or their or their counselor to begin with. So when you start to kind of let go of the fantasy if you can sort of set set aside a session if you're with a therapist where you kind of think okay I'm I'm going to do this. I'm going to replicate this pattern so that I know I'm going to kind of feel the desire to go into lirance and instead of going into liance in the session, I'm going to stop going into liance and I'm going to ask my therapist for help at this point.
Now, this brings up a lot. Okay, it does. It's going to bring up a lot when you do this. You often feel that you're a bad person for asking. It feels strange. You might feel that you can't actually say the words, that you can't ask for help when you're in fantasy. Um, if all of that is resonating, and it may well do, one of the things I say to clients is we don't have to do this completely formally in this way if it feels too overwhelming, but if you notice that in a session you find yourself daydreaming, you find yourself kind of not really listening to the therapist, just kind of trying to avoid, that's great to kind of notice. And then you can call attention to that. So you start to see, oh, I feel really uncomfortable. I feel really stressed and then I'm kind of going into fantasy to kind of cope with the stress. So, one way I can deal with this is actually to kind of go, I'm stressed and I'm about to go into fantasy, you know. So, you can really start to work with that. I can feel myself wanting to cut off or I've just not been listening to you for the last five minutes. I've been somewhere else. I'm sorry I'm coming back. I just I need to kind of be aware that, you know, this pattern is happening when you and I are becoming intimate. So, so there's all of these sorts of things that you can start to pick up and notice in sessions. And it's very very helpful to do that because obviously you know when you're working with a therapist or a counselor they're trained to kind of watch you and see what's kind of happening to you in a session. So they'll probably be already be picking up on when you narcotize and when you disappear. You might find in a session that you're disappearing really quite a lot. I do find that with clients who have this particular pattern. So that's one way to start working with it.
The other way to start working with it is to notice self forgetting. Okay, this is a huge thing that happens with this pattern. There's lots of different ways that this shows up. I'll just tell you a few of them. The first thing to notice is if you find that you're in sessions and you seem to be learning the same thing again and again and again. This is a sign of self-orgetting. Now, narcotization really unfortunately sets you up to self forget. And if I can give you an example of this, this is a classic thing that I see again and again with clients and who narcotize. So I've got clients, you know, sometimes they're from difficult backgrounds, traumatic backgrounds. And I see again again with clients when they go home for Christmas, they have a difficult time at Christmas. You know, sometimes families, as I said, they can be really, really problematic. So they come to sessions straight after Christmas and very often they're saying, "I had a really tough time. It was really hard. It was very stressful for me." So we talk about that. come the end of January, beginning of February, they have completely forgotten about how difficult Christmas was. Completely forgotten. Very often they say things like, "Oh, yeah, no, it was it was really nice at Christmas. Um, you know, I got lovely presents. The food was really delicious. It was lovely to see Aunt Mary." All gone. The trauma has all gone. They can't remember it. They can't remember how difficult it was.
Now, this is absolutely what happens when you narcotize with a limit object. You cherrypick. Okay? It's like sugarcoating the limit object. You only see the best of them. It's very, very hard for you to hold on to what's truly happening with the limit object. And the problem with this pattern, and there are quite a few problems, the main one is that if you're in a relationship with someone who's not good for you, it's very hard for you to hold on to the fact that this person is not good for you. you have a kind of positive framework in a way. So you're trying you're trying to see the best in people. You know, you're trying to kind of see the good in them and it's really hard for you to kind of hold on to difficulty. Narcotization does this. All right? So if you're resonating with any of any of what I'm saying here, if you can make sure at the end of a session that you write down what you've learned in the session so that it you don't forget it. And it might be if you if you have the time to do this, if you're willing to do this, write down what you've learned at the end of each day. Really really really focus on what did I learn? What's happening here? What are the patterns that I can see? So that the next day you can hold on to that information and you can reread it to kind of remember, okay, so yes, that's what that's what I did actually feel because certainly with narcotization, you are soothing yourself and soothing yourself. you have an automatic pattern where you're trying not to focus on what's difficult. So of course that's exactly what your narcotization does. It is a defense mechanism and it protects you from what's difficult because this shows up not just in limits. It shows up in lots of different ways but it's not really helping you. It's not serving you.
And this means with your limit object that you often have a very idealized version of what the limit object is. So if you're aware of that, you know, I'm talking was talking about cherrypicking and idealization, putting the person on a pedestal. If you're aware that this is part of your liance, one way of starting to work with that is to write down what's really going on with your limit object. Are they, for example, somewhat of a disappointment in reality? That can happen. And if that does happen, write all of that down because you may see absolutely that the person in reality is not actually the person you're addicted to. It may be that the person you're addicted to is the version that you have of them in your mind, the perfect version. And in reality, they might be a disappointment. That's very, very helpful for your recovery to kind of really be aware of that. The other thing to be aware of is that sometimes it's important with this pattern to kill hope. So, for example, if you're in a relationship with someone in your mind who cannot be with you, and again, the fantasy relationship in liance is is very common. Write down all the reasons this person can't be with you. Now, it brings up grief. It brings up sadness. Sometimes it brings up anxiety to really focus on this. But again, that's very, very helpful.
A big part of kind of coming out of the narcotization pattern is to ground yourself in reality. Like I said, it's locating yourself in reality. It's very much about coming out of that dream state. And all of it hurts. Okay? I wish it didn't. I wish I could make it easier for clients when we're kind of working with this pattern. All of it hurts. And you know pretty much all of it hurts because as I said earlier that pattern with liance sorry with narcotization is that you are avoiding a difficult thing. You're removing yourself from a difficult thing in fantasy. So when you come out of limrance absolutely you're going to have to face whatever it was that triggered the lirance and you will notice a pattern if you're resonating with what I'm saying where something stressful happens and you go straight into liance to cope with the stressful thing. Okay? But the stressful thing is still there. it still needs to be resolved and and to be worked on. Um I think that's everything that I've got to say on um narcotization at the moment. Um I hope that that is helpful. If you have any questions um please ask in the comments. You know there's a lot more that I could say about it in terms of you know really how to how to work with the specifics of it. Um because it's it's very much it feels I don't know if this this is going to help you kind of understand um an archetization but it feels like being kind of wrapped in a blanket. It feels like you're kind of covered in I don't know cotton wool or something you know like it really it makes you feel very soft and it makes you feel very safe and it makes you feel very protected and in a way it is you know it's a defense mechanism narcotization it is protecting you but you can get stuck in it you can get incredibly stuck in this pattern of not really attending to real life so it can feel like life is outside of you that other people are living it that you haven't woken up yet for from life for woken up to life I would say. So you feel as if you're sort of almost asleep to the self. Um and of course liments in a way it is keeping you asleep. It's keeping you disconnected from reality. So that's why I'm talking about kind of really grounding yourself in reality. Okay, I think that's everything. Thank you so much for watching.