Hello everyone,

As I described in my previous post, I will be sharing my thoughts and
experiences while studying Nathaniel Branden's works. First, I
should point out that I have just completed his book "Breaking Free –
How to cut the bonds of childhood that are keeping you from reaching
your full adult potential". This book as a whole was very
interesting because a theme throughout the book was Branden's
insistence that most parents, through action or inaction, do a great
deal of psychological harm to their children in one way or another.
This point was especially interesting to me because, while I consider
my childhood to have been "mediocre" as an environment that is
conducive for children to develop into independent, rational, well-
adjusted adults, I hadn't realized that the lack of a good home
environment was so prevalent. Branden reiterates his conviction that
most home environments lack what he would consider a "healthy
environment". In the context of this "healthy environment", the book
mainly focuses on the behavior of parents in that environment, and
how parental behavior can effect a child's (and the resulting
adult's) behavior. A very important aspect of this interaction
between a parent's behavior and the child's behavior as an adult is
that when the child becomes an adult s/he *is often unaware that s/he
is behaving in a manner that is harmful to hirself*. Studying this
book has brought to my attention that some behaviors in which I
engage are not optimal for my long-term health and happiness.

The book relates the question-and-answer sessions of some of
Branden's group therapy sessions (at the time of the book he was a
practicing psychologist). This entire book is based of an epiphany
Branden had during one of his group sessions. He asked the group a
series of questions about how their parents treated them when they
were children. He found that when he asked an appropriate question
to a person to whom it applied, the person experienced a great deal
of enlightenment regarding certain important frustrations or
questions about hirself. As is likely the purpose of the book, I, as
the reader, experienced a significant number of enlightening moments
with respect to questions about myself and my personality. These
experiences are what I want to share and will do so here.

Below I describe my thoughts and experience while reading this book
as it relates to a given category. The two categories of thoughts
and experiences I will discuss are: emotional withdrawal and sexual
roles.

Emotional withdrawal

I could really relate to the story of the first client, "Henry" (a
fake name), 24 years old, and his responses to the first question.
The chapter is called "The Unknowable". The question posed
to "Henry" in the book is as follows:

"When you were a child, did your parents manner of behaving and
dealing with you give you the impression that you were living in a
world that was rational, predictable, intelligible? Or a world that
was bewildering, contradictory, incomprehensible, unknowable?"

In this chapter, Henry responded to the question by giving a story
about how his parents behaved toward him when he was a child. Henry
states that when he was a child he once used some matches to set a
few leaves on fire in the back yard. His father discovered him and
told him that the police were going to take him to Juvenile Hall.
Then his mother came running up to Henry, hugging him, telling him it
was "OK", and telling him that he was her "darling angel". Henry
then remembers his father screaming at his mother and forgot all
about Henry's careless burning of leaves. Henry then states that
later that night, his father gave him a gift and seemed quite
cheerful. Henry recalled that this experience was very bewildering
to him and he didn't know what to think of it.

Henry then describes how his parents were always shouting, his mother
was often crying, holding Henry and saying that "everything will be
okay when we're with Jesus". I agree with Henry: this is a confusing
situation for a child to grow up in.

Branden explains to Henry, on page 23, that Henry withdrew and
stopped trying to understand the world around him. This random,
unintelligible environment constructed by his parents confused him as
a child and as a result, Henry stopped trying to make sense of the
world. Henry had given up the hope of understanding. When reading
this book, I remember the next phrase in the book, something Branden
says to Henry:

"When you withdrew, you gave up hope of understanding. You stopped
caring to understand. That's when you gave up your self-esteem".

This is the point in the book when I began to laugh, and cry,
simultaneously – both quite heartily. I think I became emotional at
this particular statement in the book because I have never really
understood the idea of self-esteem. I am still struggling to
understand it, and other parts of this book have helped me to
understand it. But Henry's story sounded very similar to parts of my
childhood. My parents could be quite random in their behavior,
laughing one minute, quiet the next, shouting at one another the
next, or drunk and loving the next. It made a lot of sense to me
that a child in this type of situation would "give up" trying to
understand the behavior of others and would begin to "turn off",
emotionally. I think I have turned my own emotions off. Since some
things my parents did could be hurtful, or (in contrast) caring, or
irrational, I began to tune them out and to stop emotionally
responding to them.

I still do this today. For example, I don't like a number of traits
about my mother and I am not very close to her, intellectually or
emotionally. However, on the rare occasions I see her or talk to her
on the phone, she will try to hug me or tell me she loves me. My
first response to these expressions of "love" is to ignore them or
tune them out. I don't want to respond to her, probably because my
response would be: "no you don't Mom, or you would act differently
than you do". But, rather than say that (which, in fact, I have on
occasion), I mute my emotional response. So one might say that I'm
emotionally withdrawn. Rather than express my true emotions and
thoughts and create conflict (since she will get angry with me and we
will get into an argument – it's happened many times before), I
ignore my feelings and even encourage myself to be non-responsive.
This "ignoring of feelings just to get through the situation" seems
exceedingly prevalent in my life. I have a difficult time expressing
my thoughts or feelings about a number of things, especially in my
employment setting, because I'd rather not "rock the boat" by
exclaiming, for example, that I really hate wearing a tie!

While this "emotional muting" may not sound very harmful, Branden
says another very interesting thing about emotional responses. I am
having difficulty finding the exact quote, but Branden states that
emotional responses are value judgments. When a person has an
emotional response, the emotions are an automatic expression of how
that person values a certain event. To me, this means that if I fail
to emotionally respond to events, I also fail to experience and
*express* my value system.

*And what do you know? I've had problems with asserting my values
and standing up for my convictions! Wow!*

All of these relationships between ideas made a lot of sense to me
and I'm still working on understanding their full implications. I
want to note here that taking the time to put these idea-
relationships into words (typing it out) helps with this
understanding. The process of writing a coherent story with an
audience in mind requires the author (me) to be able to clearly
explain the ideas. And being able to clearly explain anything
requires the author (or speaker) to understand the material.

Sexual roles

A second, very important point in this book influenced my thinking
very much. Branden only briefly mentions the topic of sexual roles,
and compares male and female sexual roles. I will first briefly
discuss my experience with sexual roles.

When I was in high school, approximately 16 years old, I had a
girlfriend who I dated for quite some time (18 months if I remember
correctly). During that time, being teenagers, we were both
interested in sex and exploring sexual desires with one another.
However, during our relationship, my girlfriend was very reluctant to
have sexual intercourse. This did not bother me, but many of her
peers learned of her preference for non-intercourse sexual
activities. Her peers proceeded to pressure her and mock her for not
wanting to have sexual intercourse.

After a year of dating this girl, I was visiting with her family at
their cottage, and some of our friends came along. One night I snuck
into her room and we spent time together, talking, kissing, and
holding one another. I don't recall anything sexually-out-of-the-
ordinary occurring that night, but at one point she began crying
intensely. After I coaxed her into explaining what it was she was
upset about she described to me how her brother had sexually molested
her several years prior. She had been very reluctant about sexual
situations because this experience with her brother still bothered
her. At this point I began to understand why she had been reluctant
about sexual activities and *I resolved to not pressure her about
sex* (emphasis placed because I will come back to this point again
very soon).

Within the next couple of months, the pressure she encountered from
her peers intensified. Finally she said that she was tired of the
emotional grief from her peers regarding the context of sex in a long-
term relationship and she decided to end the relationship. I was
very hurt. I think I learned from this experience *not to pressure a
woman about sex, even if I have sexual desires* (again, I will come
back to this).

In this book, Breaking Free, Branden briefly describes sexual roles.
I have taken the time to find the excerpt from the book where Branden
describes this point. It is on page 206 (in the Bantam edition first
published December 1972):

Branden: "Masculinity or femininity entails an affirmative attitude
towards one's sexual nature and one's sexual role." (Next on page
212): Branden: "Now here's something I regard as of prime
importance. [A man's sexual role is] not being afraid of the
responsibility of masculine self-assertiveness. If you're a woman,
[it's] not being afraid or inhibited about responding to the man,
about surrendering sexually."

My first response to reading the above was that it was unfair of the
man to be sexually assertive (phrased: "masculine self-
assertiveness") and expect the woman to "surrender sexually".
However, I contemplated this point at length and realized that I
likely have this response because of my experiences with women who
had been sexually abused (I have dated one other woman who had also
been sexually abused.) I understand how such women can be afraid of
sexual encounters and therefore I had resolved not to sexually assert
myself. However, in deciding this, I also am denying my sexual role
and sexual nature (if Branden's evaluation of these are accurate).
And this contradiction seems likely to cause a fair amount of
frustration, for both myself and any woman with whom I am in a sexual
relationship.

I must consider these points more. I am currently reading "The
Psychology of Self-Esteem" by N. Branden and have been taking notes
on my experiences while reading. I will consider the possibility of
also sharing these other experiences with the group.

I hope some of the readers find my personal experiences above to be
enlightening, encouraging, or at least, interesting. I look forward
to comments and discussion.


---
Steve Floyd