Feline Psychology

Progressions

When Puderd came to live with me several years ago, she clearly had some psychic boundary issues. Perhaps, these arose from the fact that in her prior household, a young teenage girl derived great pleasure from harassing and teasing my refugee feline. No doubt, this girl was "kicking the dog" as her father and mother had split up and was now troubled. The magnitude of Puderd's life challenges is evident from the fact that in the three years Puderd has lived with me, she has never once gone back to her former home of four years despite it being less than half a mile away and requiring but crossing one low-risk street.

Soon after Puderd's arrival I noted she would have nothing to do with getting up on the bed and instead spent her nights in unknown parts of the house. And for certain, she would have nothing whatever to do with girls or women who came to the house. Gradually, my tentative gray tabby progressed to venturing into the bedroom and sleeping in the window or on the floor, but never on the bed. For six months I slept alone. The night my brother called and told me Mom had just died, Puderd jumped up on the bed, and in the endearing manner that cats do so, made a nest and settled in for the duration. I haven't slept alone since.

In the two years following, Puderd has made significant progress in recovery. Puderd is now quite happy to be carried around upside down, scratched on her fluffy underside turned topside, and chased at warp nine throughout the house. In the past two weeks or so I have noticed that, like the migration of tectonic plates, Puderd's nesting site on the bed has been moving south. My feet are at the north end when I am lying on the bed and Puderd has always found the north end by my feet safer than the south end by my head. This week she has actually gotten up near my shoulders a couple of nights. Her head is now within easy scratching range. She's finding that moving south during winter isn't such a bad idea after all.

For many years I have been haunted by a relational progression that takes place among humans. Unlike the endearing ones that I and other humans have had with our cats, this one is rather unsettling and sobering. As cats get attached to their keepers, they develop a sense of safety and will submit to an upside down view of the world, knowing their guardians have their heads on right side up. It has been my observation that as people become more attached to each other, they often become much more at-risk for emotional trauma from their significant others. We have often heard that "We most often hurt those we love."

This finally makes sense to me. For those of us that were raised in abusive and dysfunctional households, a sense of personal security and strong self-esteem became a fleeting mirage in the desert. It took very little for any transient sense of security and positive esteem to be vaporized in the heat of relational conflict. As we have moved into adulthood, many of us have discovered that some powerful learning from turbulent early years has remained well entrenched in our psyche, only to re-emerge decades later at the most unexpected times. We often find a shame-based view of ourselves detonates with no notice; most often when someone we really care about unwittingly punches one of our emotional buttons. What is a new insight for me is an understanding of why it is that people we care about most have the fiendish ability to target these and fire away.

Yesterday a very dear friend was relating to me that she had purchased some furniture. A casual friend, Jack, helping her move it, had made a comment to the effect, "Have you thought about just where you are going to put and use this furniture that you have wasted your money on and consumed my day by asking me to move?" Ellen related that she would figure out a place for it and let it go at that. She did not over-react at all.

It occurred to me that if I had asked her the same thing in the same tone it would have blown her away. I would have detonated a cascade of shame in her that would have reverberated for days, potentially disrupting our friendship. I know her. I know me. It is not far-fetched to believe we might have been permanently estranged by my the errant comment, if I had made it. Ellen agreed that if I had made the comment in the same tone it would have been profoundly toxic to her.

What's the difference if I had made it or Jack made it? Here it is. Ellen has no emotional investment in Jack and what he thinks does not have the ability to threaten her tenuous sense of self-esteem or security. On the other hand, Ellen has a lot of emotional investment in me. What I think about her or her actions does have great potential to incinerate her sense of esteem and security. Further more, I have the ability to take something away from her that she highly values: myself. I can in so many words or innuendos tell her she has been a bad little girl and needs to be punished; that her punishment will be abandonment and rejection. And we wonder why people panic, get defensive, and go to Defcon 1 in a nano-second? If you think you are about to lose one of your most cherished possessions, you will scramble faster that the First Airborne Squadron on full alert.

Ellen and I have done this a couple of times. I have done it with others times without number. The problem is defense strategies don't work in relational crises. Resolution of relational challenges requires openness and vulnerability, not force field generators and disrupted communication channels. Defensiveness is just plain awful to experience. If you have ever had your genuine efforts at reconciliation rebuffed by someone's force fields, you know this too well.

Unfortunately, we learned as children that the only way to have a sense of safety was to stay defended at Defcon 1. We learned this so well we failed to realize there can be a peacetime and that people can have constructive exchanges and differences without going to war. I have never learned that women can be angry with me and NOT have their hand on the rejection button. I am still trying to figure out that anger and rejection don't have to be soul mates.

If I push a button in a shame-based individual (and most of us in the West are such) and she becomes defended and angry, feeling like a naughty child, then I as a shamed-based individual will get the return false message that I have been a bad little boy. I will feel rebuffed, panic, and expect to get that most cruel and unusual punishment, rejection. I better fire first. Want to see a conflict over nothing grow faster than the dandelions in my lawn? Let two shame-based people become emotionally invested in each other and just watch. You won't have to wait long.

Ellen and I have started getting to the place where we can laugh about some of the nonsense we were subjected to as kids. We both learned children were to be seen and not heard, that acceptance was conditional on performance and perfection, that love was conditional, that anger was the prelude to rejection and abandonment. We still believe this to some degree but are beginning to figure out there's another song to sing. And we have discovered we both like to dance.

What I have not fully figured out is a solution to the approach-avoidance conflict that arises within people who are attracted to each other but at the same time are repelled by the recognition of an ever-increasing risk of emotional injury. I often have wondered if it is not better to maintain casual relationships that keep the risk of psychological pain at acceptable levels. I still have not yet gained a grasp of what there is beyond Defcon 1, in experiencing true soul intimacy with others. I suspect that lesson got omitted in my early years. But, I am just now beginning to get the first installments of an education in mid-life that suggests a possible solution to the approach-avoidance conflicts that seems to tyrannize so many of us.

If my self-esteem is conditional on what others think of my performance and state of perfection, then I am in really big trouble. If I believe love is only a conditional thing, then I will find the love of others tenuous at best. If I believe I am not granted the right to speak, then the strong words of another will be an indictment without defense. If I believe another person is the keeper of my fortune, fate, and faith, my future fears will come to fruition

If I truly believe that my value, dignity, and worth as an individual is a fixed immutable reality in the universe then I needn't fear the words of another will be able to shatter my self-image. If I profoundly believe that I am part of a perfect family and forever have an eternal place in life, then I needn't fear someone else putting me out in the night emotionally. If a member of my family has willingly been put to death to spare me an unjust punishment, I can never claim to be ignorant of unconditional love. If I believe that I am an heir to a fortune beyond measure, need I ever fear bankruptcy of soul? Need I ever allow the words of another to cause me to be faint of heart?

Beyond the tortured legalism of organized religion, beyond the tyranny of institutionalized belief systems, beyond the exhausting performance expectations of works-based theologies, beyond the horrors of forty centuries of creed-based abuses, there is a message embedded in the universe that can provide a way out for myself and the Ellens of the world, a realization that it is safe to turn off the force-field generators and let others inside our perimeters, to trust Another for true Peace.

"For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made ... And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation ... There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus ... you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out "Abba! Father!" ... The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God ... If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?"