Mythology in Action - Part 2

Mythology in Action - Part 2, Feb. 18, 2019

Maurice Turmel PhD - The Spiritual Psychologist

In my first post on this subject I laid out the circumstances in which I felt driven to become a psychologist.  The main trigger of that drive was the failure of my first marriage which set me on a quest to discover who I was and why I was here on this earth.  A divorce by itself is not enough to explain how such a quest came to be.  What were the roots of that particular failure that prompted such a change in life direction?  For the answer to that we have delve into my childhood where conditions and dynamics set the stage for what was to come later resulting in a long list of inappropriate choices that led to a bad marriage.

Once again, this is not to disparage my first wife whose unhappiness with the marriage was well founded from her point of view.  Add to which I myself was an unhappy camper having no idea at such a young age how any marriage was to proceed.  My childhood years set the stage for that failure and others in the area of work until I could identify and put a halt to repeating patterns of self-defeating behaviour.  The driving force behind these patterns was the belief that I did not deserve happiness or success as I unconsciously sabotaged these areas of my life.

The principal factor in all this stemmed directly from my childhood experiences of physical, emotional and mental abuse at the hands of my father.  He was a rager who took his frustrations out on his children, which I, as the eldest, took the brunt.  The terror and abuse that I experienced began before age 5 and continued well into my teens. It wasn’t a daily or weekly event for that matter, but when it happened it was terrifying and left an indelible mark on my psyche.  While other boys were bonding with their fathers and sharing warm and friendly relations, I bonded to terror which is what happens to victims of abuse.  I lived in fear of this man and grew a whole host of survival and avoidance strategies to try and mitigate his rage attacks.  However, being a child I would inevitably screw up and get attacked again.

In those early years my mother did her best to intervene but she was afraid of him too so she couldn’t do much to protect us.  Eventually she did grow stronger and stood up to him, but the damage had already been done. Myself along with two of my sisters bore the brunt of his rages and suffered the greatest damage.  In today’s world children would be removed from such a home, but back in the 50s abuse of children was common and nobody intervened unless you were hospitalized.

Out of this start in life grew low self-esteem and the belief that I was the one responsible for receiving these beatings.  Somehow, without any reasonable explanation, I was condemned for some alleged infraction and a beating with his belt was the end result.  Aside from the terror, another effect of this type of abuse was shame.  I was ashamed of myself because I was being beaten.  So I assumed I deserved it and the beatings happened because I was bad.  Whatever the so-called failure, it was never addressed as bad behaviour - instead, you were deemed a bad person and that’s why you were being beaten. In today’s language the long-term effects of such a childhood would be classified as a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, not unlike what military personnel experience in the heat of war.

This is a simple summary of where the roots of low self-esteem and self-sabotage began for me.  The physical and verbal abuse aside, there were also incidents of sexual abuse brought about by a troubled babysitter and a neighbourhood predator.  But these were mild compared to what was received at home. When these incidents were reported to our mother neither of those persons were ever allowed in our home again. In fairness I can also add here that there were some calm times and even happy times at home when we seemed to function reasonably well as a family. But the threat of dad’s explosive temper and tendency to violence was never far away and we children learned to remain vigilant for those signs.

Why am I sharing all this?  Because unlike choosing to be an airline pilot or architect or lawyer, you don’t choose psychology as a career unless you’re driven there by some predisposing circumstances.  In my case it was simply the need to understand myself and undo those negative patterns of behaviour that cost me jobs and my first marriage.  I needed to know how and why I was sabotaging myself, and what was driving this pattern of behaviour. 

The simple answer was an accumulation of feelings such as abandonment, guilt and shame about my very being, and feelings of worthlessness as a result of being a victim of abuse.  The net result of such feelings is revealed in patterns of low self-esteem, self-sabotage and self-rejection.  The solution, simply put, is self-acceptance which in my case meant a long road of recovery and healing through years of group and individual therapy along with personal growth pursuits which all culminated in my choice of a career as a psychologist and helping professional.

It was during these recovery years that I found my way to the Myth of the Hero and saw in this pattern a similar quest to the one I found myself in.  From this came the realization that many humans have lived through such patterns throughout the ages.  So long before we had self-help groups and personal growth seminars, we had the Hero Myth as a model for self-discovery and personal healing from any life trauma, while putting oneself on a healthier track towards real happiness through self-acceptance. This is how my book “Conscious Evolution - Mythology in Action” came to be.  It includes my own experiences as a trauma victim and survivor along with those of several individuals whose biographies I studied while in training. Add to this the experiences of many therapy clients sharing their exposure to trauma and you have what some might call a real “meat and potatoes” kind of book, one that you can sink your teeth into since it is born from real life events.

Within the next few days I will be offering my book “Conscious Evolution - Mythology in Action” as a no cost Kindle Book Promotion for a limited time. I will be posting that information on the blog and in the Goodreads giveaways section.  I’ll be looking for reader feedback and reviews of course. It is my hope that the real life experiences and ideas offered here along with the book will help many of you as well. There may be one or two more posts on this subject before the book giveaway is launched.  Stay tuned to this blog for more.

https://thespiritualpsychologist.blogspot.com/  Watch for our Goodreads Kindle Ebook giveaway of this title coming soon.