96 I Am a Rock: How Trauma Hardens us Against Being Loved

 Summary:  Real love (agape) is given freely -- but it is not received freely in our fallen human condition.  Join me in this episode as we discuss the costs of opening our hearts to love\and the price of being loved fully, of being loved completely, in all of our parts.  We review why so many people refuse to be loved -- and we examine the psychological and human formation reasons for turning away from love.  Finally we discuss what we can do to get over our natural-level impediments to receiving love.  Lead-in  I am a rock I am an islandI've built wallsA fortress deep and mightyThat none may penetrateI have no need of friendship -- friendship causes painIt's laughter and it's loving I disdainI am a rock I am an islandI am a rock -- Paul Simon wrote it in 1965 and Simon and Garfunkel  Released it as a single in 1966, and it rose to #3 on the charts -- why because it resonated with people.  It was popular because it spoke out loud what many people's parts feel.   The desire to become a rock, the impulse to build the walls, to keep everyone out, to repudiate love and laughter, to not need anything or anyone.   Kate McGahan -- untitled poem  I don't need anyone, I said.Then you cameI need I need! I NEED YOU. I needed you.What did you teach me?Not to need you.NOT TO NEED. - I don't want to be in love, anymore. I just want to be left alone. And no, I am not depressed or something. No suicide is happening here... I am fine. Trust me. SharmajiassamwaleSo you want love.  But you also don't want love.  But you want love.  But you don't.  You do.  You don't.  You're conflicted.  How do you understand this conflict within you?  Can you and I understand this push-pull, this attraction - avoidance, this Yes and No within us more clearly.  Yes we can.  And we must.  Or we will wind up always skating along the edge of love, never really entering in.  And there are consequences for that -- and no one put it more succinctly than the English poet and playwright Robert Browning, who said: “Without love, our earth is a tomb”  Intro We do want to be loved, but we don't.  Why?  Because we want the benefits of love, but we don't want the costs The Benefits To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.  David Viscott If you don't have that memory of being loved, you are condemned to search the world for something to fill you up. -- Michael JacksonThe costs.  Real love is given freely, but it is not received freely in this fallen world.  Almost no one talks about the costs of being loved.  I find that so strange.  People don't think this way. There are costs to receiving love, to accepting love, to allowing love in to our hearts.  It's painful to be loved in this fallen world.  this is not well understood by many people, especially those who are not in touch with trauma, or who haven't suffered as much as others Bernard Brady's 2003 book "Christian Love: How Christians Through the Ages have Understood Love Second sentence of the book, in the preface:  "Loving seems entirely natural and being loved seems wonderfully good."Not to many peopleRCC member -- so glad you can discuss tolerating being loved.   Real love -- Agape -- burns away things that are sinful within us -- it doesn't coexist with the vice within us. Bernard Brady: Christian Love, p. 16:  "…love transforms those who love and those who are loved."  Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.”   ― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of LoveChange is scary “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment  Real love also purifies us from anything that is not morally wrote, but that is disordered or dysfunctional or imperfectReal love is the greatest good.  And because it's the greatest good, it requires us to give up lesser goods.  Perceived good and actual goods.  Coping strategies, crutches that helped us in the pastAnalogy of the safe -- limited room, silver and gold. VulnerabilityI will lose what I haveI will lose to possibility of being loved in the futureI don't want to find out I am unlovable.  I can't bear that.   Because for love to be real, for love to be agape means me allowing you to love all of me.  All my parts.  My entire being Not just the acceptable parts of me in the shop window, those that I allow others to see.  The greatness of the adventure of loving can be intimidating Love, in some sense, is nothing other than an invitation to great joy and suffering, so they shy away from it.  Paul Catalanotto Refusal to love is also refusal to live  The Catholic Weekly Dietrich von Hildrebrand those who "wish to linger with small joys in the state of harmless happiness … in which they feel themselves to be master of the situation … lacking any element of surprise or adventure. Let's go on this adventure of being loved and loving together.  I want you to come with me into the themes of this podcast.  I want you to really engage with what I'm presenting to you.  Not just listen like the Athenians listened to Paul about the resurrection of the dead.  Acts 17:32: Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.”  But they weren't really that interested.  Only a few of the Athenians joined him.  Stay with me in this Episode 96 of Interior Integration for Catholics, released on August 1, 2022, and titled "I Am a Rock: How Trauma Hardens us Against Being Loved" I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, passionate Catholic and I am very pleased that we can share and engage with this information. Why do I think being loved is so important?   First because receiving love is absolutely essential.  It is our starting point in the spiritual life.  And second, because most people will not realxly allow themselves to be loved. Psychiatrist and Harvard Professor George Valliant wrote:  It's very hard, for most of us to tolerate being loved.-- That's been my experience as well.  The vast majority of people have chosen to severely limit how much love they will let in, how much love they will tolerate.  You can't love unless you are willing to be loved.  1 John 4:19:  We love because he first loved us  Look at the order here.  God loved us first.  We can't generate any love on our own.  We can reflect love, we can channel love, but we can't create love out of nothing like God can.  We have to cooperate in love and be open to love in order to love, in order to follow the two great com...