the bipolarity of static masculine and dynamic feminine

Hmmm ... all the good things that i experienced over the last two weeks went out of the window in the last four days. i was on an emotional roller coaster, hardly having any control over my rawness, ended up having meaningless fights and arguments and loathed myself the most. there were some moments when i just wanted to die ... notwithstanding my need to dramatise my life.

but some insights and resolutions ...

first the insights:

I have been reading this book "Masculine and Feminine" and it talks about the two types of masculinity and femininity and the interplay between static and dynamic. one such bipolarity is between static masculine and dynamic feminine. in simple terms, people who are more towards this pole negatively, are torn between being rigid, opinionated, vocal, intrusive, dictatorial, idealistic, etc, etc on one hand, and between being reckless, impulsive, histrionic, rebellious, self loathing, drowning on self pity, lacking self control, etc, etc.

there is of course the positive polarities of this dynamics and there is the other set between Static Feminine and Dynamic Masculine; and that too has its positive and negative bi-polarity.

most people are torn between the polarities and most people end up splitting one or the other from their psyche. For example, if i take my example, i am caught in the bi-polarity of Static Masculine and Dynamic Feminine and often in its negative connotations. More over, in my case, i have split the Static Masculine from my psyche and projected it onto other people, i.e. both the positives and negatives of the pole are projected onto other people. For example, i would admire other people who can bind themselves and others, who has a sense of proportion, balance, can gently but firmly stand by his or her own principles, has a strong sense of self or self worth, can bring in a sense of order in a chaotic situation, can look at the whole picture without being overwhelmed most of the time, etc, etc; on the other hand i stay away or dislike either the same people or some others who are (in my perception) unnecessarily rigid, righteous, views the world from his/her high horses, unfair, autocratic, moralistic, judgemental, opinionated, silent critic, etc, etc.

As for the Dynamic feminine, the positives are: creativity, taking the uncertainty of life in its stride, being able to live with the tension of continuous change, spontaneous, vivacious, energetic, having a zest for life, able to bring out the positive from every negatives, etc, etc. the negatives are histrionic, overcome with emotional turbulence hence can be hysterical, prone to excesses of addiction, mood swings, self loathing, despair, suicidal tendencies, etc, etc.

now where am I in all the above? i do see myself caught in the negative bi-polarity of the Static Masculine (SM) and Dynamic Feminine (DM). while i don't see to garner enough self control when i am feeling angst ridden, i also invite aggression and criticism of the SM from others.

In one particular event, i was caught in this loop with another person who is also (in my perception) caught in the same negative bi-polarity of SM and DM and in my encounter with her, we ended up hurting each other from our denied and hence most strongly held negative static masculine. we were critical, bitter, reactive and vengeful to each other and just could not see where the other was coming from. There was one more character in this context, on whom i have projected both the positives and negatives of the static masculine and this person too in my experience was drowning me with silent criticism, often in collusion with the other person. I experienced myself being an untouchable and it was so vivid that i could not just be there physically.

physically i felt suffocated, abandoned, ostracised and being made into an untouchable both by me and by them. These feelings were so strong that i had to physically look for a person to who i could just cry and feel being accepted in my most raw and "ugly" state of being. however, there were none. but this incident opened my eyes to many aspects of me and of this phenomena.

it took me almost the whole night to steady myself and have some sense of self control over the inner turmoil i was facing.

some other insights are:

i would often face this with people whose primary experience of mother is one of "insanity", i.e. if i take my daughter, she has experienced me (despite who i may have been) as erratic, judgemental, contradictory, irrational, sometimes insensitive and sometimes out of control. Here the frame of "insantity" is distorted and consequently the frame of "sanity" that is built therefore is also distorted. in my perception, the frame of this "sanity" is to be appropriate, sensitive, controlled, bound, balanced and accepting, in other words some of the positive aspect of the static masculine. now, there is nothing wrong with this frame except one thing, all negatives of both static masculine and dynamic feminine are rejected in this frame.

therefore, with this set of people, presumably whose primary experience with female authority figures have been negative, i would draw projection rightly or wrongly of being "insane" and the person would then operate from a righteous location of the static masculine who needs to bring this irrationality into order by criticising, by being directive, by being reactive, i.e. by control and not by acceptance of the folly. and often the concerns of these people would be the concerns for the under dogs, or concern for the appropriateness of the situation. therefore, the moment a cycle of "inappropriate" behaviour starts, will start the cycle of stopping it, binding it and negating it from these set of people. I often experience this from my daughter who some times experiences me as volatile, irresponsible, insensitive and somewhat "out of control". and then the fight that we have between us is precisely "who has the last word about the situation; the "sane" one or the "insane" one"? No one wins and both parties get hurt tremendously and i often end up loathing myself to bits and this, predictably, reinforces her belief in my "insanity".

The third set of insight that i have is that there have been some gentically endowed characteristics that i have developed. These are more in the frame of the dynamic feminine but my childhood experience of female relatives around me have instilled the negatives of the DM much more than the positive ones. Not having had a positive father figure influence, or rather, having had a negative father figure influence has pushed it further to the realms of fragmenting the positives of the SM from the psyche and identifying with the negatives of the dynamic feminine. One of the ways of getting out of this loop of bipolarity is to go through the fire, i.e. dealing with the rage, raw emotions internally and not letting it come out to the world. it is very tough, as of now i have not found a suitable way of dealing with it but i hope to.

The fourth set of insight and some resolutions:

Often while i am in the grip of this, i would take the criticisms as they come, tell myself that i deserved it and others are right. This also is a distortion as it makes everyone else into perfect human beings except self.

I am going to work on the positives of both these polarity and work towards bringing in more balance rather than projecting it outside. it is going to cause some disturbances around as people who criticise me also like to experience my wild side, my energetic side, my unconventional side but they are unwilling to experience the negatives of this side. Rather than saying "this is all my fault", i am putting a boundary around myself now and i am making a decision of minimising my interface with such people who in my perception are caught in this loop with me. I do not want to be with people who make me feel "not OK" being who i am, while at the same time being aware of what i am bringing into the situation, i.e. operating from my positive static masculine and positive static feminine.

what i experienced during this experience is abject orphan hood i.e. lacking both a positive affirming father and a loving, nurturing mother internally. when i frantically searched for such people in my life, only two names came to me, both of who are female friends. What i receive from these two people are a lot of acceptance of me, the good, the bad and the ugly. I am not sure i return the favour to them in same measure, but i know that the do.

i am still feeling raw from the experience but as the positives of the dynamic feminine would point out, there is always a silver line around the dark cloud.

finding a friend inside you is actually a good thing !! i am now having more dialogues inside my head and sorting out things there rather than excitedly telling A or some other people about it and then starting the whole spiral of analysis, arguments, counter arguments, blaming, accusations and counter accusations ..... what a spiral.

now when i feel that the head is buzzing too strongly and people sitting around me can hear them, i walk about, get a glass of water, think of a song, visualise nice things ....

actually feel more empowered within myself by doing all these ... it helps me get a grip on my bitterness, my caustic criticisms and contempt of others, my disapproval, my disappointments and my hurt feelings. OK, the down side is that the dialogue or monologue becomes lengthier and sometimes, i have to ask "who is it who is talking just now"; scary, sounds like i am going mad? nah, actually i am feeling more sane than before.

i have never believed these feel good or do good books or theories which said that one should control one's negative thoughts or feelings and replace them with more constructive and positive ones. actually they work quite alright. one does not have to do it all the time but once in a while, or more than once in a while, it is a good thing to be able to see you thoughts, converse with them and put them aside rather than bringing them out there in front of every one else and then wait to be crucified.

also the need to bring them out perhaps is more out of wanting to make the other person see my point of view, hoping that they see their wrong doing, or agree with mine, or take corrective steps, etc, etc. all of these create dependency of an insidisous kind --- while i believe that i am acting out of my "free" choice but actually i am waiting for direct or indiect approval or agreement and feeling angry, disappointed and resentful when not being provided.

then the whole feeling of i am one down in the relatedness sets in and the downward spiral begins.

what seems to be working for me is to be able to have these diaglogues and also to continuously remind myself that the world does not work according to my needs and that every one wants their way -- this is the nature of the world -- like driving in indian cities - you have to decide whether you will be destructive in yoru driving passion, give way to road rage or to drive to the best of your abilities and get to your destination.

having a destination works -- at this point of time, my destination is to buy my own home .. someday i am hoping i would be able to do that. i would like to have my own home, decorate it the way i want to, live in it the way i want to, and die in it the way i have to.

do i still feel sad, angry, hurt, disappointed, etc, etc ? of course i do, but they dont dislocate me as much. i am able to have a functional, civil relationship with others and i feel good about it. i dont think anyone wants my raw side and i dont think i am ready for the same of others.

reconfigurring ........

to begin with i wonder whether i have anything to write? may be, may be not. Hmmmm, there is an internal feeling that i am ignoring and trying hard to remain untouched by it.

so, who have I been in the past three to four days? partly me that i recognise, partly me that i wish to reconfigure. for example in conversations with people, i can hear my repartees or responses or opinions inside my head but i am not expressing them. it is a kind of experimentation but also is kind of fun. Fun is being in control and not being this blabbermouth, putting your dirty foot in your mouth, being the loud, obnoxious, hurting creature who others rather avoid.

it makes me a little distant, little cold but i think it is worth it. why would i want to express my opinion so freely, or blurt out what am i thinking or feeling to others just like that? i don't think most people even want to hear what you think or feel unless it concerns them : i.e. they are affected by what you say or you are saying something about someone else in who they are interested.

i think i kept this blog open to the world, which i will still do, but i also had emails going to thousand and one odd people and i am going to reduce that number to may one or two. i really believe people don't care. like i think i don't care about how most other people think or feel.

the second reason i am reconfiguring the interpersonal interface is because i believe that i invite a lot of abuse and bad behaviour towards me by being me. i attract some of that like magnet. and when they rain on me, i act courageous and receive them all like a samurai. Samurai, my foot, i am just so used to being treated like shit that i believe i can handle all of them. but no more, i will not invite shit to rain on me any more.

that would effectively mean i would be polite, politically correct (most of the time), friendly,nice, non controversial and distant. at least for the time being i have to be just that, otherwise, i am really letting myself be beat up for no apparent reason.

later once i find my foot firmly planted in my own soil, internally, that i would then let go of some of these boundaries.

how am i feeling about doing this? not very nice but not very bad either. i am slowly getting used to being this .... only sometimes i am letting go. i am not feeling reactive, which is a very good thing. i am feeling distant and constantly reminding myself that no one else holds the key to my sense of well being, except me. no love, no friendship, no intimacy can bring to me what i cant bring to myself. and that is that.

on the other hand, i know people wish to reach out to me and they want me to reach out to them. it is just that i am not sure i want to reach out to them in my present avatar .... like i said in my facebook status message, most people may say it but in reality most people don't like the raw, the intense, the despaired, the depressed, the opinionated, the ugly, the crass, the nakedness. they like it with a filter of decency, of politeness, of civility so that they feel protected. In their place i think i would also do the same.

i also believe that there is no such thing called "deep love" or even if it is there, i have never experienced it. what i have experienced both within myself and from others are affection, attraction, fondness, caring with a proviso. i.e. provided it works for them.

i guess what i seek is absolute selfless love, and no one can provide it to me nor can i give it to anyone. it sounds silly and final and stupid but so be it.

i have to constantly remind myself in my interface with the world that the other person has a world of his/her own and is with me only partially and that is what we all get from each other and then it does not hurt that much. the longing for a full and absolute union remains but by now my heart has accepted that it is a grand fantasy.

communalism revisited

Like thousands of Indians, i too have been witnessing and anguishing on the Mumbai carnage and the outrage and outpourings that is flowing non stop.

much as i like to think of myself as a open minded, liberal, rational human being, to whom, communalism is associated only with the likes of fundamentalists of all kinds, the inner voice told some other tale.

This came up during a discussion with a dear friend who confronted me with the issue that one can not be anchored on one's own heritage and convictions unless one explores, understands and accepts both the primal and the socialised parts of the heritage, in its particularised context.

This pushed me to look at the number of communities that i emotionally connect to; and i came up with the following in order of psychological priority:

1. Bengali

2. Hindu

3. woman

4. middle class

and this list can go on and on. however, it is during the process of this discussion that i was rediscovering the communalism that i harbour inside.

Being a Bengali is a strongest identity for me - my connect with the culture, the language, literature, the ethos, food, etc, etc. But this is not all, for me, what comes along with these are the inherent biases and stereotyping of the regional identities. e.g. rural Biharis, UPites and Rajasthan are believers in "might is right", violent and irrational, Sikhs from Pujab are brave, straight, trustworthy and honourable, non-sikh punjabis are show-offs, braggarts, fun loving; people from parts of Rajasthan and from Gujrat are money oriented and are not intellectually oriented, people from down south are more religious, soft, less violent, measured and prudent, etc, etc. Similar stereotypes about Bengalis are intellectual or pseudo ones, artistic, lazy, rubble rousers, cowardly, physically weak, rebels without a cause, etc, etc.

The second one is about being a Hindu - here i am more pan-Indian than a Bengali. there is a sense of pride held with a distinctiveness. However, i have noticed that i withhold myself from talking about my spirituality or religiosity with urban Indians even if they are Hindus. Is there a shame? I don't know - probably yes.

Secondly, do i trust non-Hindus generally? a straight and simple answer is - No. Interesting, considering that I married a non-Hindu. what breeds this mistrust is a deep sense of "us" and "them" which resides in the deepers recesses of the psyche.

However, there are distinctions here; the non Hindu friends from the same social class are held with this delusion that somehow they are outside the untrustworthy circle and then there are very little difference between "us" and "them". However,the paranoia raises its huge head at the moment of encounter with non-hindus of lower socio economic strate.

the rational mind of course desperately wants to believe that these are not true and that there are other view points through one can look at the "other" differently and with "equality"; but the emotional part of me (specially in times of stress), summarily dismisses it.

the third one is about being a woman - this is trans-national and is held with ambivalence. If i were to look at the negative communal parts of my psyche vis-a-vis this part, then the part that exists here is more subtle and hence more dangerous. one part is holding men as "guilty" unless proved "innocent" - this at the unconscious level is extended to all men, at the conscious level, extended to men who are overtly "manly", "macho", "chauvinist", "loud", etc, etc.

the more shameful part as I hold it, is the way this part looks at women - part of it holds women as generally "weak", "victims", "stupid", "inefficient", "attention seeking", "dependent", "scheming", "shallow", etc, etc, unless of course they prove themselves. the other part looks at women as "powerful", "nurturing","critical", etc, etc. Do I see other positive qualities in women as well? yes, i do, otherwise, i would not have survived, but i see them in very few women and i carry a shame around it. I know rationally that what i see in these few women, exist in other women as well either as a potential or as explicit, but my primitive emotional response is the first kind.

the fourth one is about being middle class - this too is held with ambivalence - but the important thing to note here is that neither the upper class nor the lower class are trusted or welcomed into our midst. this most times is irrespective of the religious identity of the other (remember in childhood, there was strong indoctrination about mixing with the "chhoto lok" or "lower class" or not being too close the "rich" or the "baro lok".

what i guess i am trying to work out here is that there are many many communal fencing that i have and it is not confined only to being a Hindu or a Muslim, and what i am hoping to do for myself is that unless i articulate and acknowledge them without guilt or shame, i don't have any space to take the next step that can lead me/us to building a proud and aware community/India and ultimately a world citizen.

encounters with identities

I had a very interesting day recently.  it started with a petty fight with A over a very petty thing but we brought out the worst in each other.  was not very pleasant way to start a day, but ..... :-(

i went out of the house, went to my work space, vowed to myself to be "absolutely and completely" self sufficient (as though there can exist a reality like that) but i think i gave it a good try!  i finished lots of odd things that were just pending.  i vowed to start driving again; i guess it was my way of putting myself in the driver's seat again!

then the strange things started happening - i started meeting various facets of my identity or shall i say, various facets of women's identities, all of them on the same day.  

came the first encounter.  some one who i did not know from before, came to meet me.  the more i listened to her, i told myself, it is amazing that i had to meet her this morning when i am so full with the same issues at least on a transient mode;  need to feel needed, feeling trapped, feeling intensely unhappy with self, yet, looking for way out, trying to make sense of things and not given up hope.  talking to her made me question "what is it that women look for"? i could not come up with any answer.  this was one facet of me/all women which is trapped in "being needed" mode and the only mode the being has known to express itself is to offer oneself like an infrastructure (non assertive, proper, obsessive, caring, efficient and competent) but keeping the righteous moralistic upper hand to whip the "wrong doers" who dare to refuse her offerings.

then came lunch with an old friend, who was in the city for a short while and was leaving soon after. After we caught up with each other, during the course of the conversation she started talking about not really knowing what would make her happy.  again i thought how similar the line of thinking was and yet it was not the same ... perhaps we were barking up the wrong tree.  perhaps the real question to ask was whether we were intrinsically happy or unhappy?  it was as though all of us have this invisible emotional switch that has either a off or a on button for having a positive self regard and a basic sense of contentment for who we are, and not desperately looking for affirmation of it outside of ourselves, or it is most times switched off for some of us.  It is that facet of me/all women (may be for men as well) which screams "i wish things were different, i was different, others were different, only then, oh, only then, would i feel at peace with myself and with the world"

anyway, the lunch session had to close abruptly as she had to catch her flight and i came back home with my lunch packed and had a TV lunch. 

After that as i was sinking into the peaceful slumber, the cell phone rang and at the opposite end, was the voice of some one who was completely drunk, feeling rather hopeless, self deprecating and condemning and was in need of help.  i went over to her place, spent some time with her, took care of her a little bit so that she could physically become better.  my encounter with this women put me in touch with this facet of me/all women (may be men too) which has the intense need to punish the self by bringing on shame, guilt and anger.  This facet keeps whispering in our ears how worthless and unlovable we are, makes us feel desperate and lonely and then as last resort, we scream for attention and simultaneously push people away by refusing to be helped, attended to and to be cared for.  This gives us the golden opportunity to reinforce the belief that we are completely unworthy while the real anger is with the world that it is vicious and uncaring and unloving and hence we need to constantly grab its attention, and thus completing the loop of convincing ourselves that the act of grabbing attention was shameful, feel guilty, to only repeat the act again and again.

my last encounter was with a very dear friend of mine, with who i was supposed to have dinner and spend the night over with.  as we sat and chatted, i was seeing the other in me and simultaneously the stark dissimilarities.  She was this facet of me/all women which is inherently melancholic, has a short handle on reactivity and anxiety, dynamic, assertive, caring, loving, wise, balanced, matured, open and accepting of others in more ways than one.This is the facet which is very rich and very beautiful and attractive and yet is utterly unconvinced and/or critical of its inherent richness and beauty but is totally convinced about  its competence and functionality.  This makes it into a great companion and a work horse but seldom gives it space to enjoy its own beauty in all its aliveness, be it scary, stormy, dark or welcoming, full of life and vivacious.

i went to bed with this thought that while the day started with a fight which made me feel quite empty, hopeless and futile, at the end of the day, with all those encounters of various identities i felt more real as though i had to meet each and every one of them today to feel the richness of life and what it has to offer and how every encounter is only a beginning of new direction and not an end in itself. 

Thank you life!