THE DEAD ZONE STAGE
This stage of the relationship is usually characterized by boredom, feeling trapped and the strong belief that there must be something better elsewhere. However, it is important to note that while this stage might seem suffocating and appear to be the natural end of the relationship but in reality, this is where some of the most profound healing will occur.
The dead zone comes from a number of dynamics and all of them involve withdrawal and fear.
Sometimes we withdraw to avoid losing to our partners in the power struggle and competition.
Sometimes we withdraw from life because of heartbreak, failure and guilt.
Many times we compensate for these feelings by undertaking positive roles where we are doing the right thing for the wrong reason- where we give but don’t receive, where we are in sacrifice, heading towards burn-out.
At every point where we lost bonding, through fear, separation or pain, we go into ‘fusion’.
Fusion is a place where boundaries between us and others are muddled. The fusion we experience with our parents is carried into our own relationships with our adult partners. This is the stage that we can face and heal the painful illusions of the guilt and failure that is present in every role and in every family dynamic. It is painful to bring up feelings of guilt or failure that we have suppressed but a relationship is the natural forum in which to explore these feelings and heal them. We have to get past the ego in order to do so and that means we have to understand the traps that are in store.
Fusion
Fusion is the term used to represent the key behaviors in relationships that lead to their downfall.
Fusion is effectively counterfeit bonding and it can be set up by the ego to prevent us from really joining.
You can instantly tell the difference between fusion and joining. When we join our relationships are true, alive and free. We feel balanced and we are able to joinin the kind of love that brings success to all areas of our lives.
When there is fusion, however, we feel dissatisfied, that we are making sacrifices in the relationship. We are unable to receive because we have withdrawn.
When there is fusion, we cannot progress in our relationships because there is a co-dependency without partners to hide our fear, and we are unable to accept the love that will carry us past the ego’s barriers. This increases the sacrifice and throws our lives out of balance, and often shows itself by overwork, but sometimes with laziness.
We can however experience true bonding and heal what was lost or non existent in our family when we were growing up by making a commitment to move past this step to allow ourselves to experience the true emotions and feelings that we are hiding. By committing to our partner and to life, we can escape from fusion and this escape is the love we have for our partners.
Compensation
Compensation is another ego trap that happens all the time. We compensate to hide our true feelings, beliefs, and concerns. Eg, we might have a poor self-image that we are lazy and to compensate ourselves for that, we work excessively hard.
Similarly, by being over good, we hide a deep-rooted belief that we are bad or evil. Like fusion, compensation is a way of avoiding and suppressing our true feelings that need healing.
It will never lead to a satisfactory relationship because it blocks what we have to give and prevents us from receiving.
As long as we are playing roles or acting as we think we should, we will never reach a state of real joining, which make take us to a whole new level of the relationship.
When we are aware the ego sets these traps, we can watch out for them, move past them, finding peace and love in our relationships.
The roles, rules and duties step
This step in the dead zone is usually governed by our egos.
The idea here is that we act out roles, rules and duties to prevent ourselves from truly giving. We do all the ‘right ‘ things like behaving well, doing things for others and working hard but we do them for the wrong reasons. Mostly, we do these things not out of our love and our desire to give but rather, out of a desire to sacrifice ourselves and compensate for whatever feelings of guilt and failure that we are feeling.
Sometimes, we also set up rules of how we want things to be because we want to hide and protect the places where we have suffered before. While these rules are set up to protect us from our past pains, they are meant to be broken and thus, like all defenses, they eventually bring about what we are trying to defend.
When we play a role, we are not giving authentically. While others not close to us may not be able to tell the difference, when we are unable to give, we are in actual fact unable to give ourselves, which is the fundamental to the success of a relationship.
Our ego tells us that when we give ourselves, we become vulnerable and thus we set up defenses to ensure that this does not happen. Obviously, joining, then, doesn’t take place. Ultimately, however, our compensations bury and hide the guilt, poor self esteem, feelings of unworthiness and failure deeper which not only affects our existing relationships but any relationships we might have in future.
Many of our roles are the result of patterns that exist in our families- we were brought up to believe that we are not useful, important or special and so we bury those feelings of low self worth and compensate by making ourselves special, invaluable and important to others.
The problem is that these feelings and problems remain deep inside us and unless we open them up, recognize and heal them, we will be unable to receive from others and we will eventually head towards burn out , depression and ultimately, deadness, which is reflected in our relationships,.
The answer is to heal.
By joining and recommitting into our relationships and going through healing, we can heal ourselves, our relationships and our families.
We need to live by choice rather than by roles.
We need to live by truth rather than rules.
Giving ourselves into commitment can usually heal a whole step instead of trying to join at hundreds of points which are needed to get through one step.
The Oedipus step
This step forms part of the dead zone, but instead of the feelings of being in a rut, or nearing burn out, which characterize the roles and rules step, we move deeper into feelings of deadness, eventually to the point of repulsion and even revulsion from our partners.
We may find these feelings bewildering and they are even made more so because they come from our subconscious.
The factor at work here is called ‘transference’. We are taking unfinished business especially sexuality with our siblings or parents and transferring it onto our partners.
These unfinished business may be based on feelings we repressed including a sexual attraction to a parent oar sibling or perhaps a guilty knowledge that one parent liked us more than he or she liked the other parent. This is the ego’s best traps to smother sexuality, relationship and success. Every one has these traps although they are always well hidden.
Transference is our attempt to deal with this unfinished business so that we can finally heal and lay the family problems to rest. Wheat it does to our relationship, however is to kill romantic and sexual feelings for our partners as we transfer our feelings and attitudes towards our parent san siblings onto tour partners. This is a difficult step and it requires commitment and joining to see us through it. It helps to become aware of the things we might be burying in order to bring them to light and lay them to rest. Awareness and commitment, even when we least feel like it, paradoxically bring us through this step quickly and easily.
The competition step
At this stage, we use competition as a delaying tactic, in an attempt to protect ourselves from our fear. Competition stems from broken or inadequate bonding within our families. In our relationships, this leads to power struggles and then deadness and we withdraw ourselves to avoid defeat.
Competition is a hidden issue in the dead zone. We attempt to prove that we are the best, we are right and we are important. This step marks the point at which we need to let this go. We realize that our partners and our interest are the same and neither of us has to sacrifice or lose in a relationship. We must transcend our competitive thoughts to join with our partners, which encourages an honest, balanced relationship in which we both blossom.
The fear of next step
This is defined by our fear of moving forward. W want to know what the step before us is before we move forward and we delay ourselves endlessly by trying to find out. Our fear might be based on losing our sense of control, giving up too much or taking a risk that might not work out.
We often fear intimacy because we are afraid of what might happen when we give all of ourselves in a relationship. There is a certain comfort in knowing where we stand, even if we are unhappy in that place.
It takes great courage, trust and confidence t o take the next step, but when it is rewarded, throughout joining with our partners, we will experience another short romance period and a burst of confidence. We move forward by joining with our partners at any stage of our relationship with creates a new level of intimacy. This is the point at which we realize that the fear of the next step has been the underlying issue in all the steps of power struggles and the dead zone. Finally our willingness and courage are rewarded and our flush of success carries over to all aspects of our lives, which we can greet with new confidence.
The rock and swamp step
This resembles the independent,- dependent step of the power struggle stage but there are several fundamental differences.
We are playing roles here too, but they are based around different kinds of feelings. We feel deadness rather than pain at this step and there is no real question of balancing the needs of each other by playing opposite roles. Here, each partner feels he or she is better and that their ways and needs are more deserving than the other. There is a certain self righteousness involved.
Rock figures are the heroic types who normally as children felt like they had to give up their lives to sacrifice for their families. They feel that they must do the same in their present relationships. They are the ‘designated givers’ of the relationships. They are typically romantic and generous. These feelings and needs of the rock are typically underplayed and suppressed and their soft bellies are always protected form anything that might expose them.
Swamp figures are incredibly needy. They are likely to have feel unloved as children and these feelings are carried into adulthood. They need intimacy and constant confirmation of their specialness and importance. Swamps need to love intensively and continuously and despite the nest efforts of the rocks, they are typically unsatisfied by what they get. On the other hand, swamps are more in touch with their feelings and can educate the rocks about them if they do not become emotionally indulgent. This will heal the rock’s dissociation.
The scenario is this: The rock brings everything their resources allow to the relationship, but it is never enough. The swamps become more hysterical and the rocks will pull away and become more stoical. Rocks feel overwhelmed by the needs of swamps and feel that if they venture into their territory, they will literally be swallowed up. Ultimately, swamps behave the way the do to hide deep neediness inside. They feel unworthy and unlovable and so demand more and more to try to right the imbalance they feel inside. Rocks behave the way they do because of guilt but they balance their feelings by over compensating, becoming frenzied givers. Now in the end can’t give enough and just give up.
The answer is for rocks to give themselves to the relationships wholeheartedly. This usually begins with an apology.
When the rock apologizes for how the swamp is feeling, the swamp feel recognized and loved. He or she feels she has been heard and that the giver is not giving out of habit or because it is expected but because he or she really cares.
In return, swamp needs to give, instead of expecting, taking and complaining. Giving gifts, arranging special dinners, doing things the rock’s way for a change are some of the ways these can be achieved.
Rocks to not expect to receive anything in return for their giving and so when it occurs, they are always touched deeply inside and a new level of intimacy and understanding is reached. With humour, joining and integration and commitment, we can heal the problems that lie beneath our behaviors and use this step to join with our partners to move forward together.
The sick and self-abuse stage
This is the last step of the dead zone. But its symptoms may have appeared right at the start of the relationship. In this scenario, both are calling out and even competing for love in completely different ways.
The sick partner may have been ill on off since the beginning of the relationship and so they use their ill health as an appeal of love, attention and the need to be taken care of.
Being ill becomes part of their self-identity, and they are frightened to move on from this step because they are fearful of giving up such a big part of themselves.
It is possible that for most parts of their lives, they were given the attention they craved by being unwell and they are normally unwilling to take the risk that they will be loved and taken care of as much as they wish if they are seen to be fit and well.
Self-abusers don’t take care of themselves. But they hope, underneath their devil-may-care attitude, that someone will care for them, or make the care for themselves. Self-abusers are normally too busy, work too hard, eat too much, drink too much, play too hard and become injured. They choose not to take care of themselves as kind of a test to see if they can find someone who cares for them more than they do themselves. If someone loves them enough to stand up to them, although they might resist every step of the way, they will l feel worthy, values and able to care for themselves.
Both behavior hide patterns of fear and the need for outside approval and self-hatred. Underneath it all, we believe we deserve to be punished or we are setting out to wreak a revenge on someone who has not given us the love, care that we deserve. By choosing to be ill or working ourselves to the point of oblivious, we are sending our a message that reads. ‘You will be sorry when you see the state I am in now”.
Both of these behaviors are an attempt to accomplish our misguided strategy to attract love and attention. But they don’t work and they will NEVER bring us happiness.
Healing can be achieve by integrating these opposite styles through joining, communication, forgiveness, self understanding and commitment, we ca n work through pain and fear to find everything we ever wanted in our relationships.
Does this sound like YOU? Does this describe any of the relationships you are currently having with a loved one?
If there is a chance for you to get out of it and go into partnership and interdependence and find TRUE, UNCONDITIONAL love with each other, would you like to find out more?
For more details, please email me at verityy@yahoo.com
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