The Myth of Normal 94

we don’t receive the agenda-free, unconditional attention we all require, one way to guard against that deprivation is to become concerned with physical attractiveness or other attention-getting attributes or accomplishments. A child who does not experience himself as consistently and unconditionally lovable may well grow to be preternaturally likable or charming, as with many a politician or media personality. Someone who is not valued or recognized for who she is early in life may develop an outsize appetite for status or wealth. If we are not made to feel important for just who we are, we may seek significance by becoming compulsive helpers—a syndrome I know intimately. And here’s the final part of the disappearing act: as mentioned, in our culture, many of these compensations for what we lost are seen as not only normal but even admirable. Valued as “strong suits,” they too often encase and wall off the authentic self by assuming its guise. These traits and the behaviors that follow are “runaway addictive,” in Gordon Neufeld’s phrasing. Funny enough, this tractor-beam pull exists precisely because they do not work—or to be more accurate, they work only temporarily. I am fond of the physician and trauma researcher Vincent Felitti’s astute remark about addiction that “it’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.” Much like the rush an addict experiences immediately after using, the relief we buy with our compensatory pseudostrengths does not last: we crave more and more, again and again and again. In fact, the analogy is entirely appropriate physiologically, since among the brain chemicals released when we have moments of feeling loved or valued or accepted are our own internal opiates, or endorphins. And just as an opiate like heroin does not satiate, so the temporary endorphin hit of valuation or appreciation or approval or success cannot possibly resolve the ache in the soul. We are compelled to persevere in seeking those external sources of fleeting relief, only to have to replenish them once the thrill is gone. Hence the seeming sturdiness of the personality: we keep experiencing the same emotions and associated body states, and we persist in performing the same behaviors. But it is closer to the truth to think of the personality as a recurring phenomenon than a fixed or permanent one, much like the way