Joseph came to see me after finding a suspicious lump, in a location where he had previously had a benign tumour. He was awaiting a diagnosis, but his doctor was concerned that Joseph had cancer, and Joseph himself was deeply worried.
He told me that ever since he had found the lump, he had a persistent feeling that life is hopeless, and that he couldn’t rely on anyone. When I asked him what his first memory was of having these feelings, he went straight to an incident involving his father.
Joseph was 8 years old, and it was his soccer presentation night. He had thrown himself full-tilt into soccer that season, and was keenly anticipating having his father – whom he had always seen as a hero because he fought in World War II – present to celebrate his, and his team’s achievements. But his father turned up late… and worse still, he was drunk.
Joseph was utterly devastated. He felt he’d never fully recovered from the trauma of being so publicly let down and humiliated, and having the image of his father as hero shattered.
Matrix Reimprinting provides a powerful medicine chest for healing these psychic wounds. I led Joseph through the memory, encouraging him to communicate with and help his 8 year old self.
He tapped on little Joseph for his hurt, sadness, confusion, humiliation and anger; and brought in various resources to help both little Joseph and his Dad with how they were feeling.
Joseph also realised how his younger self had taken a decision at that time: that he was responsible for helping Dad recover from his alcoholism. That decision had reverberated through his life, insinuating itself into most of his relationships, and preventing him from focusing on caring for himself when he most needed to.
As he worked through the memory, Joseph began to experience a change of perspective on the night’s events. He realised what an effort if must have been for his Dad, who was almost certainly suffering post-traumatic stress disorder because of his war experiences, to drag himself away from the comfort he found in the bottle, and turn up to the presentation.
Joseph also recalled that, years later, he was the one who finally woke his Dad up to the fact that he had to deal with his alcoholism, and he had begun seeking help for it, shortly before he died.
I spoke to Joseph several days after this very powerful session, and he told me:
“I can now see my Dad as a hero again, but in a more adult way. Not as a comic-book soldier hero, fighting 20 enemy soldiers at once, the way I did when I was a kid.
But I see now that he was a hero, just a more human kind of hero, for the way he came back from the war and tried to be a good husband and father even though he was so damaged.
A childhood hero doesn’t have any struggles, but an adult, real life hero is heroic because they struggle, and yet persist and find a way through.
I’m able to recognise Dad’s good qualities now, and to honour his struggle rather than criticising how he dealt with it.
I realise that I had been holding my father up to an ideal that really belonged to childhood, when everything is very black and white. But it was an impossible ideal for any normal human being to live up to.
When I finally let go of that childish need for my Dad to be perfect, I felt able to accept my own imperfections rather than finding them unacceptable and distasteful.
The hopelessness I was feeling related to the ideal I’d held Dad up to – Dad couldn’t measure up to that ideal and he was meant to be a hero, so everything seemed hopeless.
Now I see that ideal as being unreal, so Dad’s example becomes hopeful because despite all his problems and the obstacles in his way, he kept on striving, and he did have a breakthrough before he died.
I see this as a life-changer for me. I feel really empowered now that I know my father was perfectly acceptable as he was – that means I’m perfectly acceptable as I am.”
As a postscript, the biopsy report on Joseph’s lump found that it was just on the borderline between benign and malignant. His prognosis is excellent.
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