Happiness -VS- Joy Part II

Last week I began talking about the issue of happiness and how happiness is hinged on external conditions such as relationships, things, careers, stuff....Our happiness is largely conditional based on if things go the
way we think they should go and if people act the way we think they should act.

This leaves alot of our own happiness tied to someone else's shirt tails and when he leaves, your happiness goes right out the door with him. Last week I got to tell some fun stories about my mom and her concepts of
happiness.

What I talked about regarding my mom is her 'joy' which was far different than her happiness. She wasn't always happy. My father was murdered. That certainly did not bring happiness. Her 2nd husband stole her
life savings and was a sociopath. No happiness there. Her last 'main squeeze' in her life died of prostrate cancer--a lot of sadness there. Yet, my mother was unusually 'joyful.'

Because joy has to do with the quality of US, not them. It's a me factor, not a him, or them, factor. Happiness may be external but joy is internal and in many ways eternal. It imminates from within us and can exist even when the external cirucmstances of our lives 'suck.'

Joy can be infectious and can touch others when how we are has nothing to do with who we are with. It's a barometer reading of how we are doing with ourselves and in our own spiritual development. It reminds us
how we are doing with managing our own outlook, optimism, and future. We may not have control over what he's doing, who he's doing, or how he's doing but we do have control over how we choose to see our
circumstances. This is the essence of internal joy--managing the world view from the inside instead of taking your emotional temperature based on how well he's behaving. How I am or how my joy is can't be taken by a thermometer from his mouth. It has to be taken from our internal and eternal wellbeing.

When you are finally able to shift your focus of 'where' and 'how' joy is created, it is a mind blowing change. Because you no longer hold tight to the reins of external control---I'll be happy when someone else does this_________. You are able to refocus on finding joy in your life, just the way it is, with yourself and all your warts.  In fact, over the past couple years I wrote about this regarding Viktor Frankel a jewish psychiatrist who went thru the Holocaust and developed what is now called 'Existential Psychology' which is finding meaning in pain AND taking control of how you see what you have lived thru.

If all pain is bad then there is no gift in it. If there is no gift there is no learning. If there is no learning there is no opportunity to transform it. If you can't transform it, you are it's victim.

Joy comes from right perspective when we tweak how we see ourselves, our lives, and the lessons of our lives. When life is a spiritual walk not just a relationship destination, we are able to see the lessons as part of the journey and the OPTION of having joy even in the midst of a unplanned disaster like a pathological relationship. Joy is like a new eye glass prescription--it clears up and crisps up how we see who we are on this journey and path of life even while in pain.

Your pain does not have to define you. That's your choice. You are more than your pain. And so is your life!

If we can help you in 2012 move forward in your joy, please consider joining us for the ONLY TWO retreats we are doing in 2012. February and March. Contact us for more information.

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Gender Disclaimer: The issues The Institute writes about are mental health issues. They are not gender issues. Both females and males have the types of Cluster B disorders we often refer to in our articles. Our readership is approximately 90% female therefore we write for those most likely to seek out our materials. We highly support male victims and encourage others who want to provide support to male victims to encompass the issues we discuss only from a female perpetrator/male-victim standpoint. Cluster B Education is a mental health issue applicable to both genders.
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Joy -VS- Happiness

You were out looking for a little happiness when you stumbled upon Dr. Jekyll as he was appearing wonderful and considerate. Strangely, before you knew it, evil Mr. Hyde was instead dismantling anything that resembled happiness and leaving in it's wake, destruction and despair.

Despair is a long way from the happiness you were initially seeking. How did you get from mere happiness-seeking to a totally despairing life? How can you embrace the happiness that you set out to find?

It might not even be 'happiness' per se that you were initially seeking. You might have been looking for someone who was introspective, spiritual and existential.  But you tell me...

Happiness is external. It's based on situations, events, people, places, things, and thoughts. Happiness is connected to your hope for a relationship or your hope for a future with someone. Happiness is linked to that 'some day when I meet the right guy' or 'when he starts changing and acting right' or 'when he goes to counseling.'

Happiness is future oriented and it puts all its eggs in someone elses basket. It is dependent on outside situations, people, or events to align with your expectations so that the end result is your happiness. These expectations can be seen especially during the holidays when whether or not you have a 'merry christmas' or a 'happy holiday' depends on whether or not he is with you, shows up, isn't drunk, isn't cheating,
or a list of other behaviors you expect for a 'happy holiday' experience. Unfortunately, pathology rarely obliges in that way. So when the relationship falls thru, or he isn't wonderful at Christmas, or you kick him out, or he cheats again, or he runs off with your money, or he was a con artist...then your holidays were not 'happy' and your happiness
was crushed.

Unhappiness is the result. It's a typical and inevitable result in pathological love relationships. Afterall, it's the only way it CAN turn out. There are no happy endings to pathological relationships. After Christmas and New Years, he will still be pathological and you will still have the same problems you had in November. You notice that The Institute has not written a book called 'How to Have a Happy Relationship With a Pathological.'

Chronic unhappiness leads to despair and depression. Remember the emotional roller coaster you rode with him? You were happy when he was good, and miserable when he was bad? You were hypnotically lulled into happy-land when you were with him and in intrusive thought-hell when you weren't? Your happiness was hitched to his rear end. When he was around (and behaving) you were happy. When he wasn't, your happiness followed his rear end right out the door and you were obsessing, wondering, and pacing.

Happiness is what you feel when he says the 'right romantic' stuff, buys you a ring or moves in. But happiness is not joy because joy is not external, it can't be bought and it is not conditional on someone else's behavior. In fact, joy is not contingent on anything in order to exist. You don't have to have 'him' for the holidays to have joy. Likewise, you don't have to get revenge, snoop out his short comings, tell the new girlfriend the truth or any thing else in order to have joy. You can lose in court with him, already have lost your life savings to him, watch him out with a new woman, or live out of the back of your car and still have joy.

You're probably thinking,'Sure you can have joy in those circumstances if you are Mother Teresa!' Joy is almost a mystery, isn't it? It's a spiritual quality that is internal. My mother had a lot of joy and I learned from watching her joy. Her pathological man ran off with her life savings forcing her to work well past retirement. It forced her to live simply so moved to a one room beach shack and drove a motorcycle. For cheap entertainment, she walked the beach and painted nudes. She drank cheap grocery store wine that came in a box, bought her clothes from thrift shops, and made beach totes from crocheting plastic grocery bags together. She recycled long before it was hip to do it. But what she recycled most and best was pain....into joy.

Instead of looking externally for yet another relationship to remove the sting of the last one, or to conquer the boredom she might feel at being alone...she cultivated internal and deep abiding joy. It was both an enigma and a privlege to watch this magnificent life emerge from the ashes of great betrayal.

I use her a lot as an example of someone who went ahead and got a great life and turned this rotten deal into an exquistie piece of art called her life. Anyone who spoke of my mother spoke MOST of her radiant joy. She had the 'IT' factor long before it was even called 'IT.' Women flocked to her to ask 'How did you do it? How did you shed the despair and bitterness of what he did and grow into this? THIS bright shining joyful person? What is your secret?'

Somewhere along that rocky path of broken relationships with pathological men, she learned that happiness is fleeting if it's tied to a man's shirt tails. She watched too many of the shirt tails walk out the door with her happiness tied to his butt. In order to find the peacefulness that resides inside, she had to learn what was happiness and what was joy.

The transitory things of life are happiness-based. She had a big house and lost a big house when she divorced my father. She had a big career and lost a big career when she got 'too old' according to our culture to have the kind of job she had. She had diamonds and lost diamonds.

So she entered into voluntary simplicity where the fire of purging away 'stuff' left a clearer picture and path to the internal life. When stuff, people, and the problems they bring fall away there is a stillness. Only in that stillness can we ever find the joy that resides inside of us, dependent on nothing external in order to exist. During this holiday season, this is a great concept to contemplate.

Her joy came from deeply held spiritual beliefs but it also came from a place even beyond that. Joy comes when you make peace with who you are, where you are, why you are, and who you are not with. When you need nothing more than your truth and the love of a good God to bring peace, then you have settled into the abiding joy that is not rocked by relationships. It's not rocked by anything.

It wasn't rocked as she layed dying four years ago in the most peaceful arms of grace--a blissful state of quiet surrender and anticipation. Those who were witness to her death still tell me that her death brought new understanding to them about the issue of real joy. Joy in all things....death of a dream, death of relationship, death of a body. Joy from within, stripped down, naked and beautiful.

Untie your happiness from the ends of his shirt tales...

Merry Christmas and Peace To You In This Season of Peaceful Opportunities!

From whom shall we look to understand personal and corporate pathology? Where shall our public pathology education come from?

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Gender Disclaimer: The issues The Institute writes about are mental health issues. They are not gender issues. Both females and males have the types of Cluster B disorders we often refer to in our articles. Our readership is approximately 90% female therefore we write for those most likely to seek out our materials. We highly support male victims and encourage others who want to provide support to male victims to encompass the issues we discuss only from a female perpetrator/male-victim standpoint. Cluster B Education is a mental health issue applicable to both genders.
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Triggers and Knee Jerk Reactions During the Holidays

The holidays are stressful under the best of situations. Add to it a dangerous and pathological relationships and you can have a prescription for **guaranteed** unhappiness.

The pathological relationship never lies dormant during the holidays. It's an opportunity to recontact you--of course "just to wish you a Merry Christmas." If you haven't already, do read The Institute's materials regarding our 'Starve the Vampire' teaching on no contact! He has a million hooks he will use to get you back in...here's one! Christmas!

A text message of Happy Holidays is not good cheer. It's a hook.  A Christmas Card is not a mass card to everyone--it is a targeted approach for you. A gift left on your door step isn't a thoughtful gift--it's a manipulation because being the good mannered girl you are, you'll call and thank him and then he'll have you on the phone....and it all goes down hill from there.

Then there's the mistletoe, and the date for New Years Eve, and the gift he left for your child or your parents....The holidays are one BIG OP-POR-TU-NITY for Mr. Opportunistic.

The No Contact rule still applies and he'll be testing your boundaries to see if it applies during the holidays. If it DOESN'T apply and you responded to him or sent him a text/card/call, you have just taught him where your loop hole is. You also said something very LOUD to him. You just screamed in his ear " I'm Lonely! Come snuggle with me." And you know what he's thinking, "You don't have to ask TWICE!"

Ladies, Christmas is ONE day of the year that is laced with a lot of triggering memories. Maybe from childhood where you believe "miracles happen on Christmas" or "everyone should be together then" or the sights, smells, and memories of past Christmases with him are rehashing in your mind. Don't stay stuck in that 'air brushed Christmas memory' -- how about you pull out your memory list from the other 363 days of the year and how he behaved then? One night with the twinkle of Christmas tree lights and a ribbon on a gift doesn't make a pathological man stable!

Get out of the fantasy. Christmas has a way of hypnotizing women into the fantasy of his positive behavior and his lack of pathology. Nothing changed because we hit Christmas season. It's just a BIGGER opportunity for him to hook you.

If you're still with the pathological person, they can be very sabotaging at this time of year wanting to strip every little piece of joy you could get from the season away. They get drunk, pick fights, say mean things to your family, yell at the kids, and don't participate.

Don't react. Have a great Christmas while he wallows around in that puddle of pathology.

You know one of the things we found out in our research? You ladies tested unbelieveably high in 'sentimentality'. What are the holidays all about? SENTIMENT! If your sentiment is on caffeine, what do you think it will do? Be restrained or have a knee jerk reaction because all that sentiment is coursing thru your veins?

One slip up now could cost you a year of trying to get rid of him again. Call a support person and tell them you VOW to them not to have contact this season. Then make plans to fill up your time so it's not even a possibility.

I have 'lectued' our readers about loneliness because this 4 inch stack on research sitting on my desk that you ladies filled out, tells me that you lapse and lapse and lapse again when you feel lonely. Holidays induce loneliness. Plan ahead and safe guard. "I was lonely is not an excuse for starting something that will once again destroy your life!"

Instead, do something wonderful with your kids. Get outside, take a walk, go to a movie with friends, do some scrapbooking, get some of our books to read, go to a nursing home and visit someone! Sit in a chapel alone and count blessings, walk your dog more, go to the gym! Do anything except have a knee jerk reaction to your excessive sentimentality gene!!

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Gender Disclaimer: The issues The Institute writes about are mental health issues. They are not gender issues. Both females and males have the types of Cluster B disorders we often refer to in our articles. Our readership is approximately 90% female therefore we write for those most likely to seek out our materials. We highly support male victims and encourage others who want to provide support to male victims to encompass the issues we discuss only from a female perpetrator/male-victim standpoint. Cluster B Education is a mental health issue applicable to both genders.
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Fantasy And It's Effect On Your Reality

Over the  past few months we have been talking about the power of defense mechanisms. It is unfortunately common to employ defense mechanisms that actually enhance your own emotional suffering. And of course, what we want you to employ are resources that help you recover not defense mechanisms that keep you stuck. You have suffered enough from the pathological love relationship and the last thing you need is for your own psychology to be working against you. So today we're going to
talk about 'fantasy' and how that too can effect your emotional suffering.

Eckart Tollee said "Emotional suffering is created in the moment we don't accept what is."

Women who are in relationships with pathologicals have a very strong trait of 'fantasy.' Fantasy is not just merely wishful thinking but has additional components in it that effect your here and now life. Fantasy is often associated with the future and in some ways, the past.

Here's how... women often stay in pathological relationships because they feel panic or fear of abandonment when the pathological tries to end the relationship. She ends up re-contacting or allowing re-contact because of these feelings of fear/panic/abandonment.

Abandonment is an early childhood feeling. As adults, we don't technically feel 'abandoned' although that's the feeling state we think we are having when someone leaves us. The adult feeling state is loss, not abandonment but when someone has unresolved early childhood abandonment issues, any loss will template it self on top of the feelings of abandonment. Adults are techincally incapable of being abandoned (unless you are, for instance, medically dependent.) The reason we aren't capable of being abandoned as adults is that as mentally healthy adults, we really can't be abandoned in the childhood sense. The feeling is an early childhood feeling usually associated with a time of parental abandonment. It is an age-regression feeling--something that pulls you back to your childhood or a very young emotional state. Every time I write about abandonment I will get a furious letter from someone INSISTING they are adults and they feel abandoned.  There are two categories in which adults go through intense feelings of child-like abandonment. One is if the adult has a trauma disorder and has unresolved early childhood issues from parental abandonment that have not been treated in therapy. In that case, those feelings often resurface attached to unprocessed traumatic feelings. The other intense abandonment feeings are often held by people with Borderline Personality Disorder who regularly feel abandoned.' I still maintain as a former psychotherapist, that are adults cannot be abandoned unless you are elderly, medically need care, or have cognitive disorders that require caretaking. This is not to say you don't PERCEIVE yourself as abandoned.  But if you were dropped in the middle of a city 'abandoned' you would make your way to the police department or social services and would be fed, sheltered, and given provisions. Therefore, you were not abandoned the way a child would experience if dropped in the middle of a city.

The feeling of 'ending' a relationship often subconsciously sets off childhood feelings of abandonment. These are past associations that taps into fantasy that it is happening all over again when it really isn't. The previous male in your life who did abandon you as a child (for instance) is not the same thing as a pathological leaving your adult life.

But inside, emotionally, the child feeling state is so strong that it feels like a 'hole in the soul.' The fantasy of THIS (him leaving) being the same as THAT (my parent left me) takes hold and your panic makes you go back to stop the panic or allow him back in to squelch the sense of abandonment.

Fantasy is also future oriented. Fairytales are fantasy based on "Once upon a time....and happily ever after" which is all the good stuff that 'might' happen in the future. Nothing evokes stronger fantasy thinking than the holidays which bring up either good memories of holidays past or, the total fantasy that THIS year will be the 'Once upon a time' holiday.

Women stay in relationships with pathologicals based on a lot of 'fantasy future betting' -- that is 'he might stop acting pathological, 'he might stop cheating,' 'he might tell the truth.'Fantasy betting is a lot like gambling...betting on a future that is not likely to happen with a pathological. Betting on a Normal Rockwell holiday...oh I meant 'Norman Rockwell' holiday---is fantasy betting as well.

Why? Because pathology is the inability to change and sustain consistent postive change, grow in any meaningful way, and the inability to for him to see how his behavior negatively effects others.

But women also stay in pathological relationships based on 'projected fantasies' that is, she fantasizes he will be happy with the NEXT woman and the next women will get all his good traits and none of his bad. This too is fantasy....that his pathology somehow will not effect he next woman the way it effects you. (You can't turn pathology on and off like a light switch!)

Here's some info:

Pathology Effects EVERYONE the SAME!! (Unless she's pathological as well--then who cares if he goes on to have a relationship worthy of a Jerry Springer Show?).

* Women fantasize that this 'abandonment' feeling will effect her the way the childhood abandonment did. (And it will not--just as an FYI for you).

* Women fantasize that he will be different with them. If he is trully pathological he is hard-wired. This IS his DNA.

* Women fantazie that he will be happy in the future and she is missing out on something. If he is truly pathological,his patterns don't change.

Fantasy is not related to the here and now. Fantasy is not being present in your real life to what is happening around you in this moment. Fantasy is 'out there somewhere' kind of thinking. Come back to what's real right now. List the 5 most real points about him right here:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Now stand back, step out of the childhood feelings, and look at the list with adult eyes. You can't be abandoned as an adult because where ever you go, there you are and you are all you need as an adult. You don't have dependency needs as an adult like you did as a child. To be abandoned is to be dependent on the one who is abandoning. Adults are not dependent.

Your real life is going on right NOW while you are in your head about his drama and the pathological intrigue. You are
MISSING your real life that is happening right now! Drama, obsession and intrusive thoughts are usually about fantasy--the past or the present. It sure isn't about this present moment and what's happening right now. Such as, you might be ignoring your own health, your own self care and happiness and maybe that of your children and friends because of how much time you spend in fantasy. Fantasy is telling you 'just a little longer and he'll get it and then I'll have the life I really want.'

Fantasy wants to whisper in your ear to ignore it all for a few days during the holidays when you can pretend to be that Normal Rockwell family. But on December 26th, Mr Pathology will be there in all his glittering Cluster B-ness to remind you nothing happened except a Christmas Tree.  You unwrapped a 'gift' of pathology because all you really wanted for Christmas was your pile of fantasy, right? NO! No adult really wants for Christmas 'her own psychopath.'

There is stil time to straighten out your Holiday Fantasy Thinking before December 24th.  Get a hold of it so you can enjoy a pathology-free holiday.

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Gender Disclaimer: The issues The Institute writes about are mental health issues. They are not gender issues. Both females and males have the types of Cluster B disorders we often refer to in our articles. Our readership is approximately 90% female therefore we write for those most likely to seek out our materials. We highly support male victims and encourage others who want to provide support to male victims to encompass the issues we discuss only from a female perpetrator/male-victim standpoint. Cluster B Education is a mental health issue applicable to both genders.
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