74 Internal Chaos and Blending vs. Internal Peace and Integration

Intro:  It is good to be together, thank you for joining me today in this podcast episodeI want to take you back 40 years with me, more than 40 years, to 1981, and share with you an experience I had as a lad, share with you a story and images of that story that will help us understand the topic of today's podcast.  So, without any further delays, its Story Time with Dr. Peter Its early July 1981, I'm 12 years old, really skinny, about 5 foot 5, 110 lbs, very nearsighted without my glasses swimming to the green raft with my swim buddy at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca Chain of Lakes, in central WisconsinTaking on the challenge.  I'm the lowest form of life at Boys Brigade Camp 3, A first-year boy.  I'm a FLIC--  A FLIC is an acronym that stand for "Fat Little Ignorant Camper" the term of affection, a sweet, ironic endearment bestowed on us by our fearless camp leaders.  And I’m swimming out to the raft to test my mettle with the bigger boys.  The high schoolers. The raft -- floating platform, 12 X 12, buoyed up by sealed 55 gallon drum, anchored in 12 feet of clear water and covered with green indoor-outdoor carpeting.  That is the place where the game "King of the Raft" was played by the camp 3 FLICs of all ages and body shapes.  The objective of King of the Raft was simple.  To be the only boy left standing on the raft, with all challengers in the water.  To do that, you want to push, pull, toss, hurl, lure or otherwise maneuver all the other boys off the raft.  A sparse game would have six boys, a real showdown might have 24, ranging in age from the youngest at 12 to highly muscled 17 year old incoming high school seniors with mustaches.  Very few rules and all of them were unwritten.  The primary one was no dragging another boy along on the raft, because that indoor/outdoor carpeting can tear the skin right off your back or chest very quickly, especially if the victim is struggling with all his might, as he should be, and as was the norm,  And no choking and no hitting or kicking anyone in the groin.  That was about it.  Otherwise it was a free for all, with shoving and pushing and lunging and clinging and teams of boys working together and alliances broken by Machiavellian tricks all for the great prize of being able to stand, alone, on the raft, with all your companions in the water and to beat your chest and yell with all your might at the top of your lungs, "I am the King of the Raft!"Now occasionally, a gargantuan 16 or 17 year old would dominate the raft and be obnoxious as king, and then two of the 20 or 30 something year old camp leaders would swim out to administer a form of camp justice and dethrone the obnoxious king by heaving him in a remarkable high trajectory to a watery landing many feet from the 144 square feet of green carpeted real estate. Then the game changed.  Then it was get the leaders time and the game moved into another phase when all the fat little ignorant campers had a chance to take on the two leaders, and a battle royale ensued with the campers on one side and the leaders on the other.  I did this for seven summers.  From 1981 to 1987, five years as a camper and two years as a leader.  And I learned a lot of life lessons on the raft, both as a skinny, vanquished, frequently airborne FLIC and as king.  So I hope I was able to create a word picture for you, some images of what it was like on the raft at Camp Onaway on the Waupaca chain of lakes in the 1980s.  We going to come back to the images of king of the raft  later in the episode.  Intro -- Welcome to Interior Integration for Catholics
 I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski and the reason this Interior Integration for Catholics podcasts exists is to help you toward  loving God, neighbor and yourself in an ordered, healthy, holy way. -- It's about tolerating being loved, and about loving.  This podcast and especially the Resilient Catholics Community is a training ground for overcoming your natural level impediments, your psychological obstacles to accepting love from God and others and loving God, neighbor and ourselves in the best ways possible.  It all about your human formation, all about shoring up your natural foundation for the spiritual life, all about training and equipping you to follow the two great commandments -- to love God with all your being, with every part of you, and to love your neighbor.  
 This is Episode 74, 
Released on June 28, 2021 and titled Internal Chaos and Blending vs. Internal Peace and Integration Internal Chaos vs. Internal Peace
 Psychotherapist Peter Michealson describes how quote the unconscious mind of adults is buffeted by gale-force winds of emotional chaos that originated as an infantile effect decades earlier. Emotional associations from our distant past now buffet our life in incredible, mysterious, spectacular, and frequently painful and self-defeating ways. 

 

Emotions percolate and circulate in our unconscious mind with some degree of chaos. We all know what it’s like to be happy one moment, sad the next, with no conscious input from us. We also know how hard it can be to regulate our desires, impulses, and emotional reactions. Both neuroscience and psychology have established that our brain struggles mightily and often unsuccessfully to limit the effects of irrationality. Often we try to apply common sense and reason to moderate unpleasant emotions or to curb self-defeating impulses. Yet our emotional side, with a life of its own, can often be impervious to rational entreaties.  End quote

 

Reimagine the raft battle
 But instead of generally good-hearted boys working on their developmental tasks of becoming men through struggling and wrestling with each other You have players that believe that they are locked in a life and death struggle, a deadly battle for supremacy. 
Think of the raft battle now as a gladiatorial contest to the death -- or following the plots of the Death Race movie series -- Jason Statham, Frederick Koehler, Ian McShane.  Five movies.  
That my dear listeners, is how it is inside of us for  most of us, whether we realize it or not. The players are our parts, remember --  those Separate, independently operating personalities within us, each with own unique prominent needs, roles in our lives, emotions, body sensations, guiding beliefs and assumptions, typical thoughts, intentions, desires, attitudes, impulses, interpersonal style, and world view.  May seem to use like modes of operatingOur systems may seem quiet in the moment -- maybe one of our manager parts has a really strong hold on the raft and is able to keep the others in the water, some of the submerged, drowning, in an attempt to hold on to some pseudo stability, and function in day to day life.  But the other parts are waiting and watching for an opportunity to leap on the raft, into conscious awareness and forcibly de-throne the blended part who was king of the raft.  But underneath, the other parts are waiting, watching. Looking for an opportunity to become the king of the raft, to drive the bus, to govern the system.  
Because of original sin, the sins of others, and our own personal sins, that's what it's like inside for almost everyone.Blending
 What is the key word her...