Unconditional Love

The article focused a moment on one drug addict dying in the street as emergency personnel tried to revive him. They were successful this time, but the  man just got up, shoved the EMTs out of the way, and ran off. The EMT in attendance told the reporter that the man was off to score another hit of the drug that just almost killed him. The addict wants more of the same stuff because “that is the good stuff.” The addict figures he will simply use a little less the next time. That level of addiction disturbed me quite a bit. I spent a year back in the late 90s getting a post-doc degree in addiction studies. I did not follow that up with setting up an addiction treatment clinic as I had planned, as it became clear to me that I did not have an answer to addiction. I had the latest science and newest treatment techniques, but no real answers.

I have been pondering the addiction problem ever since that time, and it has become clear to me that it is really just a symptom of a much deeper problem, a maturation problem. My focus for the last 30 years has been on maturation. I see it as an intrinsic driver behind so many health problems. Maturation issues are the primary cause of stress, which in turn compromises our health. Well that label might point us to what section of the library to start checking out books in, but there has been truly massive amounts of good clinical work done on various aspects of maturation. I have been working my way through that metaphoric library ever since. I thought I would share my thoughts at this point in my process.

After I let go of my initial two and a half years of study in university to become a nuclear physicist, I switched to a major I designed myself on how we learn. I termed it Educational Psychology. I wanted to understand how we become who we are. So in reality, I have been studying this arena for over fifty years. And at this point, I believe we have to go all the way back to the first 6 months of life to get a handle on what ultimately may show up as such profound addictions. What is it that happens in those first 6 months that is so impactful? For most people, it is unconditional love. During those first 6 months, mostly all we do is cry, poop, pee, and spit up. Yet somehow, our parents or caretakers love us enough to see that we survive this period of complete helplessness. This is true unconditional love because there are certainly no conditions we are meeting to earn this love.

The instant we start to express our will, that unconditional love becomes conditional. For our own safety, parents start telling us “no”. As soon as we start rolling about on our own and start grabbing interesting things around us (to put in our mouths, of course), we are told not to do this or that. Parents withdraw their smiling, loving faces and frown to show displeasure with us for wanting things that are not safe for us. They are trying to inhibit us to keep us safe, or simply because they are annoyed with us and want us to stop being annoying. Those first 6 months are the only time in our lives that we will ever get unconditional love. Most people never get over this. Growing up is about getting over this.

We want unconditional love! We want to be loved for who we are. We want to be free to do whatever we want without criticism or judgment. We should be above that. We are too important for that. Everyone should see the purity of our intentions and only see us for who we truly are on the inside. We should really be treated as a VIP and handled with kid gloves at all times. After all, we are special and should be recognized as such! These are the beliefs we develop during those first 6 months of life when it seems as though these beliefs are truth. The unconditional love we received tells us it is so. But when conditional love starts and we face limitations, inhibitions, love withdrawal, criticisms, and judgments from our caregivers, we feel lost and unsure of how to navigate this difficult time.

Generally, children go one of two directions with this nasty input pushed on them – they either shut down self-expression or they turn off taking in the input. The first ones become the good girls and boys and try to behave in whatever way the parents dictate. The second group becomes the resistant children that never listen and do whatever they want – the troublemakers. Both still want and feel they deserve that unconditional love, but now they are going after it in different ways. Good kids seek approval while the “bad” kids are seeking the freedom they desire. It is this second group that initially seeks out ways to shut down feeling the negative input they are receiving by using substances and behaviors to block the pain from the criticisms and judgments leveled at them. The belief they create is that somehow they are unworthy of love, as that is what the world seems to be saying. The good kids feel the same way, but because they are behaving the way the adults want, they are not getting hit with the constant barrage of negativity the resistant kids are getting. The good kids figured out how to get along through self-inhibition, knowing that real self-expression will get them the same negativity the “bad” kids are getting.  

Fast forward 30 years, and the spiral of pain and feeling avoidance through the use of substances has escalated to the picture playing out in Portland and all over the country. It starts to make sense as to why the massive drug problem this country has is over a pain killer. The opioid crisis is a feeling avoidance crisis. People feel so bad that death is welcomed as a sweet relief. “Who cares if I die? At least I won’t be in pain!” The pain is the believed loss of that golden promise of unconditional love. What is the answer? Sadly, I believe this is a parenting problem. We are not modeling mature adult love based on respect and mutuality with our kids. We teach them to believe in Disney fairy tale princesses and happily ever after storybook love. We perpetuate the illusion of deserving unconditional love.

Did you ever really stop to think about the consequences of adult unconditional love? What do you think happens when someone believes that they are entitled to do whatever they want and still be loved? What happens to everyone else when you are the most important one? How exactly are other people supposed to be able to read your mind and know what your intentions are? Why should they believe that your way is right and best? What is wrong with their way? Unconditional love is utterly impossible between people who are able to express free will. It is only possible with a tiny baby that has no free will they are able to express yet. Any expression of free will inhibits the expression of someone else’s free will. Unconditional love means you will always be seen as right and everyone else is wrong. That’s not a healthy or sustainable relationship. It just doesn’t work.

Adult love is about negotiation and mutual support. It is about sharing the good and the bad in life. Love is about the desire and action of positive participation. Love requires equality to be honest love. Love is the opposite of power over others. The desire for unconditional love is the desire for power, not mature love. This is what we are failing to teach our kids. This, I believe, is where our opioid crisis started. The massive pain of lost unconditional love is really just the failure to be taught how to grow up and learn to love like an adult. This subject is vastly more complex than I am describing here, but we gain our understanding in little pieces, like pieces of a big puzzle. This is today’s piece of the puzzle for me.

Take care,

David

Ellen

It has taken a lot of work, but Ellen has finally finished setting up her test kit of Standard Process products for nutritional testing with clients. She used to do this years ago until her test kits were stolen. Now she has a new one with all 162 whole food nutritional supplements in it. Standard Process is the oldest nutritional product company in existence. They have been providing deep nutrition since the 1920s. Up until recently they were only available through doctors.

Vitamin D makes you younger In a large study of men and women in their 50’s taking 2000 iu of vitamin D per day showed that their biological age had gone backwards 3 years after 4 years of taking the vitamin D. More ___________________________ “The change of growth does not come from judging and suppressing bad behaviors. It comes from facing and overcoming the fears that motivated the bad behavior in the first place. “~David DeLapp _____________________________________ Opioid level relief    A new pain killer has been discovered that appears to be as strong as opiates without the addiction response or opiate side effects. Patents have been secured and human trials are next. More ____________________________ “The primary purpose of spiritual growth is to get over the fear of living. “ ~David DeLapp ________________________________________ Fast food destroys gut within days Recent studies have demonstrated that high fat fast food destroys the gut lining within days. However the impact may not be felt for some time. The damage is silent for quite a while before your symptoms emerge. More ________________________ “You are enough since the day you were born. However there are not enough hours in a dozen lifetimes to embrace all the growth and learning available to you.“ ~David DeLapp