Souls Undressing
How the ability to unlearn can change the way we live and connect

SOULS UNDRESSING

This is an excerpt from the book: 

“A young woman of uncommon beauty enters the room. Her long, golden blond hair is resting on her shoulders, her movements are graceful and soft as she gently descends into the armchair, then looks at me with eyes of a unique, shining blue radiance.

But her eyes suddenly glide off me. Like a startled young doe which suspects there might be a predator in the bushes, her gaze escapes to one side – where there is a cupboard with dark glass doors. Her face is faintly reflected in the glass.

‘Oh, my God, I can see myself here,’ she says in a soft and startled voice. ‘Oh… this is really uncomfortable, I don’t like seeing myself. Could we move the armchair somewhere else?’

I was shocked. Many people had sat there before, many had seen their reflection in the glass. No one had perceived it as a mirror.

I still remember that moment vividly. The girl’s eyes, vibrant with fear, her startled face, her flash of a reaction. My own surprise at the vast difference between how I see her and how she sees herself. And still, what touched me most was the way in which this fear proved to be a permanent visitor, there to stay throughout our sessions. Even though we did re-arrange the room and put an end to the threat from the mirror, her insecurity was like a whimsical Indian deity which would re-incarnate in our midst in the most unexpected forms. ‘Am I good enough?’ ‘Is it possible for someone to love me?’ ‘Am I beautiful enough?’

After one of our sessions, I was sitting alone in my room. As I was contemplating over the nature of human fears, insecurities and restricting patterns, a line flashed through my mind from a poem titled Souls Undressing by the great Hungarian poet Mihály Babits, a piece with a unique ambiance. ‘Our soul longs to shed its robes…’

Hmm… What a lovely turn of phrase. Probably referring to items covering the soul like this young woman’s fear. Which muffles her like a winter overcoat. Even in summer. Costumes and customs – there may be a good reason for the relation.

My fingers rush to the internet, I look up the entire poem. It transports me, just like when I first read it. It’s an amazing cocktail of scents, sounds and flavours. Hot with passion that makes you dizzy and heady. But this is not the body’s eroticism this time. It is the soul’s.

Souls disrobed? Souls without costumes? Tempting images which once more invite me to games of fancy about human nature. I image how, nice and slowly, we could begin to unbutton the hard-collared legacy of our soul; carefully wiggle out of the sleeves of the various, thin and thick layers of our emotional auto-biography. Layers of fear and shame, cramped behaviour-patterns that hold you tight around the stomach, the motley old garments of the soul’s history all pile in a heap. We rip and tear off the most hidden and secret items of our attire, until ‘skin’ touches ‘skin’. We embrace with naked souls.

‘Your soul struck up with mine so bared,’ runs a later line in the poem. This is beautiful. Is it possible that the mystery of the sixth word is lurking somewhere around here? In some secret place which is to do with souls that shed their clothing? The encounter of naked souls?

I don’t know, but the trace is suspicious! Sadly, there are so many things that can squeeze their way in between two souls so closely inclined toward each other. So many things that act like a thick woolly jumper, a fluffy pair of mittens or even a ski mask. This is why I have called this book, ‘Souls Undressing’. Perhaps I will get an answer for that sixth word on this misty path.

Eric Berne writes, ‘Awareness means the capacity to see a coffeepot and hear the birds sing in one's own way, and not the way one was taught.” Is it all about unlearning rather than learning? This quote from Berne slips into my mind and brings further elation. There is so much more I could learn. And so much I would willingly unlearn! So much I want to unbutton, throw down, rip off myself! So much I was not born with, I have just learned to be.

In my experience, we cause tremendous amount of trouble to ourselves with personal patterns that we are not born with but acquired and mastered in response to our experiences. Nobody is born with lack of self-confidence. No one is born with negative self-image, feelings of not good enough, not worthy or loveable. No one is born with shame, performance anxiety, grudges, eating disorders, addictions, insomnia, mood swings, depression. No one is born with messages like „I should solve every problem of my own, never rely on anyone.”, „I should always control my feelings and I should please others all the time.” or „I should be the perfect wife, husband, artist, teacher, lover, whatever.” No one is born with patterns like „I had better not be attached to anything or anybody.” Or „I should never be tired or ill, I should never feel hurt.”

These can be parts of many of our lives, but we have just learned them. And if these are our learned patterns, can’t we get the best results from unlearning them? If we can strip these layers of ourselves?

What we usually call personality is – in my opinion - the collection of inner responses and resources that we have mastered the most. Our individual ‘expertise’. If I grow up in cold northern landscapes, a warm jacket may come in handy. I easily learn that it is worth wearing it. But if I keep wearing it when I’m on a tropical beach, I’ll get in trouble. Personality is a kind of attire that we learn to wear. However, what is useful in Alaska can be a serious problem in hot landscapes.

My memory brings to me just another client from the recent past. Similarly to the young woman I had described earlier, she, too, lived a life where ‘fear of the eyes of others’, as they sometimes call it in the East, played a great role.

‘You know, I have always known that I was very scared what other people might say about me. Whether they think well of me or not. Do I say the right thing or not? Do I perform well enough or not? But I had not realized that this kind of fear was there in my every particle. In my every moment. It lurks in my voice and turns it down when I come to the delicate bits. It is lying in wait behind my compulsion to prove myself. It drives me on all the time to perform well. As if otherwise I were valueless. .. At work, at home, or… anywhere in life, really. It won’t leave me alone. It won’t let me be free…’

Her eyes well with tears.

‘You talk about it as if there were the two of you,’ I say, noting her turn of phrase.

‘That’s interesting; it is actually kind of what I experience. As if I had a true, genuine self, but this other one would not allow it fulfil itself. (A brief silence…) You know… in the past I used to think that my fears were only present in my decisions. Now I believe they are there in my every relationship. It is my fearful part that goes to look for a job. It is she who finds a job or gets rejected. She builds a relationship, she chooses or is chosen. She takes a liking to someone, she has conversations and she makes love…’ The air stood still for long moments.

Whose life are we living? Who do we actualize? The answer seems related to items like the fear this girl was wearing so close to her soul. Encompassing not only her soul but her whole life. Unless she can unbutton these heritages.

I believe it was no accident that my memory brought back to me the cases of these two women. The question that emerged was no accident, either. Goethe claimed, ’Whatever you write, you are writing about yourself.’ Indeed, in the mirror of these girls I see myself. The overdressed costumes of my own soul. My fears. My doubts. My insecurities. My manoeuvres to score points and to squeeze some recognition out of this world. All those relationships in which I remained dressed up to the teeth. The motley garments of my soul’s wardrobe. As if they carried all the answers as to whose life I myself was living.

Actually, it is not these two clients I get so sensitive about. It is myself. I do not entertain the illusion that I am capable of viewing the world objectively. I am sure that the reason why I am mesmerised by the unveiling of souls, by the experience of encountering with naked souls, is because my own life history has sharpened my senses in this direction. Often have I stood helplessly, faced with my own fears, shame, expectations, anger, idealized images, desires and insecurities. Features that I was not born with. I have just learned them throughout my years.

These restraints have become the costumes of my soul which I put on quite automatically every morning, giving it no more notice than when I clean my teeth, have my shower or dry my toes. Protecting my soul from the cold and the rain – and at the same time from the risk of nude intimacy. This might be why the next line stands out for me in Babits’ poem again,

’A better love, undressed to bare our shame-bound souls.’

Hmm… shame – one of my ’favourite’ emotions. Undress to bare our shame-bound souls. This might as well have been the title of this book.”

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A HEART IN COSTUME

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Can you recall some of the photographs that you have of yourself from the age of two, three, five, or eight? Do you remember the clothes you were wearing? Can you imagine wearing the same ones today? When it comes to the “apparel of the soul,” something similar could happen. 
My client, a young woman (let us call her Fanny) enters the room in a state of near-ecstasy. That’s an easy one to diagnose - she must be in love.

The ‘symptoms’ are blatant. Her smile swollen to an unnatural dimension, her eyes starry, her facial skin practically pulsing with life, her entire being seems to be inches above ground. And if all of this was not enough, now comes an angelic voice which announces, as soon as she hits the armchair, ‘I am in love!’

As her symptoms become enhanced, so does my fear of the conversation which is to ensue.

I am reminded of the title of one of my favourite books, Love’s Executioner by Irvin Yalom. The title alludes to the fact that therapists can easily kill love – for the simple reason that one of the most important tools we use in therapy is conscious awareness. And this is something that love is allergic to.

I would hate to be the hooded executioner of love. So I respond cautiously. However, her vibration sweeps me along, just as an audience at a concert turns ecstatic within seconds of hearing the first familiar bars of their favourite music. She tells me that they are not ‘a thing’ as yet, nothing has been declared, but they are spending a tremendous amount of time together and send hundreds of messages through the periods of separation. Her elation mingles with fear. It is not failure she is worried about – she is almost sure that they will soon be a couple. She is much more worried about what might come later. She is a very intelligent young girl with tremendous awareness. Even now, as she dangles her legs from the pink cloud of love up in some romantic sky-vault, she can sense that she had been down this road before. Previously we had done a lot of work on the termination of her previous relationship. The beginning was quite similar. Similarly idyllic. Now she is worried – she does not want this relationship to run along the same arch.

’You know, if I think about it honestly, this is not the only relationship that started this way. There were others before. Then once I felt safe, they soon turned boring. I started looking for excitement elsewhere.’

‘You would like to preserve this initial euphoria?’

‘Yes! Of course I know it is impossible. And… another part of it is that this period of longing is not always a dream journey, either. I am scared rigid that he might get on top of me.’

‘Get on top of you?’

‘I don’t want to want him more than he wants me. The very idea is frightening.’ Her face is now suffused with alarm. ‘Every time he takes a few minutes to react to my message I am instantly scared and start having thoughts like I am not really the woman he wants, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t want me… And then I immediately start working on dismantling everything inside me that I feel for him.’

She pauses to think.

‘Nothing can be worse than loving him more than he loves me.’

‘So this wonderful period of longing does mingle with quite a lot of uncertainty.’

‘Well, yes… and the safe period mingles with boredom. That’s even scarier… What if this relationship turns out to be no different than any other? What if the same thing happens again? What if it turns boring and I will be there once more, desperate to find new excitement? He is so special I really don’t want this to happen with him.’

These two ‘ways of being’ really stand out for me. The longing, so filled with fears and the boredom of safety. It makes me think of a classic method used in Gestalt therapy.

‘How would you like it if we acted out these two periods, these two selves in you, in physical space? We could use two chairs. One represents the Fanny who is filled with longing and fears, the other the Fanny who is safe but is yearning for new excitements. The idea is that you sit in the chair of the self you are talking from.’

She likes the idea.

‘I adore this longing! It is so exciting! You saw how I was when I arrived…,’ says the Fanny of the longing chair. She is filled with enthusiasm and joy, just like at the beginning of our session.

‘At the same time I am scared rigid!’, she adds rapidly.

‘I get scared the moment his message is late. It is awful…’ Her face changes rapidly, it is now more worried rather than anything else. ‘I want to have no doubts at all, I want to be sure he loves me…’  She ponders this for a while. ‘Not just that he loves me, but that I am the one he loves most of all in the whole world! It is frightening if I am not…  I want to sit in the other chair as soon as possible.’

She moves into the other chair. Now I hear the Fanny who has got what she wanted. Now she is safe. This is a softer voice.

‘It is very peaceful and pleasant to sit here. Even if I don’t get a text I know he is mine. That he loves me. That we are together and belong to each other.’ She smiles and her voice turns even softer. ‘This is really reassuring, but… usually there is some excitement missing… you know, whenever I am in company and there are lot of guys, even if I am not interested in any of them, it is important to feel that I get their attention. So I can know that they find me interesting. Even the ones I would never think of having anything to do with. I need to know that I am interesting!’

I notice her intonation.

‘You NEED to know that you are interesting.’

‘Yes, I NEED to! Because if I am not… that is… frightening, that cannot be…” – and she says this with an urgency of despair. ‘It is important to prove, to show, how good I am. If I don’t, something starts to vibrate inside me. I feel I am missing something.’

We talk at length about this. She discovers a number of things. And she gets more and more tense. She now says with a face set with a determination springing from despair, ‘But I know I am good! I know I am the best for him, too! It is no question!’

‘You can easily prove that you are good. The best, in fact.’

‘Yes! I know it will work again this time! It’s just…’

A great sigh. She crumples up a little.

‘What is happening with you now?’

‘It is tiring… Very tiring…’

‘It is tiring to prove that you are good.’

‘Yes… bloody tiring.’

Her voice goes soft and her face dejected.

‘No wonder I want to switch off from it all sometimes. At times like that I need to be totally alone.’ She falls silent. And stays that way for a long time.

‘The people around me probably wouldn’t believe how much I need solitude. That is the only way I can get re-charged…’

‘If I am getting you right, you can easily prove to yourself and others that you are good, which gives you a great lot of pleasure but is also very tiring. It requires constant effort...’

‘Yes…’, she says with another sigh. Followed by an outburst.

‘I would be so happy if I could feel I am good without having to prove it… that I am special and valuable… without proving… I don’t want to have to prove anything. I want it to just be that way. Just… to be loved…’ Her eyes, previously so bright, are now all tears.

‘To be loved regardless of all,’ I mirror, after a brief delay.

‘Yes. To be… just loved.’ Another sigh, slightly more desperate.

‘It feels as if I had to prove every single minute that I am valuable. That I am loveable… that I am worth being loved.’ Again, I see tears in her eyes. They quietly whisper, ‘If only…’

Looking at her I hear her earlier sentence echo in me and see the face that said it.

‘Nothing can be worse than loving more than I am loved.’ I share this with her. We talk for a long time. She tells me how as a small child she had longed for her mother’s love, which she usually could not attain the way she wanted to. She has extremely painful memories of how her feelings overflowed and how she would raise her arms for an embrace and get only icy coldness in response. Causing grievous harm to the soul.

‘Nothing can be worse than being the one who loves more.’

How does something like that ever heal? Bit by bit she had learnt to notice and gather in signs that she was valuable. From others. From her dad, her classmates, her boyfriends – anyone. Her sense of humour, her playfulness and her razor-sharp intelligence helped her become the favourite wherever she went. Her father’s favourite daughter, the most popular girl among her friends, the most desired young woman in the eyes of men, an excellent student, a special artist.

Erick Fromm believes that the difference between a mother’s love and a father’s love, at least in the symbolic sense, is that maternal love is unconditional, while paternal love is tied in with performance. And what can you do to get unconditional love? Nothing. That is its beauty. That you get it just for existing. You don’t need to do anything. It is your birth-right.

And that is also what’s frightening about it. If it is not there, there is absolutely nothing on earth you can do to get it. Well, there does seem to be a makeshift solution of a kind. For instance, you can reach out and take a bit of conditional love off the shelf instead. Luckily, you don’t need to go to mummy or daddy to get that. Vendors of conditional love are everywhere. If you are smart you can get some from them.

Well, Fanny was smart. She was never granted the yes she had desired most. But she was extremely creative in gathering in other types of yes and her soul feasted on them. This is what she was afraid of losing should she enter a stable relationship.

If you say yes to one thing, you also say no to a number of other things. This is a sad rule in life. Both paths entailed lots of yeses and also lots of nos for her.

Hmm… yeses and nos. I believe the costumes of our soul are born from dramatic encounters. The clash of the yeses and nos. As in Fanny’s case. What were the yeses I was granted as a child? And where would I have liked a yes? Whose recognition, whose love, whose attention was it I longed for? What are the yeses I will never receive?

A yes is never lost, but it does become transformed. As Mark Twain put it, ’If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don’t like stoves.’

This is how our soul becomes tangled after we learn all about what is possible and what is impossible, about desires we entertain and rejections we suffer, after we learn from our experiences of hot and cold stoves.

This must be what happened to Fanny, too. Her soul treated the initial wound with a pretty tangle, but now this was preventing her from meeting other souls in a clean and genuine fashion.

‘It was really shocking for me to experience with the two chairs how tremendously my relationships had been influenced by my desire to prove myself and to secure the feeling that I am valuable. All my life,’ says Fanny.

Now I ask her to stand up and look at the two chairs from the outside. She stands there overwhelmed. She says, her voice breaking, ‘Phew… this is the movie of my life… right in front of me… this is how I go round and round between the two chairs…’

I too, am touched to have seen how this revolving motion has taken shape in front of us like a stage play. An astounding snapshot of the way in which the course of a life is spelt out from the curious tangle of yeses and nos. A thought from Kierkegaard springs into my mind, ‘A person who goes astray inwardly has less room for manoeuvre; he soon finds he is going round in a circle from which he cannot escape.’

Is that what is happening now, too?

‘I don’t want it to be like this!’, Fanny goes on, with a painful poignancy in her voice. ‘He is so different, so special… I don’t want this to happen again…’

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SOULS UNDRESSING: How the Ability to Unlearn Can Change the Way We Live and Connect
by Zoltan Pinter