“Dirty Laundry” and The Paradox of Evolving Enlightenment
Adhering to the paradox of the quest to air “Dirty Laundry” while at the same time sweeping the past and its pain under the proverbial rug is a sure-fire way to deny your own individual evolution – your own personal enlightenment. It is not an authentic way to live your life. It is a painful and limiting way to live your life. It is a paradox that if not resolved, more often than not, results in a polarization that does not promote mental health or healthy relationship styles.
More people than most would really realize in first thinking about it come from families that are dysfunctional to some degree or other. That just seems to be part of the breakdown of the family as an institution and the culture of days gone by where child-rearing was more of a focus than, for many it is, these days. In the last 25 years most would agree that the “me generation” of the 1970’s helped to cultivate what continues to be a proliferation of an intractable narcissism in culture. Sociologically, this proliferation of narcissistic norms and mores has impacted profound and lasting changes in the childhood experiences of many. Where there was once time to nurture, time to share, time to be validated and experience the true depth and nature of a focused, stable, and sustained deep-interconnectedness that fostered healthy relationships we now live in such stressful, demanding and hectic times that much of this has been lost for more people than not.
There is also an inter-generational effect here. Again, not for all, but for many, the way that many are parented, if they become parents, often is the way they go on to parent. Or conversely, they many swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and parent from a I-won’t-be-like-my-parents-were kind of philosophy. Both extremes by the very nature of their polarization set up some degree or other of dysfunction.
To some extent or other, more of us, than not, grow up with some lasting effects of the way that our family “functioned”. It has come to be more true than not that a higher level of family dysfunction than ever before permeates many a family. As the children of these families struggling to find their way in an ever-changing society, within the context of an ever-changing and more stressful world, overall, we are left with a very profound and often troubling paradox – the paradox of the quest or need to air what is thought of and referred to as family “dirty laundry” versus the taught and internalized obligation to “sweep one’s pain under the proverbial rug” of family loyalty.
Which choice one makes with this paradoxical dilemma can mean the difference between finding a healthier way of being in the world and of relating to others or it can mean staying true or loyal to what is a toxic understanding and experience of “love”.
The most commonly experienced reality is that many for some time sweep their pain and their truths under that proverbial rug to remain loyal to family. This loyalty to an enmeshed and toxic “love” strips one of their ability to truly be fully authentically who they are meant to be. It interferes with the mental health required to soar individually. It prevents the mastery of separation-individuation. It leaves people with many misconceptions about what love is and what it means to love.
The reality of more dysfunction in the great majority of families and the pain that this causes children as they grow up and how it will continue to effect the lives of adults is a far-reaching one. It is so far-reaching, yet often experienced in very insidious and unconscious ways that the way that many cultures reflect love back to us is much more about “toxic love” than it is about healthy love.
In this paradoxical dilemma between the need to air dirty laundry and the desire to sweep it under the rug and remain loyal – to the detriment of one’s own personal growth – the struggle to individuate is centre-stage.
It could be argued from one perspective that this focus on being one’s own person was born out of the narcissism of the “me generation” whose mantra was “if it feels good, do it” and yet ironically enough, psychologically speaking, this individuation that may well have arisen from narcissistic cultural ideals is in and of itself, still, and regardless a healthy quest.
Is remaining “loyal” to the dirty laundry of a dysfunctional family system what is best for anyone?
Is finding and telling your truth really airing dirty laundry?
The very fact that this paradoxical dilemma has been set up by generations of the past hints at its toxic and enmeshed, not to mention, self-serving nature.
Everyone has a truth. Everyone has the right to find their way to that truth and to then express it as they need to in order to be more fully and authentically who they are meant to be. Growing up in a dysfunctional home learning the unhealthy (often abusive) “rules” of “toxic love” separates people from who they really are.
It is incredibly painful to be separated from the authenticity of true self. It is not acceptable. Everyone has the right to be who they are. Everyone has the right to pursue their own unique individual path. Everyone needs to pursue their own individual evolving enlightenment.
Most who try to remain loyal to the “dirty laundry” of toxic and enmeshed dysfunctional family systems, having lost themselves to what is essentially the “unresolved baggage” of the generation that preceded them, will at some point or other, as their pain increases throughout life, come to realize the need to be unburdened of “unresolved stuff” that they need not carry.
What is swept under that proverbial rug, will at some point, in some way or other, come back to haunt. It will taunt. It will find its way out into the light of day. It has to. If you are going to be who you were meant to be – if you are going to be more fully and authentically you, it must out – it must be outed. If you are going to continue to grow and evolve and come to know more and more personal enlightenment what is swept under that proverbial rug must out itself. There truly is no shame in unburdening oneself of the baggage of others. It is only from the separation of the issues of others in the family that you can come to clearly know what issues of your own you need to hold up to the light of day in a new and different way – a way that will help you to free yourself from any and all pain of your past.
This paradoxical dilemma begs us to do two things at once that truly really only polarize us. It asks that we hold a loyalty to our pain in such a way that keeps us stuck in it while at the same time then asks us to express and give voice to the desire that each and every one of us has to be free and to continue to learn, grow, change, quest after, find, and experience as much healthy love and health as we can come to know and experience.
The healthy love, the authentic person you really are, and the need and desire that you have to steward your own continued evolution and personal enlightenment will demand of you that you set the “dirty laundry free” and that you air it. It is only “dirty laundry” to those who are trapped in inter-generational shame and who have come to perceive that kind of suffering as loyalty when really, healthy love, would never hint at, let alone ask of anyone that they betray the “self” that way or that they live out someone else’s pained separation from their own truth.
Sweeping anything under that proverbial rug is a denial of self and a denial of both your own truth and your own right to individuate. You are not in this world to live for anyone else. Each of us must live in and through the authentic self that we often spend years finding and re-parenting so that we can truly give and receive healthy love.
Healthy love builds, sustains, and gives. It breathes. It lives. It flourishes. Whereas toxic love tears apart, it destroys, it debilitates, and takes. It drowns in that lifeless, airless place, under the rug of denial and desperate clinging to all that cannot work for us in our lives.
The truest dilemma in all of this is really the choice involved. The choice is one for health or one for unhealthy connection that is self-destructive. Too many people are caught in the chains of toxic love, chains that indeed bind – chains that bind souls to polarized ways of thinking, perceiving, feeling, and living that become their own dysfunctional and toxic pain-filled “dirty laundry” perpetuating suffering.
Air on the side of expression and freeing yourself from the chains that bind. Live the paradox of daring to roll back the rug of your past unresolved pain and exposing it to the light of day. Dare to walk out of the shame. Dare to reclaim your own authentic truth. Dare to live the paradox by actively engaging the initial dilemma.
© A.J. Mahari December 22, 2007 with some changes February 24, 2008
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