Defences

Defences 


I have been pondering the issue of defences, in part because I spend a good deal of my time walking along the new sea wall where I live. I chanced to be heading down to the sea at low tide and walked under the sea wall.  Some years ago, I was privileged to go on pilgrimage to visit the living stones in Israel and the Occupied West Bank. The Israeli government had made the decision to build a security wall around the West Bank and more particularly surrounding the town of Bethlehem.  The security wall is a mammoth project of steel and concrete, on the Palestinian side it is blank (the Palestinian people have painted mural on it in places.) but on the Israeli side it is textured.  The sea wall is so similar that I was taken back there. I thought ‘But there are no watch towers’ which is true but looking up saw the new lift housing on the station platform. Sure, it has no guard room on top but it’s there, just the same. I am of course lucky because I have the freedom to think of these things in an abstract way unlike those living in Bethlehem.


I heard Matthew Fox(1) the one time Dominican, now Anglican Episcopal priest, talk about the time of the HIV/AIDS and the advent of the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) (Star Wars missile umbrella) Ragan(2) hoped to build. He contrasted inner and outer defences, noting that as fast as the outer world facing defences were created and made harder, the more our inner immune defences became increasingly susceptible to disease. As if the outer shell of militarism, like the hard shell of a crab is fine, until the crab must grow a new one, shedding the old revealing the soft inner the real self. A fact to be demonstrated in such a tragic way with the 9/11 attacks.


A part of our growing as humans is to experience many things, some will help us to grow, some will harm us, and many will call on our vulnerabilities. This process when working well leads us to growth. We are ‘soft shelled’, able to expand, brains of plasticity, but sometimes because of the hurt or our past, we do not do so. Rather we hold on to where we are.  As people who exercise know there is a reason why stretching is important, or shaking out, it is to help to dissipate the build-up of acids in the muscles. If not done there is a good chance of tension, aching and possible injury.  Keeping hold of emotional trauma likewise has a physiological impact on the body creating tension and hardness in the muscles. Think of some of the phrases we use; ‘up tight’, ‘stressed out’ ‘stiff upper lip’ ‘holding out’. Over time without care the very body and mind become hardened like body armour. We create a shell to protect ourselves. Roger Waters who is a part of Pink Floyd spends a semi biographical concept LP/CD on this, called The Wall(3).


For some people this becomes a prison of coping, holding out against the world a defence mechanism and at an extreme, a problematic addiction that needs long term specialist help. For most of us it can become disinhibiting of the life we want but cannot achieve.  As with so many defences it takes time and energy to keep them up. Fear lest some part should crack, fall, or be breached and the real self be seen. This takes away from us the energy to live a fuller and richer life, the one that can have permeable boundaries that let in and out our own love, self-care and loving kindness, the things that ultimately make us happier people.


Therapy is a help in a time of need, but at its best it is a way to help to see some these times coming, helping carefully to look at the defences and decide for ourselves, which serve us best in this time of life then help to dis-solve/re-solve those that hinder and reduce us.


I guess some people do that with a concept LP or their guitar but for others counselling seems to help.


Chris Rowberry is a gestalt creative counsellor, life and spiritual coach.


 (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Fox_(priest)
  (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
 (3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r48BLz42NuI









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