Анна Давыдова-Городецкая – Ouroboros or the world inside out (страница 7)

By its own internal logic, often superficial and nonlinear, the ouroboric person decides that a particular person is the right one to make their individual desire from a dream become a reality. And “love” arises, or rather its ersatz – idealization. A substitution takes place: the actor thinks they feel love or sympathy, but this feeling is a burning desire to possess the object (another person) for personal and undivided use, as if this will lead to the realization of a dream. The “incarnate” is idealized and depersonalized; details cease to be important and are eliminated from the assessment of the possibility of building a connection with this person. The illusory perception of this “embodiment of desires” prevents realistic evaluation. Everything boils down to one thing only – to get it, or rather, to get what you want by using this person. This is called “love” or “attachment,” hence all the “I cannot live without you!” Such phrases should be understood literally as: “I need you urgently because I think that with your help, I can finally escape the hell of ouroboric inferiority and unite with my Reference Image!”

If the reader is patient, they will soon understand everything about both “ouroboric inferiority” and the “Reference Image.” Describing a rigidly looped structure, which has neither beginning nor end, is like watching the TV series “Santa Barbara” from the hundredth episode – it will be easier to understand what you are reading about now after reading the next chapter. So, all this ouroboric sudden attachment is nothing but infantile manipulation, hidden from everyone, including the actor themselves.

The actor does not consider the possibility of achieving what they want through independent action or partnership, nor do they objectively assess the situation to conclude that their desire might be unattainable. All efforts are aimed at obtaining the “incarnator” and then “squeezing” the realization of their dream out of them. When this does not happen, disappointment sets in, accompanied by a mass of claims and offenses, and the idealized idol is thrown off the pedestal. It is as if the contract for the realization of the dream has not been fulfilled, and penalties must be collected from the negligent performer. The counterparty does not understand anything, neither the sudden love or affection at the beginning, which they take at face value, nor the claims later.

So it turns out to be: “I'll use you to piggyback ride into paradise,” or “I'll use your hands to pull chestnuts out of the fire”, “You will help me reach my beau ideal, and I will idealize you, praise you, obey you, please you, and be what I think you want me to be”.

If we want to free ourselves from this ouroboric captivity, we need to stop looking at other people as resources to be consumed. We must stop viewing those who have what we need, whether material or not, as very desirable to the point of trembling in our knees. We have to stop manipulating reality by keeping such a person close to us and forcing them to give us what we want.

As soon as there is a feeling that someone is “the one,” and we try to involve this person in our orbit and keep them there by any means, we enter the “eye of a needle” of an ouroboric dream – the trap has slammed shut. We are in illusion, and no matter how hard we try, no matter what we do for this person, no matter what role we play in our personal performance, nothing will work out.

This deep-seated hunger for a mother's breast, this primordial anguish, cannot be satiated by anything – neither food nor communication. Food may lead to obesity, and having a partner may lead to disappointment. If we form a couple to satisfy this hunger or anguish, we are bound to realize that the other person cannot fulfill it, leading to disappointment when they "promise but do not deliver".

I will revisit this topic when I discuss devaluation, as the mechanism of ouroboric falling in love is closely linked to the infantile personality's consumerist attitude towards others and life in general.

When an ouroboric personality is interested in someone, this interest is often presented with a sense of their own greatness. "I wanted it – you came to teach me. I will use you but idealize you for it – this is my payment to you. You are both the attendant and the ideal, while I am both the learner and the master".

Such manipulations cannot foster a trustful, empathetic communication because the counterpart will likely sense the manipulation and resist being used, especially if they have a realistic view of themselves and the other person. Fortunately, my friend eventually recognized the pathological nature of her infantile communication style, and we developed a comfortable relationship. While we may not be fully "grown up", we aspire to grow, with depth, mutual respect, and sincere empathy.

But if the manipulation is presented not as a display of greatness, but as sudden feelings from meeting someone, especially against the backdrop of loneliness and ouroboric anguish of the same infantile subject, the bait can be easily taken. Both parties may be drawn into a fascinating game of "dream come true," likely mutual, with an obvious sad outcome of mutual claims, as happened in my life. Many years later, after my divorce, I realized that this was the pattern I followed when I entered into marriage. I placed hopes for my future well-being on my husband, which he simply could not fulfill due to his personality traits, and then blamed him when things did not work out as planned.

In hindsight, it was clear from the beginning that this man would not be able to give me what I wanted from him; he simply did not have the capacity to realize my dreams. To be fair, my husband-to-be at that time also saw me as a "dream fulfillment person," which explains the sudden burst of love and hasty marriage. We both played this game with each other and paid for it with fifteen years of a painful marriage.

Such unconscious longing and loneliness may be the cause of eating disorders (ED), where eating helps to drown out not only hunger but also anguish (in my case, from loneliness). I think ED is a continuous loop in the ouroboric structure of auto- sado-maso: anguish → overeating → auto-aggression from being overweight → starvation → hunger → anguish.

At night, I can satisfy hunger (I started leaving a snack for myself on the nightstand next to my bed) – anguish is controlled. During the day, I can be aware of anguish – overeating is controlled. It is important to satisfy hunger quickly as it arises and not to eat when it is not there. It is necessary to restore the natural physiological regulation of eating behavior, without the impurity of psychological compulsions.

This anguish I have described is characteristic of every ouroboric personality; it is related to the unattainability of illusory dreams and is expressed in varying degrees – some stronger, some weaker. Therefore, people, in an attempt to drown out this feeling, are in constant communication or work. Stopping this activity can exacerbate the anguish, leading to an inability to be alone, without a date, or on one's own. I believe I suffered from the most severe form of this anguish, as it likely first visited me immediately after birth, influencing the formation of all subsequent psychological reactions. This feeling was solidified after repeated, albeit unintentional, rejection by my mother, laying the foundation for a relentless search for a partner who would give me the kind of love that doesn't exist between adults.

I can't and don't want to blame my mom for not loving me – the situation at the birth center had nothing to do with her; it was the system. Sending me to my grandmother was not a desire to get rid of me. From my mother's point of view, nothing special happened; she took me to her mother because her academic and maternity leave was over, and she had to return to school. The fact that I was without my mother and her breast, taken to people unfamiliar to me at the time – my own grandparents – did not embarrass anyone; it was common practice. In those days, maternity leave was short, and children were often given to nurseries or relatives because everyone had to work. My father's parents, with whom the young family lived, also worked and could not take care of me.

I ended up not in a five-day nursery but with loving people, and my mom visited as often as she could. The grandmother I spent my childhood with was a wonderful woman. However, she had a big house, a piglet, a cow, a vegetable garden, and she sewed to order, so she physically could not give me as much attention as I needed. There was nothing supernaturally traumatic about my childhood. Nevertheless, what there was, was enough to keep my psyche frozen in an infantile ouroboric structure with all its complexities.

As a newborn, I could not understand the peculiarities of obstetrics in the country where I was born. From the warm «paradise» of the womb, having gone through the pain and fear of birth, I found myself alone for 10 hours (an infinitely long time, probably seeming like forever), in the cold (it used to be 36.6°C all the time), and probably hungry (though I was fed, it was not the same as feeding through the umbilical cord). Just as a nine-month-old, I could not regard being sent to my grandmother's house as self-care. In one day, both my mom and her breast disappeared, and I found myself among people I had never seen before. I certainly perceived it unequivocally – as rejection.