Category: Psycho-logic

In this category, I write about stories from a psychological and environmental perspective.

Married To My Parents?

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

A critical look at enmeshment trauma

Signs of Enmeshment

These are some characteristics of families where there could be enmeshment trauma. Enmeshed families lack boundaries, there is a lot of over-sharing or demands to know all about your life. Members are expected to conform to the family’s values and norms, and if they don’t there is great guilt put on them. Parents may treat children as friends or helpers rather than children with needs for structure, attention and food. The trauma comes from the fact that children are not allowed independent personalities and to have their own opinions and values. Loyalty is expected and children are not expected to criticize the family. Children feel guilty if they don’t conform to the family’s strict ideals.

Narcissism thrives in family cultures where the purpose of the family isn’t a simple coming together to promote the welfare of each member but to particularly promote a lifestyle, a way of life and/or a concept. This concept comes from the mother or father, who may have a deep fantasy about how her or his family should be. Thus they may put a lot of pressure and effort to create the perfect family.

Enmeshment trauma means that the child identifies as a family, an extension of the parents rather than as an individual. In fact the child may feel that the survival of the family or the mother depends on the child. Therefore, what the family thinks, how they feel about the child becomes the basis of the child’s self worth. The child does not learn how to draw boundaries, in fact boundaries are not encouraged or allowed because the mother or father choose to enmesh in the child and see the child as an extension of themselves who will fulfill all the desires of the parents. Words like, ‘us’, ‘our family’, ‘we’ are commonly used to discourage independent thinking or choices. The family may exert control on choices such as clothing, food, choice of career, choice of partner and may criticize any attempts to become independent.

Narcissism thrives because the person who embodies the values of the family for example, ‘academic excellence, beauty, obedience, masculinity or religion’ becomes the golden child of the family and the other members emulate the same traits in order to earn power. The narcissistic family teaches that the purpose of the family members is to gain power and self worth by emulating perfection, rather than respect, love, support and belonging.

Who Am I?

Good behaviour does not lead to either acceptance or respect, even if it is stated that good behaviour (kindness, respect) will lead to reward, reward in fact comes from power. Thus the narcissistic family’s disequilibrium in power creates maladaptive roles because of the projections of the parents and the lack of honest assertive communication. There is bound to be low trust in family systems where perfection is more important than feelings. There is an inbuilt lack of psychological safety. People walk on eggshells.

Enmeshment also creates codependency which is a need to please others in order to survive.

Enmeshment can be a case of too much indulgent love, and many pleasers, helpers, rescuer personalities have a deep sense of the other in their personality make up. Perhaps the impact of enmeshment is as traumatic as neglect, because enmeshment is a sort of neglect. The child’s sense of self or independent identity is sacrificed so that the child can meet the unmet emotional needs of the parent. It is a wound that goes deep in the core of a child, and to them it can feel that they can never be loved or accepted for who they really are, and they deep down believe that they will be never good enough, because they did not meet the parent’s needs.

Children raised in this way, may struggle to form secure attachments. They may struggle to find trustworthy partners. They may repeatedly fall in love with narcissistic individuals and then resent the way they lost themselves in the relationship.

The first step to recovery is to identify the trauma is the lack of belonging, the deeply held sense of being an outsider than many children feel in family systems that revolved around the emotional needs of the parents or other family members rather than the needs of the child. The second step is to draw effective boundaries and to integrate i.e, heal enmeshment trauma.

Is It Time To Tolerate The Taliban?

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

The world of 2021 is very different from the planet just 15 years ago. It is a flatter world, in fact, a bit concave because of our collective grief. It could be that George Floyd, yet another black man changed the world. Or it could be that after a smart virus put us all in jail, glued in front of smart technology, something changed. It has become safer to wear a beard, okay to be any colour, okay to be Muslim, express any sexuality, wear a Hijab, pray or meditate in a post George Floyd world. Ergo: We are all in a constant state of physical vigilance because of a virus and our race doesn’t seem to bother us as much.

In a post covid19 world, being alive is enough. According to post covid19 fashion trends, it is okay to wear loose baggy tunics and cover one’s face as well. So, yes the world is more liberal….is it more liberal or more conservative to be okay with other races being more conservative?. “It just is”, Eckhart said on youtube, and I will take that, thank you.


If somebody came to my door and said the Green Party had a sweeping victory in the next elections, I’d say for sure. It had to be. Our current ideas of how to live, why to live, and how to live are completely defeated. They don’t work. I’d say here are the metaphorical keys, I’d give them to the young people who are far less close-minded. The young are the ones who have to collaborate and innovate to get a roof over their heads and meals. That seems to be the way things are now.


Culture is a major thing, and destroying it doesn’t make people change. Examples of colonialism proved that the destruction of a people only destroys their ways. It doesn’t make them grow back just like you. There’s something missing you know, something that hollows out the heart of the world i.e., if one believes the Anima Mundi idea, the Earth is an overarching soul, and we keep exchanging pain like we exchange currency, thus nobody is free from suffering, because at the soul level we feel the same pain that we give others. The realization that we can’t get away with it is part of a ‘spiritual awakening’. It seems that this realization is becoming more common than 10 years back.


If we were still in the world of 2010, people would be outraged to see media images of bearded men with guns taking over Kabul. The thing is, we saw men with guns taking over Kabul just a while back. And the year before that and…. and ….. I can’t remember a time when men with guns and weapons weren’t taking over Kabul. The Taliban, historically speaking were the anti-drug kind of men with guns. So one hopes that Pakistan and Afghanistan’s drug problem will reduce. It might even have a positive effect on the rest of the world’s drug problem. Now the Taliban don’t historically seem to like women. Turns out that most armies of men generally don’t like women as much as they want them.


Honestly, my personal opinion is that a woman should not have to get a bullet just because she wants to go to school or get a job. Truth be told, I think I like going to school more than I like men with guns, which is why I support girls like Malala. Girl’s gotta have her books. Thanks to Malala, women’s education is more of a cause than ever before. Even though conservative people in Pakistan do not respect women’s activists, visible and risky women’s activism has made sure that women’s voices are heard and women have the kind of jobs and income that they couldn’t before.


What I see is a strange defeated apathy about Kabul and an unwillingness to hate them in the media. In general, the usual patronization towards non-white cultures is missing from the media. It isn’t being missed. In the light of a more concave flatter world consciousness, Talibans appear more tolerable than before. This is a world that lived through a narcissist as President of USA. The old higher ground looks way lower in a post Trump and George Floyd world. Maybe the New Taliban won’t appear as insane as the last ones. Maybe they will let women talk on the radio and walk outside dressed as women. Maybe.


Malala, we hear you, but like Dandelion weeds, the Taliban are resilient. Violence couldn’t kill the Taliban and send kids to school. The war in Afghanistan didn’t create a whole lot of schools or passionate students so that everybody could get trained for a job. Let’s get totally real here, the Taliban didn’t even have to shave or get some pants in the last 10 years to compete for the opportunities from the ‘free’ and ‘civilized’ world after the wars. It could be that they don’t want to work for Apple or Google or maybe Violent control of Afghanistan didn’t work to convince them that the free world is worth it. Random questions in my mind, I really wonder if they practiced social distancing because of Covid19?. Did they get vaccinated? Not sure how they got their funds in a world where supposedly every transaction that promotes terrorism is monitored. Im not sure how despite all the watching and surveillance of our devices, they were able to take over Afghanistan. I am assuming they didn’t post advertisements online. That’s how useless millions of dollars poured into the War in Afghanistan were in terms of results. In Canada and in USA they took tax payers money, essentially to make weapons companies rich and pollute this beautiful fast dying planet. How much of that money created any opportunity for Afghans? Probably a fraction.

The take over was pulled off in broad daylight with everybody watching. Is that technically a theft?

It looks more like a relay race. Somebody must have given them the baton.

Photo by The Chuqur Studio on Unsplash

The Price of Survival

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

A brief short story interplay between generations of narcissism. Inspired by real life experiences of narcissistic abuse.

The narcissists in my life have never shared power with me, because sharing power would mean accepting, including and respecting me as an equal. Narcissists must be superior at all costs. Sharing power would mean that would have to be empathetic, honest and/or compassionate. That they would have to drop the mask. Since they can’t, I know that they feel nothing except hatred towards me and will only use me as long as I am of some use to them. Maybe as long as I have something they want. Service. Gifts. Documents. I am and always will be a pawn in their game of power. When I am old and sick, they will discard me like a thorn in their path, because by then they would have broken my spirit and it would be easy to kick the shell of my broken self away. The same was done before. Old weak, single women end up in old people’s homes. Homeless old women end up in their family’s basement suite to cook and clean, while narcissists circulate photos of their greatness on social media.

I could end this nightmare, tell my story and die. At least it would be courageous, unlike lying in bed in a basement where I am cursed every day for being there, thus stopping my daughter from traveling during Covid19 about which she complains daily. It is my fault you see that she can’t travel. This is the same daughter who I have served tirelessly for years to raise her and her children. I was on call 24-7 maid and punching bag. For me no travel was possible at all, ever because I’d be raged at if I did not do something instantly when my daughter demanded.

The same daughter who nearly killed me because she wouldn’t take me to the dentist, yet my life was saved because my other daughter insisted on taking me to the dentist, to discover a terrible infection that could have leaked into my body. But my daughter cannot stay around me because of the abuse from my other daughter. I cannot stay with my other daughter because the first one will refuse to see me if I do that. You see narcissists must control everything, even their parent’s death. So I am controlled in every way. For me control has become security.

I spend days hoping to go home. I can’t do anything I used to enjoy. I live moment by moment trying to please my masters and waiting to die.

My mask falls often and I just Cry. Cry. Cry. Cry. But I dare not ask any of my narcissistic children to go live in my huge and comfortable home, because god forbid they would have to leave North America.

—

I’d rather die myself than wait for my children to kill me slowly bit by bit. I tell my son my plans for Euthanasia when I am old. It is a hard topic. He is angry. We share a hug. Tears slip out. Why do I have to witness the abuse? The pain rages through every cell of my body. I burst in screaming tears about the abuse. It helps nobody. It takes two days to stop the pain in the back of my head. Another eon for the pain in the heart to ease.

People have often told me that they stay in narcissistic relationships so that they have someone in their old age and that is why they marry as well. For survival.

Is the abuse worth survival? for me, no. No. To be near my narcissistic family is like a death of the soul anyway. I pray because I have to pray. I pray because I have no other escape. Now one of them has turned all spiritual, after decades of humiliating anything spiritual. Of course narcs are always right and always positive and always happy. Their mask is tight thick perfect and they never meant to abuse you, except that now you are reeling with the attack, but it all happened in your own head, don’t you know. You- are-going-crazeee…….

They think I hate them. No. I hate what they do to me. I hate what they do to me.

Blades of Grass

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ 2 Comments

I was 22. I had graduated from business school. I had an MBA from what was at the time, the top business school in Pakistan–perhaps the only one. I had started my first job at multinational bank. Life was good. I was well paid. I had married a schoolmate. I could afford to eat in any restaurant and my husband and I would often frequent the five star hotels, where the ghosts of my past still play songs on an old piano, the last time I visited Karachi. I would buy the coolest outfits. I could afford to travel anywhere. But, something was missing. My husband didn’t love me. He couldn’t. Being a covert narcissist, for him I was a female body and a bank account.

The clock ticks forward.

I was a VP at a leasing company in Pakistan. I was the mother of a beautiful child. People thought I was attractive and lovable. I was divorced, but re-marriage was the last thing on my mind. Attractive, intelligent men were around. Something was missing. I couldn’t feel anything except numbness. There was no name for it.

The clock slows down.

I was 32. I was in love with a soulmate. He actually cared about how I felt. He wasn’t from Pakistan. He was 8 years younger. Commitment was the last thing on my mind. Apart from school and a job, I was the Editor of a very left of centre thinking Internet rag. Something felt right but something was still missing. Opportunities to retrain in journalism or psychology beckoned. At last, I thought, I’d be able to speak. But, I wasn’t allowed to do something so irresponsible as to change fields. You see, the patriarchy dictated that I had to live the life of a stigmatized single woman with a kid, invisible, never socializing.

I was 34. I had gotten another MBA from a top University in Canada. I had a great job at an up and coming software tech company, that I knew in my gut would succeed. I was part of a great team. Something was missing. I was emotionally abused and put-down. You see, the stigma of being divorced was being grafted into my soul, like a bionic limb, where a healthy normal limb used to be. The normal ones couldn’t accept me anymore as anything except a burden. The successful patriarchy of my family was ashamed of my single-dom. Their wives would whisper to the men about my true worth as a single woman. I was told to become normal, more like a man. And if I marry, don’t tell them about it.

The clock freezes.

When women cross their 20s, everyone looks at them through a lens with a series of time stamps on it. The lens zooms in on their reproductive parts. A silver hair is a loss in value. An extra 10lbs tells the world that the woman is not a virgin ripe for the picking. I was no longer seen as fruit in the prime of its life and over ripe fruit is destined for the blender or the birds. In other words, life had sent me a boat in the form of a few young men, and since I had picked a boat with holes in it, I had to recognize that there were no more boats, at least in the conservative worldview of my family’s most conventional members. Plan B was to look after my parents and face the constant bickering and fighting with my other sibling who wanted to control everyone and have everything that I or my parents had. I realized that my siblings would rather walk over me, not with me. So, I walked away with my son. Inside there were silent tears. The envy of narcissists blinds them to others’ pain. For them everyone is competition.

By age 40 I had broken several family traditions, except one. I continued to be a responsible and committed mother.

By this time, I realized that life had to have a different meaning than trying to get along with people who would never like me, not because of my character or good nature, but because I didn’t meet their checklist of ‘great’. I was actually told that I can never be a winner, whatever that meant.

The something that was missing throughout had now become a giant black hole in the centre of my soul. Narcissists bite in such a way, that the poison enters the bones. The funny thing about the survival instinct is that when some animals see a sick animal, they don’t take care of it, instead, a strange beastly character comes over them, and they annihilate the dying animal. Charles Darwin called it, ‘the law of natural selection.’ My siblings would tell me often about how there is something wrong with me. When people are bullied, they are often blamed for the bullying.

When glass breaks there is a big noise. When souls break there is no sound. A soul breaking is a scream that travels billions of miles, looking for resonance. When sound doesn’t touch anything, nobody can’t hear it. Nobody heard my scream. They told me there is nothing wrong with me, and I should be more positive.

I couldn’t pretend anymore that I fitted in. I took to the yoga mat. Sold all my possessions. It was either that or suicide. My only hope for salvation was to train seriously as a Buddhist nun.

Something felt better. Something changed.

Hope

When I was a child, my mother read the fairytale of the pied piper of Hamlin to me. The sound of the pied piper was so compelling that children and mice followed him, leaving their homes, into the mountain caves, where who knows what awaited them?

I had no choice but to follow the pied piper. Perhaps it was a delusion that things could change. My life was a shattered mirror in which I saw my deformed face. I was broken. When I tried to tell people, they would dismiss it because I looked fine. I was calm. Steady. Smiling and even Funny. You see, I had the delusion of hope firmly planted in me.

In my journey, there was one constant companion. My little son, who had somehow committed before birth to walk with me. I learnt that he was meant to walk with me even when there was no path. All the textbook definitions such as goals, outcomes, savings plans had evaporated. I lived in an alternative world, where I sought help from those who said that they can heal souls. Following the pied piper, I searched for answers in every spiritual tradition that I could find. I knocked on door after door. Where is God? who is in charge of my life? where are the answers that I desperately seek. From Homeopaths, to psychic mediums, to family– I talked to them all. Everyone either lied or betrayed. Until I started to talk to spirit of life itself, there were no answers.

When I was a child and it rained in Pakistan, hundreds of earth worms would come out. Sometimes people’s footsteps would cut them. But each piece would writhe, seeking for the other piece of itself. I shook and yearned for those parts of me that had been smashed into pieces. Each piece yearning to come back to itself while it feels like it is dying. My biggest fear in life had become people who appeared to love me. Behind that supportive face, lay hidden a scorpion, who would inject its poison at my most vulnerable.

My answers didn’t lie in survival or material success. A human being cannot think about work, after their world is destroyed by everything they trusted in. Titles weren’t big enough to wrap around the huge void in my heart. I was luckily surrounded by self-absorbed narcissistic people who underestimated my pain and overestimated their intelligence. People who never believed me. Instead they simply pointed out my flaws. “You are broken!!”. “People like you are weird!”. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Or they’d tell me that I am making it up. I learnt that most people can’t see past their insecurity. We are limited by our fear.

I learnt that in front of extreme gaslighting, one has to still find the courage to believe oneself. It is like blind faith in one’s own truth. One has to have it in order to survive.

I think narcissists have an important message to give us. The message is that as long as you have a big bandage, then being broken doesn’t matter.

I just didn’t agree that the bandage would work. It seems to work for them, but it doesn’t seem to do anything for me. Hope and idealism are my drugs of choice instead of the band aid. Hope numbed the pain of being broken. Perhaps just enough, to ask, “Why?” and “How?’.

As a result of self-inquiry and reflection, something is no longer missing. When narcissists go after me, I don’t really care. I think healing means not letting insanity graft onto my “brokenness”. I think ‘not good enough’ is the collective illness of our times. We all have it, except that some of us question it. When we face our shadows, our inner broken-ness, it frees us from others’ brokenness also. We stop letting them project their demons on to us. That’s our choice.

Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung say that when people embark on their hero’s journey, they listen to their unique call for adventure. Their spirit compels them to seek the answers to their dilemmas and when they return they teach the answers. My hero’s journey was with a little kid, who saw a lot of reality at a very young age. Abandonment had driven a real physical hole in his heart. His support system was a rock that often shook with sobs.

What was stable in my life? Nature. Poetry. Buddha. Meditation. My deep soul connection to my parents has often surprised me. I wonder what would have happened if promises had been kept and my story was not as wretched as it really was. What if people who had said, “I love you”, ‘I will help you’, ‘I will give you this’, ‘I am committing to you’, really meant it?. What would have happened if they had not betrayed me? What would have happened if instead of kicking me when I was down, those who loved me had treated with me with respect and dignity? or even support? What would have happened if the father of my son had showed up for my son’s needs? What would have happened if my siblings hadn’t believed that they had a right to abuse me for my own good?.

I might have been far more settled and far less exhausted. But, I wouldn’t have realized what I now know. My path would have been the path of many courageous and brave single parents. It wouldn’t have been spiritual. I would never have looked for meaning and hope in divine love. I would never have been this vulnerable. I wouldn’t have awakened spiritually. I think our psychic eyes open when we can no longer bear to look at life the way it is. Life has to deeply revolt us for us to look elsewhere. Revulsion petty competitiveness that surrounded me made me look away into the distance for another sunrise.

Every heartbreak is an opportunity to expand the heart and accept what humans are really like. It is like staring into the mouth of a raging volcano while hanging on the rope of God. It changes you. It teaches you that your every moment is a gift and nothing else matters.

I watch how people live for their image. I wonder if they have ever actually practiced the advice they give others?. Like the religious teacher who talks about celibacy and self restraint, but has never practiced it. Like the parent who talks about how to raise children on stage, but actually the grandparents raise them. I marvel at normal families. Where nobody crows over another member, or shames them, but actually reaches out with support and kindness. I wonder how it is that when people learn that you are interested in a certain field, they actually encourage you, instead of cutting you down. The idea that there are normal people thrills me.

When I was growing up, it used to be very very hot in summer. In Karachi water is a scarcity. Karachiites develop a reverence for water that nobody who has not been deprived of it can appreciate. Water is like a god who only likes some people. Each blade of green fights with a billion other mouths for a drop of water. Everywhere there is concrete, because rich countries donated old cement plants to Pakistan and concrete covers the ground, strangling Mother Earth to remain silent about the abuse or else.

I would marvel in surprise, when a stubborn leaf or two of greenery would push itself through cracked concrete slabs and tar covered roads. Just like that, the metallic, dull grey would get dotted with green. All it got was a few drops of smog filled moisture, yet something would push to grow, despite all the conditions against it.

Crouched, wearing a frock that my mother sewed for me, I’d watch that stubborn alive, bright greenery, that insisted that it too shall live, pushing the concrete aside. It told me a miraculous story about the power of life, versus the strength of power.

Rich people protect their wealth and send their children to the best schools, move in the right circles, wear upper class outfits, buy the best toys and save for their education. Secretly they are afraid of nature, where a blade of grass can push concrete aside. Secretly they are afraid that their children may struggle. So they do everything to make sure their children are entitled and never face hardship. Like concrete, the entitled oppress the Earth.

But a stubborn weed who insists that it matters, can break through the barriers that the entitled construct.

Megan and Gossip

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

I watched the carefully orchestrated clips of Megan and her Prince on Oprah’s show. Fast forward was a good idea. Who really wants to know about how the rich live, love, make money and procreate? We live in a world where most of us are conditioned to be mercenary and greedy. Sometimes people watch rich people out of curiosity. But I wasn’t even that curious. What I had on my mind was my little therapy gig, my health, my energy, my shortage of time to think and write, which always pinches my heart.

It didn’t seem that Megan was very happy with her Prince. She has some courage in that she shows where it hurts and like how. I talked about her with people I know. I asked them what they thought. Some people saw her pain. Those who saw her pain, were themselves ostracized and scapegoated in their life. Those who thought she was a drama queen who pulled the race card to try and negotiate more money, were the kind of people who dominate and control others. They think that only their emotions are real and others’ emotions are fake. Im not sure if skin colour had much to do with my brief survey among people I know, but certainly how they see themselves in relation to the world was important. In terms of publicity, the recent brouhaha put the spotlight on the British Royal Family as well as all our families and politics. It was a divisive event. Perhaps Britain was embarrassed that its mercenary narcissism was called out in such colourful terms.

A brown royal who talks about miscarriage, inlaws, lack of money seems to be just the sort of person who can move the crappy magazines at the check out counter. Another tally mark for the Royal Family. They found another woman who can keep the press fed about them, so that they stay center stage as the unlovable but respectable family.

If I had a chance to talk to Megan, I’d say, if you really care about being happy rather than rich and powerful, then stop poking them. If you are looking for love, well, they didn’t love you. They can’t. They won’t. Stop looking for it. Stop looking for acceptance from them. They are trained to be mercenary narcissists who do their duty above all. The Royal Family is a corporation that like the BC Lottery plays to the fantasy of deprived people who will never matter but who hope that one day they might matter.

Your emotions, you do not matter. Your picture perfect smile matters. Your grace under pressure matters.

Your courage matters.

Your mental health or lack of it, may never matter. Watch how Obama swung it. He never showed that he felt Black while swinging those 8 years. He was so good at it, that most of us forgot he was Black.

Mercenary people are too broken to care when someone cries. In fact they will keep walking on the broken bits. I don’t know if showing just where one is broken helps change things. It creates lots of gossip. And gossip doesn’t mean that anyone is held accountable or becomes more self aware or kinder.

So, what works?

Confronting people directly works a bit better. It won’t mean that they like you or even understand you. It means boundaries. End of gossip.

Have you noticed how older people gossip a lot? One big fear I have is becoming stupid in my older years and gossiping about my relatives or friends or colleagues.

So what was different between Oprah’s breaking news interview with Megan and everyday gossip?

Nothing.

It is a bit Victorian.

Stop Manifesting, Start Practicing

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

While the Eastern mind lives in terror of offending God, the Western mind lives in terror that it can’t control God.

It isn’t the cultural appropriation that bothers me in western style spiritual materialism, it is the thinly disguised greed and manipulation that is sold in the guise of advanced consciousness. While the Eastern mind lives in terror of offending God, the Western mind lives in terror that it can’t control God.

While many will put figurines of Buddha and Kuan Yin as decor items, few actually get that Eastern religions mean sublimating physical and material desires for the service of God.

People obsessively get into Eastern spirituality and “manifesting” in order to get things ever since the book called The Secret came out. Unfortunately, people have sold workshops and spiritual modalities indiscriminately. Many raised in this culture can’t access any indigenous sense of spiritual roots because their ancestors destroyed indigenous and black cultures. Meditation was banned within Christianity, so there is no intuitive access point other than fantasy.

For those who care know the reason why aware people in the Eastern Buddhist traditions follow religion–it is about making peace with physical death and constant change, NOT about manifesting lottery tickets or boyfriends. It is about letting go of attachments to things, about surrendering to a higher power, not controlling God.

A spiritual person (whether bodhisattva or momin or yogi) dedicates themselves to the attainment of Enlightenment or favour of God. It is upto God to decide if God will give or not. This concept is translated as Divine Timing here. Without surrender, Divine Timing cannot start. In fact if there is no surrender, there is no God. The concept of Favor of God is the same idea. Surrender is the most joyous state. This is the enlightened state. Which is why the journey is emphasized rather than attainment. This is the real reason one follows a spiritual path. They say in the world I come from, that if this intention is missing, your prayer never starts, let alone anyone listening to it. If you are attached to your pain, to your suffering, to your victimhood, to your fears, you are NOT praying.

Also, the spiritual are prepared to undergo any hardship, and make any sacrifice, to achieve this. They don’t do this lightly. It is scary for anyone to relinquish the comforts of a normal life. They are motivated by a higher purpose, a spiritual purpose. Whether or not they get a boyfriend or make millions or get famous or have a following is NOT the main issue for them. They are healing their soul, their body and their mind.

Start practicing the rituals, the meditation, the self inquiry, the yoga, the prayer, and reading the original scriptures. Research. Educate.

Let’s not make spirituality into a delusional fantasy. Please. Stop. Destroying it.

Don’t be so lazy. Make an effort.

The Psychological Risks Of Fighting For Psychological Safety

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Psychological safety is freedom from humiliation, bullying and gaslighting on social media or in the public space.

For a long time I have risked my personal psychological safety in order to bring awareness to the issue of our time. Bullying and narcissism. Being visible isn’t easy if you have been raised to be ashamed of your body and people check you out and make personal comments since age 0, just because you were born in a girl’s body. They don’t think there is anything wrong about commenting on your body and what you wear or look like as a normal part of discourse. This is considered normal if you are a woman.

It is crazy, but this aspect of society is all over our Internet spaces. All over social media, people are obsessed with how they look on camera. It isn’t cool. It is a bit anxiety provoking. Being visible is psychologically risky. That’s how safe our freedoms really are.

Lack of psychological safety is why every woman is a coach on social media. It is also why many wise people stay away from people, especially social media, because of the body gloating, the body shaming, and the risks of vulnerability.

I have been an explorer and a writer on these topics and what I found was that not only was there a general lack of awareness about these issues, among certain groups when people sensed your vulnerability, they got worse. I was betrayed by people who acted as if they are women’s empowerment supporters but do the opposite, because the system is set up so that men behave like predators and women are prey. Women’s empowerment in Pakistan literally means that now women are okay with being used for money and/or sex.

If you do a good job of being a curious explorer, you have at least once destroyed your life and found just the right people to help you.

What were my mistakes?

I was heartfelt but I underestimated the extent of the issue. I was awkward and hopeful. The old habit of pleasing people had not completely gone. On the flip side, I had genuine passion. I had will. I had commitment. I knew how failure didn’t mean that I was worthless, but that I hadn’t figured it out yet. When I wrote about narcissism, I was literally shunned, gaslighted and ignored. I misinterpreted that to mean that the issue has no bite. Instead, the truth was that the crowd around the Emperor never supports the little kid who speaks up, even though they can all see it.

If you want to get back in the ring, you educate yourself

You look at the one big finding from your personal project on authentic social change writing and speaking. You look at a few other things. You sift through them. You blow the dust. You declutter. You throw out the stuff that won’t work. You stop fighting the people who have no benefit from changing. They also don’t know what you mean. For them the world is black and white. Western style freedom for them means free sexual privilege for men. And Eastern style freedom, means free plus financial privilege for men. For men raised to be predators in a toxic masculinity, a woman is only respect worthy if she isn’t vulnerable and slaps them back. Then, apparently they want to marry you, because that way they can control you. Love in a world of narcissists is never about your needs.

After a while of processing what it is really like to be you. You stop hiding from people who will never understand you. You grieve over the friends you lost. Then you get up one more time. A little older. A little wiser. You say thank you to the people who still care. You dust off and you go fight again. This time you fight differently. Instead of pitching yourself headlong like David against the Goliath of narcissism, you have data now. You know what doesn’t work. You know a little bit more than you did 10 years ago. So you get up armed with your research findings. Armed with more stamps of education but more importantly the learning from failure is priceless. You get right back to work.

Because isn’t this the life you chose? when you left the safety of your comfort zone? when you realized that you weren’t actually safe in the comfort zone because it felt like a gilded cage whose rods hurt you as much as they saved you from attack? Well now you know what those rods in your cage were meant to save you from. Sick, perverted people. You also know that it wasn’t really safety. That safety will only be possible when psychological safety becomes recognized as a social goal within all institutions.

If, in the end of your journey to fight the lion in the lion’s den you learnt …..that

You are not alone.

That’s not too bad. It isn’t victory, not yet. One day, there will be others and you will find them …

The Therapeutic Pakistani TV Drama

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Therapy, especially trauma therapy doesn’t need to be in a room with a therapist. Drama and theatre have been the oldest form of therapy, and perhaps Shakespeare’s correct title would be Psychologist.

And so it is, that in a more natural world than North America, writers are therapists. In a world characterized by segregation of women and where spending decisions are largely driven by cultural factors, the Pakistani TV drama should be recognized as a therapeutic intervention for women. It provides a way to have our pain mirrored and experienced.

The TV drama cannot show anything overtly sexual. Intimacy is shown via eye contact and a random touch here and there. The heroine must always look good enough to eat, like rasgullas covered with silver paper. Tall, slim, fair and lovely, with enticing eyes and long hair, dressed in clothes that hide the female form, the heroine is usually engaged in a battle for love, respect and acceptance. Her greatest weapons are her youth, physical loveliness and innocence in the battle for her man’s heart. Her demure and loyal nature should hopefully result in finding a faithful and good man. Girls must work hard at being found desirable by both men and their mothers. It appears that as far as TV dramas are concerned, women’s aspirations begin and end at their desire for a family.

The Pakistani drama is written for women who interact with the outside world through this medium, as they are largely confined at home. The drama is cathartic and emotional, helping create validation for women who feel trapped in the family system, where power seems to lie in the hands of the other wicked woman, who holds the heroine’s man captive in her web of lies and deceit. Good men are toys in the hands of evil women, until our heroine is vindicated. This frame of reference points to psychological aspects of life in collectivist cultures such as enmeshment between mothers and daughters, the trauma of emotional abandonment and ultimate betrayal because daughters lose their safe haven and have to adopt another family. The dramas also highlight the problems with patriarchy, where women who control the man, control their family. Therefore, our young heroines, whose greatest value lies in their cuteness have no recourse but to be helpless victims of the family system. Men in dramas are portrayed as immature, gullible, dependent on women for their needs, boringly appropriate or mentally sick and perverted.

Women fight other women to capture the man’s heart, but he has been raised to be the provider and protector first. Heart for him is about who can serve /his/ needs for food and beauty. Most of the time, the mother figure wins the battle for the man’s heart, leaving our pretty heroine devastated. In the end, the younger woman may win because of her faithful and loving nature in comparison to the other woman. One would wonder what kind of Prince would deserve such attention and adoration? Just a man. Yup. But men are socialized to think they are entitled, because of being providers while women are socialized to think they need men, despite their talents. It is just entitled patriarchy as normal.

In the above frame of reference of intense compromise, enters Ghissi Pitti Mohabbat. A friend referred this drama to me, as I had sent out an SOS to find something entertaining for my mother. The heroine’s bluntness caught my attention. I wasn’t surprised when the writer confirmed that this story is a true story. In the main character I saw a woman who has not (yet) realized that hypocrisy is the only way to survive in society, where people avoid speaking the truth, because truth is dangerous.

Samiya’s search for love in a world where truth is not palatable, was especially triggering for me. She is asking for humanity in a world that thrives on killing every last vestige of it. Marriage after marriage, Samiya is taught the lesson, that she does not matter, her feelings don’t matter and that she is barely human. But she refuses to learn that marriage in a narcissistic patriarchy is not about loving Samiya, but about her service for the husband. One wonders how the story will evolve and where it will end. But for now, we watch the other women clobber Samiya and win, because they get it that many men are incapable of reciprocal love, that they are raised to be /consumers of women/ not equal partners.

Noteworthy Moments

In episode 21, the way the ‘sister in law’ vibed with the heroine’s husband was so sick, it made my stomach churn in recognition of a betrayal I have witnessed.

In episode 24, the way Samiya feels like an outsider after a 3rd divorce.

In episode 17, the way a perverted man negotiates a marriage with the heroine.

Interesting to see that divorced Samiya is portrayed as a lust filled woman because she married 3 men, but her actual behavior is rudeness towards men followed by instant agreement if they offer friendship then marriage.

Feminine vs. Feminist

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Feminine is the vulnerability, the sensitivity and the gentle nurturing nature of a human. Feminist is the somewhat angry rebellion against control and manipulation of the above mentioned nature.

I have been both feminine and feminist. Zehra Nigah and Perveen Shakir have been the poetesses for the feminine. And many other writers and thinkers for the Feminist. To be protected should not mean being throttled. To be free should not mean to be excluded.

In the space between connection and autonomy (freedom), there is a bridge. This bridge is made of respect and humility. Without this we humans will barricade ourselves from each other, doomed to live fearful, separated, isolated, lonely lives. Without the distance that this bridge covers, we will live oppressed, hurt, unhappy, shamed, guilty and fearful lives of submission. Our boundaries are actually bridges that connect and yet keep us safe from each other. Because in every human there is a misery, a darkness that can hurt others. Our animal nature is never too far from our human endeavor to rise on our two feet and evolve into angels.

In the end, there is no ending, but a constant evolution. In the end, there is only a beginning, as life creates itself over and over again.

My story, your story is an intertwined thread in an ever evolving landscape of uncertainty. It is only compassion that persists in keeping the fabric of society and relationship together.

The Feminist Behind Her Barricade From Further Pain Cries Out:

To The Men I Loved and Still Do

If I were with you, I wouldn’t be able to be with me;

My love I wish you would stop making me become someone I am not

I wish you would stop seeing me as an object of your desire

I wish that I would stop seeing you as the enemy of my true self

I wish so many things, but in this life, I wish to be free;

Maybe we will meet again, in another life

When you and I have both figured out

That connection does not mean control

And freedom does not mean relief.

_______________________________________

And the Feminine seeks to find peace at the price of truth:

Mulayam Garam Samjhotay ki Chadar

Yeh Chadar Mein Ney Barson Mein Buni Hai

Kahen bhi sach key gul botay nahin hai

Kissi bhi jhoot ka taanka nahin hai

 

I have knitted my soft warm blanket

Of comprise over decades

Nowhere is there truth in its motifs

Nor is there even one stitch that lies

I will use it to cover my body

And you can be comfortable with it

You wont be happy, nor sad or regretful

When we spread it on the courtyard, it will bring the family together

In the evenings When we lift it, it will extinguish the lamp light

Issi sey main bhi tan dhak loon gi apna

Issi sey tum bhi assoda rahogay

Na khush hogay na, na pashmurda rahogay

Issi ko taan kar ban jaye ga ghar

bichha len gay to khil utthay ga aangan

Uttha len gay to gir jaye gi chilman

Zehra Nigah, the feminine poet

Being a High Minded Bum

~ Meryll Inkaois ~ Leave a comment

Synopsis of a person with high functioning depression.

I learnt depression in childhood. I also learnt how to mask it in childhood (pun intended).

Trauma and struggle with mental health has never been part of economic theory. It just doesn’t exist. Which is why for high functioning people with depression and anxiety, it just can’t exist.

Note: The story is fictional truth

Ever since I can remember, there wasn’t enough. Pretty clothes were a big deal. One day my mother bought something for me that made my sister upset. My sister refused to talk to my mother, because she wanted it. I told my mother to give the fabric to my sister. My mother refused. The drama went on for a long time. That sort of thing happened often. Every time I’d feel a sick dread in my stomach and all the breath in my body would go.

I learnt to be nice to people to avoid being shouted at and I learnt how to listen to people and make people feel safe and happy to avoid being humiliated. Because I was that little scrawny kid that got scared. I learnt depression in childhood and I also learnt how to mask it in childhood (pun intended). There wasn’t much psychological safety. I learnt how to be just fine and get along, because it was risky to show my feelings. Behind the mask of being cheerful and calm, I avoided getting too close in relationships. It was easier to fall in love with narcissists, they don’t see or hear me. It is always about them. That way nobody knows. Just. How. Sad. I Felt.

The joy of life would disappear in the awful feeling that was part of my daily experience as a child. I learnt years later that it was assimilated trauma.* In the past, being around members of my family meant depression or immune system breakdowns. I hate being that person, I know my family loves me, despite the abusive patterns towards me, to the best of their ability. However, my body seems to have a bio-logic of its own. It doesn’t like feeling unsafe for long periods of time.

Economic theory agrees that resources are scarce and life is a struggle. Since resources are scarce, you have to trade. You have to trade at a profit in order to get more resources for yourself. Most economics is not about resource sharing, it is mostly about resource control and trade. I wanted inclusion, but the other person has to want it also. I would have liked to offer one of my fabric pieces to my sister in return for a happy smile, but it wasn’t possible. My sister saw me as the usurper of her opportunities. If she was a country, she would have bombed me. My body would feel like it was bombed as a child. Being actively hated for just existing is a familiar yukky twinge in my stomach. My genes are programmed to respond to hostility with a freeze/fawn response. My nervous system and immune system get dysfunctional around conflict and aggression. If someone abuses, criticizes, humiliates or yells at me I feel drained and miserable.

Of course if I said this sort of thing in a Psychology class, it would be analyzed in clinical terms. My colleagues who use jargon like a dictionary on autoplay would say, ‘developmental trauma in childhood.’ Basically, trauma gets assimilated. Parts of the brain believe it is still happening. Ergo, I don’t feel psychologically safe around control, manipulation, blame, humiliation, shouting, criticism and shame. Ergo, I get triggered. Ergo, I get relapses. Ergo I can’t tell anyone because I am not supposed to feel upset, because it is happening in my head, it is my problem, because they love me. Ergo, I avoid people.

I have a million ways to calm and soothe my brain. I can fool my brain into thinking it isn’t depressed for long periods of time. My periods of depression have high creativity. It is an old friend, a not so horrible demon in my closet, who is fed with cheesecake, yoga, tears and a few friends who know. But going near the people who caused my trauma means drinking poison, a poison that slows my brain, makes me cry at the weirdest things and generally feel exhausted.

Of courses the men I have fallen in love with are loud, resentful, angry and very broken, who use me to take care of them, then dump me when I ask for something back. For a long time, people could barely hear me when I spoke. Developmental trauma. Yes. I learnt that I must have enough money to shop. Nice stuff meant survival. I was miserable. But well clothed. With a nice home. Trauma and struggle with mental health has never been part of economic theory. It just doesn’t exist. Which is why for high functioning people with depression and anxiety, it just can’t exist.

An Economics student or anyone who studies business walks away with the idea that we are here essentially to exploit the planet, get rich and die. Science or rather technology is also part of the same mental paradigm. So humans have to work like robots or else be replaced with them. After all robots can’t get Coronavirus.

Most economists would shudder at the idea of having any kind of ‘ideal’ or ‘moral’ other than free market economics. Never mind that people aren’t actually free or rational. Economists believe that they are rational scientists who study the flow of goods and services, not play God. Yet human behavior isn’t rational. I wonder about the actual behavior of people during and post pandemic, given months and months of uncertainty.

Perhaps our collective, global narcissism is the religion of our times. Our obsessions with our self image have made us blind to the consequences of our behavior. The way we cope with big stuff is by thinking, “It is somebody else’s problem” . We can’t help it, it is in our biology :). Maybe I want to stop working so hard, but my life would be meaningless.

Work is my baby soother. My addiction. My meaning. The only difference between the 16 year old who sacrificed herself to be who her mother needed, and this woman is that I know that my depression will never go away, not completely. I just know how to cope, so that I function. If I had known that at 18, I’d never have joined business school, instead I’d have studied Psychology and Journalism. I’d never have tried to have more money, because more money meant the same unfreedom as less money. Because my enemy isn’t poverty. My enemy is depression. My enemy is part of me. My enemy is me. My enemy is assimilated trauma at an age I could do nothing about it. My enemy is my destiny.