Men Who Chase Shadows: Secrets, Lies and Acting Out

“Why did I do it? I love my wife, I have so much to lose, why?!”

Many of the men I work with are seeking answers to questions like the one above. They’ve make-believe in ways they later regret and, at some point, they had to squatter the painful fallout of their actions: a devastated loved one who might end the marriage/relationship; the shame of policies that conflicts with their values; the despair and humiliation of losing a job or getting into legal trouble.

In each instance through the acting-out experience, these men have built a secret reality where they escaped to then and again, a dream-like existence that unliable them to finger and wits things they couldn’t imagine feeling in their “real” lives.

Some have used their secretive world as an escape, an exit from an un-namable (and therefore un-manageable) malaise they cannot shake. Others sought relief from an overly constrictive sense of self, a self subsumed by fear and inhibition.

But the “solution” sought through acting-out isn’t realized (and therefore isn’t a solution at all). In fact, as many have discovered, often increasingly harm is caused to self and others through acting-out; and acting-out ultimately prevents one from going inward in order to do the psychological work that is needed to make meaningful life changes.

What occurs during the process of acting-out for some men?

Chasing the promise of something different

By the time these men reach out to me, many finger like they’ve reached a breaking point, or plane a point of no return. Many finger marred by shame, guilt and/or despair. Some are drastic to save their relationship/marriage, seeking the therapy as part of a non-negotiable condition set out by their partner.

Over the last two decades, as I listened to the hundreds of men I’ve worked with virtually acting-out issues, a theme has emerged in their struggles, a dynamic that they may not have been enlightened of when they first entered therapy.

The secretive world of acting-out contained for them a promise, a promise of something different, not necessarily something largest or positive, but rather an wits that would ultimately lead to a dramatic shift/alteration of the self (their subjective-self experience).

The promise of something different that I am discussing is, of course, a maze with no exit. This elusive, inarticulable promise is never found . . . like in the myth of Tantalus, it unchangingly remains just vastitude one’s reach.

And for those who finger convinced well-nigh what they are seeking (they believe what they are seeking is well-spoken in their mind), what they end up grasping for does not emotionally satiate them. In these instances, they may double lanugo on their acting-out attempts — increasingly alcohol, increasingly sex, increasingly porn, increasingly drugs, increasingly risk, increasingly danger, more more — only to ultimately find that their hunger is as fierce — and as unsatisfied — as ever.

Consumed by the promise of something different

“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.”  ~Nietzsche

Some men describe feeling gripped, stuff over-taken by the anticipation of what this promise of something different might offer, and in these instances it is the stirring of desire (above and vastitude what is stuff chased) that consumes them.

In renewed wanting, these men wilt convinced that something awaits them in the world of acting-out (a world that is often cloaked in secrecy). Like a child overcome by vaticination for Santa to bring the ultimate souvenir they will never tire of, these men enter a state of wanting (and seeking) that alters and jolts them.

The pursuit are a few descriptions men have used to describe this anticipatory state just prior to and during acting-out:

“There’s this buzzing sensation throughout my body.”

“I finger excited but it’s weird, it’s a combination of uneasiness and excitement.”

“For me it’s a feeling of dread…but I’d rather finger this than nothing.”

“My heart starts to pound and I wilt increasingly alert, increasingly awake.”

“All my problems fall away, and all I have to focus on is what I’m well-nigh to do next.”

Enlivened by expectancy, these men may feverishly uncork seeking for what they believe they want/need. As they tropical the blinds to their regular life (and everything that anchors them there), they wilt different. During this process, a dream-like shift in consciousness occurs; sometimes this shift is subtle, at other times jolting.

The unvarying wideness a wide range of acting-out policies is that you wilt altered. Plane unrecognizable to yourself perhaps.

And whether this shift is positive (excitement) or negative (anxiety, dread), the worldwide denominator is that you momentarily wits a shifting from one state of stuff to another, a self-alteration that may be taken as vestige that the remedy to what is lacking in your life is out there in the acting-out world, waiting to be discovered.

Acting-out as attempts to work-through diaper wounds

What is sought through acting-out often has little to do with our current life circumstances. The current frustrations and challenges of our lives are painfully real, but these frustrations do not worth for the self-alteration sought through secrecy and acting-out.

In therapy it is often the exploration of childhood wounds and early family dynamics that gives these men a largest understanding of what is occurring and why.

To journey when into our past is an invitation to revisit a time when we were most vulnerable and helpless, a time when the intensity of diaper longings consumed us (especially) if they were not ratherish tended to by our caregivers.

These early relationships had a profound impact on our sultana topics to connect tightly with our own needs and emotions; on our worthiness to hold in consciousness intense feelings and yearnings that may be in mismatch with each other; and they shaped the ways in which we indulge (or don’t allow) ourselves to be seen by others and ourselves.

There are unrepealable experiences that are so overwhelming that they cannot be put into words. In these instances, we needed help from our caregivers to make sense of what was happening to us. Without this parental considerateness and their efforts to help us identify and name what was occurring, our inner experiences remained wayfarer and plane dangerous to us.

Without the topics to self-soothe, the gravity of our emotions overtook us, each feeling an inner wade versus the self. In short, to finger became dangerous.

To survive this, we had to learn how not to feel, how not to be unfluctuating to our inner world.

This is the nature of traumatic experiences; we cannot make sense of them, we cannot unzip what psychiatrist Richard Chefetz calls a “felt coherence” of our inner experiences; when a felt coherence is lacking, our inner life can finger haphazard, inarticulable and mysterious.

The lost parts of us are trying to speak

These fragmented (and split off) parts of ourselves protract to influence the shape of our lives. While segregated from our awareness, they seek expression (and, ultimately, reunion with the rest of who we are).

But many of us are unaware that these self-fragments are zippy and in need of our attention.

In order to get tenancy of acting-out behaviors, we must discover how these lost parts of ourselves are seeking expression, seeking a resolution from past injuries.

Secretive acting-out serves two functions in relationship to these lost parts of ourselves:

The secretive world of acting-out might be an unconscious struggle to create experiences that will help us reconnect/rediscover these subconscious selves;

Or the acting-out may be a way to alimony these self-experiences at bay, deportment that replace remembering considering we unconsciously fear that knowing well-nigh these lost parts would be overwhelming (what Freud tabbed the repetition compulsion, repeating the dynamics of painful diaper experiences rather than remembering these experiences).

In order for self-wholeness to occur, a wholeness that will loosen the grip that secrecy and acting-out have on us, we must learn to create relationships with the wounded parts of us that long ago went underground.

Until then, the mysterious world we create through the acting-out process may alimony promising us things we finger compelled to chase.