04-08-2018, 12:00 AM
On Wednesday, I saw a boy celebrating his 9th birthday step on a small toy. He called out in pain and acted as though his foot were hurting. His mom immediately said "Well now you've broken your toy." with just a slight hint of an edge in her voice. Of course the boy got mad and yelled something at his mom. I took note of it because my own instinct would be not to do that and so I was wondering why the mom did. To me it would be obvious to let the boy deal with the pain for however many seconds that takes first then make sure he's alright and then let him know his toy was broken, (if I felt I needed to), in a way that didn't use blaming language. So, I figured my way of handling it and hers must stem from different goals. My goal would be to calm the boy down and try to keep him from getting overly upset. In her case my guess is she wanted to pick a fight in a way that she could deny to herself having done so afterwards. Since then, I've been thinking a bit about hidden motivations so this is a timely thread.
Don Juan talks to Carlos a bit about self-pity and how it serves a purpose because it supports self-importance and justifies our shortcomings. I think this comes up a lot in people's hidden motivations. They haven't achieved X, they feel self-pity for not having done so, so they actually end up sabotaging their own efforts at X in order to create a stronger argument for the self-pity they feel. For example, they might do something stupid during a job interview to prevent them from getting the job, then later blame it on the unreasonableness of the interviewer who would then be the last in a long list of co-conspirators who had kept our noble hero from getting the kind of job a noble hero deserves. Our hero thinks s/he wanted the job, and certainly didn't want to sabotage themself just so they could say they've been sabotaged.
I see this with people in domestic violence situations too. Nearly all of the time, both people in the relationship are violent and both start and escalate fights with the other. It is my estimation that people in those kinds of relationships enjoy the excitement and drama of it; the screaming, the battle of wits and wills, the risks, etc. Of course, because fighting with people is "bad" few will admit they enjoy it. IMHO, they'd be better off admitting that and then arranging some sort of regular fighting event using rules they can agree to which satisfies their own blood lust in a controlled manner. Sorta like safe S&M play.
Finally in regards to the topic I think people often have energetic needs they don't realize. Perhaps something they experienced once and never really worked through. Or they've created an energetic charge that they need to release. From a physical-and-what-people-do-world it might not be a good time to release these energetic charges, but the energy is such that it happens anyway.
Don Juan talks to Carlos a bit about self-pity and how it serves a purpose because it supports self-importance and justifies our shortcomings. I think this comes up a lot in people's hidden motivations. They haven't achieved X, they feel self-pity for not having done so, so they actually end up sabotaging their own efforts at X in order to create a stronger argument for the self-pity they feel. For example, they might do something stupid during a job interview to prevent them from getting the job, then later blame it on the unreasonableness of the interviewer who would then be the last in a long list of co-conspirators who had kept our noble hero from getting the kind of job a noble hero deserves. Our hero thinks s/he wanted the job, and certainly didn't want to sabotage themself just so they could say they've been sabotaged.
I see this with people in domestic violence situations too. Nearly all of the time, both people in the relationship are violent and both start and escalate fights with the other. It is my estimation that people in those kinds of relationships enjoy the excitement and drama of it; the screaming, the battle of wits and wills, the risks, etc. Of course, because fighting with people is "bad" few will admit they enjoy it. IMHO, they'd be better off admitting that and then arranging some sort of regular fighting event using rules they can agree to which satisfies their own blood lust in a controlled manner. Sorta like safe S&M play.
Finally in regards to the topic I think people often have energetic needs they don't realize. Perhaps something they experienced once and never really worked through. Or they've created an energetic charge that they need to release. From a physical-and-what-people-do-world it might not be a good time to release these energetic charges, but the energy is such that it happens anyway.