Chasing what’s not available can be a long time embedded groove and habit. Especially if this was the dynamic with primary caregivers. Mom, dad, brother, sister were not available and innocently a learning that I have to chase their attention became the norm.
Seeking out what’s not available became an unconscious, shadowy movement and impulse. The root driver of ‘ambition’. Scanning the environment for what’s the most unavailable, unreachable situation, group of people, person or circumstance I can get. Because if I do, “mom and dad” so to speak will love me, care for me, validate my existence, I’ll be seen, cared for, admired etc.
And if the most unavailable is unreachable or unavailable to me then I’ll turn it around and barricade my pain with the self-defense of being unavailable to them. Then I’m untouched. You didn’t reject me, I rejected you.
At the root of it is a deep pain of having realized as a baby, toddler, child that Mom and Dad’s love, care, attention were not a given. I have to do some work here. And this work becomes the work of a lifetime. In every situation, in every interaction. The primary situation was and is too painful to digest. It’s too much for a baby, toddler, child to digest this information even if it is understood on some cellular level. It’s too painful.
And as a byproduct of this deeply embedded groove, what is available is not seen, recognized, it’s overlooked. Because it doesn’t require chasing, contorting. It isn’t the false drug of seeking what inside is believed to be the only way to survive. I need mom and dad’s love, care and attention otherwise I will die. So it’s a survival instinct at work, to scan, to seek, to chase, and to try to ‘win’ the desired object or person’s attention, love, recognition, admiration -whatever it is.
From the groove’s perspective availability is uninteresting. It needs the chase, it needs the drug because it’s programmed to believe that its’ survival depends on it. It’s innocent. Mercy on the groove. And the groove will deny this six ways to Sunday. It won’t allow itself to be seen because it’s only operational in the shadows, in the dark, the dark cave of the hurt little one.