"Matt" Discovers The Secret Of Love
It took nearly 50 years for Matt (not his real name) to discover that the love he sought from outside would first require him to let go of the hatred and anger that stood in the way of him liking himself. For Matt, counselling was the answer - more than 30 sessions of counselling in fact. He shares his story with C-BERSS counsellor Patrick Howard, in the hope that it will help others.
Matt was four when he was placed in the care of the Nazareth House Sisters in Ireland. His mother was not able to look after him. He didn't understand why.
Five years Later, just short of his ninth birthday, Matt was shipped out to Australia as a child migrant. He didn't understand that either.
Two of his brothers had been sent to Australia at the same time. But all three (for reasons Matt still cannot fathom) were placed in different institutions and he was hardly ever to see them again.
First at Castledare, and then at Clontarf, he spent the next eight years of his life under the care of the Christian Brothers.
Venturing Out - Alone
By the time he left Castledare at the age of 16, Matt had received only minimal education. He worked at basic labouring jobs for a number of years before venturing into married life at the age of 24. Fifteen years and three sons later, the marriage came to an end. It didn't last, according to Matt, mainly, "because I didn't know how to return the love that was offered to me".
Matt recalls that he lived with a pervasive anxiety so intense that he could not even make a purchase in a shop without shaking and stammering. Meeting people caused him such discomfort that Matt avoided human contact as far as possible. "I was like a frightened little rabbit who just wanted to hide."
A Crutch and a Crusade
Alcohol provided some measure of warmth and comfort in a bleak existence and Matt began to abuse it as soon as he discovered its numbing qualities.
Matt's first steps towards a better life came when, in his late twenties, he decided to improve his career prospects. Whilst continuing to work in the poorly paid jobs for which his limited education had qualified him, Matt attended night school over many years, striving, with grim determination, to complete secondary schooling and then to achieve a technical qualification.
But the legacy of childhood deprivation and abuse remained and he went on for a further fifteen years of drinking heavily filling an emotional void through a series of sexual affairs.
The experience of "real" love continued to elude him and the catalogue of damage to himself and those around him grew.
Finding a Lifeline
Then came another life-changing decision - when, in his mid forties, Matt decided to sign up for an Alcoholics Anonymous Group. After a while he came to realise that this was only a first step. "AA stopped me drinking: it didn't solve my problems," Matt recalls. "But I was becoming more honest and I could see that counselling was a natural follow-on to abstaining from alcohol."
It wasn't easy to make the commitment to the more personal counselling process.
"I hoped I'd be able to get rid of all the stuff that was holding me back. But I'd never really talked to anyone in fifty years and I was apprehensive about what was going to happen. In time I realised that all the counsellor wanted to do was help me. I somehow knew what I needed and I got the help I was looking for."
In the course of some thirty meetings with a counsellor at C-BERSS, Matt worked through the lingering emotional burden of destructive early life experiences, freeing himself progressively from the self-defeating patterns that had so dominated his adult life.
"When I went into counselling I was full of anger and hate for what I perceived as the wrongs that were done to me.
"Fifty years of anger and hate: I held that inside. I was hanging onto it.
"I also had to come to terms with hating my mother for what she'd done to us.
Forgiveness
"Eventually I realised she'd been an alcoholic too and I found I no longer hated her."
The process hasn't been easy for Matt. "I've cried more during these years than in all the rest of my life. I've done a lot of grieving, for my mother, for my brothers, for the life we had."
Overcoming the effects of his early losses and the deprivation of affection during his years in institutions was probably the greatest challenge.
"I needed love. I needed to be told I was loved. Nobody ever put their arms around me and told me they cared about me."
Matt reacted by building a protective shell, which gave him some sense of security but kept others at a distance.
Gradually he learned to open up. "I've been able to accept that there are people who like me, care about me, love me. Now I know what love is and I can accept it. It makes me feel good. My relationship with my sons has improved enormously. We've become very good friends. The changes I've made have encouraged them to change too."
And for the first time Matt is developing a relationship with a woman in which emotional intimacy goes hand in hand with physical intimacy. Overcoming and abiding sense of guilt and inadequacy has been an important part of the process.
"I like myself now. I like the person I am. I can see myself as a reasonably nice person."
From One Who Knows
Finally what would Matt say to others who shared the same kind of early life experience?
"I can understand the boys who are still hanging onto it. It's a private thing.
"It's their own business. But if they were to come and ask me I'd say 'Go along to counselling at C-BERSS and see if it will help you, because - it's helped me".
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provided counselling to 300 clients
