The Castle, how life experiences shape us

I came across this piece of work, The Castle, by Mexican artist Jorge Méndez Blake.

He wanted to illustrate how, even if something appears insignificant (the book in this case), there can be huge repercussions.

This brick wall can be a metaphor for our life.

Let’s pretend the book placed at the bottom of this wall represents adversity, trauma, and small, and yet significant life challenges.

If we do not acknowledge and process it, we will have no choice but to adapt around it.
We will arrange our life (and the people within it) around it, organise our beliefs around it, our vision will be skewed, and we will feel less secure. It may even alter our life choices.

We may feel physical pain in the imbalance of it, and we may struggle if others want to lean on us, as our primary need is to stabilise ourselves.

Conversely, we may aim to only support others and as result we become weaker, bending till we break. After all, looking after others helps distract us from our own inequities.

The brick wall we built as a result, becomes our normal.

In my therapy (and coaching practice), I often see people protect their 'book' with rituals, depression, anxiousness, anger, addictions, compulsions, avoidance, humour and anything else which is helpful to maintain the wall they have come to know.

Fortunately, as human beings we can develop, understand and expand our 'bricks', we can build in new ones, creating more stability, awareness and we even the ability to remove the odd 'brick' which is toxic or decaying replacing it with something far more suitable.

Thankfully, we are not a brick wall, we do not have to undo all the bricks and start again to create a sense of security and wellbeing.