Early Childhood Shaming Memories

[Gaining Strength]

I have not post here before but I have been using EFT to help get to core issues that have me emotionally blocked.  I choose to post these here as a therapeutic means of digging them up and exposing them.

When I was 4 my mother signed me up for ballet at Mrs. Lum's.  Everyone in town took from Mrs. Lum as had my mother.  When it ws time for the recital we were given beautiful pink tutu's and were asked to wear rouge and red lipstick for the performance.  That evening as I was dressing at home I asked my mother about the makeup.  Her response was swift and humilitating, that no daughter of hers would were makeup.  When I arrived at the recital hall, one of the other mother's gently chastised me because I didn't have the makeup.  Now I was caught in a double-bind between two authority figures. She applied rouge and lipstick with the ballet mistress's approval.  While I definitely wanted to wear the makeup I knew i would be punished by my parents and yet I was falling short of the expectations of this other mother and the ballet mistress whom my parents admired.  What a bind! 

There are many layers to this memory and the resulting damage.  I am certain there are many other examples of similar binds which eventually lead to my current struggle.  I hope to uproot them and post them here.  In my memory I am aware of an imposing psychological shadow of my father hovering behind, empowering my mother.  My father had a mysogynistic tendancy which he denied.  But he always belittled women and women's roles both in a generalized way and specifically individually.  My mother never helped me with any of the things a girl needs from her mother such as learning to shave her legs, beginning to wear makeup, wearing stockings and high heels.  At each of these junctures I recall extremely humiliating experiences with my mother.  These are very damaging memories.   

[Gaining Strength]

This memory has been very powerful for me.  Today I was working on it further and came to this understanding.  My parents both projected their shadow sides onto me (for very different reasons) and then sought and seek to psychologically destroy their shadow side.  Psychologically they see their survival as dependent on destroying their shadow side - ME!!! 

I have figured out the psycho-sexual issues behind this and see that those issues have wreaked havoc in my life - all lifelong.  In this memory, behind my mother's face I see a foggy, gaseous image of my father's profile - much like the image the Wizard of Oz projects.  In seeing this I realized that my mother, who was treated me just like the mean step-mother treated Cinderella, got her power from my father.  Once he left her, (when I was 29) the mean step-mother completely disappearred, NEVER to appear again.  Instead, my mother became impotent, "Poor me" demanding help and support on the surface and back-stabbing, belittling, sabotaging me behind my back.

My father was misogynistic because of complex issues from his father and his mother.  His father who was unapproachable and was demeaning to his strong mother commanded my father's complete psychological attention and need.  My father sacrificed his own love of his mother (though she probably was emasculating) in order to strive to connect to his father.  Throughout his life, he has continued to need, yet reject strong women in his life.  he has never worked through this dynamic from his childhood and I have paid a HUGE price.

As I write this I see that my paternal grandfather's issues stem from His mother and His father.  My great-grandmother was a very strong and strong-willed woman.  She ran the company that her late husband began.  She was very successful and during the depression she was very wealthy and philanthropic at a time when few if any women had money and made significant decisions. 

My grandfather was quite young when his father died.  he had two older brothers, older by 7 and 14 years respectively.  They would dominate him his entire life.  His mother favored the oldest son - primagenitur.  And set up in her will for him and his progeny to receive the bulkhead of the wealth. 

I can see that this pattern of strong women and emasculated men (though powerful and successful in business) goes back for generations.  My great grandfather's parents played this out as well.  His mother was one of the first female physicians in the United States.  She could not find the medical books that she wanted and so she began writing her own.  When she could not find a publisher she started her own publishing company.  All of this in the late 19th and early 20th century.  After a while she and her husband went separate ways. 

"The sins of the father ...."

[Gaining Strength]

I am going to use this space to record my daily struggle - I am trying to change my emotional brain patterns.  It was posted an the board the other day thaqt it takes 500 "rewrites" to change a habit.  So here goes.

yesterday was not a progressive day.  it took me hours of sitting, withdrawn to get going.  Today is much, much better.  i am making much more progress today.  I was able to drag alot of trash to the street side for pick up.  I got a couple of loads of laundry done and thoroughly cleaned my master bath where my cats live.  one cat is 18 and won't go to the bathroom in the litter box but has taken to peeing on the floor.  fortunately he will go to newspaper. 

i have so much more to do.  But i am off to the circus with 3 little boys.  my car is a mess and i cleaned a little but have much more.

[Gaining Strength]

My dreams are always dark - always working out N damage, voicelessness and marginalization.

Didn't sleep well last night.  have been sleeping on sofa not in bed.  Don't know why.

In one dream my mother and I were walking through some outdoor shops.  She saw something she wanted but there were no sales clerks.  We went downstair to the restaurant and I asked the cashier there but she didn't know anything.  My mother interrupted me dismissively and asked a nearby construction worker.

I replayed this dream and waited her out without giving into the feelings of rejection and being dismissed.  After she was finished being huffy and superior I asked the cashier where i could find her supervisor.  That person helped me find out how to make purchases from upstairs.


In another dream i realized how powerless I felt.  I turned that into a prayer for confidence and determination.  I have learned that for me confidence and determination are the opposite of fear and paralysis.

[Gaining Strength]

Woke up late - didn't want to get up.  Stayed in bed too late to go to church.  Walked the dogs.  While walking I thought of "Whack a Mole" and how life is like that game.  I try to hit all the moles and WIN but really the object is to hit as many moles as possible and get a big score.  I want to defeat the moles and kill them forever but they keep coming back and so it is I who is defeated.  If I just try to get a big score then it doesn't matter that they keep coming back.

That is what facing these difficulties is like.  I try to defeat them all but really if I would just give myself a big score for the ones i whack then I would be kinder to myself.

confidence and determination  - I was thinking about that as I walked and realized that confidence and determination get eroded because I have moles to whack and can't get them all.  It is a REAL block to confidence and determination.

[Gaining Strength]

Starting a small business today.  Don't want to start.  Want to hide.

Working on "reversals" with EFT.  Clearly have huge blocks psychologically.  Clearly afraid to move forward.  This is EXTREMELY painful.  I pray that forcing myself to walk through this will cause it to shatter and set me free.

[Gaining Strength]

Here is something that came in an e-mail from a friend whose husband is undergoing chemo.

“Jehovah-Nissi” – God is your Banner (Exodus 17:15) “This is your new identity: You are HIS! You are no longer a victim.  You’re a victor! You don’t have to be defeated by your circumstances; He’s in there fighting for you!

I want to compile a list of thoughts that will be substitutes for the dark, debilitating thoughts that are automatic for me. 

My dreams last night like all nights were about the conflict between me and my parents.  How long into life will this be the case.  In one dream I was walking with my mother and someone else down a road.  There was no sidewalk but there were cars.  The person with us was a man who we were following.  My mother was walking very slowly and very wobbly but without her cane.  She was on the side closest to the side of the road.  There was no shoulder but something of an embankment.  She kept pushing me further out into the street and I asked her several times to be cognizant of that and to stay to the edge of the road.  When she did it again I switched sides and took the place on the edge of the pavement.  Suddenly she became all wobbly and began to fall. 

I get the meaning of this.  She will push my into harms way and if I take the upper hand and protect myself then she becomes needy in such a way as to force me back into harms way.  I won't give in to this anymore.

In another dream a large number of people were in a school building.  Everyone was going from room to room, much like on parents night.  My mood kept switching from fear, to confidence to fear again.  From rejection to acceptance to rejection.  In some way my mother was once again undermining me.  Finally my T stepped in and called her on it and told her that he would no longer allow her to try to destroy me.


I must get to a point that I can hold the positive thoughts.  But I must not dispair because I haven't reached that yet.  I am much further along simply by seeing that I hold the negative thoughts.  It is no longer what my parents do and don't do nor what they did and didn't do.  Now it is merely embedded in my thoughts and the way out is to change my thoughts.

Step one in that is to become cognizant of my thoughts.  Yesterday I worked on keeping Determined and Confident front and center.  To be mindful of these thoughts rather than drifting into the fear based "comfort" zone that normally possesses me. 

[Gaining Strength]

For six months or more I have felt as though I had all the pieces to the puzzle of the question I began asking as an adolescent, "What is wrong with me?"

But if I had found all the pieces of that puzzle then why am I not free?  I may have found an answer.
Thanks to the people of this board, I learned about a feature of EFT called reversal.  Here is a description from the emofree website: "This reversal occurs when the subconscious mind perceives that it is better or safer to keep an issue like negative emotions, chronic pain, extra weight, or a bad habit, than to eliminate it.

Since this is seldom a conscious choice, most people will initially disagree with you if you tell them that they actually want to keep their problem or issue. Of course they don’t consciously want to stay emotionally or physically in pain. But the subconscious is a powerful entity, usually exhibiting dominance over our conscious desires. "

I had been reading through this section and working on it when I went to my regular Tuesday meeting with fellow prayers.  One of the women said she brought me information about how to overcome judgments, vows and curses that develop from emotional injury that is not forgiven.  This really resonated with me.  I have been reading over these two concepts and then I came across the Personal Peace Procedure on the Emofree website.  Here is the essense of that and the first step.

MOST OF OUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL PROBLEMS ARE CAUSED (OR CONTRIBUTED TO) BY OUR UNRESOLVED SPECIFIC EVENTS.

1. Make a list of every bothersome specific event you can remember. If you don't find at least 50 you are either going at this half-heartedly or you have been living on some other planet. Many people will find hundreds.

Suddenly, I realize that I must go back to ALL of these difficult, painful memories and one by one extricate myself from them.

******

Last night I had a dream in which my T had arranged for a retreat for me and my son.  Someone he knew let him borrow their weekend home.  It was a shotgun home and we were standing the the vey back room, the bedroom.  It was a very cheaply built old, poor structure but it was filled with expensive antiques.  In the bedroom were twin beds.  These beds were beautiful and had gorgeous, carved wooden canopies.  When I saw these I was filled with resentment and dark, unease and anger.  The feeling was so distressing that it woke me.

As I lay there working on what was going on emotionally here, after some time, I came to an image of me as an adolescent, appealing to my father to send me to NOLS for outdoorsman training.  I was sure he would agree to this and moreover that he would be proud of me for having the determination to do something difficult and demanding.  NO.  No he was not proud of me.  No, I could not go.  No I could not pursue my interests.  BUT others I knew were allowed to do so and they received accolades for taking on such accomplishments. 

I am struggling in telling this story b/c I cannot get on paper the intensity that I am pointing to.  But the resentment comes in the contrast and the struggle and the no-win.  I set a goal that I expect will be received with support and encouragement, a goal that fits within the values that I have been taught to hold.  But I cannot accomplish that goal without my father's permission and financial support. 

I am certain that the memory that I have exposes a great deal about where I am stuck now.  I have not yet spelled out how this memory connects to the dream.  I can almost lay it out and when I am able to describe it in words I will be a little closer to overcoming it. 

Here is a stab - I'm in this house - silently I am very critical of the house and its furnishings.  My resentment is legion.  What is the resentment - I don't have a weekend house and I don't have the access to such fine furnishings.  I grew up in similar surroundings but since I became an adult I have not had access to such things and the only way I have access is because someone who knows someone is letting me in.  I resent it.  But what happened.  How did I get so far out of the loop.  The Memory!  My parents were the connecive tissue between my lavish experiences growing up and the experience as an adult.  My parents were the connective tissue for me to pursue my goals.  My parents were the connective tissue to continueing the life I had had as their offspring.  My goals, my wellbeing, my comfort - were sabotaged as a child, as an adolescent, as a young adult, as a ....  Sabotaged and countered and opposed.  I am psychologically frozen in that bind - waiting for my parents to help me out - ain't going to happen. 

I have to unlock those dark bonds that have kept me down for so very long.  I hope these worksheets about judgment and PPP will help me work through these unresolved wounds. 

I wrote before that I am starting a little business.  Initially we will work MWF but in a week or two it will burgeon into 5 days per week.  This week has gone extremely well.  I am very excited about it.  I am determined to work through these psychological blocks as I am on the verge of breaking through. 

[Gaining Strength]

The Garden Story

When I was in high school, I lived in the home my father had grown up in.  It was large and beautiful and sat on 4.5 acres of beautiful land.  In the back was a formal garden designed by a renown NY landscape designer.  When my parents moved into that house my mother let the garden go.  She was not a gardener and she did not hire a gardener. 

I longed to garden but my mother would not let me.  So often I would secretly go to the garden and try to restore it.  There were three paths to this garden.  One was the "servants" entrance.  It was a smooth paved path for wheelbarrows and went through the greenhouse/hothouse area and entered the garden through a wall of boxwood.  There was a stone path that went through the woods and then another formal path that was planted with azalea and hosta and other perineals. 

One time I was showing one of my brothers what I had done with the azalea and hosta.  I told him that our mother would be angry if she knew I was gardening.  He scoffed at me and said he didn't believe me so I said, "OK, let's go tell her and see."  So we did.  When she heard what I had done she flew into a rage and began yelling about how I was ruining everything.  I just sat there until she quit yelling and screaming and crying.  And when she finished I let her know that I had done it a year before.  My point was that clearly she had not even noticed and furthermore nothing was ruined.

The reason this story is important to me is this - I had an interest in gardening.  We had a beautiful formal garden that had gone to ruin.  I would have given it the time and energy to restore it.  In doing so my parents property would have been augmented and there would have been a beautiful place to observe.  The cost would have been minimal.  Also I longed to garden.  Rather than support and encourage me to develop a talent and reap the benefits my mother made sure she squelched any delight that I might have.  She made sure she squelched the development of a talent and pasttime.  She made sure that she squelched ME.

This is a process that was repeated over and over and over and over.  What could I have vowed, what judgement did I make then that has continued to bind me to Her judgement on me?

I want to get at this and extricate it from my psyche.  Any thoughts about what judgment I could have pronounced on my mother or myself that is still with me?

[Gaining Strength]

Re-writing Garden Story

I loved to garden.  There was a beautiful formal garden in the back that had gone to seed.  My parents were thrilled that I wanted to restore it.  It didn't interest them but it would be nice for them to have a place to walk in and entertain in that was beautiful.  It would be a object of admiration as it had been when my grandmother had had gardeners oversee it.

My parents bought me all the tools I needed to prepare the soil.  The let me buy all the seeds I needed and the equipment I needed to grow the plants and nurture them.  In the spring when I came home from school my mother would provide a snack for me to take to the greenhouse.  Then she would fix a pitcher of lemonade and we would go out together.  She would take her book and come sit in the armchair and read while I worked in the soil.  I would water my seedlings and make records of what was growing and what was not.  I would plan what would be planted where and then work in the compost pile and imagine how beautiful the garden will be after planting and maturation of the  flowers I am bringing into life.

The garden itself is its own reward but the reaction of visitors is a great benefit as well.  My parents are so proud of me.  They are so proud of my garden.  It is as beautiful as the garden that my grandmother oversaw.


As I write this I am close to figuring out last night's dream.  When I was a child I had access to things that great wealth provided - like this formal garden - but which had not been kept up.  I wanted to participate in this garden - it required my parents permission and emotional and financial support.  Any normal parent would have thrilled to provide these things.  Throughout my life I have remained in the state of living "in ruins" without the financial nor emotional support to overcome this and move into beauty.

This truly is the "story of my life".  And I clearly am at the crux of unlocking the doublebind that still entraps me.  I am finding freat help in reading Twiggy's story.  AS I read it, I am thrown back into memories of my childhood, even though hers was far more horrific than mine.  Nonetheless I am as trapped as anyone can be.  Twiggy is helping me find my way back to the dark pits.

[Gaining Strength]

Humiliation at the Core

I have been making a list of as many experiences in my life that have been emotionally charged.  It has really stirred things up.  I find at my core a profound humiliation that is somewhat different from the shame I worked through a year ago.  I cannot yet define th difference between the two but I can write something about the humiliation. 

Each and every one of these memories has a component of humliation.  Each and every one has a component of disempowerment.  There was force and control and feelings of humiliation and out of control.  Confusingly many of the memories are mixed with a sense of powerfulness - don't mess with me.  But last night it became clear that that power come completely from my parents and grandparents money and social status and when I left my parents home I knew that I did not have power but was completely confused.  So confused that I was not even aware that it had anything to do with power.  I could not describe what was wrong with me.

Only over a few decades when it became abundantly clear that I did not either have or chose to use money was I completely left out of the circle I had been raised in.

I see clearly today that all of my rage comes from the powerlessness and sense of being out of control.  The humiliation - I have lived into the humiliation - pigsty home - among other examples.

Eveytime I work to resolve some of these present day fruits I only get so far and then completely relapse.  Now I see that I am working against a force that is greater than my will.  I am now willing to go back in time and experience and face the draon and cut his head off.  I am willing but it is indescribably frightening and painful.

Tired of living in chaos.  Tired of being soooo rejected and not able to find a way in.  Help me - help me find my way.

[Gaining Strength]

Recent Memory - Asking for Help, Receiving Shame and Condemnation

A year after my husband died I went to a place in Jacksonville, FL called Christian Healing Ministries.  It is something I had wanted to do long before that but never could make the arrangement.  My little boy was just 18 months old and the program was 3 days long.  I found childcare arrangements in St. Augustine and drove back and forth each day.

The point was to get healing for the past childhood wounds and then to deal with all the stuff from marriage and husbands death and the mess left behind.  I was assigned to a woman from the area and she was paired with a trainee - a Lutheran clergyman from Utah.  Unbeknownst to me, I was at the early stages of a manic period, brought on by a reaction to a combination of Celexa and Adderal. 

As it turns out the experience was anything but healing.  The two healers assigned to me were actually judgemental and condemning.  I left that experience even more shamed than when I arrived - I wouldn't have believed it possible.

As an example - I was describing some of the struggles my husband and I had had, especially with his 20 something son.  The man asked some questions to elicit from me the information that during our premarital counseling I had said that I honored my husband's relationship with his grown children as primary.  The man, in a healing role, replied that I was wrong and had gotten what I deserved because the marriage has to be primary.  He had NO sympathy for the struggles that I experienced because my husband was enmeshed with his almost grown son.  He held me responsible and shamed me for it.  It was a complete repleication of what I had experienced from both my father and my husband - being held responsible for things that I did not cause, being shamed when I revealed any weaknesses, being condemned when I asked for help.  The fact is that it was the counselor, priest's responsibility to have explained to us that the marriage is primary.  This particular priest was trained in family systems counselilng and had trained with notable 2nd generation Bowenians.  He also knew some of the disfunction of my family and of my husbands previous marriage.  We went to him because I believed that he would point out to us the potential pitfalls and that he would give us some insight in how to determine if we were good candidates for marriage. I found out too late that he had been of ZERO help in those regards.  And here I was 4 years later being judged and condemned by a man whom I turned to (with reasonable expectation) for help, healing, comfort. The woman on the healing team was far worse than the man. 

This morning I woke up reworking all of this yet again.  I realized that I had to forgive her and forgive him and process that experience - that deeply wounding experience.  It was one of several experiences during this period that I was kicked when I was down and out.  I still am astonished by the behavior I encountered.

This morning I worked through forgiving them and bathing them in a light of forgiveness and love.  Then I moved to working on forgiving my husband for the regular tirades of projecting his self-hatred and anger towards his adoptive and birth mothers.  I wish I had been able to do then what I am able to do now - see him as wounded when he lashes out at me.  But I can do that now and I can find the healing as a result.

[Gaining Strength]

There is a power behind the facade

There is a power behind the facade but I have been living in the facade.  I wish I could write myself whole.  I wish I could dream myself whole. I am soo close.  There is something else that has to give and I'm not sure what.

The facade is shame and sloth.  I want underneath to the power.  I am tired of the shame.

My dream was about this.  In what is now very vague sequences I held a truth that the others in the sequence did not hold.  If I held onto that truth in spite of their disagreement but kept silent about it then the power of that truth would triumph in spite of the power thei other seemed to have.

In one sequence a person on a galf cart zooms up.  I have collected some vegetbles from my small garden and take then into an antechamber area when the golf cart approaches.  They are gathering things to take into the larger garden and I present my gatherings.  They reject them as contaminated.  I show them where they came from and yet they reject them.  I know that what I have gathered needs to go where the golf cart is going.  I remain silent and continue on as though the desired outcome will persist - in spite of the sense that the golf cart person has all of the power.

Power.  I have felt so powerless.  Words do not match what people say and I am lost and powerless by believing people. 

Hold the truth.  Don't argu it with those who appear to be in power.  Move forward.  Hold the truth in silence and believe.  The power of the truth will prevail,  Blind faith.

[Gaining Strength]

Making progress - diffficult to describe.  I am digging deep and giving space for the shaming moments to emerge.  The experiences float up like bubbles in a viscous solution.  They emerge in images more often than memories.  I stay with the image and hope for clarity. 

I am astonished by the immensity of the shame and how it manifests itself.

Things are slowly changing outwardly.  Slowly I am moving towards providing a living for myself.  Slowly I am making friends and receiving invitations to social events.  I am thankful.