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Pondering

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Meh:

--- Quote from: Twoapenny on June 22, 2012, 04:45:01 PM --- What's odd is that I find feeling relaxed just makes me feel so sad - it's like rushing around and keeping busy keeps the emotion out of the way.

--- End quote ---

Feelings are sort of subtle sometimes they do get tuned out.

It's probably really healthy though that you recognize you have sadness underneath it all

sKePTiKal:
The busy-busy keep doing strategy, so that I don't have any extra brain space to feel, is something I do too. I was taught by my mom, that feelings were "dangerous"... and not worth paying attention to and not important. I was intentionally pushed into being "head-centered". Later on, with Ex#2 I finally hit the crisis-point about that and felt that I was slowly suffocating to death... experiencing almost complete sensory deprivation... and of course, his guru-self encouraged me over & over to not have any ego, not pay attention to emotions, not value them. This was my "comfort zone" - my normal - my safe place, after a while. I wouldn't get in trouble with mom or the Ex if I didn't have any feelings.

I was not able to explain to why, in meditation, the tears would always come - and then not stop - once I was able to still my mind.

It was only later, in therapy, that I was finally able to relax into that space and use it to finally feel all that grief, shame, anger/rage, and yes... later on, peace, serenity, and even joy. I sorta had to emotionally process - feel all of those emotions in depth - to finally be able to move on to feeling other things. That's when I slowly began to let all those ancient burdens, restrictions, self-limitations, etc just fall off of me. I'll be working on that awhile, I think!  ;)

Well, Penny, I would be interested in discussing sex life after sexual abuse with you. That's one area that I keep postponing dealing with and still have a lot fear-based, self-limiting reactions to. It's one thread in that complex brocade of "recovery blanket". Your book sounds interesting - what was the title again?

It's a real pain in the arse to be conditioned (via parents, etc) to fear all the forms intimacy. Because deep, deep down unconsciously, subconsciously and some rare times even consciously & egotistically -- that kind of deep connection is our most secret desire.

Meh:
I would say that it's not just a FOO condition that teaches us to mask emotions but I think the FOO maybe compounds it.

There is an overall social behavior that causes this IMO. It's pandemic.

Twoapenny:
Hi Salsa,

Yes, I do think our society in general has been very head/science/logic focused for a long time, rather than focusing on the feelings and emotions and so on.  I suppose feelings are much more fluid and differ for each of us in different ways on different days.  I guess dealing with feelings means dealing with individuals, giving them time and space to feel, understand and express - and our world moves to quickly for that most of the time.  I'd just like to get a balance where I can access my heart, my head or my body easily, when I need to and move from one to another (or use all at the same time) rather than having to focus very intensely on one area.  I guess it's time and practice, a new skill to learn and make mistakes with along the way.

Phoenix, a discussion about a sex life after sexual abuse would be very brief because I don't have one, lol :)  I am finding the book very useful and thought provoking, and it's making me see how the earlier abuse led to a lot of the things I did in my early adult life and how I think/feel/respond to things now.  The book is by a woman called Staci Haines and it's called The Survivor's Guide to Sex.  I read some really good reviews about it; she was abused and has worked with people who've been abused as well as managing a sex shop!  I actually think it's probably a really good guide even if you haven't been abused; she's very open, very candid and very honest.  I'm not able to really think about sex yet, I just find it too scary.  But I'm working on affection and that's feeling okay, so baby steps and all that.

sKePTiKal:
Thanks! I can appreciate not being ready to even think about this! Thankfully, I've had a lot of other things to preoccupy me for the last 4-5 years and it was easy to avoid the topic altogether. But I do think it's something I'm still denying myself -- that's as normal as proper nutrition and finding that new comfort zone, that allows me to perform self-care and make those decisions to self-care. But I know, it's a really uncomfortable subject.

I was gonna write -- touchy subject. And that's what I wanted to suggest to you, from an idea that was generated by an earlier post. Touch therapy. I think there really is "such a thing"... but, I also think there are a lot of ways we can do this formally & informally... just throughout present moments in our life. Massage, is obviously one way. Reiki is another.

One thing I've noticed, is that sometimes when hubs touches my arm or my back - it hurts there and I didn't realize that before. Another thing that's REALLY weird, is that he can touch my shoulder and it makes the foot on the other side of my body hurt or feel like the nerves are jangly and irritated. So, I'll ask him to touch me somewhere while I'm consciously relaxing... and that's a good practice exercise.

The other thing I just started doing... it's going to evolve, I can see that... is sign language. I get non-verbal sometimes - something beyond just getting stuck for a word - so to express myself I'm using hand signals. Kinda interesting that the one for snack-food - "nibblies" - looks a lot like the one for "snugglies". [giggle] And it's a private, just between the two of us, language... so I can use this out in public with him and we can take our special "space"... right along with us. It's been a good idea and helped smooth out some of the rough places in our communication. Like, he's always telling me: I love you.... it can be as many times as 20 times a day... and hey, we've been married 12 years! One day after I started with the hand signals, I realized it was another type of symbol -- his way of saying, hey -- connect with me a minute or I need to connect with you. It used to really irritate me because I didn't understand what he was really trying to say, with that phrase... over & over.... no context, no reference... and it seemed like it was really, sadly, needy.

I'm the one who didn't have a context for casual, momentary, re-connect to "us" built into my experiential vocabulary.

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