Still need to work through early trauma

[Gaining Strength]

Well the sham and self criticism came up today.  I'm not surprised nor even put back.  The shame I broke through this summer was like a hard shell coating - omnipresent and extremely anxiety producing.  Nor that that is gone I can handle this shame. It is specifically attached to the mess and the work at hand. 

Until that she'll broke anxiety and shame was attached to absolutely every thing and I could not move forward .  Now I can and process the stuff as it comes. 

One day at a time.

[Gaining Strength]

It's been a good day in ways and difficult as well, learning.  I had an organizer and assistant come in to help me begin to cut through the mess, starting upstairs.  It was a good start.  What made it difficult is all of the old stuff coming to the surface.  I'm not sure I can ven write about it though I want to. 

I see how what has stood in my way in the past is a complex psychology.  The work done recently allows me to deal with the residual which is no small thing but from where I stand now seems significantly more manageable.  We shall see.

They come back tomorrow and we finish two of three rooms and then the carpet cleaners come on Wednesday.

[Hopalong]

What fantastic progress, GS!
I hope you're loving yourself with dedication...pile on more!

Love I mean.
Not clutter.

KUDOS to you!

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you Hops!!!

I'll pile it on.  I'm getting in touch with more of that yuck. Thank goodness.  Don't line it but I would rather b aware of it than in denial.  I'm ready to let it go.

I really faced up to several obligations today and knocked them off.  This is really helping  generate a shift. I wasn't tuned into my negative attitude/fear that I wouldn't get something done.  Now I can focus on my intention and do it.  I see how success builds on success.  I'm asking for help and getting it.  That is all new.

An acquaintance onFB asked if any one wanted to get some exercise.  I signed up.  We're hiking first thing then some one is coming to help me work on cleaning upstairs.  I have carpet cleaners coming Wednesday and a plumber the next day.  I'm making a list and working on it.  This is good. 

Big goal is to develop consistency and keep my word. I can do this.  I have to clean my kitchen floor so I can go to bed.  Tomorrow is a busy day.

[Gaining Strength]

Very tough day.  Worked for 4 1/2 hours and more to go.

The work isn't tough, the psychology is.  I am hitting deep lows but able to shift my perspective.  The lows shine a light on how I got here and the depths of dispair that I have lived in for so long.  I will not allow myself to dwell there.  I am making progress but there is SO far to go.  BUT, I can't get there if I don't  chip away day after day.  And the chipping away is more than clearing and cleaning.  It is also setting goals. Making sure they are reasonable. Not falling into despair.  Or lifting myself out.

Bit by bit. Day by day.

[Gaining Strength]

I used to "dial into" a fear, anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It became a dominant state. Now I am intentionally tuning into a thought pattern of looking for the good, believing I will find or generate a positive outcome.

The past two days have found me smack dab back in the old place. I do not choose to dwell there anymore.

I have a plumber coming. It turns my stomach tO have people in my house but I'm doing it. I need my dishwasher to wOrk.  I know how I got here. It is not
Because I am a
Disgusting human though I can slip into feeling that way. It is because life
Became too difficult for too long. Now I have a chance to do things differently. That will happen if I let
Go of dwelling in self condemnation and choose to focus on strengths - like my desire and determination to live a fulfilling life.

[Gaining Strength]

I see why this is so hard.  It sends me reeling and thrusts me down into the depths.  But I can learn to speak back to those not quite conscious voices.  I can inoculate myself. Stave it off before it hits.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm writing too much because I have a bit of down time while I am waiting for the organizer.  And I am writing too much because I am processing all of this.  Seeing in a new way how I got so trapped.  Now that the shell of shame cracked aim able to pull myself out of the abyss for the first time in my life and do it consistently.  But getting into the muck of stuff I see with such clarity how I got where I am, how the shame slammed me to the floor and would not allow me to lift myself up.  Then I pounded myself I further by self- condemnation for my failings.  It has been a long life of such a dark spiral.  But the outer shell is cracked and I am moving forward, counting each day.

I see how each step of cleaning and organizing would trigger the shame because I had ever let it get that way, because I had not kept things perfectly.  My goal is to rejoice in my work to creat order.  That will in and of itself be a teiumph - taking pride and comfort and even joy in doing the work, in DOING the work. Not in any specific outcome.  My first giant step is pride in moving, doing work.  Once I have some consistency in that I can take another step.

[Hopalong]

My goal is to rejoice in my work to creat order.  That will in and of itself be a teiumph - taking pride and comfort and even joy in doing the work, in DOING the work. Not in any specific outcome.  My first giant step is pride in moving, doing work.

This is totally inspiring to me, GS.

Your work and daily determination is helping me reignite mine.
Can't thank you enough for sharing this detailed, daily, dirty struggle to MOVE into action here.

It's such a balm to hear about someone cutting through paralysis with self love.

Thank you again for sharing this day by day unglamorous brave work you ARE doing.

KUUUUUUUUUDos...

xo
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

In touch with resentmentent.  Lodged in the base of the spine.

Deep dream/meditation took me to a place of struggle waiting to be set free, enmeshed in others darkness, taken on as my own.  Meanwhile the world marched on. So much healing to go, so much pain to walk through to get there.

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Hops.  I have to redirect myself over and over again.  Self -love seems so unnatural to me.  Focus on it generates a maelstrom of the opposite but when able I hold on to my focus waiting for the storm to pass. Somehow this brings up so much that needs healing.

[Hopalong]

Yep...just making the "I am DOING now" decision, over and over...
that's how the new habit will come.

I'm trying to do the same, and I so get why this is an epiphany.

Doing.
Doing.
Doing.

At least as much as ruminating, never letting ruminating win over DOING.

wow wow
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Next week when I get back from picking up my boy I'll share with you something I've been doing that helps.

[Gaining Strength]

This has been an interesting but difficult journey.  I am now finding myself walking through rejection.  I see that I could not have done this without breaking through shame.

The rejection is so enormous and sothorough in my life across the ages.  The pain is indescribably huge and yet it pales to the pain of shame.  I had a dream in which I was called into a room to work on a project.  I found myself so angry and acting out in anger.  Anger is one of the things that has led to caste swatches of rejection for me.  When. I entered that I saw myself caught in a wheel of striving - striving to get things right so I would be included, accepted.  Everywhere I turned there was only more rejection.

Coming from a family where acceptance was mixed with obligation and was ripped away at the first error or slip or sign of weakness put me in a state of permanently anticipating rejection, frozen in a damned if you do damned if you don't place of isolation. 

Of course I see why I got lost and paralyzed.  Now to find healing.  It seems impossible but that is not so.  Would I could have been through this process 10, 20, or even 30 years ago.  The heartache I could have avoided.

This morning I put myself in a meditation of seeing the healing come.  I feel that rejection right at the base of my skull and of course that is where the anger is triggered as well. No surprise. Rejection by family as a child is a survival issue and I have been stuck there  until all family was gone.  Now with courage I will find my way home claiming, looking for and putting on a manual,of healing.  Imagining what it must feel like to be able to complete tasks, have friends, be included and move forward.

[Gaining Strength]

As I enter this realm of rejection, the pain is balanced with my newly acquired ability to pull myself out of the abyss. 

Because I no longer am fettered by the FEAR of the rejection I am able to stand in the pain and look around, to see how my own reactions to it created more rejection.  I remember not really liking the way I behaved at times in my youth and having no control over it.  It was painful but at the same time I could not really get a handle on what other things led to rejection. And the rejection wasn't across the board until I began to be bound by the paralysis of expectation of failure and it's repeated experience. 

Standing in the rejection.  I see more clearly my own role in it.  Standing in it now, I could so easily make the shifts.  Such sorrow this perspective gives me.

Rationally, I want to just move forward and see what acceptance comes to me and how it will feel.  But I also fear that I will never get ou.  I have to work to overcome that fear.  Fear is a very destructive  state.  I can think of little good that comes from it.

I'm going to spend a few more minutes holding onto that vision of healing right at the base of my skull, when that fear and anger burst out of, where that sense of rejection hits after the kick to the gut. If I can process that place of rejection and switch the circuits to be one of love and forgiveness rather than anger and fear.