Still need to work through early trauma

[Gaining Strength]

More difficulty today than usual.

I am thinking it is time to move into a proactive stance.  In addition to warding off the dark, adding in the light - aiming for it, seeking it, calling it into being in myself.

[Gaining Strength]

Miracle of miracles. EMDR opening tonight. 

Yesterday had two wonderful encounters with friends from childhood and early adult.  Lovely, lengthy conversations.  Demonstrations to myself of a shifting being.  I have emerged from the bitterness and resentment that I wasn't even aware of but that I now see pushed everyone away.  It is such a relief.  Iam thankful for these encounters that tell me I have changed.

I had a series of dreams that indicate a change a brewing.  One was a series of "levels" of kind of building.  Each story one square room.  In each I was present, usually wih one other person.  I was cleaning and straightening and completing a science project in each room.  There was no angst.  Just where I am aiming my life.

In another I was traveling, flying.  My ticket was in the very back of the plane which had a long row of seats.  I was disappointed only to learn that it was a great group of inclusive people that I enjoyed being with.

All good, positive scenes.
 Fingers crossed.

[Gaining Strength]

Depressed today. Will snap out of it but feeling tired of the battle. Looking forward to the day that I wake  and don't gave to lift self out of the mire to get started. Iyanla posted something on FB this morning about feeling unworthy of a task means you won't be able to accomplish it.  Lord knows she is talking to me. 

It is time to turn that around but right now I'm feeling beaten down. Wishing something external would lift me up.

[Gaining Strength]

Resetting my mind to believe. 

I've been exercising, eating for a healthy brain. Time to add in meditation.  Must set brain to right thinking.  I believe.

[Gaining Strength]

"When you undertake any endeavor harboring a conscious or unconscious belief that you are not worthy of doing it, you will find that you are unable to move forward."

From Iyanla


From today's Diane Rehm: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-10-01/walter-mischel-marshmallow-test-mastering-self-control

It gets down to the ability of the children being able to use imagination to help control impulses.  Not unrelated to what I am doing.

[Gaining Strength]

Getting in touch with still repressed resentment which may be related to sense of still repressed unworthiness. 

Issues of father are emerging - his demanding, irrational, OCPD driven requirements. Boosted by my mother's complicity driven by her relief that I was on the receiving end and not her.  All this happened repeatedly as I watched others, brothers, friends, etc, skip through life being celebrated for the very things that brought me condemnation and punishment.  Now to unearth and reverse the mindset established by the years of this.

Unearth and let go of resentment.
Unearth and regenerate vision of  beauty and ability and he.

[Gaining Strength]

Reminders from the outside are pointing to what I must address.

My feelings of inadequacy are doubled down by the sense  of cringing, the need to crawl away and hide in a cabinet.  Memory from humiliation as a child?  Anger and agony cry out. 

This is the underneath feelings that send me into avoidance.

The other day, I saw the importance of the shift from "paralysis" to "avoidance".  The latter gives me power over it.  The former doesn't.

I am so alone.  That loneliness goes back to the earliest days.

Another message that comes up is mindfulness.  Time to turn to mindfully be aware of what is happening with in me.  I understand the avoidance.  The pain is so great. 

[Hopalong]

This is very powerful to me, GS...

I saw the importance of the shift from "paralysis" to "avoidance".  The latter gives me power over it.  The former doesn't.

Thank you for sharing this.
I'm drawing strength from your insights, for the same issues.

Thank you again! I'm cheering you on....

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you Hops.

[Gaining Strength]

Early trauma - hitting me hard.  The voices are getting louder . Perhaps presenting themselves for healing.  I have been stumbling across so much about healing that all suggests I'm on the right path.  I'm ready and I'm aware of how the old is so loud and present. 

Rejection, not worthy, get what you deserve, worthless,

Saw my therapist Thursday. Such a comfort.

Doubling down on visualization.  Really want to replace avoidance.

With T discussed how avoidance developed: in FOO, my presence brought on the attacks.  Any action or activity brought on an onslaught of criticism and belittlement.  It is so powerful still, coursing my being and my mind without ceasing.  If I focus, I can hear the words but worse and more lethal than the words was what was not said or said behind my back.  It was the attitude of contempt help by the two people who gave birth to me.  It was an omnipresent attitude which could not be shaken no matter how hard I tried to achieve.  If I erred along the way, that was highlighted and denounced and brought up OCR and again.  If I succeeded later on the first failure was resurrected.  If I succeeded or achieved something there was more denunciation.  It was well into adulthood before I even realized it.  Sometimes when I had wonderful experiences, the sort that most parents brag about, my  experiences were met with deafening silence. 

But on Monday I begin EMDR, and I pray this will bring relief to the dark, pain and omnipresent feeling of being unworthy and undeserving and expectation and reality of being rejected.

[Gaining Strength]

Today I am allowing the extreme pain to rise up.  I'm being present to it.  Hoping it doesn't kill me.  Emerging it with love.  I have tried over recent months to direct love to an image of my father.  He always rejects it - with anger.  Suddenly this morning I saw that he needed it as a child.  The child absorbs it in paroxysms of grief and longing.

*****
I love Twoapenny's post and want it to remain at the end so I am modifying my last entry.

I had a dream last night and an important visualization this morning.  In the visualization I saw healing energy penetrate my brain and then penetrate my father's.  In recent days I have seen that the damage from my mother paled in comparison to that from my father.  I saw the EMDR man Monday but it was all history taking and no EMDR.  The actual therapy is being delayed yet another 10 days.  

This image was powerful enough to lift me from a depression and allow me to actualization  movement out of avoidance.  I will spend vast
amounts of time nurturing this.
*****
great pain BUT not turning to avoidance. Very weird but good. Staying with pain and talking to it. Disappointed at first but now see it is progress and better still that the pain isn't killing me but I'm able to sit with it, talk to it .

In my dream, I was coming to an intersection behind a car.  At the stop sign the car didn't go.  I tapped my horn before realizing the young mother had a flat.  The stop was down the street from the house I lived in as a young child.  I got out to help. She pulled a bicycle tire from behind her seat.  She told me that she acquired the car from her mother but her mother had not told her about a debt of $6000 that was attached to the car.  So now this very poor young mother owed that debt.  Her mother had betrayed her and tricked her.

Today I will nourish that image of healing and bring it into fruition.  Time to go.

One of my great fears is that the paralysis will continue.  That far is in itself debilitating.  I will work on it today as well.

Hopelessness and fear of rejection and failure have kept me paralyzed.  Bringing that into the consciousness will open the door to healing and freedom.

[Twoapenny]

Today I am allowing the extreme pain to rise up.  I'm being present to it.  Hoping it doesn't kill me.  Emerging it with love.  I have tried over recent months to direct love to an image of my father.  He always rejects it - with anger.  Suddenly this morning I saw that he needed it as a child.  The child absorbs it in paroxysms of grief and longing.

GS, what you are doing is so tough and you are going through it all so bravely and wisely.  You are genuinely in my thoughts and I'm sending you all the love and white light I can muster 

((((((((((((((((((((((((((GainingStrength)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

So brave of you to send love out to your father when he represents so many unpleasant things to you.  So engaging that you see him now as a child needing that love.  Poor parenting can cause problems for generations, it's so sad.

For several years I have had a big, fluffy bunny rabbit that I bought from a charity shop.  I read in a book that a good way to try to engage with your inner child (and give him or her the love she didn't get) is to have something you can hug and hold and that can become the little person you are trying to help.  I'd read that in the morning, then went out to run some errands and the bunny was in the charity shop, looking out at me from the window - and it was exactly the amount of money I had in my purse (only a few pounds).  I took that as a sign

I can't tell you how much time I've spent holding that bunny over the last few years, rocking her, stroking her big fluffy ears and tucking her up into bed.  I've cried so many tears into her and I always make sure she's comfy when I tidy up my room in the morning.  Sounds crazy but I really feel like it's helped.

Just thought I would mention it in case it helps a little for you to deal with this huge emotional pain that is coming through for you at the minute.  You are doing great work, GS, you are to be much admired xx

[Gaining Strength]

I dipped into depression last Thursday.  It was quite a dip.  But I was able to climb back out.  Several things happened that normally would send me down again.  Thankfully I have developed a thought pattern that is keeping me out.  When I feel myself slipping again I put myself in the mind exercise and am currently able to recover.  But I am beginning to see more about how the old stuff is connected with my struggle.  In my experience, as these insights developed the healing follows.  I am expecting some more shifts in the next 6 weeks.

In a strange dream two friends of mine, a couple, were able to stand in my experience as a child and feel what it was like to be raged at.  In the dream they were able to offer me real understanding and empathy.  It felt profoundly healing, so relieving.

Over the weekend, we went to a gathering at a friend's family home in the country.  There were people from far and near of all ages across the weekend.  Several encounters shown a light.  In one instance a man sat beside me and began talking about a specific breed of horses.  I am not an equestrian of any sort. He talked and talked and talked.  I thought there would be no break and kept looking for others whom I could enter act with to get out of the situation.  In the midst of it, I had a flashback to being talked to by my father who would drone on and on and on and demand that I maintain eye contact, not blink, not look away, not interrupt, not speak.  Even just weeks before his death I was still unable to draw a boundary against this control and protect myself. 

Later the same night I heard two other women talking about being trapped by this same man.  I recognized why I felt trapped.  And I happen to know that this man has very serious mental health issues and has lost much of his net worth because of it.  I suspect he has some form of bi-polar at minimum, as did my father.

At some point, I had a glimmer of understanding about how make sure that I did not enjoy myself at such an occasion, how he would ride me about being in the way, bothering people, not making myself useful.  I hope to remember more of the memories that surfaced so that I can work them out.

[Gaining Strength]

Last week a friend introduced me to a meditation that has a healing property for rejection.  I have been practicing it since.  It is giving me insights into so much that has been so oppressive for me. 

I am able to see how the doors keep shutting for me.  This vision  has always been the first step into transformation.  Until now, I have has a tiny crack in my paralysis but each time I took a step out the door slammed shit.  Time after time  until finally the glimmer of hope was solidly attached to the door slamming shut so much so that the glimmer induced significant anxiety and self-loathing.

Today, all of this is coming clearer and clearer.  It is all about to break open.

I see how my father's power shut me down, tied my hands and enveloped me is such profound sense of failure.  I see how "shut down" kept me somewhat protected from the active hatred and condemnation and how trying to do things for myself, cleaning my home, gardening, needlework, having nice clothes, socializing, all brought out his condemnation and torment.  It may be internalized and he may be dead but it has had a tremendous power.  But now the door is cracked.  And now I have a tool to use against that oppression, to counter it and overcome it.

The next days, weeks and months will be fascinating to see what comes of it.

[Gaining Strength]

Have begun to be able to envision myself cleaning and creating order.  This is brand new.  It will grow as well.