Still need to work through early trauma

[Gaining Strength]

I feel like I have never been in this much pain in my life but that isn't true.  I have always been in this pain - my entire life.  I have just repressed it.  The shame is almost intolerable.  The feeling of rejection is crushing but I know it does not have to always be this way.  But the change will only come if I address this pain and face it. 

It is so difficult. But I must.

[Gaining Strength]

Sitting with the pain, using Jon Kabat-Zinn's guided mindfulness allows me to be present to it without moving into avoidance - where I have been living my entire life.  How long til the bounds are I loosed? It really doesn't matter.  There is no other direction to move in now that I am aware of these binds..

Profound self- hatred and fear and expectation of rejection bound into avoidance patterned into me from my first days.  Now the blind has been removed. 

I long to be free, to be whole.

[Hopalong]

What a gorgeous, loving, humane thing to say:

Peace will unfold before you as far as you can see.

Hops

[Twoapenny]

I feel like I have never been in this much pain in my life but that isn't true.  I have always been in this pain - my entire life.  I have just repressed it.  The shame is almost intolerable.  The feeling of rejection is crushing but I know it does not have to always be this way.  But the change will only come if I address this pain and face it. 

It is so difficult. But I must.

It's tough going, GS.  I've never found a short cut or a way of bypassing it.  But it does ease, and lift, and move aside to make room for other (better) things eventually.  Be kind to yourself during this time, take baths, walk, talk, write, indulge yourself, reach out to someone else, whatever you do to look after you.  For me there have been times when it feels like you're coming out of a coma and every single nerve in your body is screaming.  It's so hard, but it does pass with time.

[Gaining Strength]

My hopes and dreams and longings are deeply shamed. 

[Gaining Strength]

No words an express my appreciation to your encouragement s.  This is a lonely battle  and if anyone is to ne'er stand it is only from others who have struggled with the festering wounds of being a child with  N parents.

[Gaining Strength]

As I dip my toe into Kabat-zinn's mindfulness I become increasingly aware of my harsh judgement. Only time and increased practice will tell.

[Gaining Strength]

Seeing how envisioning any goal has generated tension and resistance in reaction to deep unconscious identification with "you don't deserve." Beginning to see that something can be both in awareness and still in unconsciousness especially if it is broad or generalized like "You don't deserve."

Mindfulness may allow me to stay with mindfulness becoming aware of how self judgment and hatred cripple me. Being aware and not resisting.

[Hopalong]

Hi ((((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))),

I was wondering something. A while back I wrote to someone here (Lupita!)
about what I'd learned years ago interviewing a mindfulness/spirituality researcher
about affirmations.

What he explained was that the subconscious is neutral, yet incredibly powerful.
It absorbs all the data/information/wording that comes at it, and knits it into us.

So...it's important to create/wear grooves of new thoughts about oneself that are
POSITIVELY expressed. Because if the wording we use in our thoughts is negative
or harsh (even if we said, for example, "I no longer want to be negative or harsh")
the subconscious , since it's nonrational, will take in: NO and NEGATIVE and HARSH.

So instead, to wear these new connections/thoughts into our beings, he said, we instead
need to create thought patters more like (just for example): I am GRATEFUL and ALIVE
and FULL of POSSIBILITY.

(Or whatever would be an effective "positive opposite" to a negative rumination.)

Do you think any of this would be helpful to you? I was just thinking about how
powerfully scalding the language you use to describe yourself/your pain is, and
wondering if flipping it would be useful. Or if the language, while it describes
the pain so perfectly...might possibly be subconsciously reinforcing or reproducing
it?

It's just a thought and may not be useful at all, in which case, please pitch it!

I am listening.

love to you,
Hops

[Meh]

oh shoot, my internet explorer froze and then my text is gone.  well I am tired.  only thing I was going to say is that suppression appears to be a common thing around here, I was just writing about keeping things bottled up.  makes me wonder if doing the suppression thing, isn't just an episodic thing we do but if it  "feels like our norm" like I wonder if suppression just becomes our status quo  if that makes any sense at all

any whos, I am going to sleep.  good luck, the only one guarantee that I think I can safely say is somehow in exploring what is inside of us we do get some wisdom out of it maybe

[Hopalong]

Absolutely. I am not at all a fan of denying pain, shoving it back in undigested, all that.
I guess it just depends on how long it goes and if it seems like a recycling loop.

I kind of live in fear of not moving forward because I have spent years stuck in places
that, looking back, I wish I'd known things (like the affirmation literally re-grooving brain
thing) that I didn't. Maybe it would have moved me through sooner than it did.

I have come to believe that literally, language leads life. I believe whatever I am
saying to myself inside my head over and over...becomes both liberating (if that's
what I'm pointing out to myself) or a trap (ditto). That's all I'm getting at.

I'm glad you said that, Boat. Makes me re-check where my thinking's coming from
and how much what I suggest to others is just projection of my own stuff. I really
have trouble getting that lesson to stick.

(And GS, if what I wrote was unhelpful I know you have the good sense to skate on
past...I'm cheering you always and will try to keep observations constructive!)

xo
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Using Jon Kabat-Zinn's guided meditations to be present to my life denying pain from rejection, condemnation and hatred. It is indescribably painful. Will it help? Will it set me free? How soon? How much do I need to do it daily? What does " free" mean for me?

I have no idea but I have to go forward. I t does not yet bring relief. It doesn't even really bring me hope and yet I am compelled to move forward.

What I hate most is being in a permanent feeling sense of original pain piled on top with a life long experience of more cycles of rejection, failure and rejection.

The need to avoid the unbearableness of the pain has lifelong sent me into shutdown avoidance which ironically created more situations of rejection and failure and so more crushing pain.

It is all so clear now. What isn't clear is the way through. But I see one stepping stone ahead and that is this wretched experience of mindful meditation which heightens the pain and seems to make it more real, more intense, more wretched and more unavoidable which only intensifies the longing to avoid.

No more. I have to face it. Heaven help me find the strength and courage.

[Gaining Strength]

hops, you have a good point about language. It indeed has power.

I am so raw right now. As though each wound is band new. I can think of little past getting to and through these sessions, surviving and hoping for healing. But as the rawness heals I will return to that place of grateful ness and careful selection of words. Thanks for reminding me.

[Gaining Strength]

Garbanzo, I hate that your original post was lost to the ether.  But boy oh boy do I get your point. I hate it but I get it.

[Gaining Strength]

I deserved failure and rejection, filth, failure and condemnation. He told me and I believed him.

I do not deserve success or beauty or acceptance and belonging. He implied it and I absorbed it unaware.

I know nothing else but I choose to no longer live that reality.

Receiving awareness of these states without judgment or fear of permanence is anethma, paradoxical, but possible and healing. Do I deserve healing?  Will my unconscious receive healing and deserving of love and life?

Somehow. Yes.

Please let it be swift like a rushing wind.