Still need to work through early trauma

[Twoapenny]

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.

GS, I believe the very fact that we seek it means it will come.  For me, this incredibly painful stuff was the healing, it just hurts so much that it doesn't feel like it at the time.  But this is the bit where you're digging out the rotting flesh so that the wound can really heal and become clean and beautiful again.  I'm so sorry that he couldn't see what an amazing, strong, deserving soul you are.  I'm glad that you've seen that now xx

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you a Two-a-penny.  I am definitely dealing with rotted flesh, layers and layers of it.  With the layers I understand more about myself and how I got where I am. Those are things I longed to understand better since my 20s.  But I bemoan the fact that cutting through the rotting flesh doesn't bring relief.  That's what I had hoped for and expected - a gradual release of pain. 

I still hope and I will never give up but I am angry that relief is so hard to come by.

BTY, your post tells me how well you understand.  Being understood is such sweet salve.

[Gaining Strength]

Hops, I've been thinking about your post and I realized this.  This is something that I have thinking about in various contexts for some time.  As a mother and as a person who was not mothered, I have become conscious of the need of a child to be nurtured when something bad happens.  A small child goes to a mom and cries about what has happened.  Regardless of the moral of the offense the child needs to receive love in order to have the fortitude to stand on her own feet and learn to walk emotionally.  

I tried to buck up my own child before he was ready and  finally realized that he needed to be loved where he is rather than get him to get beyond the hurt and become spiritually mature.  In watching him struggle I saw that I myself had needed to be loved rather than taught to be tough.  Acknowledging the hurts, understanding the pain is loving and nurturing.  When strong enough the child grows and heals and the arrows no longer hurt as much and ra more easily deflected.

I am definitely dealing with wounds from ages 2 through 5.  I am looking forward to the days when these old wounds are no longer sources of  searing pain and the positive thoughts and feelings come without manufacture and corrections are easy.

Naming something is part and parcel to having dominion over it.  Calling something dark by a name of light is topsy turvy , creating chaos just as was my parents calling neglect and obligation, "love." 

[Hopalong]

Fair enough. I believe that, GS.
And thank you for it.

And you know, I believe it in my own life as well.
I write some very dark poetry at times, and the deeper my wording goes to reveal how deep some pain is...
often the better I feel about my poem.

Heist on my own petard, but really learned something.

Thank you.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

I surely didn't mean to bash you or your post Hops.  But I needed to work it all out for myself.  When I read your post initially I clearly saw your point.  But then the rest of the picture came to me.

Language is a wondrous thing.  Specific words can point to a broad swath where each of us can see varying specifics unrelated to another's view and yet pointed to by the same language. And in that way there is both communication and complete failure to communicate.  Something like the 5 blind people at different parts of the elephant.

[Gaining Strength]

My never ending analysis drives even me crazy.  But still I am driven to analyze and write.  I post here to reach out, be understood, and connect but I also write here to work things out.  This post is some of both though I am tired of analyzing.  It has gotten me nowhere across the years.

All of my hope is on mindfulness.  Of course that is antithetical to the whole process - coming to it with a purpose.

The psain and self hatred is so overwhelming, so debilitating, so paralyzing.  I move into being mindful to connect in a way I have been unable to so far in this interminal life.  I do not want to die as I have live - locked in a life of failure bound up in longing, vision and unrequited hope..

[Gaining Strength]

Rejection - the most horrific wounding.

Just to return to the womb and emerge into a loving, encouraging world. I could flourish. 

[Gaining Strength]

Rejection is shaming. Healing elusive.

With rejection every failure is an opportunity to kick a dog while he is down. No one helps a down dog up.

[Hopalong]

No one? NO ... that is part of the wounding.
There are legions who can mbrace you, GS, and offer strong arms to tug on.

We're a few but willing and there are more...

Most of all, it's the friend/s within whom you have been so stalwartly engaging
so much for such a long time now. I so hope you will not dismiss your mighty
and determined new inner self...don't let a wave of blues be confused with the
healing ocean you have discovered.

You HAVE found her and you HAVE spoken to her with kindness and determination
and compassion.

Don't let that new light-full you be hushed now!

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Hops. I know you are right on one level and yet on another, where my inner feelings seem to be in charge, it is the sense that overruns. I am wondering how to change tracks. There is a way. I just can't see the path yet.

[Hopalong]

I hear you.
Reminds me of when my T said matter-of-factly--Oh, I see. You're letting your feelings be in charge.

HUH? Mercifully I knew he was not judging me for my emotions. Just pointing out that I expected them
to be all sweet and sorted out before I moved forward. He was telling me, indirectly...You could alternatively
allow/choose your rational mind to be in charge. (More often.)

I still fight that contest, every single day. Every now and then, I can simply take action, letting the feelings
about it have their busy turmoily drama and for that moment or hour, I decide that my feelings are weather.
They will blow but I am still going to do my next task. As I would if it were raining and I still had to go out.

Or something. Not a brilliant metaphor. It must have been his timing and my readiness because it was
one of those AHAs. No magic and it sure didn't wipe away the paralysis-analysis, but it did help. The
moments of motion come more often now.

Every small step is huge and wonderful, I mean. As are yours. Every single small step is huge and wonderful.

Don't you give up on our (((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))))))) !!

xxoo
Hops

[Twoapenny]

I hear you.
Reminds me of when my T said matter-of-factly--Oh, I see. You're letting your feelings be in charge.

HUH? Mercifully I knew he was not judging me for my emotions. Just pointing out that I expected them
to be all sweet and sorted out before I moved forward. He was telling me, indirectly...You could alternatively
allow/choose your rational mind to be in charge. (More often.)

I still fight that contest, every single day. Every now and then, I can simply take action, letting the feelings
about it have their busy turmoily drama and for that moment or hour, I decide that my feelings are weather.
They will blow but I am still going to do my next task. As I would if it were raining and I still had to go out.

Or something. Not a brilliant metaphor. It must have been his timing and my readiness because it was
one of those AHAs. No magic and it sure didn't wipe away the paralysis-analysis, but it did help. The
moments of motion come more often now.

Every small step is huge and wonderful, I mean. As are yours. Every single small step is huge and wonderful.

Don't you give up on our (((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))))))) !!

xxoo
Hops

Wow, thank you for this Hops, was catching up on GS' thread and saw that you had written this and how funny, I am just at this point myself and wondering if I should stop waiting to feel 'better' and just get on with it.  So timely, how funny when that happens.

GS, sorry to jump in on that one, really resonated, it's amazing how much other people's struggles, as painful as they are for them, can help other people just by being there on the screen, if you see what I mean.  I really understand what you mean about the strength of those feelings.  For such a long time, for me, it was as if they'd realised I was noticing them for the first time ever and they were just going to keep screaming in case I forgot about them again.  Huge rollercoasters in those early days, it does settle but I feel for you right now. Thank you for being brave enough to write about it all xx

[Gaining Strength]

I love this dialogue. It is fruitful.

I have noticed that at different places in this journey I use the same words and language to reflect my experiences that are quite different. I am definitely further along but feeling worse. But I have just stumbled on something that helps me understand.

I
Stumbled on Jim Hopper's site. A mindfulness practitioner from Harvard Medical, he addresses the pain and how attention to it initially increases it. This helps me understand why I am both drawn to mindfulness as a healing tool and why I avoid it - the intensity worsens. But the way out is through. I have no where to go but through.

This is unquestionably the most difficult and painful journey of my life and I am angry that I must undertake it and that it is so painful. The decision is mine - avoid the pain or participate in the healing. There can only be one response.

What if I'm not good enough? What if I don't follow through?

[Hopalong]

What if I'm not good enough?

We took that retired old Southern judge with his food-dribbled paunch and tobacco juice leaking down his chin and gross spider-veined nose from raging and his bumpy liver-spotted pate and we shoved him into his jalopy and escorted him all the way to the county line. He looked back at us with his lip wobbling: "But I am the JUDGE, surely you must still respect me!" and we just smiled. Patted our mules on their strong sweaty necks and turned back toward our homes. The sunlight looked different that afternoon, more golden. And the shade blessedly sweet. (We heard him ranting down the road, fainter and fainter. And though we now and then remember him, he's gray and faint and vaporous his voice is a tinny gasp. His day is done.)

What if I don't follow through?

You might not follow through perfectly. It might be two steps forward, one step back...day after day when all you are hearing is the judge screaming, "Back!"
Then one day, you wake up and realize you forgot to do the math. And everything changes.

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

I have been in avoidance because the pain is too great. I chose to open myself up to step in. It is difficult and painful and triggers the cycle of avoidance which has been my destructive "coping" strategy since childhood.

During a meditation today, I saw myself facing a meditation instructor who had received anger and rejection that I projected onto him. He mirrored it back to me. Being present to this pain generates a wellspring of agitation and discomfort. If I stay with it, relax into it it bursts like a volcano or breaks like a fever and all the negative energy discharges. If I shift away from it it retreats back to the unconscious where it continues to fester and wreak destruction.

Even still it is difficult to stay present to it. All the more reason I must.