Still need to work through early trauma

[Hopalong]

That is cool! What a wonderful awareness your subconscious offered to you.
I love the way it delivered it (not the fear in the dream, but the message).

And there is so much to celebrate in the emotional intelligence of your noticing it, hearing it, getting it.

Bravo!

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Hops. I appreciate your comment. 

I am definitely healing at long last but it is as slow as watching paint peel.daily I find myself processing enormous pains and losses throughout my life, presenting themselves in memories bubbling up one after the other like through the thick ooze of syrup or honey.  I see things I did or reactions I had that lead to so much of the rejection I experienced.  I wish that I could both change it in the past and have understood it at the time.  Going forward I simply have to believe that there will be something worth sharing in life going forward.

[Gaining Strength]

Last night I walked into the grocery store reluctantly.  I asked myself what was it?  I hated the way I looked, I felt shame.  What about?  I scanned my being for answers - and they came pouring out, all this stuff long repressed, residing just in the subconscious.  Each aisle I walked more and more poured out and I remembered words from the meditation - without judgement - and saw immediately that I have walked through life under a boulder of judgement, initially from others which became internalized.  I looked at other shoppers and felt their judgement - they weren't even looking at me.  I said the phrase, "they aren't judging me, I am." But I had to work with that because they might be judging me but the point is that if I don't take on their judgement then it will not cause me pain.

I came across yet another meme stating that meditation can change brains within 8 weeks.  Persevering.  Clearly I am seeing more and more about myself.

[Gaining Strength]

When you notice your attention has waned or has wandered off the breath entirely, noting where your mind has gone and what it is preoccupied with, once you have come to notice it and then gently and without condemning yourself for it  and without either clinging to the content of your thoughts or feelings or rejecting and suppressing it. Just letting go and bringing your attention back to the breath and doing this over and over again, each time the mind loses its focus momentarily and moves away from the breath.

[Gaining Strength]

Kabat-Zinn notes that focus on the breath keeps us out of our thoughts which keep us out of the present.  My being is omnipresent lay bound by judgement.  This practice is systematically loosening the bind.  Now I understand why I hav yet to see the physical results of it all. 

There is more, much more work to do.  The physical/emotional pain of this exercise has not decreased overall but it us gone from the first layer and the second and on.  It is now the same intensity on the layer I am working. 

I may be able to let go of the fear I have about the pain, believing I can bear the intensity and simply name it.  "Oh, you are my self-judgement. You are real but you are false and you no longer have total power over me."  I understand now, in a powerful way, why my life had been one of avoidance.  The pain was too great and I knew no other way to deal. 

My self-condemnation, learned in my earliest years of life, has been filled with self loathing.  "If I hate myself then there can be nothing of value to the world." No wonder I have been paralyzed.

Perhaps the singular facet that has allowed me to get into Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness is that it is so fully without judgement even to the posture with which we sit.  Other meditations had such strictures that this judgement bound bring could nit measure up and so the shame as ratcheted up, impeding my ability to focus.

I still have a long way to go as this brief introductory meditation causes great pain but I no longer fear it but long for the noticeable relief it is bringing and along with the relief, the hope for a new life.

[Gaining Strength]

I experienced a significant trigger today. I used the meditation to help me through it . It prevented me from escalating and shutting down.  I still went into panic but it didn't escalate.  I could step down from panic for seconds at a time but not for long.  Still an improvement but even better thus experience helps me confirm what has been happening throughout my life AND that I am on the right track toward relief.  This is good news.

[Gaining Strength]

After hours of sitting on the edge, I finally got myself to do some chores. All of the old messages and shame poured down. I returned to my breath and meditation over and over. I watched the whole process operate around me and I saw how the shame is so much greater when I finish than when I start and greater still than when I am paralyzed.

Each time I make progress I want to claim my freedom but I have to wait and persevere be thankful for the hour I worked and look for opportunities to add on to it.

[Gaining Strength]

When in recent months when I became aware of how much resentment had poisoned my life I was thinking it was in the past but daily I am becoming more aware of how it is still present. Allowing it to bubble up and become exposed is painful.  Using Kabat-Zinn's  meditations help relieve the tension and anxiety and fear.

This resentment is attached to everything the same way that anxiety has been.  But worst of all it is attached to a brick which keeps me down.  Resentment is attached to others success and huge success  gone bust, all of which closes the door on my vision for my own success.  This latter part is the most important reason for letting this stuff emerge and be exposed and healed.

[Gaining Strength]

Doing these meditations provokes anxiety and so the practice puts me into something of the same cycle as anticipating doing chores.  The remarkable insight is that I am able to do the meditations, though only briefly, and so the next step is to do chores, how ever briefly.

[Gaining Strength]

Today's meditation and writings revealed that anticipatory anxiety is the most crippling. This knowledge may help turn the key, remembering that the action is not as crippling as the anticipation.

The anticipatory anxiety is a mirror of the double bind I was raised in. Awareness may be my passage to freedom. Why do I fear it do????

[Hopalong]

I saw how the shame is so much greater when I finish than when I start and greater still than when I am paralyzed.

I kept coming back to this, GS, because I have been through a lot of similar paralysis about getting into motion regarding chores, organization, etc. It's very interesting what you tuned into.

I think sometimes I feel a boost of shame when finishing a task because the message I hear in my head is, You are a fool because look, that really was NOT THAT HARD. So if you were able to just do it this time, what the hell is wrong with you that you don't do this REGULARLY?

And then I get busy imagining how much more successful my life would be (or would have been) if I had managed myself, and managed these chores, with steadiness and regularity. I think the post-chore shame is about having a vision of opportunities lost flood in. And so I'm beating up on myself.

I really appreciate you sharing this. What it's making me think about is how compassion, and patience, and trying to have a lighter heart AS I do a chore, may help turn off that flood of post-accomplishment perfectionism and criticism. What, after all, is the point? How in the world does it help one single iota for me to shame myself over yesterday?

The ONLY thing we can do is do each chore in each present moment, while maintaining self-kindness and hope. That's the only thing.
I believe, like you, that this is what changes our lives.

Letting the water flow. Today. Only today. Not yesterday or tomorrow.

love
Hops

[Hopalong]

Dear GS--
Haven't heard from you in a while.
You okay?

Thinking of you.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Oops - disappeared.  Thanks for noticing, means so much.

[Hopalong]

 OF COURSE YOU ARE NOTICED!

((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))

Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you friend.