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Continued healing
Gaining Strength:
By the time I was in my early 20s I was asking myself (and select others) in despair, what was wrong with me. I never quit asking even though some of the answers began to come, slowly but surely. But never ,ultimately, a fully answer. Never, ultimately relief that would allow me to function normally, to keep a job, keep lomng term friendships, akeep a decent house, finish important projects, none of it.
But finally, I have an understanding. I can see how the shame and rejection have totally crippled me. Memories pop up throughout the day and my brain fused so much together along my life. Everything is a trigger. But now I am seeing the memories tied to such triggers. And it is excruciatingly painful. Standing and watching 10 sessions of qEEG and neurofeedback, watching parts of my child's brain work against itself I could relate it to my own crippling issues. Those issues are separate from the issues of rejection but intertwined with the shame.
I experienced such profound rejection from my family but it was always couched in terms of love and I could not see the reality. I had everything I needed to flourish but I couldn't put two steps in front of the other. I was bright and was accepted into a great university but completing the work was so difficult and I had no answers except to think myself a failure. Though I had plenty of friends through my childhood and college years I was living a life of extreme unconscious conflict. I felt enormous rejection as a person and my joys and desires which were berated and belittled throughout my life. But I couldn't see that it was not love I was experiencing but profound shaming abuse.
As life went on, I see now, that I anticipated rejection on every level - from movie choice to ideas for socializing with friends or proposals in work or family life. Everything seemed rejected or in my family any idea had had I was left to execute on my own and without necessary resources. It took me decades to understand that I didn't have the necessary resources. We were a wealthy family in an enclave of wealthy families. Resources were not limited. But only after years of understanding the effects of my narcissistic parents did I understand how in the midst of plenty, I had little. My father had money but he did not allow me to have money. He even controlled my ability to get work, working behind the scenes to undo opportunities. One of my brothers did the same to me a year after my husband died and when our child was an infant.
But worse than all that was the resentment I felt, though I was in denial and totally cut off from my profound resentment. Couple that with the total expectation of rejection - some of which was real and some projected but all of which led to seething resentment and anger. And that seething nature is what I projected in public. I was only aware of the slightest bit, initially feeling justified and bit by bit having to acknowledge what I wa smoking but having so little control over the anger that ruled me.
And of course the anger turned inward to depression and outward towards others, creating more rejection. When I was included in events or activities I would be both excited and fearful as participation inevitably resulted in rejection. It was a wretched Catch-22 - participate and be rejected or don't participate and be rejected. I could not see what I was doing to cause the problem. And all along in the midst, I would get an idea, rally a person or two if possible and promise to get something done and then hit the paralysis (which I now know was from the shame induced depression and anxiety.). It all worked in on itself and created a wretched state of affairs for my life.
But now I see it all - so clearly. There is certainly pain in it all and great grieving. I am not sure how much hope there is, though there could be. But I must first find a way through the vestigial paralysis shaped by anxiety and depression. Those two have really been raging these recent weeks.
The Mindfulness meditation helps but it is slow but right now it is what I have. Plus naming it - over and over and over again. Naming it, naming it, naming it.
I know why I bite my nails, why I am paralyzed, why I start something I love and cannot finish it. I understand how I became so rejected and isolated, left out. I am so thankful to get it at long last. I wonder what the changes going forward will be. I wonder if I am on the verge of being free from the paralysis that has marred and marked my life. I marvel and am thankful for the friendships and relationships that I do have. And I am thankful for having this place where I can share it and relieve myself of this wretched burden.
Hopalong:
WOW.
GS, you have figured out so MUCH.
I am awed.
love,
Hops
Gaining Strength:
I really am Hops. It sure has taken a long time but surprisingly I am not drawn into a whirlpool of regret or dispair.
Always thankful,for your encouragement.
Gaining Strength:
I used to write here about my radar searching for the signal to tune into, the signal of fear and anxiety, rejection, failure, etc., etc. I was trained to it. I remember many of those lessons, explicitly taught by my father in very young childhood. If I weren't sufficiently afraid he would tell me with clenched jaw, "I'll give you something to be afraid of." And he always delivered on that promise - until the state was permanent or the search for the anxiety channel autonomic.
Now, years after he left this earth, after 10 or more years of longing, hoping to move out of the fear factor, I find myself closer, closer still to that ultimate goal. The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a pin prick, nor even small enough to be obscured by a quarter or half-dollar. Along with the light, with the end of the tunnel insight I have hope, not certainty, but hope.
With all of this comes some clarity about my role in my own exclusion and rejection and while it pains me to my core, it does not lay me flat. It does not even trigger even a tiny paroxysm of shame, only a twinge of regret. But there is no time or need to nurture that sorrow. And in many ways I have already grieved it. No really, at this point, I have to keep my eyes focused forward, not knowing what the future will bring in relationships nor in any area of my life. But I do know it will be something rich and comforting.
I am, miraculously, not without friends but I have lost those friends of childhood and that connection with the families and friends in which I grew up which I never intended to completely step outside of. As an adult I have longer, struggled, strived to step back in. Thinking, " if I get this right, succeed here, am part of this group, attend this event, blah, blah, blah." That was the wrong struggle. But the pain was so enormous, the greatest fear of rejection was hitting me from every point of life and I didn't know how to "be" in its midst. The rejection evoking such agony and resentment which incurred more rejection. It was so vicious a cycle. And the anxiety triggered was insurmountable, everything fusing together, binding, devastating, paralyzing. Little sprouts of hope would find space to rise and I would make commitments to be a part of something and then paralyzed by the fear of failure and resulting rejecting fail to follow through heaping up yet more failure, rejection and shame. Week after week, year another year, decade on decade.
And then, tiny rays broke through, illuminating bits and pieces of the path out. And those bits and pieces and not dependent on acceptance of others. I have known, could see, for several years, that I was caught in a hamster wheel of a sense of dependence on someone, something outside of myself in spite of knowing that was the wrong perspective. I couldn't extricate myself. But somehow, with perseverance, I find myself beyond that trap. I am not free but I am on a path.
And the journey has enough of a pattern that I know I have stepped into a new realm and that the chokehold of the profound, omnipresent, paralyzing anxiety is about to be broken. And when it finally is, I will have a freedom to pursue the things from which I have been stymied for so long.
I have found increasing relief in Jon Kabat Zinn's loving Kindness meditation. In that meditation I can see myself clothed in love and acceptance and feel the grip of anxiety loosen. Sometimes only fleeting but I can repeat the experience over and over again. And then when anxiety grips again I can recall that meditation and find release. Over and over and over this repeats: anxiety grips, I recall the meditation and feel release/relief. At first it works with only the least germain of anxiety triggers and only fleetingly. But with repetition, the relief comes with greater duration and for more significant triggers.
Gaining Strength:
I find myself in the midst of a process that I recognize. Though I have been here before in healing other issues the process follows no order and is not predictable. Nonetheless, here I am, smack dab in the midst of the wretched pain that I have been unconsciously avoiding my entire life.
But now, I welcome it - sort of, at least to the extent that I think it necessary to get to the other side. I am smack dab in the middle of the excruciating pain if rejection, a lifetime of rejection. And the pain is indescribable.
I am reminded the first time I heard that the only way out was through. It seemed so horrific to me even then 25 ish years ago. It still seems horrific today while it all is exposed in its full force. I know why this process has been so slow. I could not have born all the pain had I experienced it all at once.
But here I am, toggling between needing to escape and holding my foot to the fire. I want to go through and I believe this is the way. What have I to lose if I bear this pain and it isn't the way out. I scan my memory for all that I have read across the decade about healing about raising consciousness. I believe I am in the correct pursuit. Nothing I've done in my pursuit for healing and betterment has been a mistake. It has only been too slow.
Writing here helps me find my way in this dark, overgrown forest. The path is dim and narrow and it can be very subtle to tell the difference of whether I am on it or off it. But I move forward anyway.
One clue about the path is the recent revelation, the lifting of my blinders of how I have been an instrument of my rejection. I recall in my midtwenties, recognizing something was off, very off but I could not see it for myself and those I turned to did not seem willing to shine the light on me. I do hate that but I am here now. And I still long to make changes. And it is not too late.
So I accept the revelation and the accompanying pain. And I find myself in the midst of that sorrow and grieving that I have experienced before. And when that part is done there will be more but with each layer my hope grows even stronger.
I believe I will step through the barrier and our of the paralysis and I believe that awakening is on the horizon, perhaps only weeks away. And what ever I must process after that will also be tolerable if only barely.
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