Continued healing

[Gaining Strength]

I know this is progress but it feels like regression.  I am so filled with resentment.  After three meditations I was able to connect what I am feeling today with abandonment.  Not the original but with abandonment by people who promised caring.  Of course I know this goes to a layer that sits above the original.

I don't feel the shame usually connected to abandonment and resentment.  I think this is because having processed a layer of shame I now have this stuff to process. 

I was having more dreams that brought up this abandonment. I tried to get in touch with images of caring mother figures.  I could not.  As I tried I first felt the anger and then the resentment u serenata and then the abandonment which should have been clearer because of the two things that were so heavy on my mind - not being included to my husbands cousin's daughters wedding.  He was her only 1st cousin.  And a memory of someone who was caring and kind to many but only up to a level.  These images that wouldn't leave me gave way to abandonment and then on a deeper level the connection to my family which completely rejected me but claimed love.

This is more processing.  Bough I feel wretched I do believe it is more healing.  I am so fascinated that I is not bringing up shame.  Abandonment and being excluded has always been shaming to me in the past.

[lighter]

.....it is more healing.  I am so fascinated that I is not bringing up shame.  Abandonment and being excluded has always been shaming to me in the past.

Observer mode is a helpful mode, ((GS.))

Are you keeping a journal?

Lighter

[Gaining Strength]

Heard today on Fareed Zakaria - what makes Google such a successful,place to work?  According to an in depth study it is psychological safety, being heard and valued.  That sounds to me to be the exact opposite of voicelessness.  This is powerful information for all but especially for those who have at some time been voiceless.

I will look for a link to this segment with Charles Duhigg.  For now here is a link to the book Duhigg wrote about his findings.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/books/review/smarter-faster-better-by-charles-duhigg.html?_r=0

[Gaining Strength]

I am posting a link to an all too brief article which is really About energy psychology. I honestly know nothing about that but what fascinated me is the treatment of "unconscious fear" and the amygdala.  I have been dealing with bringing MY unconscious fear to the consciousness.  But I have struggled with putting it into words. This article does it beautifully.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this for me is that I think a large portion of the field of psychology and psychiatry is unaware of this distinction.  I am certain that the vernacular about anxiety is unaware.  I'll go out on a limb and say that chronic and trauma based anxiety cannot be understood without grasping this distinction, and if not understood, then not treated. 

I'll go out on a limb and make the conjecture that anxiety is a debilitating 21st century disorder that effects broad swaths of the population.  It is time to provide effective, accessible and affordable treatment. 

https://acepblog.org/2015/08/21/the-amygdala-fear-and-energy-psychology-contemplations-on-a-neuroscientists-blog/

[Gaining Strength]

Oh my Lighter.  I thought I had proofread my post.  I can't see past the typos. 

I journal here.  I cannot keep up with a hard journal. I have started so many.  But on another hand I have wondered why
 for yEars but I find writing here more compelling.  I don't understand why that is but I am able to bare my soul here and it has something to do with being in a place where someone might understand.  I have been so alone with my thoughts for so long that perhaps I have an inordinate need to connect.  I really don't know.

And I agree with you about the observer mode.  I see the observer role so critical to the dialogue between consciousness and subconsciousness.

[Gaining Strength]

Recent weeks, I have been struggling to accomplish even the most basic - dressing, eating, any cleaning.  But I have been able to make myself do some difficult things that I would prefer to avoid.

Friday, I went out to get my license renewed. (Two weeks late because I couldn't do it.) and I had an insight.  I remembered writing here some years ago about being a turtle with a hard shell. ,and now I am that soft skinned vulnerable turtle without my shell.  I feel the pain - both original and new, triggers - on such intense debilitating levels. 

But I am processing them.  Being washed by memories and expectations of rejection, failure, not good enough.  Of all of these, the not good enough is the most paralyzingly.  But I believe this process is moving forward.  I believe this internal horror that I am in the midst of will not be eternal and will leave me in a state that I can function within.

The other encouraging thing is that so much external information is coming to me and it all helps affirm my own understanding and experience.  I chose to believe I am moving forward., that the nut is about to crack, that there is more than just hope close by.

And I will be posting here because it helps me sort it all out.  I'm staying in a state of perpetual awareness.  It is exhausting but it is powerful as well.

[Gaining Strength]

I went shopping today, dog food, cat food, that sort of thing.  I'm walking down the aisles of the big box store and hit with a wave of shame.  Immediately struck by how normative it is for me to be in a state of shame. But more - on this day, I recognized that the normal,state of shame is letting up.  It is slowing receding from the every minute norm. 

I think as this sense of being is strengthened then it will be possible for me to take the next step and begin processing everyday activities that generate a toxic reaction in me.  Ultimately I expect to be able to face my greatest fears of rejection, failure and not being good enough.

Tomorrow, I chose to begin taking steps to schedule a couple,of basic daily tasks, anticipating the blowback but being prepared to face it in the same way I have been doing so inrecent weeks.

[Hopalong]

I want to thank you GS, for what you share here.
Your talking about the role of shame in your own makeup has encouraged me to look at that.

I think getting my ADD diagnosis after six decades means that I hadn't realized how much
shame I carried for inadequacies which, without an explanation, made me feel SO awful about myself.

I'm glad you've talked about it so much, and grateful.
I'm taking up shame directly with my counselor next week.

He rushes to "fix it" behavioral suggestions, blessizheart...but I don't think he understands
that there's a whole wall of shame between me and those sprightly moves.

Thank you for the inspiration to go after a core feeling that's been in my way.

love to you,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

A story about Monica Lewinski and public shaming.  Very touching.  How do you overcome such shaming?  She hints at it and it is reminiscent of what Peter Levine says is how victims of trauma triumph rather than succumb.  It is about finding a way to turn to empowerment.  Difficult but possible.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/16/monica-lewinsky-shame-sticks-like-tar-jon-ronson?CMP=share_btn_tw

[Gaining Strength]

Hops, that is courageous. 

That sense of inadequacy can color everything.  Chipping it away may seem futile but I am convinced that it is worth it, that every chip is worth the effort.

[Gaining Strength]

Rejection
Failure
Not good enough - not deserving

Most of my shame is attached to one of these three.
The third is the most crippling.

I'm ready to go within.

They evoke a physical response - a feeling. 
Stand within the pain and reshape the feeling.

[Gaining Strength]

From a page about cPTSD and having  a Narcissistic parent:

One of the main differences between healthy parents and narcissistic parents  is the understanding that the child will one day be an adult who has to be able to function on their own. They need self esteem, and self confidence to function well as an adult.
Narcissistic parents tear their children’s self esteem down, in order to control and manipulate them. They do not see the child as an individual person with rights of their own. They see the child as an extension of themselves and property that they have every right to abuse as they see fit.

[Gaining Strength]

Here's more.  Nothing new and yet it turns my stomach.

Living with a narcissistic parent is living in constant fear. Life is unpredictable. You can follow all of the rules as you understand them and then suddenly the parent has changed the rules without telling you. You are punished for not following the new rule, which you has no way to know about.

This is a way in which the narcissistic parent can make you wrong all the time. No matter how hard you try, you are always wrong and always not good enough. There may be rewards from time to time for complying but later on the parent sets up a scenario for you to fail.

[lighter]

((((GS))))

You deserved to be cherished, protected, and cared for as a child.

Your parents couldn't do that for you.

They were broken.

If they could have, they would have.

They couldn't.

I'm so sorry.  It wasn't fair.

Lighter

[BonesMS]

((((GS))))

You deserved to be cherished, protected, and cared for as a child.

Your parents couldn't do that for you.

They were broken.

If they could have, they would have.

They couldn't.

I'm so sorry.  It wasn't fair.

Lighter

Abuse is still abuse and abuse is unforgiveable.