Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Mindfulness and codependence thread
Hopalong:
That gory horror story was your mother, Lighter?
I am so sorry.
It sounds like generational trauma.
I had a friend whose grandparents were driven out
of Turkey by soldiers with rifle-butt blows and starvation on the
way and her mother inherited and re-enacted the trauma of
the grandmother with an intensity and violence my friend
only understood later. That insight about generational trauma
was a revelation to me. Similar to what some Jewish friends
carry even as the generations make the Holocaust recede.
It made sense to me when I read about science that showed
in other species, say monkeys, ONE generation would learn
to use a tool in a new way....and a next generation that was
NOT raised by the parents who'd learned it, would still show
the new skill as they matured. The experience was encoded
in the DNA, in a way that expressed psychologically.
I find that amazing and wondrous, because I would think
that learning/encoding could be about positive discoveries
as much as traumatic ones.
hugs
Hops
lighter:
The story was about my father's mother, Hops.
Lighter
Twoapenny:
So nice to read, Lighter, without the judgement or the pressure to get things done, get things right, not to upset or offend (healthcare professional) - just doing the day, easy process, doing it as it needs to be done rather than super charging through the list. Nice!
And so sad about your father's mum. The obsessive cleaning seems to be a thing we've all talked about on here; I do feel it was very much the way women proved their worth in a time when they couldn't access education and to be divorced or single was considered a very bad thing. I used to have a friend who cleaned obsessively; she was abused as a child and even a tiny speck of dust in her house made her feel so filthy that she couldn't cope with it and just cleaned all the time. It's sad how we look back and see the way our parents, grandparents, great grandparents all dealt with the things that made them feel unhappy or worthless and how those things became things by which we were judged (not clean enough, not pretty enough, not well behaved enough) and so we take that forward and so on. Generational trauma, Hops, as you said.
And then I wonder about the current generation and if their parents are damaging them in the same way, by not making them clean or wash clothes or take their turn to cook dinner. Most of my friends' kids do nothing around the house and generally money is just given to them without any condition attached. I wonder if that does them a disservice for later life, in the same way that I feel my mum constantly cleaning did to us (I don't think it damaged us that she cleaned all the time, but it would be really nice to have some memories of finger painting with her or making pasta necklaces or something). Be interesting for all of us to be looking back at some point in the future and seeing how the patterns change or if they do.
I've digressed again! I'm glad you're in the flow. Are your friends still there? xx
lighter:
--- Quote from: Twoapenny on August 17, 2020, 08:48:44 AM ---So nice to read, Lighter, without the judgement or the pressure to get things done, get things right, not to upset or offend (healthcare professional) - just doing the day, easy process, doing it as it needs to be done rather than super charging through the list. Nice!
Yes! No lists. I'm pretty familiar with what needs doing, by now, in my life. There are things that MUST be done to standard..... even if the standards are changing, and I trust I'll DO that without badgering myself, driving myself and scaring myself all day about them, kwim?
BTW company came and we had a terrific time. They didn't spend the night, though the house was ready for spend the night guests. We cooked, with the guy pulling grill meister duty..... just an amazing time and the girls and I are luxuriating in a very clean house, very happy ME and going out and doing stuff... yesterday was cool and breezy. Youngest and I just went into the world and did stuff..... bought Chinese cooking wine, gf soy sauce, and black sesame seed oil..... SNOW PEA LEAVES! We love snowpea leaves,except for pulling them off the stems, and we made a terrific yummy meal, seeing chicken then roasting it in the yummy sauce with eggplant we got at the FARMER's MARKET! We love the farmers market but haven't been in months, and we also got corn and big slicing tomatoes... the ugly ones.... amazing and we're going back to get peaches TODAY... will leave after this post, in fact: )
And so sad about your father's mum. The obsessive cleaning seems to be a thing we've all talked about on here; I do feel it was very much the way women proved their worth in a time when they couldn't access education and to be divorced or single was considered a very bad thing. I used to have a friend who cleaned obsessively; she was abused as a child and even a tiny speck of dust in her house made her feel so filthy that she couldn't cope with it and just cleaned all the time. It's sad how we look back and see the way our parents, grandparents, great grandparents all dealt with the things that made them feel unhappy or worthless and how those things became things by which we were judged (not clean enough, not pretty enough, not well behaved enough) and so we take that forward and so on. Generational trauma, Hops, as you said. It gives me the same terrible feeling of helplessness to read that, as it does to hear about eating disorders and being trapped in abusive relationships to keep little children safe. Just helpless.
And then I wonder about the current generation and if their parents are damaging them in the same way, by not making them clean or wash clothes or take their turn to cook dinner. Most of my friends' kids do nothing around the house and generally money is just given to them without any condition attached. I wonder if that does them a disservice for later life,I'm pretty sure it does. in the same way that I feel my mum constantly cleaning did to us (I don't think it damaged us that she cleaned all the time, but it would be really nice to have some memories of finger painting with her or making pasta necklaces or something). Awww, you so deserved finger painting memories and making little valentine cards with your mum. Be interesting for all of us to be looking back at some point in the future and seeing how the patterns change or if they do. I was talking to my T about some of this... and I think my sister and I were buffered by the fact we had each other, as twins, always. We found things to do, even when we were alone for long periods of time... we were playing at the edge of a pond, waving orange safety flags in the road, drawing on walls, playing in a sandbox, on a swingset, in the orchard, and just basically running around to the neighbor's houses getting yummy treats, and helping out in the garden, etc. We had lots of freedom, but we filled that time with social, physical and creative outlets, even if we were punished for some of them. Try flushing your mum's bc pills down the toilet and see if she's as happy about it as you are... not. WE DID THAT. We'd scoot our cribs together, then crawl back and forth. Once, I'm told, we emptied our diapers and finger painted on the wall, never a dull moment with twins, and we always ALWAYS blamed little brother, even when he was flat on his back newly born.... "brother did it!" So.... I don't think we missed having a mother sit down and do things with us, bc I don't recall that she did. I remember watching mom's angry feet stomp by the bed, sister and I were hiding under, as she looked for us.... not sure what we'd done, but she was mad and we were getting spanked. I remember being spanked and sat on front stoop, to have a proper cry, AFTER my mother failed to properly supervise us... that's when we were waving flags in the road. For the life of me, I don't understand why parents hit little kids for their own failures. She should have spanked herself, not us.
I've digressed again! I'm glad you're in the flow. Are your friends still there? xx Friends didn't spend the night, but they will in the winter, as will cousins, and I'm pretty sure I digressed all over the place. Have to get youngest dd and go to the school now, then farmer's market, for peaches!
Lighter
--- End quote ---
lighter:
I've been thinking a lot about Victor Frankl and how our ability to get off painful pebbles isn't easy. It's hard. It's sometimes not possible, but it's always available, however difficult the lessons are to find.
I remember my martial arts instructor attempting to teach me to meditate in 2008, which I sorely needed to learn, but failed.
The effort backfired, in more than one way, and I became pretty intransient in my belief around meditation as elitist... perhaps viewing it as a difficult puzzle requiring keys I just didn't have. Keys being kept from me.... perhaps those who had them chuckled at my expense and of all those who couldn't SEE and grasp them? I wasn't sure... but I was frustrated and angry and defensive around the entire topic for over 10 years... when I needed it most, frankly.
After all this time, of focus on 3 or 4 very large, jagged pebbles..... my girls have grown into smart, capable adults. Capable of protecting themselves, which has been an ever present mantra through it all. When the girls are old enough... when the girls can protect themselves.
That reality frees me up-my energy up, to do other things. Not spinning my wheels suffering over and over, frees up more energy still. I can feel the space.... I can feel the possibility.... and it's thrilling, but only for a second. Something shuts it down. I don't understand that yet, but I'll keep chipping away at it. Noticing what it is, and not judging it.
About my inability to meditate. It seems so far away now, not that I believe I can do it well. The fact I reap benefits and freedom and less suffering, bc of time spent being walked through it....hand held, really..... being shown how, from so many different points of view... shown, educated, allowed to SEE...eventually..... it's everything.
Being shown was the key I needed to figure it out. The saying goes...
When the student is ready, the teacher appears." Something like that, and it was the case for me.
There's zero shame in needing help.... zero judgment for not being able to figure out myself. It is how it needed to be, and that's all.
I watch my girls blossom and move closer to me as I feel better... maybe we're all remembering who I was BEFORE... before the unthinkable happened, and things changed.... I changed, my brain changed, my biochemistry and nervous system changed..... in concrete ways I never would have believed if they didn't happen TO me. To feel so strong, then get torn down, brick by brick, unable to recover all the way between battles..... you don't know what that is, what it will feel like until you're in it. I wonder what it did to the In Laws. As MIL sent 3 BD cards to oldest dd, who's birthday isn't for some months... and one of the cards said LATE birthday.... MIL isn't doing very well. She's very smart. She should be able to figure out birthdays, but she isn't. Maybe she can't. Maybe she doesn't care to. This is familiar. Thinking about what;s in other people's heads, and spinning wheels over it. It's scary, honestly. MIL doesn't care how she appears... she's so out of her mind positive about her narrative. Maybe that's what happens when everyone around you tells youi what you want to hear.... for whatever reason. It's a sort of group psychosis, IME.
I'll tell you this.... when the Judge ruled on my attorney fees, paid by the ILs, no one on their side showed up. Nobody but their attorney. No one witnessed what the judge said, and they didn't want to know that truth. These letters, from MIL, tell me their break with reality goes on, without a hiccup.... and my children are invited to partake.
And I watch my girls figure things out.... share their experiences of problem solving in relationship, and high stress job...... I KNOW they're learning. I watch them apply what they've learned. I watch them take THAT moment..... how did Victor Frankl say it...
" Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
I wouldn't have had any idea what that meant... this time last year. Not at all. I'm sure I would have felt some amount of defensiveness and frustration. I would have wondered where the key to understanding that WAS.
But watching my girls.... reminds me of another quote from Frankl....
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
And one more........
"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."
I don't know how to teach that. Growth is painful. Humans avoid pain, sometimes at all costs. It's difficult, dirty work, IME. Really gritty stuff. I don't know how to explain it so my children will understand and internalize it... to FEEL it's truth, every day if possible, in their lives.
I no longer fear the In Laws harming the girls. That's a blessing... such a relief, but the girls have enough facts to understand now. No more protecting them. It was time to give them enough information to make up their own minds, and they have.
Talking about it isn't very helpful, I find. It shuts down conversations and communication, IME.
There's modeling it, and releasing expectation.
That's all there is.
Lighter
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I turned my ankle painfully this morning... taking out the trash, so I've been reading and journaling as I ice, elevate and eat anti inflammatories. I liked these two things....
Pinnacles Of Possibility
CAPRICORN HOROSCOPE
AUGUST 20, 2020
You may find yourself wondering today whether you will ever come close to enlightenment or ascension. If you doubt your growth potential, you may adjust your goals accordingly so that you only reach for those aims you know you are capable of achieving easily. However, it is likely that you are already well on your way toward the next stage of your development, even if you do not acknowledge your achievements. Consider that you may be able to speed your progress by striving for weightier, more challenging goals. Should you feel a need to alter the course you have walked up until today, try to look for ways to integrate your most ambitious desires into your life plan.
Our chances of accomplishing our goals increase exponentially when we choose to aim high. Often, the limitations that keep us from fulfilling our full potential are products of a worldview fraught with borders that block our progress. When we believe, however, that we are capable of breaching these boundaries in order to accomplish great feats of strength, intelligence, or endurance, we are more apt to take whatever steps are necessary to realize our dreams. We may never reach the pinnacle of success that we have pictured so vividly in our minds, but we can rest assured that we will come closer to it than we might otherwise have because we regarded it as one possible outcome of our endeavors. Your principles will inspire you to aim high today, whatever the nature of the goals you have chosen to pursue.
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DailyOM Course Spotlight
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Protect Yourself from Control Dramas
BY DR. JODY JANATI
Most people have come to accept that conflict is inevitable. What many do not realize is that most of us use unconscious strategies called control dramas to gain power or energy from another person, and to essentially, "get their way with others." A control drama is played by anyone who is feeling low on power or energy, to manipulate and steal the energy of another. We get our way with others by making them pay attention to us and then elicit a certain reaction from them to make ourselves feel fulfilled. The positive feelings we gain are won at the expense of the other person and this often causes imbalance and drama in our interpersonal relationships. In this course you'll learn about common control dramas and how to negate them through step by step applied approaches that really work. Dr. Jody Janati will help you identify and protect yourself from common control dramas that arise when individuals become defensive.
______________________________________________________________________________
At 4:44 today, I opened this link...
https://medium.com/accelerated-intelligence/why-successful-people-spend-10-hours-a-week-on-compound-time-79d64d8132a8
I believe THIS is true for me. Time spent, outside necessary business, crisis management, WORRYING over things I can't change..... is time I'll reap benefits from down the road. Time spent learning how to integrate my brain, calm my biochemistry, expand my window of resilience and rest in awareness, consistently, will be a priceless investment in myself, for my future, and that of my family.
It's been a game changer for me. I'm excited to think about what it means down the road. Excitement comes and goes, but I trust it.
Lighter
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