Message board wounds

[Marta]

I find it difficult. I say this because you said about your elder sister – can’t even love herself. Loving ourselves seems the most difficult thing to me, happening after allowing someone else to love us, allowing ourselves to believe, to trust that someone else does have our interests at heart, isn’t going to use and abuse us.

I totally agree with you Portia. I don't see how we can love ourselves if we have not been loved. THat is the biggest gift my lover gave me. That I was not this piece of trash I thought I was, but someone who danced and sang and made someone else happy. Imagine, me making someone else happy. It really feels like some watershed event in my life--before love/ after love. I could have thrown all that away so easily, because I was so, so scared. I just pounced on him even when he tried to hold me. If it hadn't been for my best friend, who came from another "healthy" world, and taught me to see the difference between love and hate. I just didn't know. It is so difficult to know these things. Her perspective was so important to me, because otherwise I'd have kept falling in the same hole again. It really helps to have some friends from "healthy" world out there, or from some fine rare specimens in here, to get another perspective on life; I do that sometimes.

May be there are some examples from others out there who learnt to love themselve in a different way, other than through finding a lover? Stories from anyone? I think moving towards beautiful and noble things, plants, birds, small children, long walks, may be pulls our life towards the noble and the beautiful in the world.

I trust what’s inside my head more than I trust the stuff I see, hear, smell

I studied Zen for a short while, which is so strikingly similar in many ways to modern psychology. There I was taught the opposite. The stuff inside my head is not always mine, it is his and hers too. But when I put that away and start smelling the flowers, feeling the rain, tasting the wine, I start loving and living my life. Anyway, I had lots of problems with anxiety, and meditation really helped me with all that. May be Mum has something to add here? 

I’m not that important to anyone, except myself.

(((((Portia))))) please don't say that......now you are making me cry. You deserve to find someone to whom you mean the world, sooner rather than later........

As for my elder sister, she is married and has two beautiful children whom she loves very much, and who love her back. But still she never learnt to love herself. I don't know why. Sometimes I think that she just never opened up to the world. Just to that tape recorder in her head that keeps playing and playing over and over again.

[Portia]

Marta, you’ve helped me, thank you.

The stuff inside my head is not always mine, it is his and hers too. But when I put that away and start smelling the flowers, feeling the rain, tasting the wine, I start loving and living my life.

I understand I think and I’m glad you love and live! You paint a clear, good picture. It’s a gift to read you.

You deserve to find someone to whom you mean the world
Thanks for this, it’s very kind. I think you’re special ((((Marta))))

[Marta]

(((Portia))), thank you for sharing your feelings with me; I am moved and honored. You've given me something too -- it is never ever ever a one way street you see.

Marta

[Marta]

Mum:
And with love, I guess comes faith....and trust, etc.

I was just thinking about this statement in relationship to my own life. For most of my life, I had loved and trusted and believed in good faith of others. That of course was my biggest mistake, since the ones I trusted filled me up with their toxins. There is a time to learn to distrust, and then again there is a time to learn to trust again, in a different way. That is why language can be so frustrating, because one sentence can mean so many different things to different people. I don't know when or how that watershed moment comes.

For me, it was a friend like you, who pointed out that I was ready to trust my own judgment, who put me in touch with my own strengths. My legacy from my family did not just consist of serving as a dumpground for their toxins; it also meant being being derided for my strengths.

[BJ]

Foot note:
Keep in-step, while in tow,
in order to heal the soul.

BJ
 
 

[Marta]

Portia,

This time around I do owe you a true apology and a deeper answer.

I cringe at my response to you last week. It was colored with my own frustration – at myself, my own discarded parts; at you, for all that was said over the past one month.

Now that my frustration, at least that I felt at you, have evaporated, I can write a different answer.

Fake. I don’t think people are fake (except for Ns etc.?), however we all say and do things at times when we don’t mean them. I don’t know how to elicit truth from someone else except by offering my own. I don’t know if it is necessary or even advisable to always elicit truth from everyone. Also, when someone speaks truth it is only his or her truth, not the absolute. Sometimes the timing may be wrong. I think issue of trust is really important when we are speaking of truth.

I am comfortable in my skin today in that no one can invade me any longer, but I also want more. I often feel an undercurrent sadness, because I really do feel a big hole in my heart where there is no family, no roots. I don’t know how to fill that hole. Then there is my past. I have a really complex relationship with my past, especially with discarded parts of myself. I see them as disembodied ghosts that sometimes show up my way when I see someone who is haunted by the same ghosts (truly, or just in my own imagination). As a rule, I keep my distance and avoid all contact. But. When someone singles me out and asks me a question, asks me to hold a mirror and tell the truth, then I don’t always know whether to say hello or run away. What I reflect back is colored by who I am, my own past, my own relationship to my past, my own pain, my own choices, it may have nothing at all to do with anyone else. I wouldn’t know. I can’t know. If anything from that resonates deeply, ask yourself why. If not, please just toss it all away. I am sorry.

Marta

[Hopalong]

Hi Marta,
I'll comment on your reply to Portia. And briefly, looking farther back too.

I am glad you are being loved. Now. In the real world, by a lover you can trust and who held you tightly yet safely when your fear made you see their desire to be close to you as dangerous. I'm so glad this has happened to you.

Just now I was thinking about the persistent pain you carry. Some dealt to you by your mother and perhaps other early things, some from your own choices since...(and I assume you were making the best choices you knew how to make at the time you made them).

I was just wishing there might be a way, just a small way, for you to have more moments of opening to pure compassion for yourself. Sometimes I think when that happens, even for a few seconds, it softens us. Not in the way of dangerous vulnerability, but in the generous way of letting ourselves be as deserving of ordinary love and self-regard as anyone else. Just...trying that on.

I think the person whose love and forgiveness you deserve most is you. I am wishing you moments of that deep kindness, and then more and more...until it becomes a steady state, an undercurrent to your days that gradually replaces the sadness. I cannot think of any conceivable reason why you do not richly deserve this.

Hope you have a good day.

Hopalong

[BJ]

Beautiful, Hopalong!

Portia,

I have a really complex relationship with my past, especially with discarded parts of myself. I see them as disembodied ghosts that sometimes show up my way when I see someone who is haunted by the same ghosts (truly, or just in my own imagination).

I am comfortable in my skin today in that no one can invade me any longer, but I also want more

If so, "the ghost is clear".
BJ

[Portia]

Marta, I have a long reply written. Thoughts on interactions and mirrors. Questions, as usual.

Now I feel a whole load of stuff. Confusion.

Reading you Hops and BJ, I’m not sure who you’re writing to, Marta or me or both, or are we similar. A kindness that replaces the sadness. I wrote:

Is that hole in your heart sadness? Can we ever replace certain types of sadness? We can’t remake our histories (perhaps we can if we go mad); perhaps we have to learn to live with that sadness. Maybe the hole in your heart is similar to the little stone in my heart? I have a little stone of sadness which I expect to carry with me for as long as I live. To me it is more of a solid thing; a physical feeling of my past. It helps me to appreciate new things better and it also reminds me of when I’m clinging on to the past. When the stone hurts more, I know I’m back in my past and need to get into the present once more.

How to be kind to yourself.

when I see someone who is haunted by the same ghosts

I am?

no one can invade me any longer, but I also want more

I want more too. But can it be found in other people? I feel I have to find it all in me.

I don’t understand.

I’m back there. Everyone understands except me.

And that is a possibility! It's disorienting.

[Hopalong]

Hi Miz Portia,
I don't thinnk everyone understands except you. You are hugely insightful and maybe you're right that your sadness is permanent. I just don't want it to be.

I don't know if we create beliefs to cushion ourselves from a bleaker reality or not. But I do know I need the belief that people can be relieved of enduring sadness by compassion...from others in, and from themselves in further.

But that's a belief, it's not a fact. It's just what I add up. I have been lucky, a lot, and I inherited my Dad's essentially optimistic nature. Depression's my exception, not my rule. I can be swamped in deep pain. But it does go away at times. I get happy.

I remember a T asking me so often I thought she was nuts: What does this do for you? What do you get out of this (persistent belief, repetitive thought, repeated pattern of on-the-surface self-destructive behavior). Took me a very long time to understand she was not criticizing me, just asking me to try to get access to the logic of my emotions.

Along those lines, you've suggested why you keep the stone. As a benchmark. Perhaps it's an anchor. If you didn't have it...then, that's the question.

I only wish you didn't have it because I don't like people to be unhappy. A pretty simpleminded thing. But it has led to some healing...some challenging of my own attachment to my pain.

Doesn't mean that's how it works for you though. Hope I didn't add confusion...

Hops

[Marta]

Portia,

I don't know. I believe that we must find our own answers. This is entirely my opinion, based on how I live my life, suitable to my personality. I am sure that there are other ways to get to truth that are equally valid and wholesome; different strokes for different folks. As for me. If something resonates, then think about it. Resonance is the sure fire thumbtack for me. If it resonates, I think about it. If it doesn't, then I throw it away. SOmetimes "stuff" comes even from the best meaning folks, for such is human nature. We all have our issues and our limitations. Become who you are, not what someone else is or wants you to be. I believe that the only way we can find our own path in our life is to think for myself, examine myself and my behavior and decide which comes from my conditioning, which feels to be mine.

You are so right about finding more -- some find it in their children, others find it in art, yet some others in locking themselves up in a forest hut, my neighbor is not a people person or a family man but cares passionately about science and humanity at large. It would be disastrous for my neighbor to be a school teacher or an artist. How to find my own path in life? I think, for that, sometimes one can also dive underneath the surface, know one's own strengths and weaknesses, come up with another viewpoint to understand the same situation and see if it makes sense, or dialogue with Alice Miller rather than Marta, who is not only haunted by her own numerous ghosts, but has a tendency to attact ghosts from others too. Last thang we need is another ghost party, me sez. I think you understand everything. My friend the diamond miner once described his exploration process to me, it was fascinating, (he taps on the earth with special equipment to see where he can find diamonds, he has now developed a nose for hte process, gives up if initial exploration is taking him in a wrong direction, sometimes takes risks); could this also be another way to have a dialogue, albeit with one's own self? Was it not you who said somewhere that empathy is like a twitch, that sometimes it can be silently experienced but not outwardly expressed? Rendering unsolicited advice however is a choice.

Take care.

Marta
Yes, that hole in my heart is sadness.

[Portia]

((((((Hopalong)))))) thank you, for not wanting my sadness to stay with me. I understand!!!!!!!  Yes I do. It’s a long time coming but I do. I really do.

What does this do for you? What do you get out of this

I get….the belief that…I am destined to be unhappy. I get the belief that: I can hurt others (by wanting what I want, being what I am).

Big huge STUFF!

Thanks Hops. So softly done too. As ever.

What does the idea of the stone do? Accepting the sadness yes, but heck….does it have to remind me that I’m flawed? Yep. That’s the nub eh? I’ve been thinking some. Much less confusion, much brighter ideas, thank you.

Another idea: I used to say I was optimistic. Yeah, I called myself optimistic. What did I mean? I meant I think: I’m optimistic because I keep surviving in spite of everything. In other words, I feel loads of pain but I won’t give up. I’ll fight and strive and …… not feel. Must keep those feelings at bay!

I wasn’t optimistic. It was another label I attached to myself. Coping non-coping mechanisms as a friend said once. NOW I can be optimistic!

*sigh* why can’t we invent a drug that opens up the brain to new ideas faster? Instead of drugs that delay or dampen or mask or…hmmm. I’m being somewhat absolute there. So I’ll say: I don’t know what I’m talking about. Nothing new there then

[Portia]

Hi Marta. Interesting posts, thank you. I do get a lot from what you write. I agree with much of how I interpret it! I like your diamond miner friend, sounds a little like water divining to me. There is much we don’t know about in how we interact with each other, with objects, with – well, ‘dark matter’ for example. Dark matter is most of us and we don’t know what it is! (Apparently.)

Alice Miller, interesting. I find her work hugely instructive and interesting. I know she has stopped other people from quoting her work because it’s been misinterpreted so much (or in my opinion badly interpreted or just plain stolen and warped over the years). I had a breakthrough in understanding why I couldn’t get into the John Bradshaw books. I had an intense physical (ophthalmic) reaction to reading Homecoming, a rejection of his ideas that he seems to force on the reader (“you MUST do the exercises” he says – oh yeah? - says my brain). John Bradshaw – lots of informative, helpful ideas in his work but: he made his ideas into guru stuff. He also insists on higher power work which I right now, violently (!) disagree with. It no doubt works for many people, but it doesn’t work for me. I won’t hand over control of my brain to anything higher.

And it all comes from Alice Miller’s original ideas but has been picked up and used and abused in my opinion. I’m interested in Alice herself now. I’ve read about five maybe of her books, looked at her website. I need to read her books again but right now, I feel there is a coldness and lack of personality in her work. They are her ideas, but I find little of her in her books. It’s probably on purpose? I’d like to know more about Alice herself but I doubt she’d let us know. I feel she’s very reserved. And I think she has good reason to be. I don’t know; all I can say is, it feels sad to me. Of course I know zero about her the person. But I wonder if anyone knows her well?

I do this. I set up heroes for myself and then take a good close look at them. I don’t like agreeing with everything someone says. Makes me wonder if I’ve given up my brain you know? So I stop thinking about the work, the output, and I look at the person’s motivations for their work. Fascinating. I feel sad for Alice Miller. And I’d like to know why I feel sad, but, that’s kind of her business and not mine.

Yep. Joseph K in ‘The Trial’ tries to find out what his crime is. He is accused but doesn’t know what he has done wrong (that was me).

In ‘The Castle’ K worries about when he will be finally accepted as a legitimate member of the community. I hope that’s not you? You are here, you are accepted.

(((((Marta)))))