starting over - stage 2

[Hopalong]

Hi GS,
I think the drive to win a parent's approval or love is so powerful. This was a very key thing for me in your post:

I would tell my mother that I had made a mess and she would begin to yell.  "look what you've done.  Why did you do that?  You've ruined everything."

Perhaps one reason you had trouble maintaining your house and allowed the mess to build was to (unconsciously) say to her:

See mother, I need you to love me so much that I'll show you that you are right. See how I've let everything go to ruin? I am showing you I agree with you, now will you love me and take me shopping like other mothers do?

My Nbrother is here. Another "surprise" visit. In subtle ways he always behaves as though he's "checking up on me." Ugghhh.

love
Hops

[towrite]

I'd never heard of hypoadrenia but felt as tho' I've looked for the term for years. What do you do for it? I researched it and cortisol reducation and found the two on many of the same websites. Do you take anything?

towrite

[Gaining Strength]

Hops - I am certain that you have something there.  I am interested to see how this will begin to loose the binds and free me rom such inaction on the cleaning and straightening front.

What!!!! Your brother is visiting????  How in the world it that going?????

towrite - I stumbled across Dr. James Wilson's book "Adrenal Fatgue" a year ago and shortly after began taking some supplements that he created.  I personally have found good results from them.  I also learned this summer that a magnesium deficiency really works against the adrenals and that magnesium can be very calming.  So I sometimes remember to take epsom salt baths and drink a powder drink called CALM.  These things have definitely help me.

Here's a web site that I have gotten information from www.adrenalfatigue.org.

[Ami]

Dear Hops,
  That was VERY PROFOUND. Wow, I did that with sickness. I thought that if I was sick enough, my M would come and take care of me.(I am STILL waiting   lol)
  GS-- My mother took me shopping,but it did not change the N messages very much. I would LOVE to take you shopping., GS
  GS  I used to have bad candida and stressed adrenals. I eat raw food and juice vegetables and fruit. I usually feel good. Also, I take Maca( in the raw form-) which is a powdered food( vegetable I think) that gives you very,very good energy. I mix it with juice(apple is the best tasting)
  Also, a supplement called Super food by Dr Schultz.His number is 1800 HERB DOC.This is the BEST supplement( green powder) for energy.
  For a very fearful person(lol), I feel good.
   The fear is really hard to get rid of. All I can think to do is meditate on the Scripture--- Perfect love casts out fear"
  I think that we are so afraid b/c we were never cared for properly when we were actually afraid ,as kids. We were shamed when we were afraid.Also, I think that I am very angry under the fear.
   What kinds of things are you afraid of?                                                Love  Ami
 

[Gaining Strength]

Ami - thanks for the tips on energy.  I will definitely look into this.  I am sitting here nurturing my tiredness and using visualizations and affirmations to progress.  I have to take my child to a birthday party this afternoon and just looked up the address.  It is at the boy's grandparent's house.  I am in a little shock.  it is right next door to a former friend, my son's god mother.  The person who quit talking to me 11 months after my husband died, and who talked other friends (whom I had introduced her to) into cutting me out as well.  She had reason.  I was in the midst of a manic state brought on in reaction to medications.  I was not sleeping and was angry but I never expressed anger to her.  She simply quit speaking to me and quit taking my phone calls.  It was devastating.  My T who knows her recently told me she was an N.  When we examined her treatment of several people once close to her I saw how true it was.  It is very sad, very, very sad.  I am surprised that I am not nervous and not afraid.  It is a very short street in a very exclusive, gated neighborhood.  There are only 3 houses on the street.  I wonder if I will see her.  It won't matter. I am so glad to see how much healing has transpired in my life.  I am very thankful.

I agree that the fear is hard to get rid of.  Mine is simply perpetual.  It exists unattached to anything.  It just is.  It actually took me many, many years to even recognize that I lived in a state of fear and anxiety.  I've only known that for a year or so.  But mine is definitely getting better.  I am at a point where I can look at it - face to face - any time.  Even recently it was so bad that I simply had to do ANYTHING to try to get away from it.  Now I can look at it and call it by name and try to calm myself and encourage myself.  That is truly great progress.  A week ago I snapped at my son and immediately realized that I did it out of my own anxiety.  That was a helpful insight and it happened very quickly.  I am very thankful to be making progress.

Maybe a more specific answer is that I am afraid of judgement, rejection, condemnation.  Those three cover about everything.  I have come to understand that my fear of those actually locks me into them so now I try to befriend them.  It helps.  I'm not so afraid of them.

[Ami]

_{[qMaybe a more specific answer is that I am afraid of judgement, rejection, condemnation.  Those three cover about everything.  I have come to understand that my fear of those actually locks me into them so now I try to befriend them.  It helps.  I'm not so afraid of them.}



Dear GS,
  THAT is so, so profound. I think that you are maing great progress, GS . I send a big hug to you 
                                                                                     Love    Ami

[Certain Hope]

((((((((Gaining Strength))))))))

I'm just reading and following along here, with not much to contribute at the moment, but one thought...

I'm wondering,

Hops, when you said -
Quote:

" Perhaps one reason you had trouble maintaining your house and allowed the mess to build was to (unconsciously) say to her:
'See mother, I need you to love me so much that I'll show you that you are right. See how I've let everything go to ruin? I am showing you I agree with you, now will you love me and take me shopping like other mothers do?' "

  I'm relating to that very strongly, but from a different perspective (or maybe it's the same? but I don't think so)...
Often, these days, I'm feeling very resistent to "doing" ... whatever it might be - the dutiful sort of stuff, like cleaning the messes.
I'd thought that this resistence was a natural consequence to my breaking of some serious compulsive, perfectionistic inclinations,
BUT now, I feel like it's more related to the desire to be loved and accepted for who I am,
rather than what I do.

And I think I just answered my own question.
"I'd thought" .... but now "I feel"... aha.
wow.
Thank you, ladies...

Hugs,
Hope

[Hopalong]

GS, Hope--
I'm so glad this topic is afloat again.

I've made higgledy-piggledy strides. I guess those wouldn't be "strides". More like, lurches.

I think banging myself over the head about it hasn't helped...but what helps more often is when I approach the 2 square feet, is to focus on a happy vision for those two square feet.

Decluttered, things gotten rid of not just moved, then cleaned.

Two. Square. Feet.

Ridiculous, but whatever it takes.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

I think that you are making great progress, GS

Thanks Ami.  I'm really fealing it.  As I walked along the sidewalk with my child today I was thinking that I really like who I am.  The parts of me that I have not liked for so long have been the parts that were reacting to the N experiences of my childhood.

And I think I just answered my own question.
"I'd thought" .... but now "I feel"... aha.

 I love it! Way to go Hope! Way to go.

focus on a happy vision for those two square feet.

I like that very, very much Hops.  I think I'll borrow that. Yes indeed.

[Certain Hope]

lol... GS, Hops...

You know those lovely online tests...
well 4 of them so far have agreed that I am exactly 50/50 right/left brain.

So while the right side lurches and the left side higgledy-piggledys, one way or t'another we'll all meet in the middle someday! 

Wandering haphazardly away now, muttering... "I think"... "but I feel";  "no, I feel..."... "but I think!"... but... 
Have a lovely night and great rest, you two.

Love,
Hope

[Gaining Strength]

LOL to you Certain Hope - right, no left, right, no left.

[axa]

What I meant was that my life was in an absolute mess.  I was so stressed from XN but I produced a home that was so simple and uncomplicated.  At the time I recall thinking my Mom would have hated my house, no confusion, not stuffed full of things, just very understated.  What I did not realise at the time was the house was a projection of how I wanted my life to be, clear, clean and uncomplicated.

By pastiche I mean it was not bits of other things stuck together to try and achieve a look.  It was plain, of its time.  XN built a house which was a remixture of French architecture, georgian, etc......... trying to recreate something that was pulled from all different genres, towering over the landscape.........HE! LOOK AT THE BIG HOUSE I BUILT I AM A RICH MAN.  He filled it full of furniture and things, could not bear to have simple spaces.  The nicest part of the house was the hallway but he stuck a tacky bannister on the stairs and made the space look like a 70's public office.  As they say you can buy ass but you can't buy class!!!!!!!!!

axa

[Gaining Strength]

I had a dream this morning that was incredibly wretched but which has pushed me a little farther along toward recovery.

In the dream I was in a room with my mother and my former mother in law (whom I loved).  My mother had received a letter addressed to me from my former MIL whom I had not been in touch with for years.  It was a letter about a structure (sort of like a barn) that I had been involved with building long ago.  My mother had sent a check to my in laws to help pay for rebuilding it.

Suddenly we were all together again and I learned that all this communication had taken place without any notice or information coming to me.  I became enraged and turned to my MIL for help and understanding.  Of course she sort of stepped aside.  What could she do?  And I sat there in my rage feeling so helpless and unable to calm myself or find a "place" to put it.  I couldn't get out of it - I was stuck.  Then I woke up - absolutely feeling the enormous frustration from the dream.  And then - so much that I have been reading about, learning about, working on came together in an instant.

I knew that I had to simply displace that feeling and replace it with something completely different.

Years ago when I read Norman Vincent Peale, I loved it but was left with a sense of a gap.  How could I get from where I was to his recommendation of seeing things the way I wanted them.  I recognized Wayne Dyar's recommendations as being in the same vein and yet I haven't been able to get there.

I have written many times about using Dr. Jeffery Schwartz process for overcoming "false" brain functions.  And finally, with this crazy dream I knew that I have to do more than stop the life long experience described in this dream but go on to fill it with the image and "feeling" of what it is I want to grow to feel. 

I will continue to replace my bad feelings with good ones by using my imagination but now I am going to move beyond that and project onto myself good, positve, joyful ones. 

In some very strange way I have held onto these anxious feelings because I felt I deserved them and I have been waiting for a rescuer to come and release me.  I did not know I coul release myself.  I didn't know how.

[Certain Hope]

Dear Gaining Strength,

About the dream... please forgive me for asking what is probably obvious, but I wondered - Was your mother's check to re-build a symbol of her undoing/negating of what you had helped build in the first place? It feels controlling to me... and patronizing... and interfering... and deceitful, to me.
Or was the dream about your finding out, long after the fact, that your mother had been financially involved in this project into which you had invested your own hard labor? This scenario brings up similar feelings and more... that old sense that N is everywhere, globally, with supreme knowledge and influence... which, of course, is most untrue, even when N is rollin in dough... : )

Keep those good thoughts flowing, GS... you are movin on up to a much more peaceful plateau of... hmm... objectivity?

Love,
Hope

[Gaining Strength]

Gosh Hope, I'm not sure what those images were about.  I just focused on that horrible feeling and what I could do with it.