feeling the heat

[Iphi]

I'm really feeling the burning humiliation of exclusion and rejection today.  Automatically my mind reviews our relationships and tries to find some reason for it.  In a larger way, I know the reasons for it and they are not my problem - they are not anything I can do anything about, or ever could. 

This is revisiting the original trauma of being forced into the scapegoat/black sheep role and nothing I could say or do could get me out of it. 

I feel anger, desperation, anguish.

This is why I need so much distance from my dad in the first place.

It is so hard to live with someone who not only projects on you and constantly belittles and orders you about - not only the one-on-one relationship, but the way they trash you to all your other connections.

It's hard to believe I can just let go of it.  That my life doesn't depend on convincing them to see me as a human.

There's a big part of me that feels that, unless I can get them to acknowledge me, to relent, to listen, to hear - that I cannot live successfully  That anything I try to do will fail.  Literally that I cannot survive.  It's literally like I need permission from my family that they will never give.

It's at such a primitive, deep, primal level. 

This experience is really giving me the opportunity to acknowledge this in all its aspects.  This is my deepest fear, I think.  This is what I have been running from, trying to fix. 

Hope is really horrible, I think.  Is hope a part of denial?  For me, it has been.

I think that what I am feeling is the whole history of it that I have kept out, frozen out.  Really, my relatives have always held me off.  They have never been loving toward me.  The denial and the hope have combined in me to make excuses for their lack of care or interest or even decency.  In truth, their current actions are completely in character of who they really are, but I have made them out to be better people than that, by  coming up for other possible (imaginary, better) reasons for the things they do or don't do.

I need to have a hurricane blow away the goo of these relationships in order to clear the decks for better.

I might need to reserve this space for more venting.

[Ami]

Dear Iphi,
 That sounds like a HUGE breakthrough. Those are the types of things I learned these last few weeks. Once you FEEL the pain behind the thoughts, you can heal, once and for all.
 Have you been really feeling the feelings behind these thoughts?      Ami

[Iphi]

Yeah - the feelings are coming first - they are very physical.  It's like I have to translate them to words to find relief.  Also I am physically feeling like a child.  It's like phantom limb syndrome or something - feeling a body that is a child body.  Also I am flashing back on my relationship with my uncle and the main feeling is fear of him and dread of his intense negativity and disapproval.  All three brothers (one is deceased) had this intense negativity.  They just seem to expect you to meet their expectations, or they throw you away. 

[Ami]

YOU are doing so,so well. Don't stop them . You are having like a  very mini version of a "primal" experience, from what I know(not much and I could be wrong) James could help you when he gets back on.
 Keep feeling them,Iphi. Your body and mind are trying to heal. Go with it, friend. You will find healing at the end,great healing(IME)
 Keep me posted.  love   Ami

(((((((Iphi))))))))

[James]

Iphi....I believe the hope you may be talking about is the false hope we develop neurotically in order to not experience as a child, the horror of what we were feeling back then. In that way it denies the truth, only then, was it serving as an effective protection. Not now. You can handle these early feelings because the old danger has passed. You did survive what happened already.......James

[Ami]

Dear Iphi,
 It IS very scary,but, as James said, we had it inside us poisoning us ,anyway. Also, it will never be worse than what we already felt as a child,but pushed down. Does that help?    Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Iphi, I have come late to this thread.  You are doing some powerful work here.  I cannot put all I want to in a comment here but I want to start and come back later.

I especially am deeply touched by your husband's reply when you said you wished you had a functional family, "Now you do."  don't ever lose sight of that.  I truly believe that you can use the comfort and support that you have there to propel you forward through your healing.

I have only read most of page 1 of your post.  I have much more to read.  It is so helpful to me to read your experiences because the way you describe them sounds so much like what I experience.  It really helps to know that I am not alone - though truly I wish noone had ever experienced what we have.

Love to you,
Gaining Strength

Some more thoughts:

My dad provokes me madly behind the scenes and then comes out and plays the sweet harmless person, while I look angry and grumpy and surly and on my last nerve.
My mother does this to me to this day.  She goes on to tell people that she must be careful and can’t say certain things to me because I will get angry.

it makes me think my dad has always been working a smear campaign behind my back,
My mother DOES run a smear campaign behind my back.  In the past year 2 different people have finally told me so.

He also sounded frail, and he may be frail - and that truly does make me feel for him and want to reach out - because for anyone unfamiliar with my backstory - he is in poor health and he struggles greatly - and it just intensifies everything.
My mother has become quite frail in the past year.  Broke her hip last Memorial Day.


The people pleasing came out of fear and I honestly don't know how I will face this fear.
You will be able to face it and overcome it.  The love you experience from your husband will show you the way.

because my whole family's story is that it is just me.
OMG – what else can I say – me too.  Now I have Lo who cannot believe her ears and eyes – cannot believe a mother would treat her own daughter with such contempt so different from the sons.

In a family like mine you can't even get the answers, because asking a question is a crime.
In my family wanting something was a crime.  The sure way to NOT get something was to say I wanted it.

Then my uncle probably insisted on having them, like these objects immediately gained value because someone else seemed to want them
I know you are right!!!! I’ve lived it too.

[Iphi]

It's really really late but I am up because the baby needed lots of hugs tonight and then because my energies and emotions are still rolling and churning on this topic.  I just had to get up and check in and want to thank everybody so much.  Hope to post more tomorrow but I appreciate all of your insights and encouragements from the bottom of my heart.  It means everything to me that I will go to sleep tonight knowing that others understand this as fellow humans and can see into this situation, not deny it/me and X me out.

I now understand the source of my phobia about being judged and condemned without being heard.  And also the destabilizing, life paradigm feeling I sometimes have when it seems others might be discussing me behind my back.  It's only from my family, not the whole world.  Also, I see that my sister has unconscious toxicity and I need to bring awareness and insulation into that relationship, because she stirs the pot.

The denial was getting in the way of insight into these things and probably has a lot to do with the phobias coming into being.

This seems unrelated but is not - a decade ago I took the LSATs for law school and collected application forms to the schools I intended to apply to.  When I tried to fill them out, I became completely paralyzed with fear and dread.  I couldn't overcome the feeling that the apps would be judged and rejected, despite having high gpa and high lsat scores and work experience and recommendations - that they would be rejected because it was me.  I was overcome with negative and fearful emotions and wept and experienced intense stomach aches.  I literally could not fill out the applications.  I could neither understand nor get past it.  I tried to force through it, but could not. 

The understanding I have gained here and through learning about N-ism and its impact on family - priceless.  Those emotions and the fear and dread - displaced from their real time and place.  A connection to the desperate child - who is hard for me to connect to - lot of layers of dissociation there.

[Ami]

The understanding I have gained here and through learning about N-ism and its impact on family - priceless.  Those emotions and the fear and dread - displaced from their real time and place.  A connection to the desperate child - who is hard for me to connect to - lot of layers of dissociation there.



This is where I am, too, Iphi----Yuch! It hurts and feels lost and terrible!You are doing so, so well.    Love    Ami


((((((((((Iphi)))))))

[Gaining Strength]

This seems unrelated but is not - a decade ago I took the LSATs for law school and collected application forms to the schools I intended to apply to.  When I tried to fill them out, I became completely paralyzed with fear and dread.  I couldn't overcome the feeling that the apps would be judged and rejected, despite having high gpa and high lsat scores and work experience and recommendations - that they would be rejected because it was me.  I was overcome with negative and fearful emotions and wept and experienced intense stomach aches.  I literally could not fill out the applications.  I could neither understand nor get past it.  I tried to force through it, but could not.

This is where I have lived.  Paralyzed - mine spread to absolutely everything.  When i came here I thought I would never find anyone who understood.  It is very, very hard to climb out of the paralysis but I am thankful that I am doing it.  I admire your work Iphi.

[Iphi]

Dear all - thank you again for your kind support and encouraging words.

I have something embarrassing that I initially considered too embarrassing to post.  But it is an important aspect of this topic.

We received an invite to the wedding last night. 

Yes after all my sturm and drang!

At first I felt that all that emotional upsurge that I experienced and shared above was completely invalid and that my perceptions on my uncle were completely off.

After the first wave passed, I realized there is a lot of learning in this experience, especially about what I own and is my responsibility to work on - my negativity.  Which comes from fear.  Which comes from the past.

And that I do have a negative view of my uncle and that side of the family which is partly based on past experience, and partly based on assumptions - assumptions which - as Amber said in her post of today - need to be recognized as assumptions (not Truth) and challenged.

Above I wrote about how I'm following those Oprah/Tolle classes and the concept of ego and the pain body.  He says that when you experience that intense negative emotional energy upsurging, the thing to do is bring awareness to it of what it is, the pain body - past pain still existing in consciousness - and to completely accept it as your experience right now, because it lives on because it was not completely accepted and experienced in the past - it overwhelmed in past.  Okay I'm not sure I've quite got that correct, but I am going to work with it and approach it that way.

It is so important to me to move from negativity and fear, which you see here me experiencing intensely and not necessarily part of outward reality, toward meaning, positivity, more accurate - cross-checked - reality based, accepting of subjective and objective experience, discerning - wiser - hey all that good stuff is what I want to progress toward.

Reading some posts this morning convinced me the better way was to admit what happened here - that the invitation came, though it is across the country and less than 2 months away - however, it is not atll and nothing like the shunning exile that is clearly one of my darkest fears.

I've got to own my stuff and accept what it is - to be where I really am and it isn't so pretty.  lol!

[Hopalong]

Iphi, your honesty and accountability is as lovely and clear as an early spring morning after rain.

love,
Hops

[Iphi]

You are a sweetheart Hops and I appreciate your kind presence.

[sKePTiKal]

Oh, Iphi...

You based an expectation of behavior on past experience. And that triggered a whole bunch of still radioactive waste from the past... just makes you human, I guess. It happens to everyone, I think.

In any case, you had an opportunity to work through another layer of your feelings about all this. The universe provides opportunities for us to learn, all the time. Sometimes we see the opportunity; sometimes we miss it - sometimes it runs us down like a freight train.

James is right about the fact that you've already survived those intense feelings; you've lived beyond and through them. Nothing to fear there... but it can be useful to learn to be with the feelings until they change or pass. Look for what the feelings are telling you, you need. What you didn't have then, that would've made it different; better.

About letting go: sometimes things just float away unfelt; unnoticed until later - like a big white fluffy dandelion seed. Sometimes you have to pull things off forcefully, like a burr. Sometimes, things change mysteriously over the course of days... like how a wound heals: from inside - where you can't see the healing - to outside, where first there's a scab... then new skin grows and pushes the scab off.

You're really doing very well here - keep up the good work! Amazing!!

[Iphi]

(((Amber)))  I appreciate your words very much.  It just dawned on me that for me - posting this - is letting people see how much I messed up and how off my perceptions were - and surrendering to letting that be okay.  That's a big thing too.  That's scary just in itself!  Weird how progress is made moving toward being less perfect.     But okay with that.

Nothing to fear there... but it can be useful to learn to be with the feelings until they change or pass. Look for what the feelings are telling you, you need.

You know what is odd.  That's how I quit smoking.  I sat with the intensity of the craving each time.  All the previous times I tried to quit, I tried to force through the craving - battle of wills style - never worked.  The final time - I endured, like a pebble in a stream with the feelings just flowing on over me.  And if the intensity plus temptation was too intense - I went to bed.  Evenings were a real danger time and so I just would go to bed at 7. lol!  Anyway, although you and I are going at things backwards as you bring your internal states experience toward your immediate goal of quitting smoking and it looks like i can bring my quitting smoking experience to help me with growing through awareness of internal states - kind of wild how that works out, eh??