Sending love to Shame Slayer

[Hopalong]

Hi SS,
I am thinking of you and worrying. Are you on the sidewalk? Were you able to ask for help and go home and chop the shamestrings that always have come attached to it? It was painful to read about your crisis and know in my gut how excruciating it has been for you. Please update when you can.

I thought of you too because I got near that point myself. This morning I told church, on my feet, that I was too discombobulated and overwhelmed to think of appropriate channels so I wanted to light a candle and ask for help, if anyone could each give me an hour tomorrow. (I"m decluttering and tidying 3 rooms in hopes of renting them to the interim minister, who arrives to look at it Tuesday morning...yet paralysis, exhaustion--haven't slept well for ages--and I am not ready. I woke up crying. I have been feeling too overwhelmed by the tasks I need to do to make a list in order to have a rational way to begin to do them! I walk into one room and have no idea what I'm doing there. Oddly, 5 months after Mom's been physically under someone else's care, I have had an aftermath to the decade of caregiving letdown or collapse or whatever, and I'm quite dysfunctional. I ran the ship FAIRLY well for her, but now that I need to do it for myself, I've botched it.)

Anyway, the good news is that when I stood up in church and confessed I was completely overwhelmed and would be so grateful for help...I had 2 volunteers within 60 seconds and by the end of coffee hour was turning away the 7th. I cried on a friend's shoulder that "Six people said they want to help me!" and SS, I was overwhelmed in a good way...

And I'm thinking of you and realizing that just bulling right through the shame and saying I can't do this alone any more was what it took.

I am hoping you will find some way to do this in real life. It's more or less like standing up naked (I remember wandering around the house naked this morning, it's a hot day, thinking, oh spit, why is it actually a requirement to wear clothes to church). But I'm getting so I can do that now and then. And in fact I looked quite presentable but had on no underpants because I haven't done my laundry.

I understand about shame. I did feel some. I mentioned in my candlelighting that I felt embarrassed but safe in this community to be embarrassed. That's sort of contradictory but there it is.

Maybe shame is just something to acknowledge, like a drunken relative. Yep, there's Aunt Magnolia. Eye roll.

with love to you, and sharing some shame, and sending a lot of love,

Hops

[ann3]

((((((((((SS)))))))))),

How are you?  How are you doing? 
Love to you, (((((SS)))))))

Hops,
I know about this paralysis due to inertia.  What works for me is to not fight it, but accept it.  Then, do one foot (12 inches) at a time.  Do 4 piles:  Save, donate, sell & chuck.  Take breaks when necessary.  If you aren't sure whether to save something, vote to discard it.

[Ami]

((((((((((((((((((SS))))))))))))), very brave, very strong, very wonderful human traits. You will prevail!                            Love   Ami

[sea storm]

Hi Hops:

I dreamt about you last night. I have been missing you here ( and everywhere).  I dreamt you were an innocent child and you had very wise words for people if they would listen. I saw an old book and your name was there.  It was a big surprise. Hey, there is Hops.  I don't quite know what it means. 

Cleaning out the past literally by cleaning out rooms in the house is really hard work and kind of dangerous for sensitive souls. Every little piece of history resonates with us at some level. What a big void there is after being a caregiver for so long.  And not and easy caregiving assignement you had. 

I cleaned out my house ( five pickup loads and two trailer loads) to put in a suite downstairs. It was terribly rigourous physically and emotionally, it was horrible.  It stirred up all kinds of ghosts, goblins, grief, regrets etc.

How excellent that you didn't wear your knickers!  The ladies who wear purple are cheering for you. If I was in that church I would be so happy to help you.  You are a good, good person.  You deserve the best that life has to offer. Somehow you got invalidated by masters who did a godforesaken job of robbing you of joy and confidence. But you prevail. And you scars have made you even deeper and wiser and funnier.

When the suite was finally rented I sure appreciate the added income.  It took a lot to get there but the juice was worth the squeeze.

I feel for you in this passage that you are on and how deeply in pain you are at times.

Much love,

Sea storm

[sea storm]

Dearest Shame slayer:

All that anger is cleansing.  I dont think many people would have the courage to go there and face the final wild and destructive job of slashing the final ties that keep you trapped in the past.  It is not done daintily.  No wonder you feel so much rage, it is about time it came up and showed you the full story.

Surrendering to a higher power is very helpful for me.  I used to work at a Native treatment centre for drug and alcohol abuse.  There we knew that many of the ties that bound a person to addictions were feelings of rage, betrayal, injustice and revenge.  We would go to a sweat lodge build a fire and  do the whole routine.  I worked with the children and adolescents.  They understood the symbolism of surrender  every time.   They would pray and give up their burdens to a higher power because the burdens really are too painful to carry.  I saw this work many, many times.  One teenager was in trouble because she would beat up other girls viciously.  She was the poet of the group and she wrote a poem about giving over her grief and anger over and over and over to something greater than herself.  I believe that we cant carry these burdens alone. The pain is too great to be held in the crucible of our hearts.

I dont want this to sound preachy or mundanely churchy.  I remember a poem called : Lets go to the Moon and be Churchy.  it is more like that.

I care how you feel.  All of it.

Lots of love,

Sea storm

[gratitude28]

Dear GS (SS),
I am also thinking about you. I have had such a major break and I think it is much like what you were describing before - that it tossed around in my head until it just... happened!!! So I don't know what the magic was to make things change  - and so suddenly - but it must have been like what you were describing.
So... how is your breakthrough??????? How is your life?????? How are you??????
Love, Beth

[Hopalong]

Thank you, Ann. I can dish it out but spin like a top when it's time to take it (my own advice...one square foot, keep/donate/discard). I appreciate the reminder that this is the way to go...

It's a little bit confusing because I sense my brother looming and to add to my spinning head I need to think: am I deciding what he keeps? What I keep? And she's still with us and I saw her today, wearing a mask since the home's been in quarantine because of a virus. Then I come home and stare crosseyed at the clutter. My brain is clutter!

Telling it helps...I can see I've hijacked my own thread, in which I wanted to shout out to SS. Sheesh.

thanks again,
love
Hops

[Hopalong]

Dear Sea Storm,

I can't tell you how moved I am that I appeared in your dream.
Thanks for letting me in there!

(It was a very compassionate, creative, beautiful psyche to visit, too.)
Some folks ignored the child but the kind dreamer didn't. THANK YOU.

with love,
Hops
AND NOW WE RETURN TO OUR PROGRAM. Meaning I wanna butt out and have this one be for SS.
(I have a loving place on another thread that's been started for me. xxxooo)

[Leah]

Dear ((((((( SS )))))))))


Sending thoughts, love & blessings to you.

Love, Leah

[teartracks]

Hi Hops,

I have had an aftermath to the decade of caregiving letdown or collapse or whatever


Just wanted you to know that I understand.   Aftermaths, now there should be a recovery group for Aftermaths.    Good for you, asking for help, red skirt and all at church.

tt

[Hopalong]

TT xxoo please see Dear Hopalong thread, I've moved over there... xxoo

[Certain Hope]

Dear GS/SS...  you asked for support awhile back and I just want you to know that I'm still praying.

I hope that you have reached out, too... as Hops is saying, and as she has done... and as I'm determined to do, before it all comes tumbling down.

Seems to me that is one of the toughest lessons involved in becoming an adult...
just being willing to ask for help from those who are able to extend it...
and still hold firm boundaries.

Love,
Carolyn

[sea storm]

Shame Slayer,

I am praying for you.  You are not forgotten.

Being angry is so misunderstood in our culture.  Dangerous to feed it too well but it will do you in if you don't acknowledge it.  Try to keep posting if you can.  Rage all you want.  I wish I could get angry but I am still too afraid and frozen. 

Shame Slayer. That is a powerful name and your totem. Just how do you slay shame?  Turn it back on the bastards who did it to you.  i am not sure but it sounds like a path. If it gets too destructive for you  SHARE YOUR BURDEN.


Much love,

Sea storm

[cats paw]

GS/SS,

  Just wanted to add my voice here, and say that I'm still thinking of you, and yes, still worrying as I was ever since I read your post
about your deadlines.  Everyone has spoken so eloquently, and Hops has added helpful disclosure, so I will just say I await your return.

cats paw

 

[Gaining Strength]

Oh my heavens, Hops and everyone.  Thanks so much for your thoughts.

I posted that thread about my financial woes because I needed to share it with someone/anyone who might understand.  I expected Hops that you and ToWrite (whom I miss terrbly) might understand the best.  I have moved money around in a couple of accounts to get two untility bills payed.  Today I remembered a small brokerage account that I have and am trying to find my paperwork to arrange to raise some funding to get some bills paid.  I know I will make my way out.  I am working hard to face the music but without slipping into that dark despair. 

Yesterday I was packing to send my little one to camp for a couple of days and then I drove him down and drove back by myself.  I had $40 for gas and just prayed that it would get me there and home.  It did.  But my car's electrical system failed this morning so my car is in the shop. 

I know that  must face this financial stuff as part of the healing.  As I drove for those hours yesterday I kept my mind in the emotional/psychological pain that I currently feel and let it take me to the darkness and meanness of my parents.  I have identified everything that controls me.  I see that I have internalized my father's message that "I get what I deserve." So if what I have is not very much and not very nice - then that is what I deserve.  I am powerless and enraged and shamed by being powerless.  My powerlessness came by acceding to my parents wishes.  The powerlessness is a psychological bind to which only I hold the key, but I cannot quite grasp the key even though I so desparately desire it. 

Yesterday I gained the perspective that I believed that my parents had special knowledge about me and about life and I believed that my parents had my best interest at heart.  Both of these things were a lie.  It is so much like the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz. 

Hops, I can so relate to your being able to hold things together while your mother was there and to the dazed feeling as you stand in a doorway.  I can still "do" for my mother all the things I cannot do for myself.  I am so close to unlocking this.  I have taken on an expression of my mother's that I fail and that she therefore has a legitimate reason to denounce me.  I have kept that up as a way to be locked in with her out of that child's need to be connected to mother in order to survive.  My psychological relationship with her is servant-master.  My psychological trap still holds that I must continue to be servant to her in order to live but that is not true.  And I am in the midst of turning from a house slave who gets preferential treatment all the while remaining a slave to someone who breaks free and in doing so must renounce all the benefits of working in the house as opposed to the field.  It is hard to give up the benefits in spite of the glaring horrors one must accede to in order to receive them.

I have seen a similar struggle played out here on the board by others whose parent or parents are Ns. 

My brother and I confronted my mother this past Saturday.  Her lieing is beyond the pale.  It appears she cannot not lie.  She lies to our face and then denies that she just said what she said.  When I left the room to attend to my son my mother began criticizing me.  When my brother asked her to stop she denied that she was doing it.  (The night before we had taken her to dinner for her birthday.) My brother told her that what she was saying about me was criticism and that she did it so much that she lived in denial about it.  he went on to explain how during dinner the night before she had intruurpted me, contradicted me, belittled me to the point that he simply refused to participate in the conversation any more.

The most amazing thing about listening to him was that I had been unaware that she was doing it.  It is so "normal" for me that I have become immune to most of it.  But the lies make me crazy and yesterday I had this insight as though the clouds had parted: crazy - reasonable; shame - reasonable; out of money - reasonable.  I can stay in the insanity or I can rise above it.  At moments it seems so simple.  But it is only simple for the moments that that clarity shines through the fog like sun through the clouds.  There is light and then shade and light and then shade.  I am so thankful for the few moments of light/clarity.  I believe that they will become more frequent and last longer and that soon I will be on the other side where the clarity lasts longer than the craziness.

Overcomer - I have thought so much about your thread about your mother and your job possibility that doesn't sound so good to you and your hope that your mother will see the light.  When you write I see myself trapped in this fantasy with my mother.  I actually thought I was not trapped and THEN I saw it - trapped in the same dance over and over and over again. 

She is crazy and I have been trapped in the insanity, like a fish in water, unable to know that a whole other universe of air and sky and sanity (functioning, thriving) exists. 

My mother will do things for my brother which she simply refuses to do when I ask.  These are things for herself that she needs to do such as pay an outstanding bill or get her leaking roof repaired.  She will do it because my brother threatens to force her to move out of her house to a retirement community.  She give him her power.  I can see it.  She could stand up to him just the way she does to me. 

I am giving her my power the same way she gives it to my brother.  I am still giving my father some sort of power psychologically.  I feel his judgement - his personality disordered, OCD, bi-polar distorted judgment and accept it and react to it as though it is real and binds me as powerfully as handcuffs and legirons.  It is false, it is not real and IIIIII can turn it off and on.  They, my parents, are not kind, they do not love me, they never have.    We as a culture do not believe that parents do not love.  We do not accept that and do not believe people who claim that.  But there are many, many Susan Smiths and others who take their children's physical lives and many, many more who destroy their children's psychological lives and noone seems to really care or even believe that it happens.  BUT IT DOES.

Thank you Hops and all the others who asked about me. 

I am here and I am going to be OK.  I am going to break free and live a fulfilled life.  I am going to work out my financial troubles and psychological binds and free myself from the evil that has bound me for my entire life.  I am sorry for what my parents have lived but I cannot carry their insanity any longer.  I wish I never had but that is a wasted regret.  I have spent 23 years without stop trying to overcome the damage they have done and now I am close and I am thankful to at last have a community filled with people who care.

Thank you all.

Love to you - Still Gaining Strength and Slaying Shame.