Healing - using compassion

[Gaining Strength]

finding fear is impeding my healing.  I am working on a way to "transcend" the fear and get to work.  It is a method described by a psychiatrist for OCD patients. 

I have compound layers of fear.  Comes from constant criticism compounded with living into that criticism and internalizing that criticism.  Part of the cement is that inbetween the layers of condemnation and failings were huge layers of hope so even hope is tainted with fear and failure and condemnation.  That's why I have to rise above it. and function anyway.

The rising above is someting like what a person does in meditation.  They can observe what they are doing, thinking, feeling and make objective thoughts about it.

That's all I am going to take time to write about this.  I am learning that I need lots of encouragement and understanding.  Sometimes I get that here and it is an incredible salve.  Sometimes I don't and that is actually painful.  But it is worth the risk because this is the only place I get the understanding and validation.  I have spent my life searching for that and often getting lashed and destroyed in the search. - more fear.

[sKePTiKal]

Whatever works... I'm sort of familiar with this technique, but hadn't associated it with overcoming fear.
I'll be interested to know what your experience of it is.

My biggest fear is of success - because that brought down the reflex humiliation, or diminishing/dismissing the success... or even claiming credit for my success. Failure and self-sabotage was my protection, my safety zone, armor and camoflauge...as painful as this is... the consequences of success were even worse.

[Gaining Strength]

PR - I understand well the fear of success.  I first was introduced to it almost 20 years ago.  I came across a book called The Success Syndrome.  It was written by a DC psychologist about the era of Michael Milliken and the majority of the book was about people who were successful but for whom success did not solve any of their needs.  At the very end he wrote a brief chapter on self-sabotage and the fear of success.  It resonated withme but I could not get at how I got there.  I didn't let go and finally in the past couple of years I have discovered the sabotage that I experienced at my parents hands. 

I got it on both ends - excoriating humiliation for failing or even making mistakes and sabotge and very, very subtle punishment and abandoment for success. 

I have to rise above the emotional reaction to my situation.  It is an ensconced pattern and I cannot continue in it. 

I have this place in me that would like to give up and if I didn't have a child I would.  This life is way to difficult.  I know that success and achievement are possible.  I can do it.  It will not be easy but it will be better than what I have been living.  My connections here give me the affirmation that I need to continue.  Thank you so much for your encouraging post.

[sKePTiKal]

You are most welcome to anything I have to give in the way of encouragement.

I dropped back in to say DUH about my last post...
I DO know the technique you described - in therapy, we called it the "Observing Ego". But in CBT - especially in quitting smoking, we call it separation. Separating the behavior from the emotion associated with it...

The reason I relapsed into smoking was the fear of success - and the fear of the usual consequences. But I was also trying to identify the actual feeling I had in that moment, when I decided to sneak that one cigarette in, that practically compelled me to smoke after 3-4 days of easy success. It seems like a bunch of feelings; none distinguishable except anguish... a tidal wave... that threatens to engulf me... wash "me" away...

and I finally nailed it down: that feeling was the almost total boundary violation of a magnitude that was enough for Twiggy to willingly go hide in my unconscious self. Where my SELF was totally violated by my mother's intent to control me, what I thought, what I felt, for her own convenience. That is the tidal wave that washed "me" away... that is the feeling that can only be calmed with smoking...

... until now. Naming it is power over it - even if it's only minimal and requiring practice to master it. Naming it also allows me to reframe those incidents that trigger that emotion... because I am totally aware that what happened when I was Twiggy can NEVER happen again. I can "defang" those trigger-incidents of their intensity and power... because the present situations are totally, completely different - as am I. And knowing this - I can separate my "observing ego" from the emotion - and make a rational decision about my behavior (not smoking)... and remind myself that I am a complete whole person now...

... so the type of situation I find myself in that reminds of the original ego-wound can be understand as a non-threat removing the intensity and duration of the tidal wave.

Thanks!! This unintentional reminder - your sharing your way of transcending fear - will help a LOT now, to maintain this current quit.
Bless you and I wish you ALL SUCCESS... I know you deserve it! 

[Gaining Strength]

PR you have described it perfectly.  It is sort of a one-two punch.  Identifying an original wound or a triggering factor and then separating the emotion from the behavior.

In that other thread I am trying to get at the trigger underlying the emotional reaction.  With the mother I got it - it is her fearfulness that she then tries to put off on me.  I feel powerful in that situation now because I know what happened.  It was a replay with my mother.  I have never seen that before.  My mother would be fearful and react by shutting me down.  She would say no to what ever I asked to do just to say no, because she could and that is what I re-experienced with that mother.

Mark on the other hand is another issue entirely - it has to do with authority and the BB/BS organization being the authority but not following through.  It goes back to something I have experienced where I was put in the middle and lost.  That is what it feels like again.  I am fully aware that if I take myself out of the emotional place that I can handle it.  Clearly - I can tell him that I need him to set up regular twice a month visits with a beginning and ending time and to keep his phone charged when he is with my son.  I know that this week I felt sandwiched between needing to do this and feeling like he would back out and then being left with the fallout from my son.  I know that I could not/did not confront him because I "knew" he would not/could not comply and then I would be left to clean up the mess.  I was not emotionally able to deal with that.  I still can't get to the source of that - here it is - my father would set me up in impossible situations.  Someone would invite me somewhere and my father would put these conditions on it that would make it impossible to meet and yet I wanted to go and everyone else would be going and noone else would have these conditions and it was a nightmare situation.  I now know that these conditions were simply done to make it impossible, to destroy me, to keep me from participating for no reason other than he could and then when I cried or became emotional THEN he had a reason to punish and humiliate me and belittle me.  It was a set up for a cycle of rejection, humiliation, punishment and more rejection, abandoment and belittlement that would be repeated over and over and over again.  I am seeing all of a sudden that this would transform into monetary issues later on.  I am getting closer to this. 

I am connecting to more of this issue - how he compltely controlled my every move and then suddenly without warning without words just completely abandoned me - but I never knew I was abandoned.  I would be set up in a certain lifestyle and the the rug was pulled out from underneath me but I never knew it.  I simply saw that I was suddenly not living like the friends I grew up with even those who had much less than I had had.  But no words were ever exchanged - I was just completely abandoned - left out to dry.  There was no explanation, no reasoning, no grounding.  Just shaming.  So at 29 I'm living in a tiny apartment in a bad marriage and my friends are in "grown up" houses filled with beautiful furnishings and I have furniture I bought at a Goodwill store.  It was crazy making - I kept trying to live normally and not being able to afford it.  I had a hard time getting jobs  and when I would get a decent one my father once demanded that I go with my mother out of town.  This turned out to be so that he could divorce her while she was gone and because I didn't have vacation time I had to quit.  At that time I could not refuse my father, I was so under his control.  The next jobs that I got were in decent organizations but were minimum wage jobs.  Ludicrously I still did not realize that I was actually poor.  I never had help getting a decent job to provide the kind of lifestyle I had grown up in.  My father refused to help any of his children get work - he said that people shouldn't do that.  Go figure. He had lots of connections at that time.  Noone would help me.  I fell into a great pit of shame and would try to get jobs but as I look back I can see that I had so much fear in the interviews that I was sort of begging to be hired - wonder why that didn't work.  It is very, very painful to look back on this period or any period in the meanwhile.  I have been in so much pain for so long.  That is why the serapation is key for me especially on the financial issues.  I see clearly how this will help me move forward.  It is the replay of the pain that torments me and paralyzes me.  This is the cycle that I have to break.  I have been making progress in many ways and it has been leading up to this break but I am sure the separation thing is what I must do. 

It is difficult to pop myself out of this pain.  I so hate it.  But I must do it.  I must find a way to survive all of this stuff.

[sKePTiKal]

oh..... SO CLOSE....

I do believe you're almost there. Yes, separate from the emotion that paralyzes you - and you will be free to think, assess, and see the things that pain blinds you with and to.... and even be compassionate toward yourself and be able to praise & reward yourself for each & every little step you make to improve your situation - to be happy and to grow. That will heal some of the original pain - repeat as needed!

Surviving is what you've done up till now... breaking through the last, you will begin to thrive!

[Hopalong]

SS, Amber...these little things I'm noticing are primitive compared to the staggering dialogue you're having, but I really notice what I notice, some days...

it stilll strikes me as odd that it takes seeing myself as two people to do this - one as the observer and one as the child needing compassion.  Who cares.  The point is that providing that necessary compassion.

SS, I wonder if that has anything to do with something I've concluded...that Nmothers, or maybe Ns in general, are very threatened by their daughters' creativity? I'm not sure at all about this, because Nmom used to "praise" me voluninously...for piano, drawing, and LOOKING NICE. But at the same time, the praise felt smothering. "Oh come speak French for the ladies...oh doesn't she look like a young Jackie-O!" I felt like a mannequin. I would feel the opposite of creative, squelched and exploited (not that I knew these were the feelings then)...I remember it was as though she sucked out my imagination and borrowed it, to parade for the neighbors. It was not the same as respecting my creativity, in a weird way it was the opposite. It was vampirish. Errggh.

I digress. What I mean about creativity (in response to your quote above) is that I suddenly had the thought that the way your parents treated you would have just smashed imagination, because pure adrenalin from fear or pure steady heartbreak is such an enormous drain on a child's psyche that daydreaming, the core of imagination, is dangerous. If you're on high alert all the time, how could you develop the daydreaming capacity that literally loving your inner child in literal scenes requires?

(You have it now, in spades, I am certain. And always did. I think that's part of what's fomenting in you.)

For me, the first time I actually spoke, as in mentally/emotionally directed a comforting compassionate monologue, to my inner child, it was an act of imagination as much as compassion. I needed to visualize her so vividly and in such detail that I literally "saw" her. The sad eyes, the smooth skin, the dark hair, the utter sincerity and innocence of her face. Once I imagainatively SAW my little self, I did once have an amazing experience of embracing her and loving her, so clearly that I felt the weight of her 5 y/o arms around my neck. (I think I described it here.)

And Amber, your maturity as an artist is absolutely phenomenal to me.

Maybe when creativity/imagination are resented by Nparents, in their children, at some point in life, will explode with it.

love ya both,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

And how are you these days, Hops? Keeping busy?

I remember it was as though she sucked out my imagination and borrowed it, to parade for the neighbors. It was not the same as respecting my creativity, in a weird way it was the opposite. It was vampirish. Errggh.

PERFECT description, from my perspective! thanks for the kudos on the art... I'm about to show those last 3 pieces at a local upscale shopping mecca... show's in Oct - and I'll be safely out of the limelight at the beach. Sticking my toe in the water in a bigger pond than the university... for feedback... and I am able to sell at this show, which is conditioned on being accepted by the jury. (if I can just find those pictures to send...)

[Hopalong]

That's exciting, Amber!

Remember no matter what "pond" you show your art in, it's all just water and a fish is just a fish. Even if it thinks it's a whale.
There's so much pomposity and posing attached to those who are drawn to art not for love of imagination or beauty, but for oneupsmanship, status, and a lot of subtle rituals of social power.

So I think you need only 4 steps about art

Your art is good.
You love doing it.
It is worth buying at a competitive price.
It may sell or not. That's weather, which is without meaning.

(repeat 1 through 4 whenver there's fear,
then return to step 2 as baseline.)

Thanks for asking about me.
I just finished the Medicaid application for my mother which I procrastinated so long I may lose a very big chunk of money I don't have, so that was difficult. Shame and anger at myself for not dealing with it properly. Embarrassment at my lawyer's irritation, and fear when my brother made a dramatic call to a neighbor: "My mother will be evicted from the nursing home!" (Not true, of course, but I could've avoided it by acting in time.) I was avoiding, denying, hiding, pretending I didn't have a brother. La la la. This pattern of sinking into fantasy to avoid the grownup paperwork of life is probably going to affect my future in a terrible way, if it hasn't already. (I'd say having nearly zip for retirement at age 58 is a pretty good indicator.)

But it's done now, turned in, and I await the outcome. I am more or less feeling good because I am not lying to myself, and I'm recognizing that accepting full responsibility for my behavior actually feels more liberating than throwing it off on being a victim. I have procrastinated and put off and played childishly with life through many years when the ants were saving and being sensible. I have been the grasshopper.

I think the same kinds of thoughts are helping me cope with the end of the "benefits" with the gardener. Realism, adulthood, both require that I remind myself that reality is my friend. It is a GOOD thing to know, so early that there's been no terrible damage, that he cannot do a relationship. It is a GIFT that he was honest and that he is my friend. It is a GIFT that I know that pulling back (not sending little hopeful messages, for example, which I finally stopped doing) is a matter of dignity and self-love, not punishment.

All in all, I'm feeling oddly good for a time during which I have faced a lot of failure.

Failure's not an enemy, I think. I've often been confused about that.

love to you,
Hops