Author Topic: The View from "There" - for me  (Read 3198 times)

sKePTiKal

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The View from "There" - for me
« on: February 20, 2009, 02:46:10 PM »
oh.... so interesting! It's just so satisfying when a plan comes together.

Last few months, I've been sleeping irregularly. Mostly craving sleep - long naps on weekends, sleeping 10 hrs at a time overnight. Sometimes, waking early but spending hours in that fuzzy zone between sleep and wakeful consciousness. What I wasn't permitted to do "back then"... was sleep, let myself rest, heal. R-brain activities: the games for Nintendo DS, Bejewelled... so-called "wastes" of time... but so necessary for R-brain & L-brain to put old patterns aside and re-establish ways of working together without invoking the fears of abuses past. It's mind-body work like tai chi - only beginning with mind. A deep calm is seeping in.

Hearing from Twiggy's long-lost friend was a trigger. Whether he remembers anything that will spark more memories isn't as important now. Just hearing from him was enough to awaken the sensation, the feeling of "me" - before I was squashed, snuffed out and programmed into a life-long battle. The emails back & forth are enough to help this me come out from the rock it's been buried under. ahhhhhhhhh.... so much better.

I'd written a long post this morning on the Spooky-Bizarro thread that got lost when my connection timed out. The inspiration was a Twiggy proclamation that I heard loud & clear, the first thing waking up:

As far as my mother was/is concerned - I didn't exist; and when I did get her attention - I always really, really wished I hadn't.

Can't think of a better first-hand description of disturbed attachment, ya know? It concisely expresses what my experience of my mother has always been like. But what kept me from walking away from this - what kept me dragging it up over & over again - was blame. Blame was my mom's defensive weapon... blame is what let her be "always right"... what made her misery into someone else's fault. I became the target for all her blaming after my Dad escaped.... when I was the most vulnerable, physically, psychically, and emotionally injured, no less. When I started feeling guilty, over-responsible, that things were all my fault - my mother said this was my "conscience" talking to me. BULLSHIT.

For me to have any needs - like for a mother, for instance - was a blameable offense. And when I asserted my independence... she just didn't know what was wrong with me. No, I was supposed to accept the blame, understand that it was all my fault and focus my attention on crawling back into her good graces by fulfilling the reversed role - mothering her and my brother. So, no matter which way I turned... I was cornered, trapped, not allowed to be a whole, separate individual. In Dec 1974, I moved out.

Now, that should've ended all this... except that I'd internalized all that nasty blather. I was held captive by what I was taught to do, when I felt bad: BLAME someone else. And I blamed my mother, even for being mentally ill. But the fact is - she really, really couldn't help being herself; no more than I could. It's just as unfair for me to blame my mother for being a crappy mother and ill, for subjecting me to abusive parenting as it is for her to blame ME, for simply wanting a mom and to be recognized as a person separate from her idea of me.

But more than that, I wanted someone to KNOW... I wanted justice... someone to tell me that yes, she's ill; no it's not you... and it's not your fault. I wanted it on a billboard on every major highway in the US. I was just egotistical enough (Nish, if you like) to think I was important enough to warrant this kind of validation. Some expert or judge to sign an official looking document (or proclamation) that said, Yep - you're right. She was wrong. And I wasn't about to stop blaming her, until I got this. I secretly hoped that like the wicked witch of the west, she'd go up in a puff of smoke when forced to admit that she was sick.

That's what I wanted when I was 12-13. Yes, it was unfair - and no, I really didn't have any business blaming myself for feeling this way then... any more than an abused wife who fantasizes her husband dying. But I was programmed to blame myself; to put myself last on the list; to look, act, and appear to be completely under my mom's projecting control. It succeeded more than I'd like to admit, true. But then, there were those wishes... the shifting of blame back to her... turning the tables...

And that shifting of blame back & forth between us is the functional mechanism that kept me "stuck".... unable to leap off my perch on the cliff...   It was 40 years ago. There is no one to blame. She still doesn't know what she did - won't admit to it if she does know - and still doesn't know it's wrong. There won't be any justice or vindication or validation that I've been right about her being "not right" - all along. Ain't to be.

But if I just lay this down and walk away - stop playing the game, even in my head - she'll be very, very angry. Might even go up in a puff of smoke... but it won't be my fault. She simply can't do those things to me anymore. And I have all the evidence I need that she's "not right" - my hubby, who's soothed and reassured me that her latest attack on me and my understanding of "reality" is totally delusional. My friend - Twiggy's friend - who's as real as can be; just like Twiggy. Who thought I was important enough to ask if I were the same person he went to school with... who was sad when I moved.

I don't have to punish my self - either my now self or Twiggy self - for being angry about how I was treated anymore. Damn STRAIGHT I was angry!! And I can just walk away from my mom's perverse, upside-down, inside-out, paranoid delusions and "right ways to be"....

it's a nice day outside. That's not my fault either.

:P





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Hopalong

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2009, 09:23:18 PM »
Oh WOWSERS.

What a wonderful declaration of independence.

Emotional independence.

It's NOT "defiance". It's declaration.

I love it!

Thank you for this waterfall!!!!!!!!!!

love
Hops
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lighter

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2009, 12:02:27 PM »
::Clapping::

If you could see me.... I'd give you a standing ovation.

You write so clearly, Amber.....

It's been a pleasure watching your journey unfold.



 


sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2009, 07:52:27 AM »
Thanks so much! I am feeling more confidence in my self... even as I'm directly faced with new-old memories triggered by re-connecting with my friend... and continued exposure to mom. They come up... I listen to the tale with my feelings... file it into the rest of the narrative... and keep on going.

Latest installment on Mom: mom has decided to target my SIL. SIL had some issues to begin with... and like a vulture to wounded animal... my mom's been doing the same thing to her (and SIL's children) that she did to my brother and me.

Yesterday's phone call with mom, triggered Twiggy's outrage in defense of SIL... and Twigs had an opportunity to choke out the words that she wanted to say for her OWN SELF... and maintain a shred of control, doing so. The thinnest shred, mind you. But a look from Hubby and a breath to "step to the right" helped me realize that the words were for my own benefit... and that Mom was completely deaf to them - either concerning my SIL or more accurately, myself. I am fine after the latest brush with ugliness, amazingly.

I believe that I could lay down a napalm path of fiery anger, injustices long past, demands for validation with her.... and she'd find a way to deny it and make it all my problem. And maybe it is. The only thing that seems effective in getting her to change her behavior is an enforced boundary. It's like a silver cross to a vampire. A boundary is her kryptonite. Not judgement, opinion, or disagreement - she thrives on this. That's fuel to her returned fire.

The absolute only thing that will cause her to back off is to simply say: I won't judge, I won't discuss this, it's none of my business - nor yours. Leave her alone. And then leave the topic.

I think I see, in yesterday's exchange... that she feeds off my discomfort and anger... it's the result she's trying to provoke... because she doesn't have any access to normal feelings of her own. It makes her feel powerful to upset me, my SIL, make my niece and nephew afraid to breathe. All the while presenting herself as a kindly, concerned, long-suffering victim.... sigh. Eventually, I think I'll have the cohones to address my mom directly about my feelings without letting the conversation fall into indirect communication through the vehicle of my SIL. But that's only for me. I have absolutely no hope any more, that she'll even acknowledge hearing the words or see the person and pain behind them.

I am appalled at how sad and pathetic this is - but there isn't any way for me to educate her or fix her or change her. It's her own self-defeating hell, designed to prop up her victim role and cause the very same abandonment she so fears. I can only change my boundaries to protect myself from either direct or indirect attacks. I won't be answering the phone for awhile. I've warned my brother that Mom is probably BDP and told him to Google it. He and SIL will have to find their own path to sanity in the face of Mom's need to maintain drama & upset. It will be different than mine, I'm sure. The collateral damage:abuse is invisible, unintentional even - she doesn't know this is wrong.

But I don't have to simply accept it anymore. Or accept her boundary transgressions. Or accept a relationship only on her terms... even if she is my birth-mother. My real mothers have been completely different kinds of people. Thankfully.
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sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #4 on: February 24, 2009, 07:37:30 AM »
All righty-then!!  :D

I'm in a "putup or shutup" place with myself these days.

I talk a really good game - art school was 90% learning to bullshit and I had some talent at that, anyway. Rationalization, excuses, obfuscation, procrastination.... all sum up to self-denial, self-sabotage.... trodding the old well-worn path of internalized abusive scripting. Reality is always simple.

What I've noticed is that I've been repeating this same pattern, with my navel-gazing "work on myself". Delaying, avoiding, day-dreaming... and returning again & again to my "reasons" why... those reasons are still - at the root - just blaming someone else for "making" me "this way". The cure is becoming the problem. It's sooooooooo tempting to keep on babbling, self-observing, and just looking over the edge of the cliff - feeling justified in blaming someone else. It was bad, it hurt, it was horrible and "against nature". It was abuse, sure. That was THEN and this is NOW.

The work of writing it all out... of devoting so much time to self-reflection... is what's keeping my feet stuck on the edge of that cliff. I've argued myself into believing that this is how I care for my self. How I healed. That's true; it's valid - but it's not the ONLY thing I need or the only way to care for myself. I've been giving myself long stretches of sleep, right-brain work, as much boredom and sloth as I want... as much non-cognitive time to begin to feel like "me" and to feel the ability and confidence in "me" to move my ass into action - the other ways I can care for myself and other ways I need to care for myself...

like saying what it is I need or feel.
like allowing myself what I need.
like giving myself permission to walk away from the story of the past - to pull my feet out of the mud and step off the cliff and stretch my wings.


I double-dare me.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Gaining Strength

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #5 on: February 25, 2009, 12:14:55 AM »
I have only read the first part of your first post on this thread.  I will have to process this one in small bits.  It hits far too close to home. 

You wrote, "For me to have any needs - like for a mother, for instance - was a blameable offense. "  I wrote something very like that earlier today.  Part of the work I have been doing lately has been remembering, listing and "tapping" on as many emotionally charged memories as come to mind.  Two of those memories were about times that I was injured - 2" gash on my shin and broken arm - but was given no medical care  in the first case and not until the next day in the 2nd case. My injuries were inconvenient and needed care and attention - need to my mother or father was also a blameable offense - need brought neglect at best and belittlement and shaming and condemnation at worst.  That's exactly how I got "frozen" or "paralyzed".  Because I need help now and that need is an offense against nature - one that will bring shame and humiliation upon me.

As this place dies I feel like I am losing a light or a mirror that helps me see who I am and where I have been.  I learn so much about myself from you, through you.  I'm always thankful for your postings.

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #6 on: February 25, 2009, 07:56:23 AM »
GS - I don't know if this will work for you; it did for me.

Blaming is an unfair shift of responsibility. By blaming you for your injuries, your parents attempted to deny their responsibility to care for your needs.
That HURTS, for sure. It breaks the "contract" of parent & child; the trust you automatically give - and are expected to give - to your parents.

The way out of the hurt for me, was to simply not accept the responsibility - the blame - and to realize, that my mom had broken the contract. She didn't do her job. And I only kept the hurt alive, by blaming her BACK. Playing her game, if you will.

Once I was able to accept that she simply didn't know any better; didn't have the right "qualifications" to be a mom; that she wasn't some archetypal, stereotype of what we're told Moms are supposed to be... I was able to see that she was a flawed human, living in her own constricted hell... and that it wasn't anything specific about ME that made her this way... I could walk away from the blame game and the hurt.

The blame game is an infinite loop - I got blamed, so I blamed her back for unfairly blaming me... tit for tat. Eye for an Eye. Once I could see that this blame was the actual chains that kept me tied to the loop... and I realized that I didn't "cause" this blame she dumped on me... (it couldn't been simply that a bird pooped on her head and she would've blamed me for not standing where she was) and I DIDN'T HAVE TO BLAME HER ANYMORE...

WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to justify the blame I placed on her by believing that she had a responsibility... the parental contract... and nursing the hurt to add fuel to the fire... I let my "injustice" drown out her "inconvenience" of having to be a parent - my injustice was more important; my hurt so much much greater than what it would've cost her to completely change herself (as if she could). I nurtured that "injustice" - the wrong that was done to me - until it became a cause celebre... my raison d'etre - to finally gain "justice" and validation for the wrong that she did. That just kept me unwittingly locked in the blame game, ya know?

I could choose to see my mom differently. I could choose to pity her, instead of secretly hoping for admission of responsibility dropped. I could choose to walk out of the pointless need to seek justice, emotional "damages" for the broken contract, and go live my life free of the inner struggle. My hurt was my hurt. I can't expect anyone else to comfort it - ESPECIALLY not my mom, who still doesn't acknowledge she did anything wrong.... and never in her lifetime, is there ANYTHING that will undo what she did to me; how she hurt me... there is NOTHING that would get me the "justice" and reparations I so needed...

until I stopped blaming her and walked away from that struggle. Until I let it go and directed my work only on changing ME... giving myself the reparations and justice (living well IS the best revenge) I needed.

I don't know if this is the same for you, GS. But I offer this explanation of what I went through, in hopes there's something you can use.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #7 on: February 25, 2009, 10:51:19 AM »
PS (GS) -

as long as I saw myself as the "cause" of the blame... I was collaborating in blaming myself... all the while trying to reason out why the blame really was my mom's and not having any effective means of "proving" it; holding her accountable... the "double bind". No wonder I always felt like things were "my fault"... no wonder I always felt trapped, stuck, and got absolutely no relief from trying to blame my mom...

the more I tried to blame her - the more I was ALSO blaming myself (seeing myself as the cause of the effect)...

... and around the same self-perpetuating cycle we went again.

YUCK.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Gaining Strength

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #8 on: February 25, 2009, 11:47:46 AM »
Quote
The way out of the hurt for me, was to simply not accept the responsibility - the blame - and to realize, that my mom had broken the contract. She didn't do her job. And I only kept the hurt alive, by blaming her BACK. Playing her game, if you will.
I get this intellectually.  How do you make the shift on this from L-brain to R-brain.  I KNOW not to play her blame game but now my "work" must be to make the shift.

My memories about these injuries are not new but what is new is my vision of the incidents.  In the first one, we had just arrive at a resort for a week long vacation when I was jumping over a low brick wall with my brothers just before lunch.  I didn't make it and cut a 2" gash on my right shin (still have the scar to prove it).  It was inconvenient!  A bandaid or two and gauze bandage was applied by the lifeguard.  I never realized until now that they could have taken me into town or across the bay to the emergency room to have it sewn up BUT that would have been INCONVENIENT.  Instead I was given, in essence, a bandaid, both literal and metaphoric and told not to get it wet - i.e. no swimming on that summer vacation.  But what happened was that my bandage was never changed and it had gotten moist and sandy and dirty throughout the week.  I still remember the putrid odor of that bandage when it was finally changed after the vacation.  My mother raged at me and called me disgusting for having such a dirty bandage.  I remember the shame and I remember how it penetrated to be about who I was - I was shame and I needed to hide that ME from public scrutiny.  I never thought that memory through because it recalled that wretched memory of shame.  But this time I did remember it and finally after these 40+ years I saw how shocking it was and is that she not only never mothered me by changing my bandage but reversed the responsibility and shamed me for her utter inadequacy.

You write about justice.  My writings are full of work about injustice.  Two sides of the same coin.  I am well aware of being locked into that longing, no CRAZE - for the injustice to be recognized. But even worse, I think part of my subconscious is raging over the injustice locked into disfunction until JUSTICE comes through and fixes everything up - restores my life to its rightful place.

How long have I known this?  A day or two or maybe a couple of decades.  I don't even know.  Will exposing this subconscious blame/shame game release it?  Clearly a necessary step but unfortunately not sufficient.  I definitely get that I must shift this mess from L-brain to R-brain and release.

Very, very angry that I must clean this mess up all by myself.  Very angry. The same anger that I developed when abandoned and neglected and blamed for needing as a child.  Same stuff - exact same source of damage.  This is precisely what is meant when we are told that the dysfunction was developed to keep us alive but now destroys us.  I had to accept the blame to survive but no longer.

Thank you PR.  Thank you for sharing your story and your work.  I am ready to move on.  I am ready to release this rage and self-destruction.  I don't know how yet or do I?

Quote
I double-dare me.
I double-dare us both!

I charge myself to see myself forward.  To see myself the way I would have it, as though it were so already. 
I have envisioned myself as my mother's whipping post and lived into it.  I still rage and shut down at injustices.  It is time to push through them and make changes.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2009, 11:54:57 AM by Gaining Strength »

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #9 on: February 26, 2009, 07:50:49 AM »
Hmmmm. Rbrain work....

it's less an effort, less a struggle, less a plan, technique, a method or process. There aren't any steps to this. No instructions.

It's almost counter-intuitive, in that "doing nothing" is how I eased into this. Instead, I simply breathed, felt, observed thoughts & feelings rise up and blow away... like dandelion seeds on the breeze. I allowed myself whatever I "felt" I wanted or needed - "should" and "have to" were just ignored - sleep and lots of it! - cherry pie - needlepoint - yes, even cigarettes.

Eventually, those thoughts & feelings - while still very, very real - became part of the background noise of my experience. Stuff that's barely noticed in experience of the present moment. Instead, what occupied my attention was ME. I watched it like a hawk watches a weak mouse.

How Lbrain liked to stay the center of my experience with it's incessant, self-important chatter. How Rbrain could just BE... and was happy simply to feel sun & breeze... smell things... and that this FELT GOOD. Remember my idea of just taking the afternoon off and finding a swing? It feels good to swing. Body gets exercise, the rocking motion is relaxing, and the other senses are slightly blurred if you're swinging fast & high. Rbrain isn't full of scary things... Rbrain can even review all the injustices... and feel like: OK... so what? It's not happening now... let's do this other thing - feel this other thing - instead.

During last year's tai chi ranking exam - when I realized that I'd skipped over whole sections of the form - I had a direct experience of how my Lbrain and Rbrain worked together. I was "feeling" my way through the form without the usual memorized names of the order of the postures echoing in my head (Rbrain). This was different; it was fascinating; totally interesting - and yep, distracting. It's as though I'd slid from Lbrain's dictatorial "do this, then this, and this at the same time" metronome-like process of "doing" into a full Rbrain experience of feeling the doing. Well, then - when the "oops" occurred - Lbrain actually manifested in my mind like some black, shrivelled up imp - dancing around in glee and pointing shame/blame at me.

I've looked at this experience for a year, trying to understand it. That image of the imp is the internalized rules, controls and injustices of abuse. Lbrain is highly programmable - a wax record album onto which many things can be recorded - my Lbrain absorbed all the injustice and creatively came up with defenses, too - for the situations that I lived though as Twiggy. Lbrain thinks it's the best part of me; it's my ego, I think. My inner N.

Now, we commonly assign feelings to Rbrain and cognitive thought processes to Lbrain - but I'm fully convinced that Rbrain thinks (it reasons emotionally) and Lbrain "feels". There isn't any clear-cut assignment of "duties". I finally realized that I needed to find a brand-new "center of balance" between the two and how they worked together. Lbrain thought it was so smart, so important - and was unwittingly repeating the recorded abuses of the past - over & over - through my perception of my own experiences. Left brain was over-compensating, filling up the space that was left when Rbrain had to run & hide to survive.

So, for the past few months, I've been letting Rbrain have free rein. I don't give a damn, frankly my dear, if people find me different, strange, or not myself. I deliberately disengage Lbrain on a regular time-schedule (like the time triggers of smoking) and take a "Rbrain" break. And it feels good - and I've been able to prove to Lbrain that Rbrain isn't going get me in trouble anymore... lightning isn't going to strike twice. I've been allowed to be right centered and NO ONE has even noticed.

And it feels a whole hell of lot better to be me.

The blame game requires egos (Lbrain). When you can take the egos out of your memories of experience, the blame - and pain - goes away. When the blame goes away, you're free to be yourself... you're past the old habits, routines, and self-abuse that were the stock in trade of Lbrain's recordings.

Zen saying: make the monkey (ego; Lbrain) run up and down the pole... in other words, give Lbrain something to do - but don't let it be the "master" of ME. It stays out of trouble (i.e., self-abuse) when it's kept busy on the kinds of tasks it likes - for, playing bejewelled - and lets me breath the fragrant, peaceful  & comforting air of r-brain experience....

... long enough to heal, to rest up, to recover and decide what's next.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

debkor

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #10 on: February 26, 2009, 10:00:09 AM »
Hello PR,

Just wanted to say you  Appear to be Flying to me.  You may not feel that wind beneath your wings because it's coming Natural to you now just like breathing.  We do it we just sometimes don't notice we are.

You to Gs.

Love to you both

Deb

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #11 on: February 27, 2009, 07:05:30 AM »
Thanks, Deb - I guess that explains the feeling of weightlessness and the roar in my ears! Or maybe, I've just come down with the current bug at school.

:D
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Gaining Strength

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #12 on: February 27, 2009, 02:12:06 PM »
Thanks Deb.

I found the source of my brokenness by talking things out in therapy and here.  Voicelessness allowed me to see how much of my damage actually DID come from wounding from N parents.  I learned this by seeing it mirrored by others here.  I got confirmation and validation from so many here.

The EFT and inner-child work I am doing with some EFTers is helping me incorporate the R-brain which is foreign to me and which I resist.  The loneliness and rejection I experienced as a child still have a strangle hold on me.  I am certain that only R-brain work can do anything to begin and/or achieve healing and transformation for that.  It is the end all and be all to move beyond the rejection and isolation.  It is a catch 22 because only be reaching out can I get out of it and yet in reaching out I experience more of it which ignites the intolerable pain from childhood etched indomitably in my being.

I love L-brain!!!!  It has been my solace and comfort.  I don't have to give it up but I have to move into R-brain and that is where all the pain is stored.  Gotta go through it.

Phoenix - yesterday I was watching EFT videos on YouTube and saw one in which the person was talking about R-brain and early childhood pain and she mentioned how smoking related to that.  I thought of you and your work. 

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2009, 04:52:10 AM »
I don't know if I mentioned this, or stressed it enough, GS....

but Lbrain isn't totally the bad guy... L-brain is important, too. It has a valuable role to play, but it's only part of the "team". An important part of this R-brain work, is figuring out how the team is going to work best together.

I didn't realize it - but I'd had plenty of r-brain help from my team - some of it appropriate and some of it self-destructive (well - it was immature at the time). AND... I've found that I had "enough" of what I needed (provided by other people) - back then, as Twiggy - to be whole. Still a little "left of center"... but whole. That "left of center" is what I call center of gravity... and it's simply not a single "spot"; it's constantly changing.

Like balancing on a tightrope or balance beam - my physical center of gravity needs to change based on movement... so in my experience and interaction with life and the people in it, my inner center of gravity has to change too, to keep me balanced.

Somehow, the isolation - the shunning - I experienced and the resultant pain of that experience got me "stuck" in Lbrain and made me fear Rbrain's reality. No longer, I might add. But it's taken quite a while for me to find a new balance; new center of gravity; and it's still a work in progress. I'm working on the association of being physically ill to justify being more "right of center"... it was the only safe way for me to have a r-brain time-out as a kid, in the presence of my mom. And being "sick" was the ONLY way I could make my mother pay attention to my needs. (You still out there, Ami?)

Oddly enough, this leads me to investigate permissions and conditional thinking again. Different than B&W thinking... "conditional thinking" I define as [I can do|be|feel - X - only IF, 'Y'=true].

In other words, IF I have the whole house cleaned up and neat & tidy... can I "relax" and play (like it's possible for more than 5 minutes, with a dog, husband, and 3 cats).
IF I'm sick, I can give myself a break from work.
IF I quit smoking, I can return to tai chi class.
IF I quit work and there's enough income from my inheritance... I can be happy.

Sort of like - IF I can meet the impossible demands of submitting to abuse, then I'll be "loved" and the abuse will stop.

Truth is, there are no "conditions" I have to meet before I allow myself be [be|do|feel] anything. The [if -- then, or else] programming isn't capable of change... so losing the "if -- then" habit of thinking and realizing the conditional operator is unnecessary...

I can relax and play, whether the house is "perfect"... or not
I can take a break from work, even if I'm NOT sick.
I can return to tai chi, even if I'm still smoking (as if I wasn't previously - duh!!)
I can be happy NOW... circumstances external to myself don't control that choice, no matter how much I was convinced that they did.

And without the conditions - it's not "good" or "bad"... it just is.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

sKePTiKal

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Re: The View from "There" - for me
« Reply #14 on: March 25, 2009, 07:59:32 AM »
As far as my mother boss was/is concerned - I didn't exist; and when I did get her attention - I always really, really wished I hadn't.

Here is my trigger at work. Yesterday, he flat out told me I wasn't allowed to be angry or defend myself when treated badly by other people. He called it "having an attitude"... and denied that he thought I had an attitude; blamed it on faculty who complained... which is totally ODD, I told him, since I have very good relationships with faculty. I told him I'd try to be more aware and pay attention to it. You all know the truth in this ruse, don't you?

What he's noticing, is that I am doing what I know needs to be done. I'm not letting him "tell me what to do" or how to do it. I'm not letting him tell me I'm not allowed to have and express my feelings... especially, when I'm angry at him. And he's beginning to get a clue about my changed life circumstances, because he denied me leave last week to attend some important trust/probate meetings, so I called in sick (covering HIS ass and still doing what I needed to do) and sat in by phone.

My dreams are full of images - feelings - scenes of past divorces. Of getting the anger out - at last - of giving up hope for change in the "other"... of letting it go. I've gone through all the fantasies of revenge, things I have the power to do, to put him on the spot... all the while wide-eyed innocently saying "Did I do thaaat?" (It's clear from what he wants me to do, that he'll do himself in without my help.) I've revisited my old friend anxiety, while putting together a strategy to give my notice and it's given me a chance to see which parts of it are fear; which are excitement and anticipation. And to prove to myself that even under this kind of emotional pressure - I can stay grounded, responsible, calm even.

I've dealt with the abandonment issue - leaving my colleagues in the insane asylum without someone capable in my position. They'll be able to fend for themselves. I see how this issue intertwines with disturbed attachment... how we become dependent on the person we most fear and hurt from our being involved with them... hoping, hoping hoping - even cynically - that "this time" our experience will be different. I see how this became my false "self" - always living - being - feeling - thinking contingent on the reaction to me, from that "other". Always chafing under the hair shirt of that false self and hating it. Ain't that silly? It comes off.

There is no longer any value in my subjecting myself to the triggers in that job. None. I had hoped that I'd be able to work through all these issues, learn what I needed to learn, finally change the situation and stay beyond the reach of anxiety, fear, anger and hurt. That's not possible as long as I stay there. The situation sucks, it's not changing and all I'm doing is beating my head on a brick wall until I'm bloody. I can't believe I didn't see this a year ago: that the only reason I thought there might be value in staying was truly - that's what I was used to. The devil I knew. And the more I claim my independence, my right to my feelings, the more I expect to be treated well... the more intense and frequent the "punishments" get; the more limited my range of movement (which is pretty much already confined to my dark, cave-like office and computers).

In push hands, there's a techique that says: Yield, but don't give up, without signaling your intention, to lead your opponent into error. I've been yielding... letting the boss think he's won... while putting together all the necessary puzzle pieces, to be able to simply step out of the way - to be not there - thereby changing the balance, leverage, and forcing him off balance. In the process, I am claiming what I should've realized was mine all along. Self-determination. My own integrity and dignity. My own rules of being and my own identity...

and yes: my identity is strong and intense; intensely emotional. I'm not going to change that for a job - any job. So I'm letting the job go. On my terms, with my timing, to suit myself. I'm bored and longing for something DIFFERENT. Claiming that, too.

Yield, without giving up. Be not there.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.