N parents actually TEACH children destructive self-images

[Hopalong]

I MUST be that voice for myself ....

....The internalized voices deny me the breakthrough.

You are right, GS. You know you must and that's why you're frustrated...it is hard to pick up that new habit. To be your own loving supportive ally...all the way to your internal monologue.

Pretty soon, though, a positive self-loving internal monologue becomes so fruitful and pleasant by comparison, that it joins up with the life force and beomces the dominant voice...

The internalized voices are TEMPORARY parts of you. You are a youngish woman with many decades of life and thinking and realizing and celebrating ahead. You won't want to listen to those internalized voices for dozens more years. You're too smart. You'll literally be bored with them.

At some point, with enough repetition, the life-calling voices will just show their beauty. The ugly ones will keep muttering, but they'll be boring to you.

Swat. Swat.

love
Hops

[Ami]

I can relate to your pain, GS.
 I had the same thing, today.
 I have found a modality that is helping me--Kundalini Yoga. It uses breath and simple postures. It is breaking up layers of distortions for me.
 I bought some books on how it heals emotional disorders. Some people with severe emotional problems overcame them. I do believe it b/c I feel much better since I have been doing it. 
 You can check it out on Amazon,if it seems good to you.    Ami
 

[Gaining Strength]

He is only 8.  He knows she is irritating but not what the real deal is.  He is too young.  But he does pay a price.  She is basically his only grandparent.

[sKePTiKal]

Here's my theory on those internalized voices - it's true for me, anyway:

Those statements - the putdowns, punishments, dismissals - are actually my pain trying to tell me "what hurts"... and why. The repetition of those unkind, thoughtless - and even malevolent - internalized statements, are my pain trying to get my own attention and DO SOMETHING about it. The most common thing I would do is protest... and of course, the punishments & judgements escalated as needed to quell the protests. Voila - voicelessness.

And what I've realized recently, is that all I have to do is acknowledge the hurt, the boundary violation, or what I've realized on my recent road trip - is  FEAR... listen to it, understand it, agree with the fear or pain and deal compassionately with myself... for me to stop being in the emotion long enough for me to ask: is there any evidence that there is any truth to this particular judgement, or painful statement, or fear??? And then it goes away, until the "next one" comes up.

I feared most, that my mother was dead-on accurate about me: I really was a spacey, day-dreaming, incompentent fool. That I needed all my anxious, OCD-like "routines" and processes -- or I'd STOP APPEARING NORMAL... sort of emotionally naked in public and this would abominably embarrassing. (uh... I AM normal... and I have nothing to hide emotionally... I think this is a projected fear; not a REAL fear, in other words.) This and other other fears came up as I drove 1000 miles round-trip over the last 4 days. Wasn't really "thinking" - just driving, paying attention to driving - and over & over these fears came up, I did what I just described, and it went away again... gradually becoming less & less. It was just what I did... and it seemed to work.

I began to FEEL that those old fears were nothing more than how I protected myself from real statements that hurt, were unfair, unjust....

... and that I have learned many other ways to protect myself... though I need to less than I did long ago, because OTHER PEOPLE don't treat me like that (and for the few that do, I have new methods of defending myself). It was time let the fears pass into "history"... fade away... tossed out of the car like a gum wrapper, before people cared about littering. The whole road-trip was full of things like this. I'll write more about them, later.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm really getting some deep stuff coming up.  It is extremely painful and I am feeling great hope at the same time.  Belief for real, life altering healing.

Hops - thank you for that.  Even though I have posted since your post I was responding to Gratitude's earlier post and did not read your last one.  The timing was right.  Yesterday I began reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers which pushes the issue about the value of the amount of time applied to something.  It was a shot in the arm or encouragement to keep at it.  Then I came here and read your post, "At some point, with enough repetition, the life-calling voices will just show their beauty. "  I will NOT give up and my hope only grows stronger.

Ami - how interesting that you should write about Kundalini Yoga.  A friend of mine is deeply involved and has been inviting me to come.  In a week or so my little one will head off to camp and I will take that as time to give it a try.

[Ami]

Hi GS
 Kundalini is so life changing. It works on just the deep patterns you and I talk about. I bought a book from Amazon on how it helped all sorts of emotional problems.
 It helps you feel a sense of your own identity and your own value. That was what we lost. I love it so much, GS.
 I would be excited to see what you think.   Ami

[Gaining Strength]

What is the name of the book?

[Ami]

I will find it later, GS and come back with it. It is SO inspiring to see case histories of people who had it worse than I did recover and feel good about themselves. For me, this type of yoga  has been one of the greatest gifts of my life.    Ami

[Gaining Strength]

PR - I would love to read more about your road trip.  I hope you find time to write it here.

I believe I understand the process you describe.  It fits well with the 4 Steps articulated by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz that I have often referred to.  You are allowing the feeling to emerge rather than repress it and then (in my words) calling it false, recognizing that it is not accurate.  As I read it I was hit with a kind of flashback and recognized immediately that I have lived in fear that the voices were correct.  Your post helps reaffirm the process that I have used and gives me insight into more opportunities for applying it.

I am in a place yet again where posting my process for healing and my experience of uncovering the profound wounding allows me to receive from other here wonderful insights and techniques for further healing.  The best group therapy possible.

Oddly, I am finally understanding why this healing has been so slow and has taken so long, so late in life.  Whenever it comes it will not be too late.  And it IS coming.

*****

The other day, Monday, I was tapping along as I waited in carpool line and received a rush of understanding that I wrote down in a notebook.  It was 7 statements that came up from the depths that revealed the issues I am facing at this stage.  The 7th was that my parents needed to destroy me in order for them to sustain life.  Once this emerged I knew the line from "Mandela's Prayer" pointed to the key issue for me.  "There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around me. My playing small doesn’t serve the world."  My parents, as part of their N distortions needed/need me to play small and I did it - always under extreme rage and resentment which I often have turned in on myself. THIS is what I must counter - these voices which tell me to be small in SO many ways, including all those issues that have bedraggled me over the period I have written here.  

My obedience, my longing for family, my need to belong all of which would have worked in another family, in another setting with loving supportive encouraging parents, actually worked against me and all but destroyed me.  It makes me cry, even now.  The attributes that would have provided another with a fantastic life led me into a life of poison and destruction.  There is so much unfairness in this life.  The things of survival that paradoxically wreak destruction on life as well.

When I recognize and acknowledge that my parents actually needed to destroy me psychologically, it explains so much of the struggle I have endured.  It also shows me the way out. Not an easy path but a path.

[Ami]

This is the book    Kundalini Yoga Meditation
                         Techniques Specific for Psychiatric Disorders,Couples Therapy and Personal Growth by David Shannahoff--Khalsa

[sKePTiKal]

For me, the breakthrough was in realizing that only I was responsible for those voices... the fears...

and that since I WAS responsible, I could FINALLY do something about it. Yes, my mother played a big part in how I became like this. But she can't - it's not possible - KEEP me being this way.

It was really necessary for me to completely ignore all the old grievances I had about my mother and what I experienced and how I felt about it, before I fully understood how much power there is that one simple fact. Absolutely nothing "in my way", in the here and now... nothing stopping me from being what I choose to be. And that's pretty different from I used to think was "me".

Still imperfect... still a little ditzy sometimes... but that's all OK now. No more self-sabotage or failing on purpose... no more rationalizations about how I am. Rationalizations, I think, are only a way to blame someone else for what is my responsibility to be or change.