My journey out

[Gaining Strength]

I have three weeks to break these binds.  I now know the sources and I have several techniques to help me but the strength of the bind is astounding.

I am going to work out these issues here because it is too difficult to do it all alone and I know there are a few people here who will be supportive of me.  The past two days have already slid by - no action.  I refuse to allow the full three weeks to do the same.

The silent voices are the strongest.  Those voices are voices of sabotage and they tell me that I do not deserve better, do not deserve a clean home, do not deserve books, do not deserve friends, do not deserve healthy foods, supplements, exercise, nice clothes and on and on. These voices have me going in circles.  They shut me down.  It is ridiculous how painful this whole experience is.  It seems ludicrous and absurd but it is not.  I know I can break this.

Part of what happens with this internalized criticism is a perfectionism that completely binds me.  Right now, my counter is littered with empty bottle and half-empty bottle: an empty syrup bottle, an empty vanilla bottle, a half empty kefir bottle, empty orange juice bottles.  They are there waiting to be cleaned and put into the recycling bin but the recycling bin is full.  Today was recycling day but I did not get the bin to the curb.  And the explanations go on and on, connecting to one thing after another but there is no "end" to reach, no starting point to begin from.  It is so frustrating.  I see it as a kind of reverse OCD.  I don't have compulsive behaviors but compulsive paralysis.  I am determined to break through this now. It is SO frustrating and humiliating.

[Ami]

Dear GS
 I SO understand the voices that tell me I am not worth anything. It is awful. Today, I thought that it would be easier to see my M as good and myself as bad. It would be so much easier than facing the truth of my life. Then, I could call her and have a family.
Then, I thought about people who love me. I would be hurting them by not loving myself.How would I feel if s/one I love hated themselves and wanted to destroy themselves. It would kill me.
 Then, I felt a sense that I WAS worthwhile b/c God loved me but it was a real heart feeling. You and I are worth s/thing b/c God does not make junk. I feel it. I hope I can hang on to it. It feels really good.
 Keep writing GS. I think everyone can relate whether or not they will admit it.
 We, from N families , are probably more alike than different. You have a home here, GS. I wait to hear  more.       Love   Ami
 

[Hopalong]

Wow, GS.
This interests me a lot, just have a sense that it's a key thing for you:

there is no "end" to reach, no starting point to begin from

Maybe that is actually true.

For everyone.

In all times.

Maybe the tidy beginnings and tidy endpoints are all an illusion.

So...benchmarks might just be pauses, on thresholds, to say, Yes.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you Ami.  I helps beyond words to have a place to work this stuff out among people who might understand some of it.  So few people anywhere understand the jumbled mess left by N parents.

Hops - when I first read your post I was taken aback - I have to have a beginning - somewhere to begin to undo this mess - to find my way out.  But then I thought that your message held the true hope.  It says, "stop looking for the beginning and just plunge in." 

But my mind goes in loops.  As soon as I start one thing it all loops around and connects to so much else and the beginning turns into the middle and becomes so jumbled that I have to stop.  The one thing for certain is that I MUST find a way to stop the jumble.  Somehow put blinders on - blinders on those old voices.  But as I wrote before the biggest problem with the voices is that they are still unconscious so it is hard to overwrite them even though I know exactly what they say.

Bear with me as I go through the very same stuff I have poured out here for the past three years.  For some reason, I simply must pour through it yet again.

[Ami]

Of course we will be there for you when you express your grief and pain. It is not linear.You need a place where you can just "be". If s/one does not like it, it is their problem.
 The Board is for self expression(having a voice). That is what you are doing.
       Ami

[Ami]

Dear ((GS))
  I can see what Alice Miller means when she says healing is about really seeing just how rotten  your N parents were.
 As I see my M's face come in to focus, *I* feel more real. It is so ugly.
 When I had some sense as a teen,I remember saying over and over,"My M is an idiot. I am OK. I was OK and I am. My feelings are human. My thoughts are human. I can chose my actions to be with character, as much as possible.
 My teen self was right. She was an idiot. She is an idiot.I took what an idiot said and lived a life by her rules . I was her mirror image idiot.
       Ami

[sKePTiKal]

Oh my... sounds like you've simply HAD IT with this "fix" you're in. I can sort of relate to the feeling of pressure building up - a restlessness and impatience to be DONE WITH IT...

I know this feeling, too. But I think that's asking too much of myself, too fast. And for me: making "rules" about how healing works is just more of the same bad parenting that I am in the habit of imposing on myself, projected expectations, and refusal to accept that I simply don't "fit" into any pre-manufactured jello-mold of who I am "supposed to be"...  what is "right & proper"... and conversely, what is shameful or humiliating.

After all, it's not like I had a complete and "good enough" parent, ya know? I'm bound to have quirks, bad habits, and things I struggle with. That's OK, for me. Sometimes I might make lightning fast huge leaps... sometimes, I find myself back down at the base of the "gravel mountain" looking the same old issues in the face, too. But I truly AM different than before starting my journey. So are you.

WHO SAYS that not getting the recycling out is grounds for humiliation? Nobody's perfect. And the world isn't going to come to an end, because you missed one week. In perspective, it's an inconvenience; a bother... and doesn't mean you aren't a responsible, caring individual. So... you didn't get it done. OH WELL. Life goes on. (And if that "transgression" is worth feeling humiliation for, I should be hiding in my closet, whipping myself over the size of the pet hair balls that roll around the floor, everytime the A/C comes on...)

Really, sweetie. Maybe laughing about all this, will help you find a way through. I know you get caught in these loops; I do too. But, really, some of the things we were criticized for, and made to feel lower than dirt by the 'rents for, are preposterous. It helps to realize that the things the parents thought were so earth-shatteringly important, just might not be - to a LOT of other people. We don't have to care about the same things, the same way. We really DO get to choose what's important for ourselves, each and every minute.

After all - the parents were abusive; how they POSSIBLY have a good sense of perspective and just what IS important? Maybe the recycling just wasn't that important to you, this week. Ya know? It's OK with me that you didn't "get there" and I don't think any less of you or stop caring about you, as a result of it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So much for my reaction and silliness....
here's something more serious.

Attachment theory.

Our sense of ourselves - who we are, what we are capable of, how we function... our relationship with ourselves...
develops out of our first relationship with Mama. If there were problems in that relationship (and duh - how could that be YOUR FAULT?) it can even affect how our brains (L/R) develop. Look up Allan N. Schore... he's got some amazing ideas about this.

It sounds like a life sentence - that our brains are hard-wired going back to infancy to react the way they do. But it's really not. It is possible to re-program yourself... but, of course, the older those rutted pathways of being, feeling, thinking and responding are... the longer it takes to re-program. Trying anything new - changing routine/habit for even just one day - and then repeating helps me figure out the relative importance of the "old" paths... and whether or not they really apply in the present. It takes many, many repetitions of the "new" before it feels natural; feels like "me".

I think this might be a way for me to "repair" my self.

Remember what I said about "rules"? Deadlines are also rules. When I'm feeling impatient with myself and wanting to "Git R Done"... and then feeling overwhelmed with all the things on my list... I just give myself a "me timeout". It can wait an hour, a day, a week, a month... while I figure out whether or not, I truly DO care about it, if it's just a "should" that I got conned into thinking was important or if something else is more important to me - RIGHT NOW.

Obviously, common sense would dictate some variation in the actual application of this self-prescription!  
Bills do have deadlines, fires have to be put out, the dog does have to go out. But there is an amazing amount of flexibility in so many things that we've become accustomed to believing are "have tos". It feels really good sometimes to just tell that voice: NO, I DON'T have to. I'll do it later - when I WANT to.

Maybe your "paralysis" is an inner need that is asserting itself over the practical to-do list. Maybe it will tell you what it needs... and why that's more important than the recycling.

[Hopalong]

Hey PR,
Repetez, s'il te plait.

I wonder if it's like reverse OCD. Or if there's perfectionism under the inability to start.

I am completely empathic to one-square-foot at a time...

Chores ARE endless.
Maintenance IS eternal.
Housework NEVER ends.
Organization REQUIRES ongoing attention.
Stasis IS entropy.

These are daunting truths for me too.

But it is not personal. I know that the need of life for these things to happen isn't about needing ME to do these things. Life doesn't care whether I do them or not. It's just that the life force generally requires humans to do these things in order for that bit of life (one human) to live its life effectively. I can opt in, or opt out, life doesn't care. But the kudzu is going to grow whether I give it a whack every day or not.

Sometimes I feel better, and float out of my paralysis, when I ask myself to think simple thoughts.

Not about my mother, or brother, or home. Just, simple:

I will make my bed and tidy my room now, with the History channel on to keep me entertained.
That will feel good, to leave for work knowing I leave a tidy room behind.

Okay.
I'm going to do that now.

love,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

I don't know, Hops; I don't know.

I'm sorting it out, too. One minute I'll feel like I have it all figured out - and the next, I know I don't. Somehow, the "shift" that's going on is that it's OK (for me), no matter which place I'm in.

[Hopalong]

Gotcha, gotcha, PR...

I actually typed PR when I meant GS!

We're all looking up through murk, but I like it that you say wherever you are is okay with you.

xo
(GS, only got my bed made. But then, a few other things too...)

xxoo
Hops

[Ami]

You make good points about life , Hops.
 I wanted it to be a certain way and I  threw away my true perceptions so I could see the false as true.
 I wanted my M to be normal and if *I* had to morph in to a mental case, I was willing to do it b/c I wanted a M who loved me.
 That metaphor could be applied to most areas in my life.
 I could not face how it was.
      Ami

[sKePTiKal]

GS - how's it going today?

Something I forgot to say yesterday... those "voices" that come up from the void of unconsciousness... I think you need to let them come. Get them out. Put them down on paper or put them here. Whatever those messages are, even if you can't find the exact words that were used. Don't let them linger in your mind... where they can invoke the feelings of old wounds and start up the "loop". Look at them with an awareness of "now". Evaluate the statements/messages as if they were coming from a complete stranger. See if the feelings you have are exactly the same as the old ones, coming from someone else.

I think these messages and the feelings they elicit are exactly the tools you need to unlock the mystery of the loops and find your way out. After all, you aren't required to always have the same feeling to the same words... not NOW. And even just the tiniest difference in you NOW - how you think about the "message" and how you feel - really is progess. A lot of itty-bitty successes are just as successful as one great big one.

It's always murkiest before the dawn for me. Yesterday, I was completely cranial-rectal. Naval-gazed into a foo-foo bird. I do apologize if I didn't make much sense yesterday. When I'm in the midst of a big flash of understanding or seeing, I don't communicate too coherently. I haven't yet learned to keep away from the keyboard until it all settles down into words that actually communicate what I mean.

Those of us who've experienced a lack of "good enough" parenting or worse at the hands of parents are left with a belief that we ourselves are somehow deficient, permanently shattered or lack effective skills to function with the rest of humanity. It's not true, of course. But despite all the evidence to the contrary - that belief persisted for me in the form of an idee fixe (or obsession) with trying to overcome my original wound(s). To make the outcome of that original struggle - DIFFERENT. It wasn't conscious, though - it was buried in my feelings about myself and my ability to see and match patterns.

When a present moment situation lined up with, reminded me of that old pattern.... out came the old feelings. And of course, I have messages like yours, too. And hello - for me, that WAS the loop. It all happened at the speed of light; all a blur. It was only in retrospective, cranial-rectal analysis that I could parse out the linear cause-effect. I've had to go through this parsing exercise a mind-numbingly number of times... all the while feeling helplessly trapped in a process that I felt was completely uncontrollable by me and intentional choice. It is truly a form of paralysis, as you describe it.

After I found Allan Schore's work on Attachment Theory... read it... had superficial a-ha connections... and let it germinate in my brain for a few months while I worked with some of his ideas, it came up again for me recently. And I found another paper... and a reference to yet a third work. It's the title of the third work that's flashing like a neon sign for me right now. Just the title is enough, right now. The title is: Repair of the Self.

I don't know if it's a how-to manual or not. Doesn't matter. What is important to me, is the idea that it's POSSIBLE to repair one's self. No matter what horrible things have been experienced or how deeply they are buried in hard-wired neural pathways... it IS POSSIBLE to repair, correct, change those pathways and therefore "fix" ourselves. Sort of negates the idea that we're hopelessly, helplessly "stuck" this way, doesn't it?

Where his work has shed some light on my predicament, has been in his neurological descriptions of dissociation. I didn't really understand that word "dissociation" in terms of brain-function and my sense of self. I didn't see at all how my relationship with my mother could be described in terms of brain function... and therefore, my sense of identity or self. Oh yes - and in my sense of self-efficacy, or effectiveness in life... at meeting my own needs; being aware of my own power to direct myself, choose goals, and take the steps necessary to execute the tasks to reach that goal.

That's why I recommended it yesterday. We're all different and those early experiences are all different - so my path through using that work, those ideas might be irrelevant for you. The one thing that will be helpful, though, is the idea that our minds - and therefore also our emotions - have a basis in bio-neurology and that how our minds develop is affected by that very early attachment scenario. Just like we became programmed to think/feel the way we do now... we can edit those neural pathways... those endless loops of action/reaction... and install new programming. And whether we're aware of it or not - I think we're always doing that anyway. So we know HOW - at a neuro-biological level... where there may not be any "words" to describe it.

Then, what Hops said is absolutely true... you just gotta dive in, right where you are. There's no one size fits all formula... accepted linear "practice" or 12-steps to success. The only benchmark is YOU and your relationship to YOU.

You get to decide what's important to you. You get to decide what matters, what you feel in certain situations - and whether the situation really calls for that intensity of feeling or not. You can cancel the loop that causes paralysis and feeling those awful feelings. And even one teeny-tiny, itty-bitty change in the direction you WANT to go in... is real progress, an achievement, and a cause to celebrate your own power over faulty programming. Sometimes it's the little things that matter the most, when you're trying to do big things.

[Hopalong]

I really like this, PR--I think it's very powerful advice:

Evaluate the statements/messages as if they were coming from a complete stranger.

And I looooove this, thanks for it:

even one teeny-tiny, itty-bitty change in the direction you WANT to go in... is real progress, an achievement, and a cause to celebrate your own power over faulty programming.

That is being compassionate and generous to ourselves.

True, the world won't grind to a halt to make way for our parade. But that does not mean we can't stop on the porch on in whatever room we're in to hold ourselves lovingly for a moment, and quietly acknowledge the subtle step we just took.

I agree with you.
Those little steps are meaningful.

Even if it's one 6-inch square, we can let it speak its positive reality.

Without doing the Lady Justice thingie.

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

My computer has been on the fritz for several days.  I have just logged on after several days absence and have scanned the posts but not read them in depth.  But I'm going to comment anyway -

It is difficult, even in this particular environment, to convey the individual struggle.  It is difficult for many reasons but part of it is that I find that I operate on more than one level at a time - conscious, subconscious and unconscious and of course what is going on often is conflicting.  I believe it is those conflicts that are the source of neurosis and denial.  

My big battle of course is with what is going on with me on the sub and unconscious levels.  

What I am trying to do in this thread is to get it out on paper, to bring up that which is repressed or hidden or submerged and unavailable to my rational mind.  I am very comfortable and pleased with my rational thoughts.  They give me comfort and even where they differ from the "nom", I embrace my differences - wholly.  My rational thoughts are not troublesome to me at this time.

My struggle is in the other realm.  When I expose the bits and pieces of the puzzle of my subconscious and unconscious that project themselves into my consciousness and I put them out here - it SEEMS easy to react to that rationally but really - until I get more of these pieces on the table it is more like the blind men and the elephant - it is easy to come to a conclusion but the conclusion doesn't take into account all the pieces and the subtleties that are still trapped below consciousness.

As i have struggled with this issue over the years I have come to see a number of things that have helped me.  One of the first things that helped me was to understand at long last that what I experienced was indeed abuse - emotional abuse.  Once I did hthat I began to understand more of how that abuse actually worked.  Because there were some catch 22 aspects it has been difficult to figure this out.  For example - when something went wrong, i.e. I needed my parents help, the response I got was that I deserved what I got.  Just think about that - when ever I needed help and asked for it I was met with profound undermining and devastating belittlement - that if I had a problem - if someone was rude or cruel to me - if I made a mistake - if I didn't know something important about how to procede in life - it was because I deserved to be excluded, belittled, punished, without - and on and on.  But more than that - I lived in a family had a way of functioning in which life was a set up.  Everything I did was an opportunity to be belittled and humiliated and it was all done in the name of love.  As a child and young adult my family lay in waiting to see me trip up or make a mistake so they could "prove" how I deserved everything that happened to me.  If I did something well, it was cause to bring up every mistake as a way to say that I did not deserve a pat on the back because I had, in fact, failed and made errors in the past.  If a question were asked, inquiring into my interests or activities, it was done as a set up to garner information to use against me in some form.

If something broke when I used it then I was the scourage of the earth.  I something didn't get done - it was because of some bottomfeeding trait of mine. If I made an error it deserved punishing, If I put something in the dishwasher it was at the wrong tilt, if I didn't put it in the dishwasher it was an unspoken, behind the back, all knowing expectation of failure again fulfilled.

If I did something - I did it wrong.  If I didn't do something - it was typical - failure - worthlessness.  If I was excluded and became angry it was proof of why I wasn't worthy of being included.

All of this and more - lead to a damned if you do, damned if you don't - paralysis.

So what i am trying to do hear is to put words to the fears and anxieties that keep me bound in chains.  Rational responses don't really turn the key to the locks - it's all too deep for that.  It is, of course, completely irrational.

In one aspect I am really stuck at a very young psychological age because never in my entire life was there a human I could turn to for sympathy and compassion.  Needing help always lead to humiliation and a kick of sand in my eyes.  But the big trick here is that now as an adult, when I implicitly or explicitly ask for help I am expected to be asking as an adult but on a level I have no control over, I am actually asking on the level of a very little girl who needs her hand held and kind proddings.  What I got were demands and hopes that I would go away and get the nelp I needed somewhere else if at all.

This is very, very difficult stuff and I am up against a clock.  I am NOT functioning and I MUST.  I am out of money and out of time.  But what I need may be just the opposite of what someone else here needs but across the years I have learned that I have a good sense of what I need.  For many years, I knew what I needed and often when I asked someone in the helping professionals they would tell me, "no that is not what you need - let me tell you."  And often i did but they were wrong and I was right.  Now what I need is to push forward and get through this stuff. For me - pushing myself is nothing like a replay of my experience with my parents - my parents never pushed me nor did they expect good things from me ( and finally I understand and admit that they did not WANT success from me - it was FAR too threatening.)  Getting good things, having good things, making accomplishments is completely out of my experience with my parents.  Pushing myself can be a good thing - it is the resistance that is the parent induced, anti-me response that i am determined to overcome.  

Would I like support and encouragement for that - absolutely.  Is there anyone I can turn to for that - not that I know of.  If there were any people or any place where I could find  help it would be here.  You are the only people that might possibly understand but even here our experiences are different enough that I may not find help - even here.  But at least I can come here and share.  I simply need a place where I can share what I am doing and why.  It may not be what anyone else would do nor why anyone else would do it but maybe you can cheer me on anyway.  Probing questions can definitely be good but looking through my FOO experience lenses, probing questions look like ammunition gathering tactics rather than the thought provoking tool they may be meant to be.

[Hopalong]

Hey GS,
I don't know if I understand completely but I have maybe a glimmer.

Sometimes when I have an acute need (from my own problems) and somebody doesn't grasp it, it's like a razor.

My current housemate, to whom I've expressed a near-desperate desire not to be engaged by in "chat" in the mornings when I'm trying to focus and get ready to go out the door (a huge challenge)...has tried to modify her intrusiveness. But I'm SO sensitized to her past sallys (what I experienced as aggressive, though she didn't mean it that way) that when she so much as says HELLO! in the morning I tense all over...

It's like, if I yield a fraction in her direction I know she will begin to direct me, ask me questions, subtly start "helpfully" telling me what to do, and I'll become completely derailed from my very tenous grasp on making order for myself.

It can practically wreck my day. And I hate that.

It's horribly fragile, sometimes, my one-inch step forward.

Is it anything like that...well, don't answer that.

But do say exactly how we can help push.

If you can, when you like, if it's helpful.

love,
Hops