Another layer of the onion

[CB123]

Strength,

I know that where you are right now feels lonely, but the work you are doing is so important and is truly making a difference.  I hope it helps to know that we are out here, cheering you on, while you do what is essentially lonely work.  It is as though you have finally given up on having someone else take care of your pain, and given yourself permission to (and the faith in yourself to) work through it.

I am reading your dreams and thinking how very very important they are in this work, and how they are giving you a treasure box of information about your pain.  What a gift!  That is better than anything we could give you.

I am excited for you and so, so hopeful.  It has been a long night for you, and it is thrilling for me to see the dawn.

Love
CB

[Gaining Strength]

Dream lastnight, long and complicated but one scene was in a grocery store aisle.  I was behind two women and they were ambling along, oblivious to the fact that they were blocking the entire aisle.  I was getting so frustrated and irritated.  When i finally got to the end and got by I caught up with friends at the meat counter - an old fashioned cold counter set out, stand alone.  

I was still quite frustrated and knew that they would not want to hear about it and yet it was bubbling up and had no where to go.  If I revealed my frustration they would leave me behind.  If i didn't I would explode.

As we are chatting, I realize that all of this bubbling frustration goes directly to my father.  He was figuratively in that aisle with me and was getting angry and fomenting his quite anger and irritation at me.  I knew, anticipated that STUFF that was going to come out either at me or inappropriately at the ladies.  Everything was always about him.

This dream showed me connections of real life to childhood experiences dealing with him and his rage and the dreaded result - the anticipation.  It is so fitting that I had a similar experience connecting the present with the angst of being with my father in the past just yesterday in the grocery store.

all of this is bubbling up.  I so pray that there will be a freedom when it is revealed and dealt with.

[Gaining Strength]

Dear hops and CB, thank you both for reaching out.  It was like hearing a voice in the wilderness.  It let me know that I am not alone.

CB - thanks especially for the encouragement about the work.  I talked to my therpist about it today.  I told him that I knew that I was reexperiencing the real, raw pain from my childhood as a part of "going through" in order to get to the other side, but that my fear is that I will not get to the other side, to the functional side where I can use the competencies that I was born with.  He assured me that I would get there.  that is exactly what i needed to hear - that I will definitely get there.

I do believe it.  I do know where I am and why these dreams are bombarding me.

[CB123]

Strength,

And I am a witness to your journey for the last few years--remember?  I can testify how far you have come....

Can you believe that you are where you are now??? I know that this is very hard and a struggle.  But LOOK at you!  This is huge.

Your therapist is right--you are going to make it.  You HAVE made it.

Love
CB

[sKePTiKal]

I'm of the same opinion as CB - you've made it kiddo! ((((((((GS))))))))

Sure, there'll be more emotional forensics as you put some distance between the "down into" and the "up out of" parts of the process. Things actually start to look different on the up out of side and for me, this caused some re-evaluation; re-assessment of old stuff that I thought I was "done with". Sometimes the "answers" were the same - but with a slightly different angle of perception about them. A new, different understanding.

Your dreams I think, are helping you create & design your own "how-to" manual - they're providing glimpses of how to start making those changes you've wanted for so long. They're letting you see the choices you've got now.

So - WOWWWWEEEEE GS!! Can we have a happy dance celebration soon?

[Gaining Strength]

Got an image/analogy today that Ihope  will help me find my way through.  (Greatest fear is being stuck right in the middle of the maelstrom - in the pain - stuck in it.)

I am scuba diving and down deep and oxygen malfunctions.  I am desparate and racing toward the top.  If I don't slow down I will get the bends.  I am not thinking but reacting.  I am desparate.  I must transition out of panic and into determined, calculated action.  I must leave the desparation to belong to the family for survival, leave the striving to get it right so I can belong - that striving to survive and desparation to belong and be loved and be cared for is the very panic and despair that is driving me to race to the surface - it will kill me.  

The key that I want to gloss over is looking to be cared for, to be nurtured to health and functionality, to be a child again with loving, nurturing care givers.  I simply missed out on that.  I must mourn it and move on.  if I continue to try to get it by dysfunction (immobilization/slovenlyness) I will die and worse than that my child will carry that suffering and debilitating burden onto himself.  I owe it to HIM as well as myself to move out of the panic and slowly, methodically, deliberately get myself out of this danger.

I can do it.  I am utterly on my own but i can do it.  and I must.  I am afraid but this is truly life or death - not physical but emotional, spiritual  life or death for me AND my child.  

I pray for God's strength and courage and ability.

I am in a desparate struggle and the only path to survival is slow and steady.  It is not fight or flight.  I have NEVER been slow and steady with anything.  It is now or never.  Thank you to this community for the courage and acceptance that gave me the grace to get to this place.  I will find solace here to journey on. 
Even though I see this as the way to my desired outcome, I am still gravely reluctant to put myself through the trials and tribulations that it will take to get there.  Only thing is - I have no where to go but up but my life depends on slow and steady. 

[Gaining Strength]

CB and PR thank you both for your insight and your encouragement.  Your posts are like breaths from your own oxygen tank to help me bear the pain of the slow and steady journey up - through.  No panic allowed.

[Gaining Strength]

I must hold to the feeling of the rabbit dream - the fact state as opposed to the reactive, emotive, panic/fear state. 

This is the "training" that I must go through so that when I experience the triggers, I must return to rabbit state.
Step 2 is to push through the actions that must be taken, which heretofore have triggered the repressed anxiety state, the double=bind rememory, to rewrite those neural paths.

[Gaining Strength]

The "going through" feels like a self-destrucion.
Thinking about this process - I saw that self-sabotage was the way that I stayed connected with FOO and held onto hope that I would be loved and provided for.  Of course self-sabotage also meant that I would come into life as a failue AND be rejected all the while still on the tether.

It is so topsy turvy insane where up is down and down is up but never so straight forward as there are many twists and turns and mirrors to confuse along the way.  It is a tangled mess.

Part of the evidence that I am "going through" is that things are getting much worse: the disorder is growing, the self-care portions are getting worse and on and on.  What was always bad is greater and greater today.

I am in extreme discomfort.

The voice that is loud in my head says "I hate you."  It is my voice.  I haven't heard this for years, if not decades.  I remember that during my college years it was the loudest, most repetitive voice in my ear.  I am not sure why it is resurfacing at this time except perhaps as a "going through".

The double binds that I have written about here for years now have feeling attached.  For so long it was words with no feeling connected.  I do know that this is part of the "going through" but the problem is that the feeling is like a low voltage cattle prod and it is difficult not to revert to immobilization or other stimulation to distract.  I must find a way to stay on target in order to get through.  Distraction and avoidance will merely prolong it.

I think that as an adult the pain will be more tolerable than as a chlid.  As a child it was NOT bearable.  I, unwittingly and unaware, desparately sought connection and solace - ANYWHERE and from ANYONE.  But I was loud and funny and came from the kind of family that people wanted to attach to so the connections were for all the wrong reasons and did not last and then I was left in the middle of the room starkly alone.

Now I am in a place of retreat with mess piling up around, no money, mounting debt, deteriorating house and yard and truth be told - deteriorating self.  I continue to hope that this "going through" does indeed lead to the other side.  The pain is so great.

[sKePTiKal]

Ah sweetie - you know we're here for ya! We absolutely CARE about you and I for one, believe that it will only be desperate & extremely painful, for just a little bit. I do believe that the fear, the pain, are all going to evaporate very soon for you. That voice - the inner "brat" that says I hate you? Here's an idea... reply back, saying "I don't blame you after all you've been through!" Or something like that - validate the anger, and the reasons why.

But don't stop there. The next step is hard to describe and will be unique to you. You're going to ask that "I hate you" voice for permission to try to make it OK in the here and now. Explain that you can't change what used to be, but with her help you can make NOW what you both want it to be (those wants might be different).

You may find that she couldn't care less about how the house looks. That she actually finds some satisfaction in the mess - the lovely, full of life material chaos of life might be her thumbing her nose at the values that were pushed on you when you grew up. That situation will require negotiations: asking permission, outlining goals and steps to getting there, and trades - rewards for completing step 1, step 2, etc. The rewards can be quite simple - even 15 minutes & a cuppa tea are sometimes enough.

I'm going to bet that, as a child, you weren't even offered a reward for some of the impossibilities you were asked to take on. This might just be enough to win her over - gain her cooperation and participation in helping you, instead of stopping you with fear and pain.... (just the same weapons used against her). It will be a novel experience, huh? She might like this enough, that she'll come up with things to do, and propose her own rewards! How about an ice cream cone, for cleaning up the kitchen? A walk in the park for __________________.

And NO - I'm not gonna let you run out of oxygen!!

[Gaining Strength]

PR - that is an incredible offering.  What you have written feels like a perfect fitting puzzle piece.  I have read it quickly as i must be on my way but  I will be spending a good bit of time moving into fully.  Thank you - the words are inadequate.  I feel as though I have received a gift from the universe and you are the vessel through which it was delivered.  Thanks again.

I am practicing shifting  into "rabbit" today.

[Gaining Strength]

I come here to write, to help my mind unload as a way of accessing or releasing some of the unconscious stuff so that I can find my way to the other side.  Several times I have come here and had nothing to write but when I get in the car or lie down at night then I have paragraph upon paragraph coursing through my mind.

I am finding myself toggling back and forth between avoidance and distraction.  In the avoidance state I experience shut down/immobilization.  This period is possibly, potentially productive because at times i am able to be in this place, turn down the repression and tune into the pain ultimately shifting into what i am referring to as "rabbit" state - where I see things clearly without the emotional pain.

It is in distraction that I am slipping into the old pattern that is currently really working against me.  I do need help out of this place.

Unfortunately computer time and mental stimulation through TV, radio (NPR), human conversation, computer busy-ness are all ways that I can distract myself and not feel the cattleprod of anticipatory anxiety that is actually a low-grade physical pain - a constant release of adrenal which is exhausting and unpleasant, like a never-ending caffiene buzz - so, so, draining.  This distraction state is the normal state for my entire life.  I am able to see that I have lived my entire life in this state of fear of my father's silent rage jammed up against my longing and fear of not getting his approval and acceptance.  that fear is the fear of funning out of food of sustenance of shelter of protection.  As i write this I see that I have put myself in that place where lack of money has jammed me right up against fear of those very things.  This never ending, until now unconscious recognition of my infant origin fear has brought about the reality of what I have life long feared.

Bringing the unconscious into the conscious is supposed to bring about a shift.  I am so frustrated at not getting to the shift. 

In the past few days there is so much more that i have understood.  Issues about friendships from my teen and college years.  All this stuff is just pouring out.  I so long for the shift and am so, so, so, so frustrated that nothing is happening.  It really can't go on forever.  Being in the know without a shift is like sticking my finger in the socket with no relief.  it doesn't actually kill me but surely the sustained experience will.  My heavens, I have spent my entire life in avoidance and distraction and now i'm stuck experiencing it full throttle.  How long can this last?  I suspect it could go on without relief for a very, very long time.

[Gaining Strength]

Now I am late today but I have to write.  I had a breakthrough.  Hope ney pray it results in outward changes.

My father set me up to fail.  When I was in his home he put excessively tight controls on my life.  He was determined to keep me a child.  This was a family joke with everyone else but him.  My mother would occassionally talk about how he wouldn't let her talk about "adult" things because my father did not want up to know.  She clearly saw that he was trying to keep us from growing up and she thought it was funny. 

My father controlled all of the finances.  He was generous with his spending on us but only for things that he selected.  He did not fund things that we asked for or that we wanted.  Only things that he wanted us to have.  Many times these two universes were the same but my desires or needs that fell outside of his choice went unheeded.

But the biggest part of this understanding is that my father who kept extremely tight controls, then leg go of the reins when I became and adult.  He  did so without so much as a word.  The whole set of rules shifted but I only learned it by experience.  In fact when confronted with it he would actually deny it.  So I was kept a child especially in financial terms - totally dependent and then in a child-like mental state - unleashed with a mentality that kept looking to dependence.

[I had seen this clearly but it is much more difficult to write.]

There are ways in which he constantly sabotaged my work.  One was when I had a decent job in another city and he insisted that I accompany my mother on a trip to Europe.  I did not have vacation time and was forced to quit this excellent job to do what he demanded.  Couldn't I have said no.  Of course an adult could but I was psychologically a dependant and did not have any capability to tell him no.  I believed he was asking of me something that had MY best interests at heart.  I believed that HE knew what was best for me.

Did he help me find a replacement job?  of course not.  Did he help me provide for myself financially - of course not.  Did he care what I was going through - of course not.  Did I understand any of that - absolutely not.  I was only certain that I wasn't getting things right.

This whole state of dependence that I am living in without and entity a person to depend on is an outcropping of all of this. 

Clearly still not worked out but definitely getting closer.  So desparate to cut through it all.

[Gaining Strength]

Ph my gosh - I got another piece of it.

I have been waiting for the "other foot" to come down. 
The way I got set up from early, early childhood was I would be given responsibilities that I did not have the resources "knowledge, ability, financial wherewithall, etc" to complete. and I would sit in utter panic unable to move forward and THEN the deadline would come "6:30am" was a regular one and all hell would break loose - the rage (silently but deadly) would be unleashed and furious action would ensue and some assistance would come through in that fury - it was a "move over you incompetent and let me take care of this."  And the job would be done.

THAT is EXACTLY what has been going on inmy life.  I have been waiting for the other FOOT to DROP.  That is the immobilization and the panic.

I so get it.  I would fail until deadline and then there would be much GREATER consequences.

I pray somebody here hears this and understands.  I cannot tell you what a door of pain this has opened.  This is very, very, very frightening. I do feel like a little child who is immobilized and incompetentt to take care of herself - to even keep herself alive.  This is the storm.  I so pray that the other side is near and that it will truly bring a release from this cycle of immobilization and authoritarian punishment. 

My house and my life are a mess waiting for the punishment and condemnation to come and wipe it all out to start the cycle again.

Someone recently posted about their parents demanding they do things with out the child knowing how - it was about toys being thrown out because they weren't cleaned up even though the child didn't know how.  That is exactly what I experienced.  That is an example of this cycle I am describing.  I am going through life immobilized waiting for the hell to wipe out the mess so I can start over.

Please God let this realization break through to the other side.

[sKePTiKal]

That "other foot" isn't going to drop, GS. That rage, fury, and humiliation WON'T follow anymore... unless you do that to yourself, because you've been trained to do so. Remember a while back, I posted a description of what "FEAR" stands for?

F = fear of
E = experience that
A = appears (this is the important word)
R = real

So break this down: you learned from first-hand experience, painfully, over & over until it became like a "law of nature" engraved in your brain that there really WAS something to FEAR. The real part of this, is that when you were a child and even as a young adult "kicked out of the nest" with no one covering your back... you realized how much you didn't have - the empty spaces in skills or knowledge, etc. That's like standing on the public stage of the world, stark naked. Humiliation and fear are the normal responses, aren't they? Intensely so, I'd imagine.

But HEY - that was then and THIS IS NOW. A LOT has changed - about you, about the situations you face and about the skills and knowledge that are now all part of you that you can bring to each challenge (no longer obstacles) or opportunity (because you are now an expert "learner"). And one of things you've learned, is that we internalize the cruelty that other imposed on us.... we do it to ourselves and it's hard to "catch it" - to see it happening in enough time to disrupt the cycle or pattern...

One thing I've realized is that these loops, patterns, self-sabotage things... depression, anxiety... these all take up so much head space - so much of my TIME... that I can't possibly add one more thing without the fear of failing completely to accomplish ANYTHING. So.... what can I drop? Let go? Not do? If I have to cut something out of this multi-tasking hell, what would I choose?

The thing I chose to drop was the FEAR. I have been filling up the other side of the balance scale with experiences where "nothing bad happened" because I ___________________. (X, Y, or Z) I lowered the "risk" of the "other foot" or shoe dropping... chose to do/not do things ON PURPOSE to "see what happened" - see if the world came crashing down... or if someone would come up and make fun of me for it... or if the cosmic punishment dropped down on my head. I picked things like housework....

If I DIDN'T do the dishes this morning - would anyone complain? Would I be smited by the other foot kicking me in the butt? NOPE. I just had dirty dishes to wash up later. NO ONE ELSE CARED... it was just ME and my internalized personal critic, abuser, and FEAR who created all the tension, worry, anxiety, FEAR and driven-ness to do these things. When I "experimented" with letting go the fear of doing/not doing... I discovered that there was a LOT more time and space in my life. When I set myself to for instance, cook slowly... decide what to eat, allow myself to move at a comfortable space (and allow others to participate)... and not make it about "doing it right or wrong"... it lowered the "risk" that fuels the fear.

Bunnies don't worry about nibbling leaves or hopping "correctly". They're not too worried about outside cats or other predators either... they just "hop away down the bunny hole" to safety. Oh - and I've seen bunnies defend themselves pretty well - those back legs are very strong! They can fight back.

I think you've "got it", GS. You're already "there". I'm gonna confirm that for you. But there's still the work of experimenting, putting into practice - actualizing - making real what you're starting to see very, very clearly. It's not a test. It's just bunny hops and practice.... and sometimes playing with other bunnies, too! No nasty "other foot" anymore.

((((((()))))))))