Author Topic: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis  (Read 9807 times)

Gaining Strength

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Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« on: July 18, 2010, 12:30:44 PM »
All that is past is prologue.

No joke.  What I have been writing about in my process of healing here the past three years has at many times felt like some kind of self something or other that was just going through motions and a bunch of BS, up one step and down two others, chasing my own tail.  But it was NOT.  It was all building, building, building a platform.  Unbeknownst to me, the ups and downs were gathering the tools and excavating the damage.  It was an up and down business.

I struck a level, a solid level and now I have picked up so new tools and am moving forward.
I can't wait to share more about it but for now I am strengthening my own mind and holding a solid focus, allowing no distractions and do doubts to enter in.  I am like a ant chewing through metal.  And I am, as always, thankful for this place to come an share and receive.

Izzy_*now*

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2010, 02:19:04 PM »
This sounds great, GS

"Breaking through.." put me in mind of my new (for neurological paiin) medication. I feel so free, loose, agile, limber, almost pain-free, and compare it to before when it was like all of me was coated with paint and 'keeping me inside', immovable, stiff, in pain, creepy, crawly skin feelings that set off tremors and shakes, but...
..yesterday I dressed almost normally and took the car out as though these past 15½ months never existed.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if such a simple pill could do that for our minds? (Of course the above gave me a new mindset, but not for healing of the mind that takes every thought we have and puts it to the test of 'righting' our thoughts, about whatever brought us to this forum in the first place!)

Good on you!

xx
izzy

"The joy of love lasts such a short time, but the pain of love lasts one's whole life"

sKePTiKal

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2010, 09:15:08 AM »
I'm eager to hear more about this! Sounds refreshing and empowering!

Hugs to you.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2010, 12:42:06 PM »
Izzy - what incredibly great news.  Maybe the "mind" pill will be next.

PR - thanks so much.  There will be more to follow.  next up - financial freedom - well the start of tackling the financial mess - I fear, nay, know that it will be more like  5 months rather than 5 days but even 5 months will only be about getting feet on ground (if that) but it will only be worse if I don't get going.  The news for me is that for the first time since my husband died 9 years ago last week I will be getting my feet on the ground.  Lots of loss to make up for but if these shackles of paralysis are broken then it is like having life, it is a hope that can truly conquer instead of the emptyish hope/fear I have been living in.

CB123

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2010, 11:45:51 PM »
Hi Strength,

Just wanted to cheer you on and say that I believe in you!  I am so excited about the strides you are making...I can hardly to wait to hear the details when you can share them.  I know that your journey is going to encourage me in mine--already has, as a matter of fact!

CB
When they are older and telling their own children about their grandmother, they will be able to say that she stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way -- and it surely has not -- she adjusted her sails.  Elizabeth Edwards 2010

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2010, 02:10:57 PM »


CB - thank you for your continued support. 

I continue to make progress.  All to slowly but progress none-the-less.

I have been daily using prayer, meditation and focused work to make shifts in this backward way of living.  This morning, I had a full two hours before my child woke up.  I am not discovering new issues but I am focusing on making shifts.  The biggest issue that stand before me is compex but I am becoming aware of how I have lived into the wounds and stayed emotionally stagnant.  Now my work requires that I shift out of those life-long habits of feeling and energy.

I am working on shifting out of "inadequacy."  There are so many connected tissues to those feelings including the need to be brought out, waiting for my parents or some authority to give me the go ahead.  When I write about it here it seems so simple, simplistic even but this understanding is the result of YEARS of work.  That is what is so crazy about the whole thing.

These days I am using internet connection at Starbucks so I get little online time.  I have more that I would like to share but time is very short.

Ales2

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #6 on: July 28, 2010, 01:28:05 PM »
Hi Gaining Strength..this sounds good and solid - meaning its on a solid foundation, not the temporary euphoria of awareness and the feeling that all will shift on its own - it still takes hard work to unwire old patterns. Does that make sense? I've been caught in that trap before....

Over christmas last year, I bought a bracelet with a charm that I had engraved that reads "Breaking free brings great rewards".  Its reminds me that I need to make a break from the difficult past to reap the rewards in life I want.  Whenever I get stuck and am about to do the same behavior, I repeat that saying and it helps me to make a different choice.

Good luck with your recovery...hope it continues its upward trajectory!



 

Overcomer

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #7 on: July 28, 2010, 01:40:57 PM »
Dear GS.......this almost brings me to tears!  I knew you could do it, honey!!

I am so proud of you!!  You are a wonderful woman and you are learning!!!!

You go girl!
Kelly

"The Best Way Out is Through........and try laughing at yourself"

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2010, 05:04:46 PM »
Through prayer, dreams and meditation I am sinking deeper into these age old issues.

I have been doing a specific prayer with a friend for a few weeks, it is about "alignment".  Without going into the details about the prayer, I will say that it is helping me see how I have been "aligned" with the insanity that my father imposed on me.  Day by day, I am recognizing that beginning as a young child and throughout my young adulthood he forced me into crazy thinking.  He appeared to be reasonable and successful.  When he would tell me specific things about a subject that seemed to be contradictory, I always assumed that the problem was with me rather than his lack of reasoning.  I could not see that the views or information was not logically possible.

Now I have to realign my thinking and my emotional reactions.

I was listening to NPR this morning, the Diane Rehm Show.  the conversation was about the new credit card rules concerning college students.  I found myself getting more and more frustrated and angrier.  And when the moderator used the phrase, "The Big Talk" I knew why.  Most of the conversation was about a parents responsibility concerning teaching financial responsibility to their children.  Not an odd point, very reasonable.  But the problem is what about the offspring whose parents never teach them and the further asssumption that they have been taught.  I had this sudden insight in a gap that applies more broadly to people whose parents never taught them things that society expects offspring to know.  Some of this stuff cuts straight down a socio-ecnomic line but not all, not by a long shot.

One of the things that I am understanding is that points of focus for me are issues that draw strong emotional energy.  This understanding is not particularly new but the the way in which to apply it is.  This issue about parental instruction is one for me.  Because my parents left me to fend for myself concerning almost every issue.  I may as well have come from the lowest of low economic levels in terms of the instruction I received about life.  That would be NONE - about anything.  And once I was out of school and married, (I now realize) I was simply off my parents radar screen.  "Responsibility done."  sort of thing.  No more relationship needed except for my mother to get from me what she could.

This is a hugely sore issue for me and one that I must work on righting myself concerning.  By righting I mean that I have been knocked asunder by it and am at a tilt and must be righted or set upright.

Some how this issue get to the very concept of being able to act on my own behalf.

One of the other things that is coming to me, albeit way to slowly, is that thinking about and doing things for myself were sabotaged and punished as a child.  And this has been a big problem for me. This may be my biggest problem.  I can definitely overcome it but it is indescribably painful.

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #9 on: July 30, 2010, 05:11:13 PM »
Finally able to meditate, after years of anxiety standing in the way. 
I am not yet up to a daily regimen but on my way.

This is truly helping.  I am beginning to differentiate between the emotional being that i desire and the person who is attached to survival.  Very difficult to convey in words.

While my child was out of town two weeks ago, I was able to clean the entire upstairs.  That is a huge accomplishment for me.  But even better, though I have not cleaned the downstairs, I have worked daily with my child to maintain the order upstairs.  It is such progress.  And I am making some progress downstairs as well, particularly in the kitchen and concerning planning and making meals and keeping the kitchen clean and orderly.

Progress is important and noting the progress is important as well.  i am very, very thankful and hopeful.  Much more progress to be made particularly on generating sufficient income to pay off my debts and sustain our modest lifestyle.

sKePTiKal

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #10 on: July 31, 2010, 11:55:49 AM »
Hi GS - your news sounds very good! Even if there's still a ways toward your goals - you are getting there!

One thing you posted tho, isn't quite accurate. Economic status doesn't determine whether or not parents do their job - or teach children what it is they need to know to "grow up" or function as adults. I grew up one of the poorest of the poor - and while my mom did an absolutely lousy job teaching me the finer points of interacting with others and even basics like taking care of myself... and instead giving me a whole bunch of bad habits under the guise of "this is the way WE do things" ....

... as a poor kid taking care of my "family unit" I learned quickly about money, budgets, stretching a dollar, making do and the "horror of the situation" when there simply wasn't enough money for the most spartan of basics. It's what I needed to know to survive. I wonder, if your parents didn't know the financial side of life? I mean, didn't they have accountants, secretaries, lawyers and bankers who "took care of" all that for them? I'll bet your mom didn't even know how to keep and balance a checkbook - someone would've done that for her. Did they keep track of the budget themselves? Do you remember seeing anyone open bills, write monthly checks, discuss large purchases and expenditures? Maybe... they didn't know HOW because they never had to do it themselves.

You are correct about strong emotions being tied to memories of certain events, interactions, memories. It's how specific parts of the brain work, you know? Something I'm finding out - and wanting to know more about, so I'm working on it - is that we can "edit" that connection of strong emotion and those memories. In positive ways. In ways that are still truthful, fact-based... but by breaking that link of strong emotion (or processing through it, maybe)... it is possible (and it gets easier with practice I would think) to free oneself from the pattern of stimulus - response - and treading down the same old paths of the scripted loops that our brains have learned so well.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's possible to use the same brain that's kept one in those loops... differently... and get a different result that is experienced and perceived as freedom from the old responses. More soon - I have little time.
Success is never final, failure is never fatal.

Hopalong

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #11 on: July 31, 2010, 03:36:18 PM »
GS--

Wow. Oh wow.
Your progress is absolutely MASSIVE, woman.

I see this. Oh good for you oh keep going oh that's exciting!!!!
Atta GIRL.

My daughter has for 10 months absolutely excoriated me for the things I did not teach her that she needed to know in order to run her life.

She has been unfair, and unkind, and also accurate.

Dave Ramsey's our new daddy. (I wasn't taught what I needed to know about money either.)

I am so glad to be learning it now.

Life will be different than if I had been taught to not daydream instead of plan.
But it wasn't.

I won't be well off and perhaps not even secure. But the thing I am sloooowly figuring out is, even if constrained, I will be okay.

And so will you.

O BRAVO!
Keep doing! That's actually all it is.

love,
Hops

"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2010, 04:56:39 PM »
As I continue forward with my meditation and EFT I am learning more still about my anxiety and paralysis.

I find that with both of them, when I first begin a session, the anxiety actually ramps up.  I have written about this here every now and then over the past couple of years.  But if I stick with it about 10 or 15 minutes into the 20 minute sitting suddenly there is an opening into calmness.  It is as though a trap door or drain has opened up and suddenly the dirt fluid drains out of my mind and body.  This is such a relief.  It may last only a moment or it may last through the rest of the session.  But the more I do it the more I am able to get to it.  It is happening with EFT as well but it does not have a lasting effect yet.  Still the instantaneous relief is a God send.

As I am getting these brief moments of relief I am able to understand more about my anxiety, how it functions within me and where it came from.  I'm not sure this will make sense to anyone reading it but it is worth a try.  

Today I got an insight that opened a door onto an understanding that I have had brief flashes of a couple of times in the past.  It is difficult to explain but here goes.  I  have oftern written about the double bind that I live in due to some of my childhood experiences within an N family dominated by an NPD, OCD, bi-polar, autocratic father who demanded and received complete controll and dominion.  Part of the double bind that I gained insight into today is that there was anxiety that was part of our family life.  While my father did not raise his voice he dominated with a quiet rage.  It was a clenched jaw that held back a threat of violence that was experrienced as normal by my brothers and me. (I have no idea if my mother thought it OK.  Her parents did not exhibit that kind of temperment.)  Life was frightening.  Home was frightening though I was completely unaware of it.  The sound of footsteps or car tires sends my anxiety into overdrive even today.  It sends me into performance anxiety and the profound sense of inadequacy.  Retreat was the only safe place, being alone in my room but it was always only a temporary reprieve and would soon give way to the silent rage that would come because something was demanded of me that I would not be able to perform up to snuff.

But what I saw today was a two fold insight.  While I lived in a baseline level of anxiety, if my father saw that I was not sufficiently anxious he would see to it that I reached that state.  Somewhere along the way it became a norm for me so that if things are going peacefully for me at some point my body unconsciously turns on its radio scanner and searched the universe for the right anxiety wave and tunes in.  Bop - anxiety level soars.  Not in reaction to anything other than peace and calm.  Add a task and WHAM performance anxiety skyrockets into shutdown.  Performance may be something as simple as planning and fixing dinner, cleaning the kitchen, writing a thank you note - the mundane and the significant alike.

But, I digress, the insight today was that anxiety was also a form of punishment.  If I made a mistake or was unprepared, or without adequate resources (time, money, ability, etc.) and my father caught wind or became aware or turned his own scanner on looking for my inadequacies then the punishment was executed in the harshest form - BZZZ - but no tell tale signs were left only a child (or young adult) left to dissolve in utter fear and paralysis which exacted even more silent rage.

My point is this - silent rage (his action) and extreme anxiety (my reaction) were the punishment for setting a goal or receiving a task and the certain (through unreasonable demand or sabotage) failure.

Anxiety is the result of my scanner anticipating more anxiety AND it is the punishment for not being adequate - a double bind - the only solution to which is overcoming anxiety.  Much, much easier to say than to find.  But at long last, meditation (which has eluded me for so long - ironicallly due to anxiety) is opening the drain, oh so slowly but surely.  And where EFT did not have enough power, (I suspect because there is no one or even two or even multiple "events" that led to it but it was a steady state) coupled with meditation, together, I am beginning to get relief.

The other insight is even more difficult to describe.  But here goes.
I have been praying and "alignment" prayer for a few weeks.  I think I wrote about this yesterday.  The way I have gained my insight is be seeing how this worked for the other person and then I immediately saw how this applies to me.  The friend I have been praying with is in a difficult place in her marriage and is separated.  The other day after we had been praying I saw that part of what happened is that when she was married she became aligned with her husband and her marriage.  Four years into their 8 year marriage, he began to run up credit card bills and make less money than he said he was and used a home equity loan on the house which she bought before their marriage.  It was a mess. But they were able to get things patched up and sorted out - in a way.  Then he got cancer and almost died 3 years ago and brought in no money for over a year.  This past Jan. he lost his job but did not tell her for over 3 months and again racked up credit card debt and then - shorted the health insurance premium in June leaving them and their young child uncovered.  All of this happened without my friends knowledge.  To put it mildly, there are some trust issues there and some issues concerning security.  

Anyway - the point is that what I saw is that as she was aligned to her marriage to a deceptive and not forthright man, her alignment with God was out of kilter.  The image that came to my mind was that her marriage alignment went off to the left a few degrees but as she has been praying she simply let go of that alignment and moved into alignment in a vertical direction.

When I saw this, I knew immediately that I have been, lifelong aligned to my father, trying in vain to generate justice in an injust family situation.  I have wanted that get things "right" in a family where no relationships are going to be right.  It is like clinging to a sinking ship, unable to let go of the dream I had when I embarked on the lovely voyage rather than recognizing that the voyage has gone horribly askew and needs to be abandoned in favor of something different, in favor of saving my life.

Strangely enough I got part of this understanding from a fascinating book on financial types that I just happened on in the library.  I sort of presented itself to me - and for all the right reasons.  Now that I see this, I know that I must let go of trying to "right" (as in set upright) this injustice that I have lived my entire life.  I was truly unaware, in denial of the fact that I was still operating within the constraints of those disfunctional boundries.  I knew they were not good for me but I falaciously thought I had moved beyond.  Not so - at least not until now. 

Am I completely free of my denials?  Probably not but I am now aware of at least two binds and obstacles that have kept me from succeeding in life.  And this is significant progress.  I look forward to continued progress.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2010, 05:00:57 PM by Gaining Strength »

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2010, 05:21:15 PM »
Hops - I am replying to your post without rereading what I wrote.

I hate that you have been the recipient of "excorizting" criticism and condemnation.  I hope that I did not write something that was "blaming" parents for not teaching because I know when I heard that NPR story my reaction was great frustration at the expectation expressed by the panel that parents DO have that financial "Big Talk."  I think very, very few do and I attribute it (correctly or incorrectly) to two primary factors - 1) they don't know the information or 2) they don't take the time or prudent (responsible) action.  And, I for one, think it predominantly falls into the former.  I think few, few people have the knowledge themselves and money and financial issues are so overly laden with moralistic valuation, therefore financialy ignorance is a source of shame and must be covered up at great cost.

I do love Dave Ramsey and he was my favorite until I discovered Clark Howard who is fantastic as well.  Check him out online if you get a chance. 

I am so thankful to be learning these financial things now.  There is no age that is too late.  My anger concerning my parents not teaching me is NOT so much that they didn't but it is that they simply never saw it as a responsibility, that they didn't even address it and sort of hoped it would go away.  There was a pattern of abundance that had been in operation for several generations and it accrued to my father's and mother's first cousins and to their friends and their children's friends.  While that same financial situation was NOT going to accrue to me or my brothers my father (and heaven knows my mother had ZERO idea about any of this) choose to NOT address this rather than simply being honest.  All I would have needed was one or two sentences along the lines of, "You will have to provide your own living.  You will not be receiving any financial assistance from us or your grandparents."  That is all but not only did he nor she EVER say this they simply pretended that nothing needed to be said or that nothing had changed or that they had no responsibility to point me in any direction and to make things worse, my father and my mother sabotaged several ljobs that I did have. 

Even if they chose not to help me financially, which is absolutely their perogative, they have never even acknowledged that I am struggling, that they never struggled financially.  It is as though the gulf does not even exist.  It is a HUGE elephant in the room that they simply pretend is not there.  That is actully far more difficult than the financial struggle itself - it is the utter pretense that my struggle simply is not there.  And furthermore, because my parents and family prefer to pretend it is not there, I don't have the comfort of even discussing with any of them any kind of strategy for getting out of my situation and into a better one.  Having someone or anyone to talk with and to receive advice from would be such a remendous help.  And that lack is definitely a greater burden than the lack of financial resources. 

BUT, I am getting stronger and stronger and will be able to learn what I need to know on my own.  The fear has defnitely stood in my way. 

I realize that I started this post in reply to yours and yet it took a decidely rant and venting direction.  My apologies.  I hope you will forgive me.  I relaized mid-stream that something of significance for me was tapped as I wrote. It was very helpful in opening yet more insights for me.  I hope that it did not feel - I'm not sure how to finish this line except to say I hope that as I shifted from being responsive to you to venting about me, that it did not feel offensive to you.

Gaining Strength

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Re: Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis
« Reply #14 on: July 31, 2010, 05:41:31 PM »
PR - Thank you, as always, for your post. 

You wrote,
Quote
Economic status doesn't determine whether or not parents do their job - or teach children what it is they need to know to "grow up" or function as adults.

oops - of course you are correct.  I know that.  What I was trying to say is that there is an assumption, presumption that parents in the upper socio-economic levels have a well developed financial understanding and knowledge AND share that knowledge with their children.  Society also presumes that in the lower socio-economic eschelons that parents don't have the knowledge to share or prepare their children. 

Obviously these presumptions are not about fact.  I actually know no one whose parents conveyed such financial knowledge to them.  One family I knew growing up had three children.  The oldest two are males and the youngest female.  The oldest is autistic or something like that though his parents have denied that anything is wrong with him his entire 56 years of life.  The second son succeeded his father in the family business.  The daughter was given only the $10,000 taxfree max per year for many years and taught nothing about finances.  This family is on, and has been on for many, many years, Forbes list of 500 wealthiest individuals.

Because this daughter had zero training, her business brother was able to use his position as a corporate head and his access to top attorneys and accountants to trick his sister into signing away her rights to an enormous amount of money.  She was unaware that he would trick her into such a give away until a couple of years ago.  Not surprisingly this led to a huge scandal and law suit that was quietly (out of the newspapers) resolved this summer.  I have no idea how it was resolved but I know that the contract she signed must have been well drawn because I know many of the attorney's involved.

I actually know a half-dozen people who I grew up with who had something similar happen to them by a sibling or parent.  And in each case my friend or peer, or school mate had little if any knowledge about financial issues though they stood to inherit significant wealth.

Thank being said, I cannot even begin to convey the admiration I have for you and for others who determinedly figured out financial matters for themselves.  It is a remarkable ability and character trait.  I have a couple of friends who fall in this catagory as well. 

Quote
I'm becoming more and more convinced that it's possible to use the same brain that's kept one in those loops... differently... and get a different result that is experienced and perceived as freedom from the old responses.

I completely agree with this point and with your entire paragraph in your post above it.

That is why the book by Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, The Mind and The Brain is so meaningful to my.  He writes about his scientific inquiry and understanding and therapeutic use of neuroplasticity.  I believe in it, I count on it and all the things I have been using to make progress are chosen because I believe they contribute to "rewiring" my brain and/or my son's brain.

Thank you for your patience with me particularly when what I write seems to come across insensitively.  I do not want to be insensitive nor offensive and always want to know if my writing takes such a twist.

thanks so much - GS