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.
