Getting Stronger - Breaking through paralysis

[Hopalong]

Yegods, GS, this is fantastic thinking.

I can see and believe in this progress you've made, it's wonderful!

(And heavens no you didn't offend me in the slightest, no idea what you're on about....it's delightful to read your leaps and bounds of growth.....)

I am just thrilled about your insights and I can hear your gaining strength.

Wowzers!!!

 

xo
Hops

[CB123]

GS.

I dont think words can adequately express how encouraging your posts are.  I have known you a long time on this board, and to say that you have grown immeasurably since I have known you seems like an understatement.  I admire you so much for the way you have hung in there and pushed your way through extremely painful issues.  I see the fruit that it is bearing in your life and it is a huge encouragement to me in my own push.

Your journey has been part of my own thinking about money and material things....I almost started waxing eloquent on your thread about my own wonderings.  But thought the better of it and will start my own thread.  I do think you are mining deep things that are about more than your own situation. Thank you for sharing what you are learning.

Love
CB

[sKePTiKal]

Dear GS -

I don't think you were being insensitive! But I do recognize how in subtle, undetectable ways our thoughts & beliefs can color our perceptions... and affect our emotions. Just didn't want to let you make a wrong turn, unwittingly!

But, I'm reassured after reading your later posts that you won't make that kind of wrong turn. I am SO GLAD that you are able to experience relief from anxiety - even if it's anxiety-inducing right now - to get there! I can completely relate to the anxiety of "ok, everything's going too well... dare I risk feeling happy, or satisfied, or comfortable..." because my memory doesn't have many examples of when it was actually safe to do so, before being blind-sided by something "awful" or chaotic or anxiety-inducing, yet again. I wonder if: if it's possible to memorize that feeling of relief... so that you can turn it on at will... and perhaps that can assist with tasks imbued with the greatest anxiety???? I think I'll have to experiment with this one.

What you said about the alignment prayer and seeing your own predicament in your friend's -
I think (tho I wouldn't take it as gospel) that this is a form of mirroring (seeing yourself in others; others in you) and that along with marking - you got neither in your relationship with your parents. Marking would've acknowledged your anxiety as separate from your parent's lack of it. Mirroring would've tried to help you identify the cause of the anxiety... and helped to soothe, reassure, and dispell it. A little compassion and listening goes a long, long way toward getting anxiety to subside. And yes, I think this might be a way out of your anxiety feedback loop; the double bind. The EFT and meditation will help settle your nervous system... sending signals to your brain about calm, peace, safe... and help to re-wire how your brain reacts to today's challenges - separately from what happened in the past.

'member a while back, I said it might be possible to re-write how I react to things that trigger old wounds? through fiction? I think I might be getting to closer to making that idea make sense.

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Hops.

CB I am looking forward to your thread but your thoughts generated by something in my posts are always welcomed here as well.

PR - I completely get the mirroring concept - absolutely.  And rewriting - that is completely up my alley.  Great to hear that you are doing it.

The night after I last posted I had more insights.  It was extremely helpful.
Then today I started out with great plans of creating order and getting down to the work I must be about right now - generating income and creating financial order.  No big surprise - my plans have been sidetracked and I am finding myself mired in issues with my mother.

Here's the deal -
Saturday night I had taken my child hundreds of miles away to a two day workshop on meditation at a Dhamma Brothers center in rural Georgia.  I spend the afternoon/evening in an internet cafe and then camped out (only $5).  During that time I wrote, meditated, tapped and read and boy did I get some help.

I began to be afraid for my physical safety.  As I worked on that I saw that the paralysis that I have struggled with had a looping aspect that kept me trapped.  It worked like this  - a torture victim is forced to stand up for days on end.  If he or she buckles at the knees or falls down then the victim experiences excruciating pain through an electrical shock that is triggered by the body dipping down.  So the victim learns to sort of normalize the torture of standing well beyond the human capacity.

In a way that I have long known but was unable to articulate, my father required of me to state in a state of self-condemnation and anxiety.  If I slipped then what awaited me was worse than these - it was a kind of death - a psychic death or physical death.  Because of this threat I chose to stay in a state of self-condemnation and anxiety.

In some ways, the loop has been exactly that.  In other ways there are layers and layers of the way this worked.
I also identified aspects of the psychic and physical death and aspects of the self-condemnation.  And that gave me an order in which to work on these things.  I must recognized the source of these aspects.  For instance - any thing that attaches to abandonment for me is under this fear of psychic and physical death/danger.  As I make these connections I can use my old friend - Jeffrey Schwartz' 4 steps to disconnect the shut down from what is happening today at this minute and apply it to THEN.

Once I did this work, by Sunday I realized that there was a significant shift in the volume of anxiety from my being.  This is going to be a big help.

this morning as I was doing chores I found myself momentariy stuck in a "perfectionistic" loop/trap.  I quickly identified it's source, disposed of the problem and moved on.

In that moment I saw how disempowering it was for me to grow up in a household with an autocratic father who was vereer and admired in our family who was operating out of OCD, anger, and dictator like power.  I was FORCED into thinking/action that was wwaayy out of the universe of rational thinking.  And all action led to condemnation and belittlement.  No decision, no choice of action could get me out of the condemnation.  No choice or action could get me into "acceptance".  Hence - paralysis.

I arrived home last night fafter 9:30 after an almost 7 hour drive (6.5) the day before.  Tired to be sure but also invigorated about starting life anew in many ways.  The chain of paralysis has been broking.  Now I have to learn how to live outside of that.  I am cautiously optomistic.  Caustious only because it is all so new after such a long imprisonment.

anyway - I have not been taking my mother's phone call for a few weeks.  It makes her mad but what she does aboutit is tell anyone who will listen that she is worried about me and my child.  The last time we spoke, I told her that I needed a break and would let her know when I was ready.

I'm not even going to get into the dynamics, the shades of pretence and controll that are going on here but after I got my son off to a fencing camp and headed to starbucks to use the computer I called my brother and we spent over an hour talking about why I wasn't calling her.  He did a good job listening.  he understood some parts of it and he acknowledged that she does not treat him the same way.  Some of what she does - like telling people she is worried about me and my son is a way of deflecting what is really going on because it works to get her sympathy.  As I said to my brother, "She is not saying that 'She won't take my phone calls and it hurts my feelings.' because that would be HER problem and not get her sympathy but she says 'She won't talk to me and I am worried.' and that gets a 'I bet you ARE worried' response."  She is not worried - she wants me to give in and she is playing it.

Anyway - I was doing welll after this weekend of peace and development and looking forward to figuring out how I am going to get money for gas and food (to start with) when I got smashed back into reality with my "mother problem".

I had hoped for a slight honeymoon period but I am going to just be thankful.

Now I have two things to work out - finances, mother and another issues as well so my clean plate is now overfull.
Yuck.

[Gaining Strength]

I am so irritated about my day.  But I have much to accomplish and I must move forward.
Clearly this mother thing is needing attention and I know that and am willing but having just unlocked a HUGE father/FOO thing I really wanted time to process that and make necessary adaptations.

One of the things that has been made clear to me over time and more acutely since this experience Saturday is that when something I do for my child, whether it is prepare a meal or arrange activities or necessary accoutrements for activies, I have such a strong inner reaction to any of his negative responses.  I have known for some time that this connected to my childhood issues but I now understand it in a totally new light.  

Often in the morning, I do anything to avoid getting him up because of anticipation of his reaction to what he is going to wear or what I have prepared to eat.  Now I know what these simple, daily things carry so much weight for me.  I look forward to letting go of much of this as well.

Now I understand the paralysis - the fear - the expected pain and the certain knowledge of lack of appreciation.
Thanks for listening.

[sKePTiKal]

WOW.

When you go for it - you sure get what you want! Not only are you seeing through all the invisible chains around you - and breaking it all down into manageable chunks - you're STILL moving ahead. I'm impressed, GS.

And what you've written helps me, as I'm sort of relapsing into dealing yet again with my mom issues swirled together with my dad's abandonment... and losing my brother to a regressive, neuro-traumatic silence worse than my own. That death-abandonment connection is pretty familiar to me (especially in light of how close I came to experiencing the reality of it)... and it has almost it's own emotional language, separate from other types of experiences. But there are many different kinds of abandonment. My dad's leaving and almost no contact with him for years is one kind. But my mom's inability to parent or even be rational sometimes, is another kind of abandonment. Remember how I said I used to describe myself? I felt like an orphan, who had living parents. And in a way, I would've preferred being a real orphan - because then maybe I would've connected with another sustainable parent figure.

Here's what hit me with recognition like a 2x4:

[/quote]In a way that I have long known but was unable to articulate, my father required of me to state (stay?) in a state of self-condemnation and anxiety.  If I slipped then what awaited me was worse than these - it was a kind of death - a psychic death or physical death.  Because of this threat I chose to stay in a state of self-condemnation and anxiety. [/quote]

There are different ways of seeing this... understanding this. For me, that kind of psychic death was what I call "annihlation of the self". It IS worse than self-condemnation, over-responsibility, anxiety, depression, self-abuse, self-torture, rage & resentment or self-hate. But it doesn't have to be a permanent state... and I believe (don't have an argument to support it yet) that it isn't really possible to enforce that on another human being... that the nature of human spirit and will to survive - intact - is stronger even than the worst types of this kind of abuse. Hence, the moments of relief you've found in prayer and meditation.

Usually, in 2 parent families, there is a sort of good cop - bad cop play going on with kids; if kid is on the outs with one parent - the other parent will offer some refuge, comfort, relief and explanation and guidance, even if parent #2 is technically in agreement with parent #1. When that doesn't exist... I think kid feels betrayed by parent #2 - abandoned - along with being the target of anger & frustration (or worse) from parent #1. This is usually a temporary state; say a "time-out" punishment of finite time. Kid re-establishes a positive relationship with both parents when "punishment" is lifted. For some of us - time out was a permanent state of punishment.

[Gaining Strength]

I connect with this:

I felt like an orphan, who had living parents. And in a way, I would've preferred being a real orphan - because then maybe I would've connected with another sustainable parent figure.

I recall learning about the concept of adoption when I was 5 or 6 and hoping that I was adopted just for the reason you describe.  Later in my childhood, when my parents would go out to parties, especially if it were rainy, I remember lieing in bed thinking that if they died in a car wreck on the way home I might be free.  I used to go through the list of my God-parents trying to decide who I would like to live with.

PS - and still the fact that I had an unhappy childhood or that there was anything wrong with my family eluded me.  Had you asked me during my college years I would have in all honesty claimed that I had a great childhood and came from a perfect family. How deceptive denial can be!

*****
In our home there was no good cop/bad cop, mainly because my mother couldn't be a good cop.  she preferred to stay in la-la land not dealing with anything.  she popped out everynow and then when our lives and needs demanded it but then she acted like a two year old whining and throwing tantrums b/c her la-la land was disrupted.  My father sometime could be good cop in that he was the only one who did activities with us but there was so much bad cop intertwined with these experiences that there was no differentiation.

*****
The psychic death was the greatest ruler with my father.
When I was meditating and feeling fear re: danger for my safety, a memory popped into my head.  As a teen, I asked to go to a local mall near our home to purchase something.  The mall was a couple of miles away in a very safe neighborhood and I was going for a specific item.  My father said no because it was too dangerous for a girl to go by herself. (My parents controlled my every move but not out of concern but purely controll.)  What I realized on Saturday was that this "fear" of safety was about this - if I were hurt or a crime victim, then my father would be right and if right then everything else he espoused would be right as well.  It is very hard to convey but if I were injured it would be annihilating to the phyche.

What I am able to do now is to see this fear of death issue as a large dark sphere just to the left of center.  Above this dark sphere is a greyish area that intersects the vertical center at an angle and goes off indefinitely to the left.  The dark sphere in some way supports that entire grey area.  If I can annihilate the dark sphere by becoming aware of how it works and when it works then the grey area which is the section of self-condemnation will also lose its grounding.

[sKePTiKal]

Well, I don't know how you work on the black and gray spheres... but I think if you can see the "patterns" in specific situations - like the mall memory - there is enough "stuff" there for you to begin seeing what went wrong (identifying the problem), propose alternative solutions from what actually happened (look for a correction to the problem) and then, through trial and error - experimenting - find the most satisfactory one.

I think... not entirely sure about this... that I tried to completely separate myself from any "legacy" connection whatsoever with my parents. No, I don't have have my dad's freckles... no, I'm not "just like mom".... but, without any guidance or assistance, I made an error. That was, I still carried an unconscious "legacy connection"... in that I was so ashamed of their inability to be parents, to even care about me that I simply decided, again unconsciously - that I didn't matter... and that therefore I could treat myself any old way, to the extremes of pathological caretaking, self-sabotage and self-abuse... including always keeping alive that threat of psychic annihilation via shame for failure to perform perfectly and intuit the unknowable... as some kind of deep, dark, genetic - or even legacy connection - secret about "who I am". And I wouldn't even let myself know I was doing this....

so I was preventing myself from ever putting any emotion into "context" - to make it a part of my story, my personal narrative and coming to a different conclusion about myself. Almost intentionally preventing myself from changing emotional states from "shame" to "attunement" (i.e., balanced positive relationship). Because, in my family - as yours sounds, too - shame was a permanent thing.
It derived out blame, in my family... every normal child need I had was considered to be an intentional attempt to hurt my mom, make her sick, get on her nerves, or otherwise drive her crazy. Even her own mental/emotional states were blamed on us. From blame, it was easy to jump to shame - the toxic variety. When you can't do anything - or be anything - "right" or acceptable in a positive sense with a parent... ever... how else is a young'en going to feel about oneself, except that there is something wrong or bad about him/herself? And in some ways... that psychic annilhilation was preferable to always being in an environment where you never knew when/where you'd trigger the next emotional assault.

I'm babbling again, friend. But I think I see the "way out" of this kind of constant reinforcement of wrong brain development and the loops that we built in our brains. It does require that I re-enter the chaos-zone of all those emotions - again; one more time. But this time, I'm going to look at "alternate endings"... use my brain to imagine, write-over the "old" files about meanings... and between me, myself & I... re-attune... adjust the frequency... of me, myself and I... leaving the parents and the old blame/shame cycles as some kind of minor walk-on characters not central to the plot of the screenplay. They are setting, background, only. They are not "part of me", in reality... so why should I allow my experience with them to control who I am NOW?

"Simultaneous activation of neural networks of emotion and cognition may result in a binding of the two in a way that allows for the conscious awarenss and integration of emotion". Quote is from my "Neuroscience and Psychotherapy", Louis Cozolino.

This can be understood positively - as a healing process. But the flip side of it is more important at this point, for me. The binding of cognition/emotion can be negative, also - this is where I went wrong - so many years ago. Things got "bound" incorrectly... because of that blame/shame cycle... assumptions were falsely made... and I accepted a belief about myself that is completely not true.

[Gaining Strength]

I'm going to look at "alternate endings"... use my brain to imagine, write-over the "old" files about meanings... and between me, myself & I... re-attune... adjust the frequency... of me, myself and I... leaving the parents and the old blame/shame cycles as some kind of minor walk-on characters not central to the plot of the screenplay.

This is extraordinary stuff PR and it makes complete sense to me.
Everything I am doing and the writings that have resonated with  me in recent years point to something similar.  Rewriting.  It comletely comports with the neuroplasticity that drew me in completely when I happened upon it.  It also comports with a healing theory of a woman Agnes Sanford who writings have shaped my thoughts about healing for some time.

The binding of cognition/emotion can be negative, also - this is where I went wrong - so many years ago. Things got "bound" incorrectly... because of that blame/shame cycle... assumptions were falsely made... and I accepted a belief about myself that is completely not true.

Yes - absolutely.  The binding is a big problem for me.  Recognizing the pattern in my life is the first step to releasing from it.  I am in the midst of recognizing the "binding" about daily anxiety and the feeling that a person is about to come down hard on me.  I see it play out over and over.  The  next step is to act differently and see the results.  I haven't develop the strength/courage there yet but am close.  And I have learned that it is not a one time solution but a pattern that must be repeated until it becomes the norm rather than the resistance and "bound" expectation.

[sKePTiKal]

Right you are - it's not just a one time thing. In tai chi, the saying goes - it takes 1000 repetitions to learn something and 5000 to unlearn something. Doesn't matter how big the "thing" is either. I take heart from your extrordinary progress!

[Gaining Strength]

4009, 4008, 4007
Just a little more to go

[sKePTiKal]

Yeah, if you're gonna keep score... it helps to know that each time COUNTS and even if you forget... you aren't made to start over from zero, again.

[Gaining Strength]

Yesterday I was thinking that keeping track may even be helpful.  I was noticing how often I am using this and and I suspect that 5000 xs will come quickly.

I have a friend with whom I pray each morning via the phone.
She is beginning to hold me accountable.  She says that she feels called to do that.
It is so unpleasant and I am incredibly thankful.

It is beginning to propel me forward.
The timing is excellent.

[sKePTiKal]

Huh! Being held accountable, huh? That's pardoxical... but I see it and what that value is for you. There is power in it - the power to decide and do... and follow through.

Is it possible, that the old script of the double-bind denied you the opportunity to learn that you could do/be this? If so, then my logic would suppose that since the very first time you chose to do X, took the time to do X, and then enjoyed the satisfaction of completion of X... the hold that the old script had on you was effectively broken. But because it was a habit, a way of seeing yourself even, then the realities of "practice" are necessary - repetition until the new way of doing/being feels natural and becomes a part of you.

I've been thinking about failure. About how society's attitude has changed to denying that failures exist and are necessary and that they aren't shameful or destructive of self-esteem in themselves... and the repercussions of that attitude-change for individuals, businesses, and society in general. As children - and as beginners learning anything - we are going to fail and we require a safe environment to fail in... so that we can learn. Think about how an infant holds a spoon... and how that changes as she learns it has to be bowl-side up, to carry the food to her mouth - and how many times she will hold it upside down before figuring it out. The failure is necessary to success.

I think you're very lucky to have to your friend working with you.

[Gaining Strength]

I laughed out loud when I read your first line.  I see the confusion.

Actually, there was zero accountability in my family now or then.  It was ALL condemnation and set up.  There was never any point of achievement.  Achievement was impossible.  There was never any ATTABOY.

The accountability actually requires that I move into action.  It isn't about the results it is all about getting going.
She lent me some budgeting software and asked me to set a date for when I would have it filled out.
Things like that.

It helps me feel like I am getting things accomplished rather than being set up to fail.
Another big difference is that she flat out believes I can do it and if I can't she has already suggested a couple of people who can help me.  THAT is totally different from my experiences.

I've been thinking about failure. About how society's attitude has changed to denying that failures exist and are necessary and that they aren't shameful or destructive of self-esteem in themselves... and the repercussions of that attitude-change for individuals, businesses, and society in general. As children - and as beginners learning anything - we are going to fail and we require a safe environment to fail in... so that we can learn. Think about how an infant holds a spoon... and how that changes as she learns it has to be bowl-side up, to carry the food to her mouth - and how many times she will hold it upside down before figuring it out. The failure is necessary to success.

You've got it.  This is so, so critical.
I have been working on helping my 9 year old learn this.
During karate camp a couple of weeks ago he was given a saying each day.  One day the saying was, "Even monkeys fall from trees."  I have been reading the book "Switch" and there is a section about the vitality of failure in success.  It is critical to be willing to fail.  Absolutely critical.