Circumventing avoidance and moving into pain as a journey

[Gaining Strength]

This thread is what I am going to use to do the work that is inspired by PR's thread.

I recognize that there are a number of diversionary tactics that I use to avoid the pain that is held on an unconscious or subconscious level.  Today, I was forced through this pain in a way because both, I chose to face it and because some fascinating self-sabotage took place on a subconscious level. 

I had a difficult meeting this morning.  It left me frustrated and adgitated.  I went home with the plan of facing some of these underlying issues that make it so difficult to do the things that PR is describing that will lead to some healing or at least relief. 

Facing these pains, deep underlying pains is very, very difficult even when it is my primary intention.  I found myself truly walking in circles.  I decided to use the EFT because it helps me get to some level of consciousness in a way that meditation cannot yet do for me.  That is because it is currently impossible for me to sit still and let my mind go blank.  EFT shifts what I think the issue at hand is and diverts my thoughts to a secondary and sometimes a tertiary thought pattern which actually is deeper and closer to the issue at hand. 

While I was adgitated and trying to sit and tap, I found myself getting up and taking care of first one task and then another.  Things that I have not been able to do.  (As an aside - I saw today how and why this works for me - there is some "memory" of punishment that comes from addressing the task at hand and addressing that is like pointing a leaf blower at a huge pile of sawdust - it kicks us so much detrius that I can neither see nor breathe and must seek refuge.  That refuge takes the form of a number of things including getting something to drink or something to eat or TV or radio or web surfing or readeing or talking on the phone or doing errands or chores.  None of these things are detrimental in and of themselves but they are when I am (unconsciously) using them to divert myself from the pain which is twisted up inside me as a kind of catch-22 due to the sabotage that my father (in particular) used to control me.

So today, a number of the diversionary tactics were unavailable to me because as soon as I got home this morning I misplaced my keys.  for two hours I tried to use the EFT to find my keys.  for a very long time I would try to tap and find the agitation so hig that I simply had to get up and walk and move around from thought to thought like a bee from flower to flower.  When I realized what I was doing I would redirect myself and try again.  At some point I found that there was a conversation going on underneath the "key" issue.  It was an argument I was having with some "authority" figures and it had everything to do with the appearance v. reality conflict where one person is doing the "pretense of 'Who me?' provocation. 

I wrestled with this for 90 to 120 minutes - finally realizing that there was something else underneath this "particular" at work here.  I knew that it attached to some early childhood experience and so I began trying to make that connection.  In time, I began to realize that the "keys" issue was actually tied into this "appearance v. reality" issue.  So I kept tapping and alternately doing diversionary tasks and then tapping and repeating the cycle until the agitation began to be worked through and the connections began to be made. 

In time I made some progress and I found myself going back again for the umpteenth time to one of many places I had looked for my keys and lo and behold - this time I saw them.  I could move on.

I know - I must face this pain and step away from the pathology of needing relief FIRST.  I must be willing to step into the consciousness of the extreme pain and stay with it to make the connections.  I do know it will be difficult.  I do not know how long or how well I will stick with it. I do not have a great track record of sticking with these healing techniques but that has been because the dust that is kicked up is so excruciatingly painful and life-sucking.  I pray that now I know or am aware that I need to put on a respirator and have the courage and stamina to go through the cloud of dust to get to the other side.  I must have the courage to believe that the punishment that my father exacted on my psyche and that my mother allowed to be perpetrated and that they together taught and encouraged my brothers to participate in - that this punishment no longer need be continued.  I pray that I can have the courage to go through this dust storm with the conviction that I will not be suffocated but that there is indeed another side where healing and comprehension can take place.  And moreover, I must be willing to go through this process countless times until I can reach a level of healing where a different technique might be better suited.

[Hopalong]

I do not have your courage.

I think of you and PR as sumo wrestlers of pain...

(I am the one way up in the bleachers with my eyes shut, trying not to watch them fight.)

But I'm cheering, squeakily.

love,
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Hey - where'd you get the idea that you couldn't have some relief or comfort FIRST... before addressing the pain? The image that comes to mind... is a little girl with stage fright and mom or teacher gives her a big hug, boosts her confidence and that's all the extra "reassurance" the little girl needs to have the courage to go on stage and perform. I sure as hell need this!! In that order!!

So, do what works and don't berate yourself about it or put it down, mentally. We are where we are and have to start there. We can't really skip steps in the process, simply because we're "big people" now. These old wounds are tough to heal; and I'm beginning to think that part of the difficulty is that we're so USED to it/them being there; being part of daily experience, when we're offered a solution... a way out of that... we're loathe to let the old go and just TRY the solution. Maybe even frightened to - because of the "devil we know" vs risking the unknown.

Way back when... I wrote about habits & routines that it was like a two-lane highway: that the old stuff wouldn't "just go away" until I had something new to fill that space or replace it with. Just picking the right "something" can be a challenge... but it doesn't end there, either - a new "habit" requires repetition until it seems second-nature, normal for oneself, part of oneself. That applies also, I believe, to thoughts and feelings that are strongly associated with things that are difficult or painful. So that we need to "train" ourselves to respond differently - internally. Simply because we didn't get this hug and reassurance growing up, so didn't internalize it. Or because of the no-win experiences, or scapegoating, or gaslighting... or whatever.

Good Luck - and don't forget you're allowed to have breaks - "time-outs" - too.

[Gaining Strength]

Hops - you are so courageous. Don't even try to say otherwise.

PR - I don't really know but am hoping that in going through this baloney I will get to the other side.  I agree that I must have something to replace the old stuff.  I broke out Wayne Dyer's Intentions again last night.  I think that in going through this stuff that I may be able to actually get to the good stuff.  Who knows - we'll see.

[Gaining Strength]

Rereading Wayne Dyar's Intentions, particularly the section on Barriers, I am reminded that much of how I was trained to think fits into Dyar's descriptions of barriers.  Tapping with EFT helps me identify and move past these barriers but it is a very slow and laborious process.

[Gaining Strength]

As i go through this it is definitely painful - reopening the old experiences.  It is not as though I have a choice - these painful wounds have been effecting my life whether I repress them or reveal them.  They won't be healed if continued to be repressed.  But I still need a place where i can write about the pain I am experiencing. 

As I get to one experience and begin tapping it explodes into a myriad of memories of similarly experienced micro events, each one adding more and more onto the pile of pain and rejection and voicelessness.  I hope that I will be able to separate out these memories and some how get them written down, separated out, individualized and dealt with one by one by one.

[Gaining Strength]

damned if I do - damned if I don't.

It is in being seen, being present that made me a lightening rod for their shame.
any thing that I was assigned or expected to do
it would not matter if I did a good job or a bad job except that
finally I see that doing a good job actually brought out more recriminations

This is the source of the paralysis

Must go in and undo.

[sKePTiKal]

damned if I do - damned if I don't.

It is in being seen, being present that made me a lightening rod for their shame.
any thing that I was assigned or expected to do
it would not matter if I did a good job or a bad job except that
finally I see that doing a good job actually brought out more recriminations

This is the source of the paralysis

Must go in and undo.

For sure, the being present as enough reason for abuse, is something I know; not so sure about good vs bad job... for me. It could be given my predilection for perfectionism.... trying always to "get it right"... and of course any outside commendations were met with jealous, envious tearing down of the significance of that...

don't know if it'll hit you the way it did me, but what Guest said on my thread- about being loyal to oneself FIRST (before FOO) makes oh-so-much sense. I'm not sure if it's the same for you; but I was always strung along with this implied "promise"... that if I made all these sacrifices... if I let my boundaries of self be violated time & again - for MomBro's needs.. if I were the actual parent in fact, if not in the eyes of the law/society... THEN, I'd be accepted, belong, cared for, etc.

And no, I can't say I've ever attained that status and now I know enough about how sick it is (in it's dual, co-dependent reality of delusions and self-righteous congratulations) - I no longer want it, either. But then there is the attending, surrounding crap... the stuff I endure within myself. I know you know what I mean by that...

sigh.... let's take a time out and have a hug before going back to the trenches again, OK?

THANKS.

[Gaining Strength]

I was tapping earlier today and got a flash that tied into a flicker I received a coupld of days ago.

This wounding - that is getting triggered in my life today - is old, ancient.  It goes to the need to connect to my father.  In this flash I saw how I knew even as a very, young child, that my survival was not dependent on my mother but on my father.  That is most unusual.  My father was not nurturing (minor understatement) but he did participate in my brothers' and my life.  My mother sat by passively.  She had 3 young children but she had two people who worked inside her house every week day and a man who drove and worked out side 5 days a week as well  - while she lunched and did little.  She didn't drive us to school or to activities.

My father taught me whatever I would be taught.  He read to us and he played games with us.  but he was extraordinarily demanding.  For instance he had a huge gate (he had been a military man) and when he walked with us I (even at 4 or 5) was expected to keep up with him step by step.  If I didn't he would excoriate me or leave me out. 

So here is where I am going - my survival depended on him.  I had to take the abuse in order to survive.  that was how that little child processed her experiences.  I longed to get his love and he knew it and he used that.  I knew nothing else and as a child in survival mode I saw nothing as abnormal or even unwanted.  I took his training of self criticism and abuse as the cost of survival.  What I am trying to say is that the abusive voice that I internalized was critical for survival.  Separating these tings out are very, very difficult.  but tapping, tapping away will take me there.  It is showing me how some of these things are connected.  It is helping me unravel it all.

[Gaining Strength]

I did see Guest's remark and recognized the validity.
I can see that as I sit here peeping in on your thread as an objective observer BUT when I take Guest's point and look at it from my perspective and my experience there is still to much confusion and convulution.  There was never any space for ME.  The ME part got punished and that is precisely where I am mining right now.  all that is disastrous in my life right now, I see as part of the punishment that I learned to do as a survival issue, always couched in a moralistic turn and in a "suffer now for benefit later" sort of conservatism.  having to sort out the lies and the truth and the me from the them, the twisted manipulative abusive cr&p.

[sKePTiKal]

That's a pretty amazing "picture", GS....

an emotionally unavailable (and attentionally neglectful) mother...
and a father with such a strong belief in military "toughness" that he couldn't make allowances for the fact that a child isn't born with the abilities, inherently, to achieve that...

without providing the safe, protective, caring and understanding environment that becomes the seed-bed for germinating and growing a strong, healthy, tough yet flexible tree.

I think you instinctively know - deep within - what it was that little child needed but didn't get. And it sounds as though you're zeroing in on it. I'm hoping you also fiind out, that even though you were deprived of whatever it was... that you have evidence around you, in you, in your life... of the kind of toughness that makes a "survivor". A different kind of toughness than your father valued - but perhaps one that's better suited to you; that allows for nurturing and empathy and connection and doesn't see those things as "weakness".

I surely understand the search for "me"... and pulling off all the pieces of duct-tape with labels that have been stuck to oneself over the years. One thing that helps with those pieces of tape? I accept that most people are capable of everything - in the right or wrong circumstances. But unless something is repeated over & over & over... it's not part of the package of who one IS. The ME. I'm still having to rely a lot on feedback from people about "me"... checking the old tales/lies against what I know from that kind of feedback - whether it's something that's been said to me, the way I've been treated - it's "reality-based", and I'm (trying to) no longer just automatically accept the "You always..." statements that people make.... because not everyone sees me the same way; thinks the same thing about me. And my FOO - most of all - don't have some special, x-ray vision or knowledge of me that the "outside world" doesn't perceive.

[Gaining Strength]

 Healing seems (though I haven't gotten there yet) to provide a release rather than a resolution.  I have been stuck in trying to get resolution.

I think there is some very significant shifts I can get from this insight. 
I'm going to work on this today.

[Gaining Strength]

The search for me

PR - that is what it is isn't it
It is very difficult
mining feedback
separating detrius from nugget

essential but slow, frustrating, at times hopeless and lonely but essential none-the-less.

I am (again) becoming conscious of when I slip into avoidance (because the habituation of aggitation tripped by triggers IS overwhelming and so omnipresent) and trying to use the EFT to go through and get to an earlier experience in order to process and get some release. 

I care not how many hundreds or thousands of times it may take to process these things (memories, experiences woundings) in order to get release, relief.  I have no choice now that I can see an out, a hope. 

thank you for your writings - they are flickers of light - momentarily shining on something I need to take the next step toward the light.  Ever moving forward even it the journey takes me into periods of pain, despair, hopelessness and woundedness.  Even those steps are temporary but necessary.

[sKePTiKal]

You're welcome, Hon...

I gotta tell ya, too - that once I started to establish what was really "me"... a big chunk of the old "I'm so alone" and "I'll do anything to be connected" really started to fade away. As if, in recognizing - really seeing me - I had a new best friend that I could really trust.

It's still a work in progress; being in the "toxic zone" - a place where I really don't belong - brings up a lot of those fears, confuses me in the warpedness of it's perversity - how could it not? I think it's probably OK for me to give up the quest to understand that zone. It's a distraction for me, from moving on to learning how to handle and deal with it - without being roadkill. So "training" is my idea of developing and collecting the wisdom and skills to make myself strong enough... that when I do have to deal with the toxic zone... I'm not thrown for a loop. Maybe next time, I'll get it more "right" that way.

[Gaining Strength]

PR - your post reminds me of somethng that I glimpsed the other day - the part about doing ANYTHING to feel connected is exactly part of what "Stockholm syndromed" me to my father.  I was doing something the other day and had this bizarre flashback type experience in which I saw one memory after another in which I was acting/interacting/reacting with this knot in my stomach hoping that the proverbial door would not close in my face.  In each of these memories I was with family or good friends.  At the time of these every day events that I remembered I was utterly unaware that I was afraid of being excluded.  It was so normal for me.  so normal.

I have such a heightened sense of exclusion>  I have a radar that tunes into passive aggressive behavior as well and both of these flip a trip wire in my core.