Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Gaining Strength on February 25, 2016, 02:01:14 PM
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I'm sneaking back to this place of comfort because I need a refuge as I continue on my journey of seeking and healing.
In some ways I'm in the same place but in others I am moving forward. I still struggle but I continue to understand more and more about my disorder and how I got here. This month has been one of those slips into depression. Not unusual but always I welcomed. But with it comes always welcomed insights.
It is my birthday today and for the past 6 months I have been planning about my life going forward, what I want to accomplish with the last third of my life. Honestly I am very excited about it and have been able to be more focused than at other periods. I am able to let so many things go which is such a relief. Today I am now the age my husband was when he died. This has been especially significant to me as I am ever vigilant about my young son's life and how little family or support system he has. In truth, it frightens me and that fear, of course, triggers all that is related to fear and hopelessness in the past.
I still have such a huge struggle with being able to function fully on a daily basis and this is directly related to my brain function and the profound sensitivity that can at times be debilitating. So worked into my goals is the significant one of maintaining my mental health. Ironically, some of the steps that help are the most difficult to execute when I am struggling so in part I am waiting for the wave of debility to wane and it will and when it does I will renew my efforts to exercise regularly. That will surely help regulate those surges of anxiety that at times keep me paralyzed still.
Finally the cold is soon abated. The spring birds are here but the cold still cuts like a knife.
Moving forward, I have turned again to Jon Kabat-Zinn's meditations. They have such a calming effect and I believe, over time, a healing power as well. I love concentrating on evoking and feeling the emersion of love. Bit by bit. I can extend that experience. Oddly, the first bit of that feeling actually sends a shock of fear that gives way to acute anxiety. All of it hardening back to past experiences where hope led to exclusion and rejection and the paralyzingly sense of humiliation. It is a powerful cycle. It is a reflection of normalcy for me. And in that moment of mindful experience of that cycle - hope - remembrance - fear - paralysis - I see past and present and delve in to refocus, re experience a moment of sitting emerged in the sense of love. Believing that that experience, that healing will grow and extend the more I practice, the only surprise is how difficult it still is to jump back into the meditation. But I will. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.
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Hi there. I've been keeping up with your progress on FB and it seems to me you're doing really well.
Big hugs and a Huzzah!! happy dance for you.
(PR)
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Hi there. I've been keeping up with your progress on FB and it seems to me you're doing really well.
Big hugs and a Huzzah!! happy dance for you.
(PR)
Thanks Skeptikal. It's nice to be able to pop in and be remembered.
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I started listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness meditations on YouTube about 18 months ago. His voice is so soothing. Just this month, when depression pulled me down deep again, I went to his Heartscape meditation which is the right one at the right time. I am more and more drawn to it the more I use t.
My fears Bourne out of rejection and her concomitant wounds find reprieve in the place of love, health and well being that Zinn guides through the meditation. I can tap hope and belief when I am in the midst. In time that experience will be accessible for longer periods and in the midst of fear and darkness. It will take root and replace that long lived canker. How can I not practice? How can I not be willing to cast aside doubt.
It fits with the linguistic list of things that I have been drawn to across the years, like a culmination go a long journey, bringing me to a new place where a different story begins. This healing has been slow and painful. I am hoping to come across a way to put my experiences to good use beyond my own.
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Happy Birthday for the other day, GS :) Those meditations sound lovely. I'm glad you're hanging on in there and making progress. I do find the winter quite difficult to get through each year. It's feeling more like spring now; the mornings and evenings are lighter, the birds start singing much earlier and crocuses and daffodils are starting to flower, it makes a really big different, I find :) x
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Twoapenny, the emerges of spring is life renewing isn't it. I am counting the short days until extended light in evening.
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Tear tracks - you are so kind and welcoming and wonderfully unforgettable as well.
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Lifelong, I've been gripped by a dread. One step out increases the grip. Retreat doesn't relieve it but lessens the intensity. Though in retreat more inaction piles up the failings which has its own set of tortuous grip. Across the years I have found techniques that chipped away at this predicament.
I have come to understand a significant portion of the psychology of how I got trapped in the first place and of course having narcissistic parents is an enormous portion of that. Understanding their role opened the door but once the door opened there was a mountain to climb and that climb has had pitfalls which exposed dangers and demands that caused indescribable pain.
As I enter a kind of final stretch, the downhill, I am finding that the dread has been softened, made permeable, seems contained rather than infinite. And now I am able to penetrate it, to see something on the other side. It takes pointed concentration and the experience is fleeting but the difference now is that for the first time I know the other side can exist for me.
While I see how my own reactions have alienated me, stimulated rejection, how my own fear of rejection played a role in generating more and more of it for the first time I am seeing how I can exist without that or outside that reactive volatility. I have been longing for this experience my entire life. Of course I am thankful to be on this precipice but I cannot move forward with out experiencing the enormous grief of the decades of pain, loss, rejection, isolation that have been my life and through no fault of his own, my child's as well.
I cannot help but feel that inordinate grief and yet there is not gift in staying in it, no benefit. I must move forward, committed to intentionally being aware of, present to the loving kindness existant in the world and available to us all. With intention, I can expand the feeling of the heart, grow it. In the midst of that intention I experience peace and in time that sense of peace with shift something internal within me, within my soul, within my mind, within my brain and slowly it will become my norm.
Believing it will be, rather than taking shelter from the dread of failure and rejection gives me just slightly more wiggle room than has been my norm and that is something too.
Day by day this grows as I feed it with intention, protected from inner and outer harm, experiencing ease of well being.
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The political situation today, along with my child's struggles with his executive function issues is depressing to me. Along with my life long norm of depression and anxiety, it can take a toll on me, not to mention the dull, cold, rainy weather. But I am finding that the Heartscape meditation helps me lift above it, even for brief moments.
It takes specific mindful recollection for now but in time, I expect to have as my norm, a place above dark, shamed paralysis where the norm is hope, and motivation and a spence of well being.
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The omnipresent sense of dread comes with a hyper vigilance in perpetual anticipation of attack and/or rejection. As as the saying goes, to a hammer, everything is a nail, so too goes the anticipation of rejection and/or attack.
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To move out of this place of dread is to move into a totally unfamiliar realm. For decades, I have longer for healing which I saw completely in terms of functioning - the elusive being of functioning. Moving out of dread includes bit is not limited to functioning. Being in loving kindness means I will not even dread the thought, experience of images, places, situations that trigger depression.
The very hope of lifting out of dread is a profound relief.
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Maybe emotions have their polar opposite - their "flip side" or "B side" like we used to say with 45 speed records. The feeling feels the same, but we associate a different WORD with it, to explain it.
So that dread's flip could be excitement or anticipation; eagerness.
Maybe rejection's flip is just a simple recognition of you as person... as in, "I see you" (watch the movie Avatar, for an interesting use of that phrase; talk about balm for the soul of a child of an N). You are real, you matter, you have value - just in being.
..............
Somewhere around the time I was 16 or 17, I had to write a research paper for school. I think it was civics class. I wrote about Pavlov. I was already reading a lot of the 70s psych stuff anyway by then, but Pavlov's Law is much like Newton and gravity. At the time, it didn't connect for me... that even our feelings could be "conditioned" and "trained" in such a way to be completely upside down and inside out from "normal".
Now, of course I know that this nugget of truth is just the beginning of understanding that emotional space.
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Brilliant, (as always) Skeptikal. Truly conditioned. Exposing to light. Restores to pre"conditioned" self.
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But the real issue is that trauma changes people. They feel different and experience certain sensations differently.
“ . . . the main focus of therapy needs to be helping people shift their internal experience.”
That’s why the main focus of therapy needs to be helping people shift their internal experience or, in other words, how the trauma is lodged inside them.
How Talking Can Distract a Client from Feeling
Now, in helping people learn to stay with their sensations, we need to resist the temptation to ask them to talk about their experience and what they’re aware of.
This is because talking can convey a defense against feeling.
Through the use of brain imagery, we’ve learned that when people are feeling something very deeply, one particular area of the brain lights up.
And we’ve seen other images taken when people are beginning to talk about their trauma and, when they do, another part of the brain lights up.
So talking can be a distraction from helping patients notice what is going on within themselves.
“ . . . some of the best therapy is largely non-verbal.”
And that’s why some of the best therapy is very largely non-verbal, where the main task of the therapist is to help people to feel what they feel - to notice what they notice, to see how things flow within themselves, and to reestablish their sense of time inside.
This is an except from a FB article that I had to go through hoops to read. I post it b/c it points to an understanding that helps me understand where I am. 24 hours aday my antennae are alert. Ready. On guard. My secondary position is retreating, fearing every demand for even basic functioning. All of it harkens back to childhood, to minor fears and traumas that added up, the incessant drip of water wearing away the stone.
Over the years I have employed countless methods to help, to heal, to relieve. Many did help - a little, for a while. But perhaps the total trauma was too great? Or the effect of the trauma caused actions and inactions which further traumatized. Maybe all of it.
But still I persist. All my knowledge, understanding, experience coming into play. Hope never ends. Small shifts bring relief. Faith endures.
Yesterday, for some reason remembrances of my attempts at EFT kept bombarding me. It, EFT, seemed to hold promise and even bits of relief. But even years ago, I saw that the traumas were too many and many unknown, not remembered, unconscious. I tried the "bundling" technique - to no effect. Why did this memory come up so powerfully yesterday? I have no idea.
But as I move forward yet again, find light rays of peace and hope yet ever strangled by that constant presence of dread, I wonder. Then I remember how my entire adult life has been a combination of retreat and conscious and unconscious attempts to find relief. Coffee, sweets, good foods, bingeing carbohydrates. Exercise, sloth. Reading. Television. Flurry of activity - organizations, membership, enterprises, projects. Nothing. None of it brought relief and much of it brought on more and more pain, more failure, more disappointment, no relief, more loss. It all seems so clear today. The rat race, the fleeing on the hamster wheel. Run faster, faster, faster and I'm no further away.
I'm still in the midst of indescribable pain. My parents are dead and I still hurt. But I have not given up. And more miraculous - I still have hope and believe there is a way out of the constant state of dread and the physical pain that accompanies it. And most important of all - I believe that the paralysis that has plagued me for decades is bit by bit breaking up and dissolving - like the ice on the frozen pond in spring. Time will tell. It either will or it won't. And with the constant state of dread, the self-hatred and self-condemnation that I was trained, encouraged, demanded to develope so many years ago by my father and silently promoted by my mother.
I have no hatred for either. When I think if my father I see him through a child's eye and find myself cowering and hyper vigilant for refuge. Hmmmmm. When I think of my mother I fall into a longing, a pleading to be seen, to be heard, to be recognized. It us not hatred but hurt. Healing will bring relief from that ancient disease. I am on that road, almost there. Resentment and bitterness broke, sorrow remains but freedom will come when the dread and hypervigilance for retreat recede as well.
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The longing for my mother is my longing for connection. It is an unrelenting need or longing that I can't quench.
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I know, GS. Oh I know.
The only time it began to heal for me was when I became my own mother.
Had that powerful visualization/encounter with my inner little girl.
Loved her, offered her a promise to never let her be alone with her sadness again,
actually put my arms around her and felt the weight of her small arms touch my shoulders.
I think my healing process started in that moment. I mothered myself.
love to you,
Hops
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Yes. The meditation I'm doing now has an aspect of that, very strong on loving kindness. It is such a comfort.
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GS... you might investigate what "Mother Mary" has to offer too. She's very much along the same lines as the Goddess of Compassion, Guan Yin.
In my most painful episodes, visualizing being wrapped up in that comfort has offered the connection fulfillment I was looking for. They're there, 24/7... always on call. :D
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GS I can only say that over the years my longing for my mum (or any mother) has faded. I have found mothering myself really helped but it's a slow, painful process (and I'm not all the way there yet). Thinking of you and sending love xxx
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Skeptikal - please say more about Mother Mary. Are you meaning in general or a specific meditation?
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Twoapenny - that's encouraging. I have no doubt I will get there soon enough. Thanks for the encouragement.
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Almost 2 weeks ago, I travelled 1000 miles to take my adolescent son to see a specialist, a neurologist/psychiatrist who is using break through technologies clinically. I have learned so much about my child's brain and his difficulties, seen his emotional and academic struggles in terms of neurological expressions, literally seen them displayed via qEEG signals and then shifting via neurofeedback techniques.
I have learned so much about him and about me through these past 9 days of diagnostics and treatment.
For days, the doctors have been using qEEG to watch the brain function in real time while simultaneously training my child to make shifts in various brain waves. These shifts activate certain areas and deactivate others. Today, the two doctors moved to the most debilitating area. They gave my son a video game to play. In order to activate the game, to move a rocket through a tube either hitting or avoiding specific targets, they monitored emissions of specific brainwaves. When my son was unable to complete the task within a specified time his frustration escalated. The goal was for him to simultaneously slow the lambic center while activating the prefrontal cortex or executive function.
After several attempts he was finally successful. Of all the successes he has had in these two weeks this is the most important. Though this is just the beginning I have such hope that he can become functional. As I watched today, I understood in a way that has eluded me his entire life, how his brain and it's disregulation have truly crippled him. But I am able to relate so clearly to his struggles and I see my own mirrored closely to his. His entire life, in school but also in extracurricular and social settings he has been disregarded, shunned, and rejected. Worst of all is the moralizing done by teachers and the educational system in general. In essence children who can sit still and be quiet and follow rules are good and those who don't are bad. So he has been told over and over and over again that he is "bad". Even at his young age it has taken a toll, such a heavy toll.
This doctor is using a number a therapies which we can continue at home. They are all fascinating to me and to learn how they work on his brain is fascinating. Plus, some of the techniques I have used on myself in the past are ones he supports. But one of the most interesting is the therapeutic value of a balance board. It stimulates both sides of the brain at once. The very first day I could see the left side of his brain lit up while the right side hardly engaged at all. A significant therapy is a breathing technique or exercise. I'm sure there is a name for it but essentially you cross your arms and pinch your ear lobes. You hold your left earlobe with your right thumb and forefinger and vice versa, while you breath in through your nose as you bend your knees. Then standing up as you exhale orally. I have no idea how this works but it seems to.
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Everything Tupp said.
And with a hug, and love, and comfort.
((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))) and her beautiful boy, who will one day be a man of wisdom.
love,
Hops
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Almost 2 weeks ago, I travelled 1000 miles to take my adolescent son to see a specialist, a neurologist/psychiatrist who is using break through technologies clinically. I have learned so much about my child's brain and his difficulties, seen his emotional and academic struggles in terms of neurological expressions, literally seen them displayed via qEEG signals and then shifting via neurofeedback techniques.
I have learned so much about him and about me through these past 9 days of diagnostics and treatment.
For days, the doctors have been using qEEG to watch the brain function in real time while simultaneously training my child to make shifts in various brain waves. These shifts activate certain areas and deactivate others. Today, the two doctors moved to the most debilitating area. They gave my son a video game to play. In order to activate the game, to move a rocket through a tube either hitting or avoiding specific targets, they monitored emissions of specific brainwaves. When my son was unable to complete the task within a specified time his frustration escalated. The goal was for him to simultaneously slow the lambic center while activating the prefrontal cortex or executive function.
After several attempts he was finally successful. Of all the successes he has had in these two weeks this is the most important. Though this is just the beginning I have such hope that he can become functional. As I watched today, I understood in a way that has eluded me his entire life, how his brain and it's disregulation have truly crippled him. But I am able to relate so clearly to his struggles and I see my own mirrored closely to his. His entire life, in school but also in extracurricular and social settings he has been disregarded, shunned, and rejected. Worst of all is the moralizing done by teachers and the educational system in general. In essence children who can sit still and be quiet and follow rules are good and those who don't are bad. So he has been told over and over and over again that he is "bad". Even at his young age it has taken a toll, such a heavy toll.
This doctor is using a number a therapies which we can continue at home. They are all fascinating to me and to learn how they work on his brain is fascinating. Plus, some of the techniques I have used on myself in the past are ones he supports. But one of the most interesting is the therapeutic value of a balance board. It stimulates both sides of the brain at once. The very first day I could see the left side of his brain lit up while the right side hardly engaged at all. A significant therapy is a breathing technique or exercise. I'm sure there is a name for it but essentially you cross your arms and pinch your ear lobes. You hold your left earlobe with your right thumb and forefinger and vice versa, while you breath in through your nose as you bend your knees. Then standing up as you exhale orally. I have no idea how this works but it seems to.
Oh GS, this brought a tear to my eye, your boy sounds so much like mine! Those early years were just hellish, I found doctors, health visitors, paediatricians, social workers, all these people that work with kids, either useless or destructive, so determined to blame either myself or my son for his situation. Such, such, such a relief to read that these doctors are helping; like you, I've found learning about the brain and central nervous system so helpful in understanding my boy and helping him. I really want to work now on getting other people to see past his early presentation when he meets someone; he's such a kind hearted, sweet souled boy but you have to get to know him well enough for him to be comfortable before that really starts to shine through. He makes me laugh so much, and after a good year or so of real teenage "keep away from me, don't touch me, don't sit near me" I've had a couple of really nice hugs over the weekend. So, so glad to read your boy is getting this help and how lucky he is to have you on his side.
((((((((((((((((((((GS and son )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Tear tracks, thank you so much.
It was fascinating watching his daily sessions for so many reasons. But one unexpected boost was that I saw myself mirrored in his brain. I could see before me a mirror of what I have been experiencing and I understood in a new way what he is suffering and what I have experienced lifelong - a brain stuck in dis regulation.
I saw how he gets paralyzed, why it is almost impossible for him to do his school work. I could see how his right hemisphere was under active while the Alpha waves emitted from the left were surging resulting in his prefrontal cortex, executive function nonfunctional.
I saw how small bits of frustration ignite his lim in system while the front of his brain sits inactivE. Small irritants have an extreme reaction in his brain and he is not able to override it. Though through the neurofeedback session he did..
But I understood how the paralysis that I have written about here for years, is a manifestation of my brain dysregulation. I have hope that I will be able to overcome my broken brain as well but at least I finally have an answer to that question that has p,aged me all my life, "What is wrong with me?"
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Thank you Hops. Your encouragement is so comforting.
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Twoapenny, I hear you and understand those struggles all too well.
Today I am preparing my presentation to the advisors and administrators at my cons school with the hope that I can keep him in this school while we try to get his brain repaired. Of course raising a child who does not function the same way as others is agonizing and exhausting but it comes with all those other alienating issues that you list and imply. And those take an extra hidden toll on child and mother and that alienation is particularly acute for you and me whose FOO was already alienating.
My heart aches for you and your son but I also feel a special kinship and compassion for you both. I will always have hope of finding a path out for our children and others who suffer as they do.
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Thinking I have discovered at long last, "What is wrong with me?" Is giving me great comfort.
I have a path now. I feel such a layer of relief, understanding how my lambic system was so strongly reactive and the prefrontal cortex unable to activate to moderate. This explains so much of my lifelong failings and pain and struggle.
Since I last posted I have found several academic papers which further explain this brain state. One made reference to the effect of childhood trauma.
I feel such relief and such hope. I am so profoundly thankful for the work being done by Dr. Has an Asif. I may give my child and me hope for a functioning life.
I have two projects due. Both of them have me frozen, not able to do the required work. I may get some part of it done and I may fall from grace, yet again. But now I understand why. I cannot describe the sense of compassion I have for myself after all. Of these years. And the ache and hope I have for my son. There are so many suffering who could be helped. I hope to participate in that when I am healed.
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In answer to your question, I don't have a specific exercise. This is simply something I stumbled across years ago and well... maybe it's "magical thinking" or simply a visualization but it's got real lasting effects for me.
The Beatles "Let It Be" or similar music helps open connections in neural pathways. And then, simply take the leash off the longing feeling. Let it run, search, despair and wail until such time as it "finds" succor and comfort and protection and relief.
What I've experienced is often just the feeling of the relief, but occasionally the sense of a person embued with those maternal characteristics; the "Mother Mary" image... experiencing the same distress alongside me (mirroring; validation)... and staying with me, till it passes. None of this even needs to be verbalized to yourself; I'm pretty sure it's all a need based in pre-verbal centers. A successful session will feel as if a weight has been lifted, the clouds have blown away, and the sun is waking up all the little chirpy birdies.
There is a whole mystique around Mary in religious circles. I'm no scholar, but I'm sure you'll be able to find lots of things via google-fu. In Chinese and Tibetan traditions, the same energy-force is personified as Guan Yin. She's the Goddess of Compassion.
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Skeptical, thank you for your post. Your craft with the written word is powerful, the way you translate your amazing analysis of your mind into written prose is a gift.
I love the idea of receiving maternal love. I read this this morning on FB:
When a mother doesn’t bond with her daughter, the daughter grows up apprehensive, worried about abandonment, expecting deceit at every turn. She grows up lacking emotional confidence and security, and must find a way to gain these for herself – not an easy task when she doesn't know why she always feels empty to begin with. ~ Dr. Karyl McBride (paraphrased from Ch. 2, p.11 of “Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.”)
In my first book, “Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.” http://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/about-will-i-ever-be-…/, I provide a starting point for daughters who have identified the problem and want to take steps to recover from the life-long effects of narcissistic abuse. I also provide ways to prevent your own children from undergoing what you went through.
No doubt I have a profound wound from need of maternal nurture. And yet, I am drawn to the masculine for the past several months. I find the voice and image of the caring Jon Kabat Zinn to be so soothing and comforting.
These recent days and weeks have been so up and down, in and out of depression but with sharp insight into my sense of alienation and rejection. As I have written for years, the periods of healing for me, are marked with almost tortuous, upheaval - insight and understanding twisted around depression and fear; the insights lifting and then grieving for what has been lost intermingled with shame and then fear that the state is permanent or the trek out futile and then the thread of hope and determination. Ultimately, I remember to focus on, to light up the thread of hope and dim the grief, fear, and internalized condemnation.
The process is one of hope but it is speckled with black holes of despair and stumbling.
The insights have a price - the pain and grief are so sharp and ironically trip that longing for "Mother."
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By the time I was in my early 20s I was asking myself (and select others) in despair, what was wrong with me. I never quit asking even though some of the answers began to come, slowly but surely. But never ,ultimately, a fully answer. Never, ultimately relief that would allow me to function normally, to keep a job, keep lomng term friendships, akeep a decent house, finish important projects, none of it.
But finally, I have an understanding. I can see how the shame and rejection have totally crippled me. Memories pop up throughout the day and my brain fused so much together along my life. Everything is a trigger. But now I am seeing the memories tied to such triggers. And it is excruciatingly painful. Standing and watching 10 sessions of qEEG and neurofeedback, watching parts of my child's brain work against itself I could relate it to my own crippling issues. Those issues are separate from the issues of rejection but intertwined with the shame.
I experienced such profound rejection from my family but it was always couched in terms of love and I could not see the reality. I had everything I needed to flourish but I couldn't put two steps in front of the other. I was bright and was accepted into a great university but completing the work was so difficult and I had no answers except to think myself a failure. Though I had plenty of friends through my childhood and college years I was living a life of extreme unconscious conflict. I felt enormous rejection as a person and my joys and desires which were berated and belittled throughout my life. But I couldn't see that it was not love I was experiencing but profound shaming abuse.
As life went on, I see now, that I anticipated rejection on every level - from movie choice to ideas for socializing with friends or proposals in work or family life. Everything seemed rejected or in my family any idea had had I was left to execute on my own and without necessary resources. It took me decades to understand that I didn't have the necessary resources. We were a wealthy family in an enclave of wealthy families. Resources were not limited. But only after years of understanding the effects of my narcissistic parents did I understand how in the midst of plenty, I had little. My father had money but he did not allow me to have money. He even controlled my ability to get work, working behind the scenes to undo opportunities. One of my brothers did the same to me a year after my husband died and when our child was an infant.
But worse than all that was the resentment I felt, though I was in denial and totally cut off from my profound resentment. Couple that with the total expectation of rejection - some of which was real and some projected but all of which led to seething resentment and anger. And that seething nature is what I projected in public. I was only aware of the slightest bit, initially feeling justified and bit by bit having to acknowledge what I wa smoking but having so little control over the anger that ruled me.
And of course the anger turned inward to depression and outward towards others, creating more rejection. When I was included in events or activities I would be both excited and fearful as participation inevitably resulted in rejection. It was a wretched Catch-22 - participate and be rejected or don't participate and be rejected. I could not see what I was doing to cause the problem. And all along in the midst, I would get an idea, rally a person or two if possible and promise to get something done and then hit the paralysis (which I now know was from the shame induced depression and anxiety.). It all worked in on itself and created a wretched state of affairs for my life.
But now I see it all - so clearly. There is certainly pain in it all and great grieving. I am not sure how much hope there is, though there could be. But I must first find a way through the vestigial paralysis shaped by anxiety and depression. Those two have really been raging these recent weeks.
The Mindfulness meditation helps but it is slow but right now it is what I have. Plus naming it - over and over and over again. Naming it, naming it, naming it.
I know why I bite my nails, why I am paralyzed, why I start something I love and cannot finish it. I understand how I became so rejected and isolated, left out. I am so thankful to get it at long last. I wonder what the changes going forward will be. I wonder if I am on the verge of being free from the paralysis that has marred and marked my life. I marvel and am thankful for the friendships and relationships that I do have. And I am thankful for having this place where I can share it and relieve myself of this wretched burden.
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WOW.
GS, you have figured out so MUCH.
I am awed.
love,
Hops
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I really am Hops. It sure has taken a long time but surprisingly I am not drawn into a whirlpool of regret or dispair.
Always thankful,for your encouragement.
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I used to write here about my radar searching for the signal to tune into, the signal of fear and anxiety, rejection, failure, etc., etc. I was trained to it. I remember many of those lessons, explicitly taught by my father in very young childhood. If I weren't sufficiently afraid he would tell me with clenched jaw, "I'll give you something to be afraid of." And he always delivered on that promise - until the state was permanent or the search for the anxiety channel autonomic.
Now, years after he left this earth, after 10 or more years of longing, hoping to move out of the fear factor, I find myself closer, closer still to that ultimate goal. The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer a pin prick, nor even small enough to be obscured by a quarter or half-dollar. Along with the light, with the end of the tunnel insight I have hope, not certainty, but hope.
With all of this comes some clarity about my role in my own exclusion and rejection and while it pains me to my core, it does not lay me flat. It does not even trigger even a tiny paroxysm of shame, only a twinge of regret. But there is no time or need to nurture that sorrow. And in many ways I have already grieved it. No really, at this point, I have to keep my eyes focused forward, not knowing what the future will bring in relationships nor in any area of my life. But I do know it will be something rich and comforting.
I am, miraculously, not without friends but I have lost those friends of childhood and that connection with the families and friends in which I grew up which I never intended to completely step outside of. As an adult I have longer, struggled, strived to step back in. Thinking, " if I get this right, succeed here, am part of this group, attend this event, blah, blah, blah." That was the wrong struggle. But the pain was so enormous, the greatest fear of rejection was hitting me from every point of life and I didn't know how to "be" in its midst. The rejection evoking such agony and resentment which incurred more rejection. It was so vicious a cycle. And the anxiety triggered was insurmountable, everything fusing together, binding, devastating, paralyzing. Little sprouts of hope would find space to rise and I would make commitments to be a part of something and then paralyzed by the fear of failure and resulting rejecting fail to follow through heaping up yet more failure, rejection and shame. Week after week, year another year, decade on decade.
And then, tiny rays broke through, illuminating bits and pieces of the path out. And those bits and pieces and not dependent on acceptance of others. I have known, could see, for several years, that I was caught in a hamster wheel of a sense of dependence on someone, something outside of myself in spite of knowing that was the wrong perspective. I couldn't extricate myself. But somehow, with perseverance, I find myself beyond that trap. I am not free but I am on a path.
And the journey has enough of a pattern that I know I have stepped into a new realm and that the chokehold of the profound, omnipresent, paralyzing anxiety is about to be broken. And when it finally is, I will have a freedom to pursue the things from which I have been stymied for so long.
I have found increasing relief in Jon Kabat Zinn's loving Kindness meditation. In that meditation I can see myself clothed in love and acceptance and feel the grip of anxiety loosen. Sometimes only fleeting but I can repeat the experience over and over again. And then when anxiety grips again I can recall that meditation and find release. Over and over and over this repeats: anxiety grips, I recall the meditation and feel release/relief. At first it works with only the least germain of anxiety triggers and only fleetingly. But with repetition, the relief comes with greater duration and for more significant triggers.
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I find myself in the midst of a process that I recognize. Though I have been here before in healing other issues the process follows no order and is not predictable. Nonetheless, here I am, smack dab in the midst of the wretched pain that I have been unconsciously avoiding my entire life.
But now, I welcome it - sort of, at least to the extent that I think it necessary to get to the other side. I am smack dab in the middle of the excruciating pain if rejection, a lifetime of rejection. And the pain is indescribable.
I am reminded the first time I heard that the only way out was through. It seemed so horrific to me even then 25 ish years ago. It still seems horrific today while it all is exposed in its full force. I know why this process has been so slow. I could not have born all the pain had I experienced it all at once.
But here I am, toggling between needing to escape and holding my foot to the fire. I want to go through and I believe this is the way. What have I to lose if I bear this pain and it isn't the way out. I scan my memory for all that I have read across the decade about healing about raising consciousness. I believe I am in the correct pursuit. Nothing I've done in my pursuit for healing and betterment has been a mistake. It has only been too slow.
Writing here helps me find my way in this dark, overgrown forest. The path is dim and narrow and it can be very subtle to tell the difference of whether I am on it or off it. But I move forward anyway.
One clue about the path is the recent revelation, the lifting of my blinders of how I have been an instrument of my rejection. I recall in my midtwenties, recognizing something was off, very off but I could not see it for myself and those I turned to did not seem willing to shine the light on me. I do hate that but I am here now. And I still long to make changes. And it is not too late.
So I accept the revelation and the accompanying pain. And I find myself in the midst of that sorrow and grieving that I have experienced before. And when that part is done there will be more but with each layer my hope grows even stronger.
I believe I will step through the barrier and our of the paralysis and I believe that awakening is on the horizon, perhaps only weeks away. And what ever I must process after that will also be tolerable if only barely.
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Sorting out my mind, creating order.
Alienation is anxiety provoking and, for me, anxiety is alienating.
Failure and rejection are so profoundly linked for me. That link was made early, early in my childhood. There was profound shaming and rejection when I failed at things that were beyond my ability, my resources, or at times beyond human reason. None of that mattered. My father made me pay and my mother never intervened. Looking back, I think she reveled in it to a degree, the way she would revel in her younger sisters misfortune lifelong. And with her youngest sister, who was sweet, pretty and successful, there was still a disdain -never the love we think of, no real sense of bond. By the time I was 13 I saw that I was in much the same roll as a third sister -an annoying, younger sister who needed more than she was willing to give.
I experience a profound sense of failure before I even get started at times and at others that sense comes in when I hit a roadblock. I have believed for years that this aspect of paralysis comes from the sabotage and ensuring condemnation from my father. He often took perverse pleasure in belittling my ideas or attempts to learn something or accomplish something. And though he was wealthy, he would refuse me the resources necessary to accomplish something that interested me. My mother definitely participated I this. A couple examples: when I was 4 or 5 I contracted toncilitis. I was scheduled to have a tonsillectomy a few months later. In the meanwhile, my family had planned a short vacation with another family. I was the only daughter. I was not allowed to go because I might pick up an infection of some sort and that might interfere with the surgery schedule. Everyone else went and left me behind. My fathers mother had brought me a gift. I was not allowed to open it - for months - until I was in the hospital and then too ill to use it. It was a knitting kit. Once I was home and healing I tried to knit but I did not know how. I was very interested and did learn the knit stitch but couldn't figure out how to purl. And all I could make we're rectangles. I had no idea how to bind off or add or drop stitches. Neither of my parents could be bothered to find the help I longed for. Never mind that both my fathers mother and sister knit. But not having know how didn't deter me. I made several rectangles and then sewed them into things. But my brothers loved to belittle my work and berate my incompetence. When I cried, my father punished me and took my kit away.
As a young teen, I ran into a similar experience when I loved to garden. When had extensive grounds and I used to try to grow things far removed from my mother's observation. But once, my brother reported my gardening to my mother who did exactly what I predicted. She threw a tantrum, railing about how I ruin everything. I knew she was not connected to reality, that I had ruined nothing but I also knew that if she were informed that I had an interest she would do all in her means to cut me off for it. She did that throughout my growing up when I expressed interest in any sport. I was allowed to play tennis but that is because it was my father's sport and she could not deride it.
I hear the or words, spoken and unspoken, echo in my mind. They have gripped me my whole life. And see how my longing to be recognized, to be treasured, understood, celebrated kept me connected to my mother in spite of her refusal or inability to care. That same feeling has me gripped today. And I have learned in this long, long process that the physical feeling is essential in the healing process.
I do not know how to extricate or relieve myself but I am choosing to acknowledge it, be aware of it, hold it in my consciousness with the hope and belief that that heightened awareness will grant me a reprieve, will attenuated that grip and its wretched state of being and associated pain, that sense of worthlessness and hopelessness.
I have always been ready to move on. I am willing to reexperie de that crippling pain to get to the other side, to release its repression.
Paralysis comes from both the shame and her resulting anxiety, and equally from the subconscious fear of triggers. Both the experience and the anticipation are equally gripping. When the grip is released, I expect the fear of anticipation will dissipate almost immediately and I will forget it's wretchedness almost immediately. Time will tell.
And I will have this record to help me see the shifts and changes.
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As toxic as the belittling was the overall alienation, the disinterest and disdain of me as an individual. That is the ultimate shame, that I as a person, is shame itself. That I as a person, in making my presence known, in expressing my needs, my desires, my preferences, was setting myself up for derision and punishment.
That is the trap that was set and which I have railed against but not stepped outside of. That is the mission I am on - to begin to honor my needs and desires and sense of self. I have no idea how except to begin where I am by heightening awareness of the binds that have trapped and calling them by name.
I will see if that is a valid way.
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In my parents house, if I was struggling, or I needed help or advice it was a setup to bring down the hammer, to incur humiliation, to have myself berated and belittled. My decision would be rife for jokes for the rest of my life and my brothers loved to participate, which they were allowed to do, no, encouraged to do.. To this day, struggling to make a decision I feel shamed and humiliated, defeated from the gut go and then shut down..
I am struggling with a very difficult situation right now and being powerfully revisited by these lifelong forces.
I am bring them into the light.
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Yup.
They were assholes.
And they are gone.
It's just YOU, GS, finding your way to your OWN life.
You are not a shadow of them.
You are not a walking scar from them.
You are not an unhealable wound from them.
They are gone now.
YOU still have life, and many years to unfold it.
I am amazed by your journey.
I believe in where YOU are going.
You non-shadow, you.
love to you,
Hops
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In my parents house, if I was struggling, or I needed help or advice it was a setup to bring down the hammer, to incur humiliation, to have myself berated and belittled. My decision would be rife for jokes for the rest of my life and my brothers loved to participate, which they were allowed to do, no, encouraged to do.. To this day, struggling to make a decision I feel shamed and humiliated, defeated from the gut go and then shut down..
I am struggling with a very difficult situation right now and being powerfully revisited by these lifelong forces.
I am bring them into the light.
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
There's a special place in hell for abusers.
Sending you e-hugs as I've been there too!
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This gift just fell into my lap. It is a path marker, confirming I am headed in the right direction. I am thankful as I just made a difficult decision in making a commitment to neurofeedback with qEEG with a specific doctor at significant cost. While I was working with this doctor far from home I made in depth notes about the work. I made notes about a few other related concepts and one article I wrote about in depth was methods for supporting the Vagus nerve. Then comes this article tiring those two things together along with Jon Kabat Zinn's Mindfulness. It is though it is written for me.
https://healingfromthefreeze.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/the-vagus-nerve-and-the-difficulty-with-mindfulness/
This morning I was remembering how the veil of resentment was lifted from me late last spring. It was such an amazing experience and a time a tremendous new insight. That memory came just after receiving a bit of a reprieve last night from the present layer of wretchedness. I take it as a signal that relief or release is on its way. And then this.
I needed this article. It relieves me of the shame of having been stuck all these decades. Oddly, the article hints that it is about "freeze" but then never addresses it directly though I understand it so clearly. I wonder if I can find this author. I wonder if I would be welcomed.
The foot on the brake is the anticipation of freeze. It is equally as bad as the freeze itself and usually triggers the freeze. For some reason I can seem to get around the freeze a bit. Easier than the anticipatory freeze. I am wondering about which release will come first, how it will unpack. I am imagining living free of "the dread" or what life will be like without waiting for the other foot to fall, without the fear expectation of being rejected, of failing of being frozen. Just the ability to wonder is new, and now to nurture the image of it, to imagine the feeling of it. For all the years I could not make those leaps but was stuck in the image of someone outside of me opening the door for me. So this is a huge transition and it is of course empowering because I am no longer waiting for other, other who does not exist, who cannot rescue me. And that other was "mother" who I waited for lifelong to show me the way and nurture me to the point of function and set me free. That mother nurture of the baby bird learning to fly, bits on its own, returning to the nest, trial after trial until it is able and then on its own. Having missed that natural process I was locked in search for it but somehow have found my way through.
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Ah Bones
There's a special place in hell for abusers.
We know that all too well don't we Bones. It is a sorrow that cuts so deep.
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Thank you Hops.
You know they live inside my head. My favorite line from my favorite Zinn's meditation says something about releasing self hatred. Every time I hear it I am stopped in my tracks and hear myself think, "I don't hate myself but I have internalized their hatefilled, hateful messages." The difference is subtle but significant, because it is easier to let them go than to reform my self image. Suddenly I know I don't have to change my being but I have to release their grip on me, release my fear of their internalized condemnation, my anticipation of their cruel belittlements and rejection. It is separate from me, just internalized.
Thank you for your encouragement!
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With this new perspective, I am learning. Yesterday, I began to differentiate the regular anxiety from that of the anticipation of encountering an anxiety trigger. The second is the one the keeps me from moving the first, tends to shut me down or trigger frustration or anger, it is physically painful.
Today I am shut down (avoiding) but seeing the difference and not triggering anxiety by not getting anything done. Yesterday I was able to get things done without triggering. These things will slowly sort themselves out.
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I have had two difficult and strange days. I see space between my normal state of shame/anxiety and fear/anticipation of a trigger. That space gives me room to breath, to process. I experienced something like this a year ago when my lifelong state of resentment cracked like an eggshell. Things looked different, the light changed. I saw the present but more importantly, the past in very different light. I felt different. Initially, there was a period on mourning, for all that I had lost by being in that state. It was a heavy, heavy loss.
I feel the same kind of shift in light, new vision, and deep grieving. I've lost so much but I still have life in front of me and that is where I must focus. Off and on, yesterday and today, I noticed that normal triggers are not triggering. It is so bizarre - welcomed but unsettling. Subconsciously Waiting for it to return and then checking, as if to be sure I have my phone or keys, only to remember the dread has slipped away, my, previously permanent shadow has faded away.
Every now and then, over the past two days I have felt a great sorrow wash over me, from head to foot, a sorrow, a loss, a memory of excruciating rejection and loss. Memory after memory, in no order, without warning. It comes, waves over me and goes. I'm sure there is more to come but I am not afraid that it will be too much. It would have been too much pain earlier but no longer.
There is, however, at least one more large segment still to be processed and that is the one about failure. Had I predicted the order I would have thought all the rejection I have experienced would be the most devastating and so the last to process. Rationally, failure seems to be a product of that profound rejection, sabotage and humiliation by my father and passively, tacitly by my mother. But that is what is still there, still paralyzing, at least the fear or expectation of failure is. But, I'm going to start pushing back against it. It is very, very scary for me. I can do this. I can emerge from this freeze after all of these years and still have a life.
Give me strength.
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Emerge, GS.
Breath the free air.
Lighter
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I came across this post today at the bottom of a blog post that made a connection between PTSD and victims of Narcisists. I connected to much of what she wrote. I find it more validating when it is written by someone else.
Annie
NOVEMBER 8, 2014 AT 10:20 AM
I have been toying with the idea of PTSD for the past few weeks. This post has helped me to realize I likely suffer from C-PTSD from sibling abuse. I have nearly every symptom associated with PTSD, but haven’t experienced a “severe traumatic” event.
I am 56 years old, each year I feel; more anxious, disconnected, and sad. I don’t enjoy social events, I’m on high alert at all times, afraid of humiliation. When I isolate, I feel lonely. The little confidence I have gathered in life is slipping.
As a child from a family of 10, I was the scapegoat. I was tormented by my next older brother and sister. Every day, I was laughed at and teased. If I tried to get away from them, I was followed and taunted. We lived in the country, so were isolated. I was repeatedly told how stupid I was, ugly, worthless, fat, would never amount to anything, and no one would ever want me. Every mistake I made was a family broadcast and resulted in prolonged taunting. My other siblings did not stick up for me, and often joined in on the taunt. My mother looked the other way, or told me to stop being a baby, they were only teasing me. My dad was sick. At age 15, this brother set me up on a blind date, as a joke, with a 22 year old controlling man. This man “loved me”, the first person who ever said that to me. I became pregnant at age 15, and married him, It was my escape from that home. I divorced by age 19.
I’ve been through counseling twice, but it hasn’t “stuck”. I think this may be because I didn’t address the PTSD. I am a successful professional woman, I am thin, physically active, eat healthy, and have been told I am nice looking. I am married to a kind man, who loves me. I have 2 beautiful grown daughters and 2 lovely grandchildren. I have a few friends, but am very slow to trust.
I have withdrawn some from my family of origin. I still live in the same area, but don’t engage much, mostly holidays or special events. My abusive sister has cut back quite a bit on her hurtful comments, but I avoid her a lot. My brother is unchanged, I think. I don’t engage with him much at all and he basically ignores me. I have found myself in a couple of parallel experiences with in-laws and at work, where I had flashbacks to my childhood, and basically felt “re-victimized”. This has left me more cautious.
I am not suicidal or in danger of hurting my self. I have been treated with SSRI’s for depression and sleep medications, but they leave me feeling flat and groggy.
I want to heal. I want to feel joy, not emptiness, fear and sadness. I feel broken and robbed. This blog has given me some hope that there are others out there who have suffered sibling abuse and could help me heal. I would appreciate any suggestions, insights, or ideas anyone may have. I am excited that some are writing a book about their experiences, as it is helpful to hear from others. I don’t want to write a book, I’m not good at writing, but I would be happy to share more of my story.
Annie[\quote]
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TT and Lighter - thank you for the encouragement. It is time for me to emerge. I believe it too. I am thankful for being able to see my role in all this finally and to be able to see it without feeling such profound shame but rather understanding. I have one more level. I'm trying not to press it but let it ( and now I have the right word) emerge.
I'm waiting, preparing, pushing ever so gingerly. It has been a lifetime. The correction may be swift or it may be slow but it will certainly come.
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Here is the blog post. I like the idea though The article is light on substance.
http://letmereach.com/2014/02/01/ptsd-in-the-aftermath-of-narcissistic-abuse/#comments
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WOW.
Sibling abuse scarred me deeply.
And then the bullying at school (also abuse).
I think PTSD makes enormous sense, and I felt somewhat that way for decades.
It is a form of anxiety after all...
Hops
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Memories have been flooding me, memories of times that evoke shame , some rejection, some extremely complex. As the memories come, one after another, gossamer ties to earlier childhood wounding are visible, the connects made. The pain is just bearable. I hold it, process it with with words from Zinn's Heartscape, transforming shame by being wrapped in the experience of loving kindness.
One memory that reflects back to specific training by my father to not ask for what I needed, to wait for it to be given, a kind of helplessness. The pain of abandonment, wrapped in the phrase, "I love you." There is so much more to process. I am weary of it but not afraid and as days tick by I become more and more willing to face these memories, to process the shame and resulting anxiety.
The big grouping of shame still to address, maybe the biggest is "not good enough." Anything I did was "not good enough." The more I tried to do the more I opened myself up to the condemnation, shame. I would start something, a project that I loved, gardening, needlework, cooking and when I ran into an obstacle, rather than helping me learn to resolve it and find a way to finish, I would be belittled and made fun of, so I would quit but be scarred with humiliation and shame that took hold in the recesses of my mind. This process would repeat over and over again until I only knew failure. The very point of having an idea for a project starts the process of shame and humiliation and paralysis.
It is all so clear now. Memory by memory I am processing and unbundling. Bit by bit, I am taking tiny steps to set a " project" and complete it. Feel the shame descend like a wave starting at the top of my head and descending. Process it, be aware of it, be present to it, until it passes, until it is relieved. And as memories appear repeat the healing process.
I can tell that the daily intensity is decreasing, incrementally. Shame and anxiety still dominate me. I am still paralyzed but it is receding, bit by bit.
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This is amazing, GS.
You're facing the hard feelings..... not avoiding them. Enduring them, rather, despite the pain, in order to quiet them.
Hopefully you can put them behind you completely.
Lighter
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Dr. David Kessler was on The Diane Rehm Show today. His segment was such a gift for me. He has written a new book, Capture: Which supports the very idea I have been trying to articulate. I cannot wait to read the book. This is a huge boost and confidence builder. I'm so thankful. No doubt to me that my depression/anxiety has captured me. The way out is through awareness. It is incredibly painful but it is getting more and more endurable. I suspect there is great pain still hiding, waiting for my strength to increase.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-kessler-1/capture-theory/
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Thank you Lighter. I am so encouraged. Which I also take as a good sign. Hopeful and encouraged.
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Ahhh, (((((((((GS))))))))))))))--
Maybe there is LESS pain still hiding.
Love,
Hops
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I had a dream last night that blew open a whole level
Of healing, revealing such levels Of shame and bringing on more. I under Kabat-Zinn's Loving Kindness meditation as I held the image of the dream and realized some peace. But the dream revealed behavior and attitude from my youth that is in itself shameful. So I again applied Loving Kindness to the meta awareness.
The dream was made of two parts. The second part held the most pain. It was from the time of high school. I was wandering in a high school
Building where I belonged, on an open stairwell. As I continue used descending the steps ended in a well half a floor below the main level. There was as separated half flight up. A flight to no where. A small platform six feet below the floor. I was lost. As I ascended on the other side, I was approached by a pretty blond girl in green. Several high schools had just been combined and students from each wore their school's colors. This girl was coming over to speak, to introduce herself.
In my peripheral vision I could see other students begin to fill the halls dressed in various color uniforms. Several guys approached this sunken well where I was now standing. I spoke to the girl I'm a kind of haughty, sarcastic reply. She was confused but thinking she or I had misunderstood tried again to be friendly. By now, the boys were closer and one sharp witted caustic boy joined in with a barbed put down. I was on a kind of a stage, holding the group's attention and I threw several more barbs at easy targets. Several of the boys joined the mean spirited repartee. Just before a faculty member
Broke it all up and moved us along to our classrooms, I caught a glimpse of the first girl's eye, her head cocked to the right side. She wasn't so much hurt as confused, disappointed, too confident in herself to be hurt.
As soon as I woke up I felt awash in shame. I knew this dream was significant in two parts. That it was revealing a dynamic that took place in my life and that it went to a level of shame that I live with today. What my retro long above
Does not get to is the dominant emotion of the dream. It was an anger that came out in the back and forth between me and several of the boys. An anger I held and played off in a kindred banter vollied back and forth with small digs at some in the little crowd.
But I recognized immediately that as an adolescent, my own shame coupled with a contradictory sense of entitlement, led me to shut the door on many possible friendships out of a sense of --- well, the closest
I can come is inferiority. But it is really out of what my father and my mother would put down or belittle. The verbal
Jousting with he boys which had a tinge of meanness came out of the same space but rather than rejecting was a way of connecting though in a very tenuous and negative way. Both came out of shame and an expectation of rejection coupled
With a longing to belong. And then a new layer of shame would blanket the whole scene afterward. So not only did I get no relief, but the shame just piled up, layer on layer.
This is a dream, not a memory. But it reveals so clearly, the shame I felt, how I rejected people before they could reject me. It also shows me something about my caustic banter that felt supercharged and was fun but had a huge
Cost for me and for others around.
I do feel relief, healing, layers peeling off. It is shameful to see but I am thankful as well because images like this are presented for my to understand and to heal. Though I have no vision for the future. I feel certain that something good will come of it. As I began this process my goal is to move out of "freeze" I did not realize there was so much "relationship" work.
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This stuff is pouring out of me, like a septic wound opened to the air. I am so weakened but at the same time aware of a seed of strength waiting to flourish.
Today's dream, I was at a small airfield. The building was for the local pilots, like a small clubhouse. I was there with a friend.and we were straightening up before we left. Someone came in and was speaking to me. When I looked at them I could not see them for the sun shining in my eye. Bu they spoke as though they knew me, referring to an acquaintance. As I went to another room to get her my belongings, I saw behind the door, along the wall a dark animal. I thought it a cat but it was a small, long haired, black dog. When I looked again, it had pooped and then I saw a significant open wound along its ribs. I called for someone to shut the door so we could contain it while we went for help. But when I tried to get help identifying a after hours vet suddenly no one would help. People were present but wouldn't allow me to use their phone, wouldn't help me find help for the dog, wouldn't help me catch it. And I felt a washed with shame, with failure, with rejection. It all poured out on me.
And when I woke, I saw again the source of that shame, that experience of being helpless and rejected. And I saw how that same shaming helplessness has followed me down through the years. And again I applied the words of loving kindness and felt a kernel of relief. In the dream Some young men had laughed at my friends pants. I felt such humiliation even though she didn't. After I embraced loving kindness, the image of the young men came back and I turned to them and told them there was humor in her colorful striped pants but not belittlememt. And the shame melted.
Each day another layer melts away and yet the remainder seems to float up again, like ice in the ocean, presenting the same volume to my eye, making it appear to have not diminished at all even though I am certain that it has. So I process by faith that I am making progress and the bind will surely snap soon enough. Once the bind snaps I will be strong enough to persevere through the daily struggles, strong enough to face these battles without retreat.
I'm not expecting the battles to go away but I am working towards strengthening myself to withstand them rather than be knocked down and debilitated by them. I have no doubt that I have the strength to endure but I have not thought before about having the strength to not be leveled by the battles. I am getting there.
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My father shamed me about things beyond my control. I was unaware of this until recent years. It is one of the factors that caused me to be so shamed about things that make no sense. The effect has been catastrophic for me. Now I take it on to retire it bit by bit. It explains why I had to retreat - everything was shaming, things that had nothing to do with me. My radar picked up anyone and everyone's shame and took it on. It feels so painful even to write about it, expose it.
Then to top it off, my voice, my understanding, my recognition of this would be denied, even to this day by anyone in my family. I would be further shamed for understanding it. I'll never forget years ago, decades ago, when my mother went to treatment for alcoholism and my brothers and I went to family therapy a couple of times my oldest brother railed at me for not being forthcoming about my impending divorce. This was in the 80s and the breakup of my marriage was extremely shaming. And there was my brother openly hostile to me about this huge loss and the therapist said not a word. I was aware of what a revelatory moment it was and the therapist was oblivious. I tap into that pain, shame just recalling it. But the shame really does not belong to me.
I have taken on so much that does not belong to me. And now I begin claim what is mine. Slowly but surely.
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GS:
I think that's a really insightful point about feelings and belief not always being ours, but belonging to someone else.
I bet that feels like a revelation.
Good work.
Lighter
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((((GS))))))))
I think shame is your Big Secret. And, your Key to Healing.
It is wonderful that you are drilling into it. It's huge, beyond huge.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-zesty-self/200905/what-we-get-wrong-about-shame (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-zesty-self/200905/what-we-get-wrong-about-shame)
love,
Hops
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I know this is progress but it feels like regression. I am so filled with resentment. After three meditations I was able to connect what I am feeling today with abandonment. Not the original but with abandonment by people who promised caring. Of course I know this goes to a layer that sits above the original.
I don't feel the shame usually connected to abandonment and resentment. I think this is because having processed a layer of shame I now have this stuff to process.
I was having more dreams that brought up this abandonment. I tried to get in touch with images of caring mother figures. I could not. As I tried I first felt the anger and then the resentment u serenata and then the abandonment which should have been clearer because of the two things that were so heavy on my mind - not being included to my husbands cousin's daughters wedding. He was her only 1st cousin. And a memory of someone who was caring and kind to many but only up to a level. These images that wouldn't leave me gave way to abandonment and then on a deeper level the connection to my family which completely rejected me but claimed love.
This is more processing. Bough I feel wretched I do believe it is more healing. I am so fascinated that I is not bringing up shame. Abandonment and being excluded has always been shaming to me in the past.
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.....it is more healing. I am so fascinated that I is not bringing up shame. Abandonment and being excluded has always been shaming to me in the past.
Observer mode is a helpful mode, ((GS.))
Are you keeping a journal?
Lighter
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Heard today on Fareed Zakaria - what makes Google such a successful,place to work? According to an in depth study it is psychological safety, being heard and valued. That sounds to me to be the exact opposite of voicelessness. This is powerful information for all but especially for those who have at some time been voiceless.
I will look for a link to this segment with Charles Duhigg. For now here is a link to the book Duhigg wrote about his findings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/books/review/smarter-faster-better-by-charles-duhigg.html?_r=0
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I am posting a link to an all too brief article which is really About energy psychology. I honestly know nothing about that but what fascinated me is the treatment of "unconscious fear" and the amygdala. I have been dealing with bringing MY unconscious fear to the consciousness. But I have struggled with putting it into words. This article does it beautifully.
Perhaps the most important aspect of this for me is that I think a large portion of the field of psychology and psychiatry is unaware of this distinction. I am certain that the vernacular about anxiety is unaware. I'll go out on a limb and say that chronic and trauma based anxiety cannot be understood without grasping this distinction, and if not understood, then not treated.
I'll go out on a limb and make the conjecture that anxiety is a debilitating 21st century disorder that effects broad swaths of the population. It is time to provide effective, accessible and affordable treatment.
https://acepblog.org/2015/08/21/the-amygdala-fear-and-energy-psychology-contemplations-on-a-neuroscientists-blog/
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Oh my Lighter. I thought I had proofread my post. I can't see past the typos.
I journal here. I cannot keep up with a hard journal. I have started so many. But on another hand I have wondered why
for yEars but I find writing here more compelling. I don't understand why that is but I am able to bare my soul here and it has something to do with being in a place where someone might understand. I have been so alone with my thoughts for so long that perhaps I have an inordinate need to connect. I really don't know.
And I agree with you about the observer mode. I see the observer role so critical to the dialogue between consciousness and subconsciousness.
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Recent weeks, I have been struggling to accomplish even the most basic - dressing, eating, any cleaning. But I have been able to make myself do some difficult things that I would prefer to avoid.
Friday, I went out to get my license renewed. (Two weeks late because I couldn't do it.) and I had an insight. I remembered writing here some years ago about being a turtle with a hard shell. ,and now I am that soft skinned vulnerable turtle without my shell. I feel the pain - both original and new, triggers - on such intense debilitating levels.
But I am processing them. Being washed by memories and expectations of rejection, failure, not good enough. Of all of these, the not good enough is the most paralyzingly. But I believe this process is moving forward. I believe this internal horror that I am in the midst of will not be eternal and will leave me in a state that I can function within.
The other encouraging thing is that so much external information is coming to me and it all helps affirm my own understanding and experience. I chose to believe I am moving forward., that the nut is about to crack, that there is more than just hope close by.
And I will be posting here because it helps me sort it all out. I'm staying in a state of perpetual awareness. It is exhausting but it is powerful as well.
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I went shopping today, dog food, cat food, that sort of thing. I'm walking down the aisles of the big box store and hit with a wave of shame. Immediately struck by how normative it is for me to be in a state of shame. But more - on this day, I recognized that the normal,state of shame is letting up. It is slowing receding from the every minute norm.
I think as this sense of being is strengthened then it will be possible for me to take the next step and begin processing everyday activities that generate a toxic reaction in me. Ultimately I expect to be able to face my greatest fears of rejection, failure and not being good enough.
Tomorrow, I chose to begin taking steps to schedule a couple,of basic daily tasks, anticipating the blowback but being prepared to face it in the same way I have been doing so inrecent weeks.
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I want to thank you GS, for what you share here.
Your talking about the role of shame in your own makeup has encouraged me to look at that.
I think getting my ADD diagnosis after six decades means that I hadn't realized how much
shame I carried for inadequacies which, without an explanation, made me feel SO awful about myself.
I'm glad you've talked about it so much, and grateful.
I'm taking up shame directly with my counselor next week.
He rushes to "fix it" behavioral suggestions, blessizheart...but I don't think he understands
that there's a whole wall of shame between me and those sprightly moves.
Thank you for the inspiration to go after a core feeling that's been in my way.
love to you,
Hops
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A story about Monica Lewinski and public shaming. Very touching. How do you overcome such shaming? She hints at it and it is reminiscent of what Peter Levine says is how victims of trauma triumph rather than succumb. It is about finding a way to turn to empowerment. Difficult but possible.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/16/monica-lewinsky-shame-sticks-like-tar-jon-ronson?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Hops, that is courageous.
That sense of inadequacy can color everything. Chipping it away may seem futile but I am convinced that it is worth it, that every chip is worth the effort.
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Rejection
Failure
Not good enough - not deserving
Most of my shame is attached to one of these three.
The third is the most crippling.
I'm ready to go within.
They evoke a physical response - a feeling.
Stand within the pain and reshape the feeling.
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From a page about cPTSD and having a Narcissistic parent:
One of the main differences between healthy parents and narcissistic parents is the understanding that the child will one day be an adult who has to be able to function on their own. They need self esteem, and self confidence to function well as an adult.
Narcissistic parents tear their children’s self esteem down, in order to control and manipulate them. They do not see the child as an individual person with rights of their own. They see the child as an extension of themselves and property that they have every right to abuse as they see fit.
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Here's more. Nothing new and yet it turns my stomach.
Living with a narcissistic parent is living in constant fear. Life is unpredictable. You can follow all of the rules as you understand them and then suddenly the parent has changed the rules without telling you. You are punished for not following the new rule, which you has no way to know about.
This is a way in which the narcissistic parent can make you wrong all the time. No matter how hard you try, you are always wrong and always not good enough. There may be rewards from time to time for complying but later on the parent sets up a scenario for you to fail.
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((((GS))))
You deserved to be cherished, protected, and cared for as a child.
Your parents couldn't do that for you.
They were broken.
If they could have, they would have.
They couldn't.
I'm so sorry. It wasn't fair.
Lighter
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((((GS))))
You deserved to be cherished, protected, and cared for as a child.
Your parents couldn't do that for you.
They were broken.
If they could have, they would have.
They couldn't.
I'm so sorry. It wasn't fair.
Lighter
Abuse is still abuse and abuse is unforgiveable.
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Bones:
You're right, abuse is abuse, but it's helpful (for me) to assume everyone is doing their "best," which admittedly does sound wrong.
Maybe it wouldn't sound so bad if it was re phrased.....
Everyone is doing what they're capable of?
The goal isn't to excuse or forgive abuse, IME.
The goal here is to make peace with it, myself, and leave it behind so as to limit the damage it's doing in my present, IMO.
I'm sorry if my post upset you, ((Bones.)) That wasn't my intention.
Lighter
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You deserved to be cherished, protected and cared for as a child.
Thank you.
A friend told me a story last week about a church friend who was profoundly shamed as a child. When she recently told her psychologist he said to her, "I am so sorry. You did not deserve that." He meant it. And she fell apart, dissolving into tears. It touched her core.
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Bones, it is true that abuse is abuse regardless of the abusers ability or even intention. Plus, my mother had many opportunities to own her part, to apologize, to regret. And she never did. My father became so severely mentally ill after a successful, prominent career that I never looked for any acknowledgement. He was pathetic and I would cringe if I saw him out in public. But my mother could have owned her part and chose not to. At one point when I quit speaking to her she agreed to see a counselor and did admit to lying to me. But the guy was weak and completely let her off the hook, following up,only by asking why and letting it go when she said, "I don't know." She copped out to admitting that she lied but not even giving a single example. That was as good as it got. She knew what she had done but wouldn't own it. Still hurts. She died 3 years ago tomorrow.
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Today, I was able to tackle several chores at the top of my list. I felt the rush of shame flood me and the anxiety shoot out of the back of my brain, flooding my cranium, cramping my gut. But I returned to the voice of loving kindness that I am growing through my daily meditation. It sustained me.
My work ahead of me is to continue growing this voice. Facing the shaming work, growing the voice. The stronger I get the less terrified I will be. The more willing I will be to face the shaming. That is the key to progressing out of this paralysis.
I have another chore ahead of me early this afternoon. Setting a schedule is shaming as well. It triggers the, "you always say but never do" internalized voice. I counter that with the helpful, encourager, " it is difficult but you can do it. Just start. Step by step."
That's my goal. Just start.
Step out of retreat.knowing the neurology shifts each time I step out of retreat within the framework of loving kindness. At some point, the doing will be wired with the loving kindness. That is the goal.
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I did my afternoon chore. I'm so relieved.
But more important, I was not shamed in doing it. THAT is huge and that is what I have to process and remember. I was not shamed in doing my chore.
Could the log jam be breaking up?
No to get dressed and be on time - yet another life long shaming issue.
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Bones:
You're right, abuse is abuse, but it's helpful (for me) to assume everyone is doing their "best," which admittedly does sound wrong.
Maybe it wouldn't sound so bad if it was re phrased.....
Everyone is doing what they're capable of?
The goal isn't to excuse or forgive abuse, IME.
The goal here is to make peace with it, myself, and leave it behind so as to limit the damage it's doing in my present, IMO.
I'm sorry if my post upset you, ((Bones.)) That wasn't my intention.
Lighter
This sounds grumpy as I'm feeling grumpy right now.
If it's helpful for you, then clearly state that this is helpful for you only, using "I" messages. When it's not clear, it feels like trying to "fix" others and it feels like my pain is being discounted and minimized. The NWomb-Donor was NOT doing her best as she was NEVER a mother PERIOD! She was a PSYCHO who didn't hesitate to justify child-rape! I have to deal with the very real possibility that she was a pedophile herself. I know you didn't mean to upset me. The original posting just triggered a raw nerve. PTSD does that.
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Bones, it is true that abuse is abuse regardless of the abusers ability or even intention. Plus, my mother had many opportunities to own her part, to apologize, to regret. And she never did. My father became so severely mentally ill after a successful, prominent career that I never looked for any acknowledgement. He was pathetic and I would cringe if I saw him out in public. But my mother could have owned her part and chose not to. At one point when I quit speaking to her she agreed to see a counselor and did admit to lying to me. But the guy was weak and completely let her off the hook, following up,only by asking why and letting it go when she said, "I don't know." She copped out to admitting that she lied but not even giving a single example. That was as good as it got. She knew what she had done but wouldn't own it. Still hurts. She died 3 years ago tomorrow.
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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From Kabat-Zinn's Heartscape
"Drinking in the experience that you are unequivocally and unconditionally loved and accepted just as you are, without having to be different, without having to be worthy of their love, without having to be particularly deserving. In fact you may not feel particularly worthy or deserving, but that does not matter. It is in fact irrelevant. The relevant fact is that you were or are loved. Their love is for you, just as you are. For who you are now, already, and perhaps always have been. Allowing your heart to bask in these feelings, to be cradled in them, to be entrained into them. To be rocked moment by moment in the swinging, rhythmic beating of the loving heart of another. And in the cadences of your own breathing, allowing your heart to be held and bathed in this way by the warmth of this radiant pulsating field of loving kindness"
See if you can imagine someone treating you this way. And imagining with great vividness the feelings of love and kindness and regard. That can actually serve equally well.in this practice.
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These words, this message forms my path out. Though expressed so clearly and simply, the journey is indescribably rocky and difficult.
Each good feeling described here triggers loss and rejection and failure. Each misstep requires considerable concentration to get back on the path. It is easier to retreat into numbed paralysis. But that is accepting death over life and I have made a declaration that I can no longer do that, not now, not when I believe I have found the path out.
Retreating feels less painful but it is truly without hope. Choosing to step into the pain and finding the way into the experience of loving kindness is difficult and paradoxically painful but I am certain that in time with repetition that feeling of love will begin to become the norm rather than the handful of seconds that come about with concerted, concentrated effort. For now I must commit to the effort.
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From a page about healing from narcissistic wound:
4. Guilt, shame, and doubt are thoughts and feelings from elsewhere to be ignored. Ignoring your "inner critic" is hard to do because it feels like it's your "self" telling you these negative messages so you think it must be true. But these messages and feelings are not from your true self--they are incorrect beliefs from surviving your N parent which you have internalized! You can learn to recognize them and identify them as your "inner critic" which you must ignore. It is not the truth! Your inner critic is WRONG about you. Most often the exact opposite is true. When you become conscious of your "inner critic" you can over-ride your thoughts with positive affirmations such as "I love and approve of myself". Getting in the habit of catching yourself when you are unconsciously beating yourself up will change your life! When you can stop your negative thoughts and know and believe that they aren't true, your true purpose and compassionate self will begin to emerge. This is not easy and this leads into my next tip. Sometimes you must get help from a safe person you can trust fully to grieve and let out the pain from your abused inner child before you can begin to change these negative beliefs about yourself.
*****
I will say that for myself, I don't think ignoring works but the rest of this message is important for me to hear over and over and over again. For me, the way to shift out of these intrusive thoughts is using Mindfulness practices.
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This brief piece of Jon Kabat-Zinn about thoughts is so helpful for me. It gives me courage to allow myself to be aware especially today when the awareness is excruciatingly painful.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LvLRheIPY90
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Kabat-Zinn
Default mode of the mind is to be all over the place. It's called approach avoidance.
Default mode - what's happening when you are not doing anything. Your mind is wandering, an entire field in neurology studies mind wandering. Aka narrative network. Mindfulness is awareness cultivated by paying attention.
Paying attention has to be learned. Attending must be learned. It is learnable. People pay attention in different ways, auditoirly, visually, intuitively. Orchestras first tune their instruments, first to themselves, them together and ultimately in a relational way.
Mindfulness - Paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judge mentally.
There is more right with you than wrong with you.
You can't improve performance by trying to improve performance because
The kind of mind that is grasping for an outcome is precisely the kind of mind that gets in the way of the desired outcome.
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At this stage in my process, being aware is like sticking my finger in the socket. With attentiveness I can close the circuit and the wretched feeling will attenuate.
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The more I process the more other stuff comes up like an endless parade.
Tonight it is sorrow for all these years of so much loss. It is a type of grief. But grief is not eternal and there will be something more beyond this pain. We are more than our pain, more than our worst selves. I have focused on the worst. I learned how to do that, was taught as a child. But now I am unlearning it or better yet learning how to focus on the better parts of me.
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((((GS)))))
No words.
Just hugs.
Lighter
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Thank you Lighter.
I really believe I am on a healing path that will accord me some freedom to have a valuable life.
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I have just discovered this paper which includes the following passage. It reflects what I lived and it is written by someone I have never heard of. Her objective mess gives it such value to me. Plus it explains what I have been trying to say
http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/5623865/Adult_Children_of_Narcissistic_Parents.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1461261629&Signature=npgYmiVXG0mudqyq8ZWMk%2FtbENk%3D&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3DAdult_Children_of_Narcissistic_Parents_T.pdf
The echo child learns, the hard way, to keep their feelings, problems, mistakes, questions, and opinions to themselves, or face severe disapproval, rejection and punishment from their narcissistic parent. If they do share their true selves in a moment of unguarded honesty, they may find those intimacies thrown back in their face at a later date. The communication style of the disapproving narcissist is indirect because they fear clear, and honest confrontation. Instead of “Mary, will you please take out the garbage?” One hears: “It would be nice if someone besides me took the garbage out once in awhile, do I have to do everything around here? Mary, I thought you said you were going to do this, you let it get too full and the dog got into it! I suppose you‟re on the phone with that girl who you said was skipping school. Well, go ahead, if you hang out with losers long enough you‟ll end up one too.” The simple request to take out the garbage is not about the garbage at all—it is a loaded gun of communication. Indirectly, the narcissist has used the garbage to: (1) elevate themselves as the only one who cares and actually does „everything‟—insinuating that nobody else does anything; (2) singles out someone to blame for the dog making a mess; and (3) brings up a previous confidence shared by Mary about her friend skipping school, and equates Mary, the friend, and the full garbage can to Mary ending up a loser. In this scenario, Mary may have just gotten home from school, or been helping the neighbor lady find her cat, but that is of no concern to the narcissistic parent. Mary‟s feelings are of no concern to this parent either, and to express them, or try explaining why she did not have time to take the garbage out, is pointless.
A child that finds themselves in a similar situation to Mary‟s will respond to the parent in one of two ways: fight or flight. To fight back is perceived as rebellious, selfish and disrespectful. To choose the flight option will be mistakenly seen by the parent as compliant obedience. Either way, the narcissist believes they are right, and the children was wrong—end of story. The garbage is not just the garbage; this whole situation is another opportunity for the narcissist to reassure themselves that they are not a failure as a parent; they are, in fact, a good parent by pointing out how irresponsible Mary was. On the surface, that sounds like a reasonable explanation that few would see as „child abuse‟, but it is. To cloak shame under the guise of caring is precisely what causes such psychological damage to the Echo—they do not understand why, if they are so loved, do they feel so worthless and unlovable? They conclude that what mom or dad said about them must be true, that they really are ungrateful and lazy.
Another ineffective communication technique used in narcissistic families is triangulation. The narcissistic parent uses a third party to talk through—a dog, a child, or even the other parent, to create a buffer against intimacy, and to not accept responsibility for what they say or how they say it. A more common and destructive form of triangulation is to use one person against another to form an “alliance” with the narcissist. This is sort of a “divide and conquer” technique where the narcissist positions themselves so other family members cannot form relationships with each other. The narcissist needs to be the center of attention, and sees close relationships within the family much like a jealous child would: “If they love each other then they do not love me.” The parent will gossip about one child to another, share intimacies about their spouse, betray confidences or even make up lies in order to remain “in the loop”. The concept of intimacy being established because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is the way a narcissist tries to feel in control. In other words, they believe: “If they do not like each other, then they will have to love me”.
A narcissistic parent is essentially an emotional child who relates to their own child as a “peer”— another adult who is trying to compete with them, or deliberately wants to make them look bad. To a narcissist there is no “us”, there is only “them or me”. They live in a world that is right or wrong, black or white, good or bad; if someone else is right then they must be wrong, if someone else is loved then they are unloved, if someone disagrees with them, that means they are trying to make them look stupid, and so on. Every feeling or experience of another is somehow a reflection of the narcissist‟s worth and value—whether it has anything to do with them or not. For example, if their child gets in trouble at school because they forgot their homework and feels bad about it, the narcissistic parent‟s first thought will be embarrassment— now the teacher will think they are a bad parent—they should have made sure the homework was done. Instead of being empathetic, or using this as a teaching moment, they are angry. The child is not permitted to express regret. The parent has already grabbed the situation, twisted it around, pulled it to close to them, will manipulate the child into feeling guilty for making angry. The narcissist has taken the focus off of the child‟s needs and placed it on themselves. The discouraged child is now expected to comfort the parent so they don‟t feel bad anymore. When this form of emotional co-opting occurs repeatedly, year after year, a child not only
stops telling the parent anything that may upset them, they stop being consciously aware of their true feelings at all. To feel is to be disappointed, so the protective walls go up, creating emotional safety from the narcissist and from feeling hopeful. Why desire intimacy and closeness if it means being rejected? Why bother just to be humiliated and emotionally abandoned? Trust leads to pain; therefore, trust becomes synonymous with pain.
The process of building a protective wall around the heart is not a conscious one; it is the magnificent brain‟s clever rewiring that helps the child survive a narcissistic system of emotional abuse and neglect. Unaware that this rewiring has occurred, the adult child of a narcissist has trouble figuring out why they have trouble with intimacy; why they lie when the truth would be easier to tell, have anxiety attacks, or find themselves in abusive work situations over, and over again.
Although the process of healing is difficult, it is possible for the Echo to find their voice and live a healthy life. If their therapist or counselor is familiar with the narcissistic family system, it is not difficult to spot an Echo client who displays ACOA symptoms, but whose childhood seemed “fine”. What prevents someone who was raised in a narcissistic family from becoming one? It is the presence of an adult in their life: a teacher, parent, aunt or neighbor, who, knowingly or unknowingly, loved, and accepted them. If there was one person who did not get mad if they made a mistake, or did not expect anything in return if they did the child a favor, then through this healthy “mirror”, they could see themselves reflected as valuable, unique and loveable. They could experience being “good enough”, just as they are. It is this same positive parent-child model that will help heal the adult child of a narcissist. Not tough love, not behavior modification or psychoanalysis, but a healthy, truthful mirror of the client‟s inherent beauty that is not based on what they do, but who they are. The beauty is flawed, imperfect, and prone to all sorts of mistakes, and miss-steps; but these are to be accepted, and learned from, not feared. That is the truth that will finally set the Echo child free.
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This is so profound for me that it was difficult to even read.
But I am determined to get through this and to another side.
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One of my resentment categories was triggered when others received group or public sympathy because my own family denied me concern, care sympathy when i was hurt or wronged or experienced misfortune. There was no support but instead denigration. And I was resentful when others received support and sympathy. It took me years to understand any part of that dynamic or even to be aware of my own resentment.
I am reminded of this when I read the first paragraph.
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. To cloak shame under the guise of caring is precisely what causes such psychological damage to the Echo—they do not understand why, if they are so loved, do they feel so worthless and unlovable? They conclude that what mom or dad said about them must be true, that they really are ungrateful and lazy.
This points to the mechanism that generated the state of shame through which I have muddled for decades. This is like a mirror for me. I know it is not true and that was an important step in the process. But it does not sharper the dome of shame that has confined me. I'm counting on awareness and processing the severe anxiety induced by the shame to do that. Befriending the shame and anxiety, not going on autopilot, now resisting or tensing to it all.
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Listening to JKZ.
Not fixing thinking, not CBT but recognizing and befriending thoughts, allowing them to come and go.
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In the paragraph of triangulation, I see my mother who talked about me to my brothers. She was thrilled to see us not have relationships among each other, sit back and watch my brothers belittle and sabotage me and say nothing. That still hurts and it set up such an indescribable situation at the time of her death that I still have not been able to process where my brothers were given conteol and power and used their connections to turn extended family and the legal system ( one brother and his wife lawyers) against me. Mo was not allowed into my mother's home to get my or my sons belongings nor to go through her clothes, etc. he pain of it is still indescribable. But none has let me talk about it or even sympathized with me.
I will process this in time but it may be the last thing.
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Paragraphs 4 and 5 reminds me how often I wrote or talked about my mother being stuck as a pre-pubescent child.
I am also reminded how I became aware of my own disassociation from emotions in my young adulthood. I have transcended that but of course there is a price (though worth paying.). The price is actually feeling the indescribable pain. Now I feel it so I can be aware of it and move through it.
And triumphant paragraph 6 is about healing. Healing that requires awareness and understanding and self-acceptance (which resides alongside the part of me that rejects who I am.). Focus on what is good, grow it through focus.
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I'm making progress and I'm so thankful. The anxiety is starting to lift. There are cracks in the blanket of shame.
So I'm on to the big one. The not good enough, the told you you would fail, you don't deserve nice, etc. etc. that's the big one. The big crippled. Time to face up. Time to open awareness.
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Window of break through this morning. Able to work. Shame present but not controlling. Using meditation, I am able to hold onto sense of a loving presence even in spite of the lurking presence of my shaming N parents. This is the most substantial break through in my life to date.
Hope giving.
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Today, this process has put me in touch with that pain of abandonment. It is wretched. I think it is exposed b/c I am finally able to tolerate it through the work with loving kindness.
I worked hard on chores. A huge plus. And then I found myself testing different triggers. Not intentionally at first but when I bumped into them they did not hurt as bad as usual. All of this gives me hope.
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Thank you Teartracks. I am so thankful to make progress and to have this place where I can work some of this out. Mi am a person who has to understand to Move forward, to work out the insanity I accepted and the prison that it created in my own mind and brain.
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I dealt with some very difficult things this weekend. One was a reunion of sorts - a cocktail,party Friday and luncheon Saturday. Only females in a broad range of ages. It included people from high school who used to be my close friends but who have moved on. It is such a huge hole,in my life. But I went, and smiled and enjoyed - all the while feeling those old feelings wash over me, remembering how my sense of rejection had left me angry and bitter and pushed people even further away across the years. It was bittersweet.
But I also saw that my longing across the years to reintegrate into old friendships, the longing to be included had kept me in pain as well. So I was able to be thankful,for what I had had, thankful for being together in that moment and move on to mourn what I have lost without giving in to the longing to be included in the future.
Sunday, I was hit hard by a loss that is in progress. I had not seen it coming even though I have been in the middle of it for some years. It hit me so hard and knocked my new found feet out from underneath me. I felt the panic rush in. I could hardly keep standing but I was out in public. Once I saw what was happening I reluctantly pulled myself back together and used the techniques that are helping me. I was able to avoid descending into a depth. But this ironing when I awoke I was clearly in a depression.
I know this is not a steady rise without slips but the slips down are scary. This will take time and I have to remember that yesterday evening and into the night I was able to really make important shifts in my thinking and feelings. That is huge and I am focusing on that today as I continue climbing out of that scary place.
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(((((GS))))))
I think it is so huge that with the old friends, you were able to stay in the present and view the moment from a different perspective, and you chose consciously to remain grounded in what you have in the present, rather than trying to rewrite the past. The fact that despite acknowledging and accepting that waves of old emotions also came and went, the overall experience was that you claimed your inherent right to exist and enjoy being alive.
That is just wonderful. Imo, especially wonderful because you created that different experience. It didn't happen to you.
Love and support,
Hops
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Very bad day. Actually slipped in depression. Totally paralyzed - more than ever.
THEN, I realized that I have not fallen back into old ways or old stuff but more old stuff is bubbling up, like air in a liquid, bubbling up to be released, to allow me to turn repressed, unconscious into awareness. . This is an opportunity for further healing. No fear. This is hope..
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When we view the sadness as a messenger, and listen for the message, it helps to avoid panic, IME.
It's difficult to rise up, assume that position of observer, and stay still without reacting, IME.
I think you've identified an opportunity also: )
Lighter
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Very bad day. Actually slipped in depression. Totally paralyzed - more than ever.
THEN, I realized that I have not fallen back into old ways or old stuff but more old stuff is bubbling up, like air in a liquid, bubbling up to be released, to allow me to turn repressed, unconscious into awareness. . This is an opportunity for further healing. No fear. This is hope..
Not totally paralyzed; you realized that this was old pain - leaving the body. That "knowing" separates you from the experience you had. And if you can observe quietly and patiently, you can start to "know" the "knower" too. That's the real you.
It's probably a silly analogy - but the process of letting go all of that kind of stuff isn't that much different than the "archeological digs" through years & years of accumulated "stuff". Our memory (most of the time) can place the details of how we acquired something, why we've kept it, and maybe even when it changed from a "thing" to an emotional symbol of times, places, people past. Things aren't the experience either - and they usually aren't "us" - they don't mean enough or serve enough purpose to keep them, when we're in the huge process of "lightening our load".
Whether that be emotionally, letting the past's hold on us go, or the accumulated "stuff" that someone just had to have, at the time... in the past.
I think you're doing wonderfully, moving through all this. Sure, some things will made us sad or feel like it's hopeless from time to time. It's only hopeless if you stop; give up; can't bear to choose, review, decide... one more thing. For me, that's a sign to take a break, and "take care of me". And with some of the bigger things, when it's really and truly gone you now have the problem of that big space it took up in "you". That's a really good problem to have... because you know enough, are whole enough, and strong enough... to just put you in that space. (Even if you simply guard it as "open space" while you're deciding - LOL.)
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Hitchhiking on the help...
Amber.
Thank you.
love to you both,
Hops
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I'm so appreciative of the support you give me. It is such sweet balm.
This is a very slow process but I do see minute progress. And each straw added will eventually break the camels back.
I am finding that imagining myself receiving loving kindness when I feel shaming anxiety is slowly chipping away at the pain and paralysis. As I progress I also see in more clarity how much there is of this dark stuff. I see the ways shame led to resentment and those two wired together in an anxiety response.
sadly, even attempts to improve my situation and my life are profoundly shamed. I have understood that for a very long time. But now I can continue to use the loving kindness meditation and the image of being loved and nurtured in my sadness and brokenness to begin to address the countless memories.
I have always had a system of repression. So when something triggered a shaming response my initial reaction may have benne resentment and then a flash of anger or irritation and my body tensed, especially my shoulders and back of my neck. The first thing that happens now is that I acknowledge what is going on and name it. I immediately feel a relaxation and release but that is like taking the armor off and it opens the flood gates for more shame and a flood of anxiety. And that's when I use the images. It may take a while to calm that down. But I believe that the more I do this the more it will become automatic.
That is my goal.
For so long I have not been able to face these memories nor the wretched feelings that come up and that repression is intimately at the para
Uses that I have experienced for decades..It started around one or two activities in my childhood but over time it spread to most everything.
Now I am able to be present to the feelings I have repressed for so long. I'm counting the days to healing.
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My mind scans channels to find the thing that I must be vigilant over. Reading David Kesslers new book Capture, I learn that this is a normal process from earliest man that evolution has not yet shifted. Mine unfortunately gets stuck. When my mind lands on shaming memories or people who cause me shame I am now able to hold that person in my memory and use the process to I shame it.
That is such relief.
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For example often when we are in trauma, the stomach will begin to contract at a rapid speed. The immediate reaction is to make it stop or react to it. What if we fully feel that contraction and allow it to happen? If it is pushed away that moves the emotional pain from the surface and deeper to the core where it may cause more harm such as turning into illness, anger or even depression.
I came across this today. It is about yoga but it describes so well what I have been doing about my shame and anxiety. This is so helpful for me to read, an affirmation that is so encouraging.
I have begun doing more to help, using more therapeutic things tDCS, infrared light, plexus, now time to add exercise back in. That will be huge. Slowly I see myself emerge from this paralysis. You don't know how welcomed that is..
Like an I thawing after the deep freeze. It continues to be easier to recover from shame and anxiety flashes. They occur less frequently, now countless times a day rather than all day. But I am also able to focus on growing loving kindness and feeling my heart grow and that is so welcomed. I am beginning to be able to tackle responsibilities and that is such a relief.
So bit by bit, feeling the darkness and staying with it, concentrating on loving kindness until it passes it healing and freeing.
I am so thankful.
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I'm in a truly insane situation. That's the bad news. The good news is that I have completely controlled my anxiety. That gives me such hope.
I traveled 750 miles withy former sister-in-law to visit my 24 year old nephew. My nephew is not educated, doesn't work and lives with his non-working 26 year old girlfriend and her father. The girlfriend demands my nephew work but sabotages him when he gets a job. His truck only works in 1st gear. His phone is on his girl friend's father's account b/c he works for ATT. The girlfriend told my nephew to either get a job or get out by May 1. She is very abusive and he cries about it regularly.
My SIL planned this trip, scheduled vacation from work, worked it out with my nephew 4 weeks ago. But when we got down here he would not see us Monday night. Not until Ties afternoon and not today. He doesn't answer the phone and only occasionally responds to texts. When I hear her behavior it appears that she is exhibiting BPD like behavior. She tells him he is not welcomed there and demands he return. She demands my sister-in-law pay his share of the rent. When my sister-in-law contacted the father, whose name is on the lease he did nt answer the phone but had his daughter text my sister-in-law to ask how dare she call him when he was at work. We happened to know he was not at work but was off.
I could go on and on. But this behavior is all too familiar to all of us. Unfortunately my SIL won't draw a line in the sand, won't go on and head home even though my nephew won't communicate or agree to see her.
So we sit, hour after hour, in a Comfort Inn 100s of miles from home - waiting. And it is miserable and dealing with my nephew is completely crazy making but I am keeping my mind focused and staying even keeled. And that is something wonderful.
If I continue on this path I will find myself functioning well very soon. I can almost see it happening. I'm so thankful.
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Here is a short description of one mans hellish life living with cPTSD since his father blamed him for his father's suicide attempt.
It is so helpful to read this. I felt so connected and such compassion. It helps me be kinder to my struggling self.
https://medium.com/@otherlives/i-have-complex-ptsd-it-works-like-this-63ef1de35b2f#.rrimzp7q0
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This trip and my meditation are bring so much of the past into consciousness. It feels wretched but now I am able to hold it until it dissipates but only because I attentively call on my heart to tune into what it feels like to give and receive love.
We drove for 12 hours Monday and tried to see my nephew that night. He refused. Then on Tuesday he would not respond to texts or calls until 2:00. Finally after 30 minutes of waiting at the house he lives in he came out and went with us to get something to eat. Yesterday we waited all day and even though he said he would see us he wouldn't respond to texts or calls. We went by his house and knocked on his door, standing waiting at the stoop the rains began to pour, we got wet and he refused to come out. Late last night she picked him up at almost 10:00pm. But she keeps giving him money even as she has said she wouldn't. This morning she she tells me she is going to pay his rent to these people. Meanwhile the girlfriend is screaming and yelling at him because he is spending time or speaking to his mother.
She gave him $300 Monday night and it was gone Tues. morning. She gave him more money yesterday and then $50 last night for gas, oil and cigarettes. Today it's money for rent and back rent. Each time she says she is not going to give him money and each time she does. She is in recovery, 12 years sober. Total insanity. In 24 hours I will be out of here.
It is total insanity. This is exactly what would send me into a tailspin in the past. But now I can focus on transforming, staying out of depression and anxiety. That is what I have the ability to do.
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When I first started the heartscape meditation it was very difficult to tap into feeling what it feels like to be loved. I concentrated on the spot in the back of my neck where I fell a knot of anxiety and darkness. Over the weeks that has shifted. I now feel it in my heart.
But I also felt something else yesterday. I had a faint image of a memory of being offered love and feeling terror. Instantly I recalled how my parents both said, "I love you." But the love they offered was demeaning and demanded a form of servitude. The two became entangled within my being, even as I sought love from others. What it meant was twisted and contorted.
Almost daily, these insights and memories waft up. Some clear as bells other vague but each is attached to twisted feelings and with each I return to the Heartscape. It is now offering a healing sanctuary.
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So today my SIL is planning to do things to help my nephew, get his truck fixed, go to job fair so he can qualify for food stamps, buy food, pay his back rent. She didn't want to go to get breakfast in case he called saying he was ready. He called at 11:30. We got there at 11:45. She panics that he will say again that she didn't warn him she was coming.
See anything crazy here?
Day three of this. Stressful but I'm holding.
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I am remembering that in the past, in a similar situation I would be stewing, nursing resentment, making this worse as I seethed with anger. I can almost feel that but what a relief to be free of that and yet see where I have been all at the same time.
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What an extraordinary situation you are posting "from", GS!
And yet you have the stamina to observe without enmeshing in it.
BRAVO to you.
And also thank you for the Medium story. Joe is astonishing,
and I can imagine how it felt to you to read what he wrote
about shame.
love, and safe home,
Hops
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GS:
Glad you're holding your own in the midst of all that crazy.
What an amazing journey you're on.
I'm happy you're sharing it with us: )
Thank you,
Lighter
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From a Hubpage post. It always helps me keep my perspective to read another's view. This helps remind me why no one helped me and why no one believed me.
THE NARCISSISTIC PARENT
Young children of a parent who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder are genuine victims of their parent and the disorder, as much as any child who lives through life with an addicted parent, or a parent guilty of physical or sexual abuse. The narcissistic parent abuses in an intensely subtle and devious fashion: they are guilty of severe emotional and mental abuse, and no one outside of the family would ever suspect anything wrong.. These child victims quite often go unnoticed, untreated, and not helped by other adults outside of the immediate family. This is due to the nature of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
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Thank you Hops and Lighter.
Lighter I appreciate the validation. I am so encouraged that I did not slip into darkness. It was a very dark experience with no escape for 5 days. This is certainly new for me. I did have dark dreams but in a half wake state I immediately went to focus on healing. It is clear to me that I am on a real healing path.
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Each level of healing brings with it more levels of wounded ness. And so the next level has presented itself to me. And it is a douse, one I would not be so easily able to face if I could not write about it openly here.
This is another level of stacked ness, of resentment, of childish tirade. Today, I am facing my own level of anger and resentment for having to take care of responsibilities that are mine. The resentment comes from an age when I was held responsible for things beyond my ability to deal with and for being saddle with responsibilities that I did not have the resources to deal with or that were never mine to begin with. Today I see how this resent,net is met with a stubborn, defiant child whose only power is to refuse to act. Funny that I did not do that as a child. This is all repressed stuff emerging. Perhaps I longed to refuse and turned the refusal to things that were self sabotaging.
This will be an interesting journey into this stuff. I do hate these periods of revelation but what awaits on the other side is more than worth it. Thanks to those of you who take this journey over the next few days with me.
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Entering this new phase is every bit as miserable as the one before. It feels so overwhelming, all consuming, extremely painful and debilitating, as though I won't survive it.
I am trusting in this process. I am allowing these feelings that feel as though they will,lol me to rise up and to no repress them. Some of the thoughts and memories of rejectors and failure are the same as the last round but I am allowing them anyway. Praying there is light on the other side. Praying there is functioning on the other side.
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My parents had a way of demanding that I serve them and my brothers. This was especially true around meals but not limited to that. I am now aware that I have repressed a resentment about having to do what others expect me to do. My resentment is directly connected to their demands. Later in life, My mother would directly demand and then refuse the help I offered. But she would also passively say something needed doing and not ask but clearly expect me to do it. But whatever I did would not quite be right.
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I remember becoming aware of my self-critical voice when I was 30. Someone asked me what I was telling myself about something I was trying to do. And I realized I was saying to myself, "You can't do it."
I am still learning ways in which my subconscious voice is putting the breaks on. As I continue in the Mindfulness meditations more and more of this is coming to the surface. And in doing so I am slowly able to change that voice. Still slow but clear progress.
Today, as I was listening to Jon Kabat-Zinn on YouTube I had an image, a memory of sorts of my mother asking me to do something and I was experiencing her passive aggressive criticism that at times was voiced, "You ruin everything." "Never mind, I'll do it myself." And I was able to step in, talk to myself and keep doing the task with a knowing smile and without the crushing shame and anxiety that has marked so much of my adult life.
Being able,to visualize this is a promising start. So thankful. So hopeful.
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Thankful and hopeful.....
these are very good things, GS: )
Lighter
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GS, good work you're doing - even if it is yucky and painful at times - and YES, it's worth it on the other side.
There is almost a formula, an equation that can be written to describe what the persistant experience of PD parents engender in a child's emotional "self". You're uncovering that self, acknowledging the feelings - and the reality of wrongdoing to you... instead of letting that feed the usual defenses we build up to protect that self. That's brave and heroic; you are saving your self.... and in the processing, letting go and breaking the chains of the old patterns.
The next step is figuring out how to let that self come out into the light of day, and shine.
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All of my dreams are dark. Each reflects my struggles with rejection.
Last night I had several that I remembered. One was a bit crazy - I was at the airport, getting ready to board. My son was with me but he was staying. We got to the gate and there was a new automated system but no human around to explain or help. I wanted to check in to get a decent seat assignment but not board so I could spend the last minutes with my child. The machine had a little conveyor belt which swallowed up baggage but you had to stand on it to put your board pass through. People behind were impatient, the machine wouldn't take my pass unless I stood on the conveyor belt but if I did that I would not be able to get out. When I looked back my son had disappeared. It was all so maddening and no one would help me.
The feeling evoked by this dream is the feeling I walk through daily life with. With concentration and attention I can shift into a more positive mindset. I do this over and over every day. It is helping me do small things, follow through where I have been retreating. I have one of those needs to follow through as I sit here.and I finally know how to get it done. But I need, long for, that to be my default. This dark place, fear, sense of for doing, failure, rejection on the horizon feeling is taking a toll.
I will take what I have for now and try to grow the hope and more,positive mind state.
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Sorry the dreams are so dark, (((GS)))
Here's to growing growing hope, and choosing positive thoughts as a matter of habit: )
Lighter
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I know that committing to getting a grip on my ADD and functioning enough
to take care of my life effectively feels like a conveyor belt taking me onto
a rocket that will shoot me out into a layer of atmosphere I've never lived
in before.
I too will be leaving my familiar earth behind. It is scary.
Let's wave as we find our new orbits...
Hops
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Here is an article that describes OCPD. My father had both OCPD and NPD along with OCD, bipolar and a few other mental health disorders. The combination of the two personality disorders continue to cause me great dysfunction and daily depression and anxiety.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xlQTUtFiSzq9Cc5anvDWKUWFHRCWAq4uZRzVFP4n1gM/mobilebasic?pli=1
I also ran across an article on the difficulties of children of parents with PD. while I continue to do my Mindfulness meditation and see progress I am still not functioning. I also read an article about Vipassanna meditation and how it can lead to depression. Y bringing up too much too quickly. While I don't believe that is what is happening to me, I do believe that the meditation co to use to bring up much buried stuff and stuff that needs to be processed and that there is so much to process that it keeps me down. But I will continue to do my work u till I break through.
I was also reading in my text oN qEEG-neurofeedback and came across a story of a young man who gained insights and memories when doing the neurofeedback. This has been true for me in the Mindfulness. There are other fascinating similarities.
Last week I was able to get myself to show up at obligations. This weekend however and today, I could not move. But I am still optimistic about progress and reaching a level of functioning in the near future.
One other article I read discussed how difficult it is for children PD parents to talk with others about it. Their stories are often rejected. That is certainly my experience and it is so profoundly isolating. But it helps me so much to know that many, many other children of PD parents have had that experience.
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My insight today came like a bomb. I sensed it like an extra body beside me, to my left. It was a golden, glowing, lozenge shaped body of resentment towards my mother and it was self-sabotage.
I did a little research and found this:
Resentment Resentment can lead to sabotage, of self and others. Research has shown that people will suffer an enormous amount of pain and loss themselves in order to retaliate against others they feel have treated them unjustly. People can also remain in unhealthy lifestyles as a way of showing someone just how much they have hurt them. Unfortunately, they have to remain "hurt" to prove this, which ultimately causes them more pain and grief than the one against whom they are retaliating. - See more at: http://www.kellevision.com/kellevision/2008/05/self-sabotage-t.html#sthash.1Kq2r4Qq.dpuf
I certainly needed to see this. Now I am aware. It will be interesting to observe this journey or transition through this self-sabotaging goo.
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I had a very powerful dream night before last. It evoked some of the strongest feelings that keep me stuck. I could not process it to release it but I hope that will come.
I the dream, I was in a house win my mother. There were dogs that had peed on the floor in the finished basement. She and I were cleaning up. It was disgusting. I went upstairs to the main level to get some supplies. I heard someone come in the front door and went to see about it. There was a young wo,an who had just walked right in, selling something. My hair was in my face and I couldn't see her but I could see dog poop on the floor and I was trying to walk around it and get her out of the house. The entire situation was disgusting and frustrating. Imposition on imposition.
The past few days have brought great depression. I haven't left the house, nor hardly the bed. Not eaten. I'm hoping this will break today, like a fever. As I continue the meditations I find more and more darkness emerging. A lifetime of depression, resentment, anger. More than I knew. Self-sabotage, self-hatred. Expression of irritation and resentment leading to rejection. Could only I go back in time and do it all again. But it would be enough to get past it now, to live fully going forward. I don't have full control. It is dependent on whether these things are released from the unconscious.
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Memory and insight or vise versa:
When I showed up - shaming ensued.
Doing something, making effort shuts me down, sends surges of shame and anxiety.
Lord I pray this insight brings release.
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Drink plenty of water (((GS)....
and breath.
Lighter
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Funny you should say Lighter - I usually drink substantial amounts of water but have hardly finished a glass a day recently. Thanks for the reminder
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I'm facing a difficult circumstance and I totally get why I have not responded to calls, emails etc.
My father's, cousin's widow who lives a few hours away asked me to fly with her to her granddaughter's wedding in June. I said I would.
In doing so I made a couple of assumptions - that my 15 year old son was included for one. A few weeks later I received a save the date email sent to many. It stated that children were not included. Nothing specific was addressed to me about my child. Now, my child is 15 and has only one relative - ME. So that sank me a bit. Plus thinking about the cost of the travel and other expenses. Then add to it the profound depression and anxiety over the past couple of months.
Then add to it, the cousin contracted a form of cancer and the prognosis isn't great. Do 3 weeks ago I started getting messages from her daughter who lives in Africa but has come home to care for her mother and help with wedding arrangements.
Bottom line is, the whole thing us so overwhelming for me. It is the expectations that are not directly addressed. I am feeling so out on a limb - obligated - even though her only don isn't going because he and his wife have a trip planned. My reaction is not rational, it comes from shame of bring asked to do something that causes me hardship balanced with the appreciation of being included by the cousin. She has genuinely been kind to me especially in recent years.
It is a bind - and I shut down in a bind. Every DSL for 3 weeks I have said to myself that I would call the next day. And now do much time has passed. But I have to do something.
Any thoughts? I would explain about the depression. Even though few understand how crippling it can be. But I think that is the way to go if I could just pick up the dang phone.
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Oh GS, you are in such a difficult place right now, I'm so sorry and so behind on reading threads that I'm only just catching up on your situation and goodness, I have been in these dark places myself and they are tough, tough times.
Re the wedding, I am wondering whether just an honest phone call, or perhaps email if that is easier, explaining, as you do so well, that your health is not great, plus the situation with your son is making attending difficult. I struggle with letting down (as I see it) people who have been good/kind to me but also know if people really get you they understand where you are coming from. And then perhaps a lovely gift with a nice letter reiterating how much you appreciate your cousin's kindness, now and in the past, and perhaps some sort of tentative plan for you to visit them when you are feeling better and your son can go as well (or whatever situation works practically)? You could have a sort of wedding re-run going through the photos and video of the day at some later stage.
I really resonated with your post about resentment leading to self sabotage; I do think the difficulties in my life have been my way of saying "Look what you did to me, look how much you hurt me" to my parents - not consciously of course but it makes sense to me that I couldn't say they caused me all that pain and be having a wonderful time. I'm very painfully reminded of my mum dismissing my step-father sexually abusing me, her argument basically being that as I'd had a child I'd obviously had sex so the abuse couldn't have been too bad. I'm starting to wonder if that's why I've been single for so long!
With regards to those terrible black moods, which I used to suffer from frequently, I used to find that focusing on the next ten minutes got me through. In the next ten minutes I'll clean my teeth. In the next ten minutes I'll put some clothes on. In the next ten minutes I'll eat a piece of toast. Just one chunk at a time, one little, achievable goal in that time. I remember how bad it felt so my heart aches for you.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))) sending you strength and lots of love xx
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((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))
Can you write this kind cousin:
"I so want to accompany you, and am very glad you asked me.
But I'm honestly in a bind. The invitation excludes children, but I can't afford arrangements for
him to have a companion while I'm away. Unfortunately,
there aren't relatives available I can send him to right now.
What do you think I should do?"
love
Hops
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OK, y'all have to tell me if I'm way out in left field.
Usually the "no children" on an invite refers to the little ones - not teenaged young men. I'm having a hard time seeing how he would be disruptive to the ceremony or reception. So, that's what I would be asking about - is if Richard could escort you. Including him could ease the difficulty of travel these days, too.
On the personal side of the decision... if you aren't feeling up to socializing and being leaned on for support yourself: there is no obligation, except to take care of yourself. There might be disappointment for your cousin, because you weren't able to go along, but people own their own feelings... even if it was your choice/decision that evoked that disappointment. People own their own feelings -- they don't own people. As the grown up GS, you are responsible for protecting and caring for the little girl GS that is trying to understand and heal... looking at it that way, what would you decide?
Just wait till you get to the point, you're having to make that little you do things she doesn't want to do - at all - because it really is necessary to "growing up", "letting go" and healing. You might kinda be there now. The little inner children are tenacious, and when the topic is resentment in particular, they can be vicious. This all dances around the fact of the heart wound that hurts so much.
Hang in there - you have superb judgement - and there's simply no shame in not feeling up to attending even a happy occasion. It's just you taking care of you - FIRST, before other people.
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I agree with Amber.
But I'd ask your son whether he would be willing to/like to go, before proposing that alternative.
Sorry I didn't understand the dilemma!
hug
Hops
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Reading. Appreciating comments.
Will respond.
Having very bad day.
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Reading. Appreciating comments.
Will respond.
Having very bad day.
We're all here, GS, you're not alone.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((Gaining Strength)))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Thinking of you, GS, and what you are going through...
Richard
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Stopping by to say hi... how are you?
Have you found where the edges of you are yet? And where they touch the things you've lived through? (They ARE different things.) What connects them is that swirling mass of emotions - some blending easily from you to the experiences & back; and some staying lumpy & chunky & crunchy and resistant to processing. I'm still trying to figure what a good laxative for emotions is... LOL. To ease emotional constipation. :shock: :o
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Thank you for your support. I slipped into a dark hole briefly.
I continue to connect with the profound shaming and the small but vast traumas from childhood. I am more convinced that I am processing them bit by bit. I came across this piece by Peter Levine whose work has been helpful to me. This piece supports my own experience of shut-down. It further encourages me that I am on the right path. It is slow - which I hate but I have no choice. I'm must keep pushing
http://www.nicabm.com/peterlevine-trauma/free-report/
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"The child learns that they must set aside the things that are important to them or the things that they would like to do, because it is only what the NPD parent wants that counts. The parent always places their own desires and needs before the child, often cloaking this with the altruistic statement that the parent is just doing what is best for the child. The child has no real choice not to buy into their parent’s plan for them, even if the child has no desire or any real talent for the activity that the parent is forcing them to do. Emotional blackmail is a given. On the other hand, some NPD parents will simply ignore any achievement that the child makes on their own, and may even belittle the achievement in private while taking full credit for the child’s accomplishment in public, if the accomplishment reflects the NPD parent as parent of the year."
Really struggling. More and more bubbling to the surface.
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(((((((((((((GS))))))))))))))))))))
All I can say is, arms....
let it lift, let hope in for you.
love,
Hops
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Thanks Hops.
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I have spent my life trying to avoid this pain. But for the past dozen years the way I have coped is to shut down. I finally figured out that putting myself in action triggered painful anxiety anticipating the humiliation to come from my parents. That is where I am. Right in the middle of this pain, learning not to cover it up. What I do to cover it now is zoning out for hours on the Internet. But I am agreeing to let the big time offenders go for a while.
I either function or sit still. I may have to include unscheduled television as well. It is time to let the pain in and move through it. I know I can do this. I am stuck in young childhood, longing for the help I needed from my parents, the instruction and encouragement and support that was replaced with humiliation instead.
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I have spent my life trying to avoid this pain. But for the past dozen years the way I have coped is to shut down. I finally figured out that putting myself in action triggered painful anxiety anticipating the humiliation to come from my parents. That is where I am. Right in the middle of this pain, learning not to cover it up. What I do to cover it now is zoning out for hours on the Internet. But I am agreeing to let the big time offenders go for a while.
I either function or sit still. I may have to include unscheduled television as well. It is time to let the pain in and move through it. I know I can do this. I am stuck in young childhood, longing for the help I needed from my parents, the instruction and encouragement and support that was replaced with humiliation instead.
GS, It does lift and get easier eventually, although not in one big chunk, I've found, waves and puddles is the image that springs to mind. I would say try not to give yourself a hard time about the way you cope with dealing with this. If you need some hiding under the duvet time, getting lost on the internet, watching back to back box sets then go for it. I have found it helpful to tell myself I deserve this as a treat or reward for dealing with something so difficult and make it into a bit of an event; choose a box set or a stack of films I've been wanting to watch but haven't got round to, put a fresh cover on the duvet, get some pillows and drinks and nice snacks, almost make it like a celebration that you're choosing to work through this and yes, it hurts and yes, it's horrible but you're dealing with it and the least you can do for yourself now, I think, is to make the way you deal with it as comfortable as you can. A lot has been written about parenting yourself if your own parents didn't give you what you needed and what I found was missing from my life was comfort, big cuddles on the sofa if I wasn't well, loving hugs, time spent choosing clothes to wear or helping with homework or making costumes for so and so's party. I have, and do, try to give myself that not, and I don't always manage it but I do know that doing it helps and it does start to repair some of the damage. Be kind to yourself. Be your own mum, give yourself a big cuddle, make a snoozy space up on the sofa and snuggle into it when you need to.
((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Here is a link to a site I just joined recently. The newsletter is at the top right of the page, and I'm ordering the Buddha's Brain book on CD today.
http://www.rickhanson.net/writings/books/buddhas-brain/
Another site that helps understand the child that goes into a turtle shell to cope with early trauma, what I believe you're explaining in your most recent post, is in the webinar about coaxing out avoidant children..... it's the 9th webinar down...
STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING AVOIDANT AND RESISTANT ADOLESCENTS, which might give you important insights about the part of you that shut down all those years ago.
http://www.suwscarolinas.com/about/webinars-workshops/
I'm sending you Amazon strength to engage this abyss of pain, and get you through to the other side. You've got to go through it, GS.
It won't kill you.
It's a messenger, and it has many things to tell you.
((((GS))))
Lighter
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Just wondering how you are doing, GS, as you don't seem to have been online as much recently. Hope you are doing okay xx
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Two penny, thank you for asking. Thank you so much for noticing. You have no idea what it means to me.
Honestly, it has been a pretty bad summer. But I believe I am going deep into very early trauma and that it is healing. I hope to find the light very soon.
How are you?
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Sending light and comfort, (((((((((((GS)))))))))).
I'm sorry it's been so hard this summer.
For me, the heat doesn't help the intertia issues, either.
Love and hope for you,
Hops
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GS, what do you hope is on the other side of your struggles? What do you WANT on the other side? (They may not be exactly the same things.)
And you know what? if you get there, and it IS what you hoped and wanted... but you don't want it WHEN you are there, you can do/be something else, too.
I have to remind myself about this a lot, because it's too easy to get locked into what we SHOULD hope & want for ourselves (according to other people) instead of really getting to know what it is we do want.
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Two penny, thank you for asking. Thank you so much for noticing. You have no idea what it means to me.
Honestly, it has been a pretty bad summer. But I believe I am going deep into very early trauma and that it is healing. I hope to find the light very soon.
How are you?
((((((((((((((((((((((GS)))))))))))))))))))
I'm sorry it is so tough at the moment. Going into some of these things is so, so hard. I hope it starts to ease up a little. It's hard not knowing how long it will take. But little by little things shift and start to resettle themselves, hopefully in a way that is easier to manage. Hang on in there.
I'm doing fine :) We actually have some sun in the UK at the moment, lol, it's a miracle! So I'm trying to get outside as much as possible and top up the Vitamin D levels :)
We are all thinking of you xx
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I wrote something I want to share here. It may be premature as has been the case often during my struggles but something feels different this time and even if it isn't I know progress is being made.
"Jon Kabat-Zinn's Loving Kindness meditation asks us to remember being loved by someone and if that is not possible to imaging being loved. After months and months of practicing this meditation something happened today for me, a shift of some kind. And suddenly I see, feel (as opposed to know) that throughout my entire life, love and obligation were confused, that love and performance were tied together. And while shame is still the predominant feeling coursing through my veins I think the earth may have tilted and the destructive sense of shame may begin to give way to the life giving energy of love. It is odd how I am seeing my past and present in such a different perspective.could this be possible?"
I see into the struggles both before and after my husband died. I especially see into my extreme struggles to connect to my mother. Neither she not my father were capable of love. Each one acted out of something different - my father acted out of obligation and called it love, my mother acted out of fear of being alone and called it love. Neither was love and both were profoundly damaging to me.
Today I am able to tap into a true feeling of love. It is somewhat fleeting but I know that as I continue to practice the mindfulness meditations that connection will grow and as it does, the omnipresence of shame will diminish. I have lived in under the shadow of shame my entire life and it has left me caught in a wheel of desperation and despair, running harder and harder and falling farther and farther behind. Life has been impossible living in shame.
Today the light crept in and I believe it will grow. I am fully aware of the feeling of inadequacy, not deserving, failure and all the various forms of shame I have written about and struggled against. The inability to clean,,organize, complete tasks and on and on has been 100% about shame. And now, I am able to face it head on, name it and not be completely paralyzed, not need to hide. I know where the shame came from and that I did not deserve it. And finally, with work and practice, I can tap into a feeling of love which is the light to shine into the darkness of shame.
With trepidation I am going to press the Post button and put this declaration out into the world, starting with this safe place that gave me a platform to begin this difficult journey.
Thanks to all who have weather this with me. It has certainly been a long journey.
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(((GS)))
I believe writing them down helps us learn, internalize, and keep the hard lessons. In fact, maybe it's the best way to hang on, sometimes by our fingertips, and keep the lessons at hand.... where we can touch them, turn them over, examine them, and maybe make friends with them?
And posting it here means you're not only sharing... you're also teaching.
Teaching is the next step in learning/healing, IME.
I'm so glad you hit POST. :)
Lighter
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I am so glad you have experienced love, GS...and so moved that you have persisted until you were able to be its channel for yourself.
That is beautiful and so hopeful.
(And you know I understand the paralysis thing. I'm better too, fits and starts. I'll never been an automatic functioner, it'll always require a dialogue with myself--"This is what I want to do, it feels good to be doing this now"--without being ashamed of how hard it's been when I've been anxious.
love
Hops
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How goes it GS? Has Richard gone back to school yet?