Continued healing

[Gaining Strength]

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. 

[Hopalong]

WOW.

GS, you have figured out so MUCH.

I am awed.

love,
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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. 

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Hopalong]

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

[BonesMS]

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!

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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!

[Gaining Strength]

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.

[Gaining Strength]

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.