My Truth

[sKePTiKal]

How about visualizing a room - where you will actively express your anger at your parents? Put them in the room. Let yourself walk through the whole thing... say all the words... add whatever you like to the room... get the anger OUT there, where you can see it and hear it. It can all be done in your mind...

Sometimes, anger is our friend (and screw "spiritually mature"... WHO SAYS?... and who died & made them god???) when our own survival is at stake.

Are you searching for the word "exasperation"? That word sounds to me like someone is so frustrated that they are completely out of breath and red-faced from exertion.

Are you afraid that if the sac of emotions breaks, that there will a Noah's Ark devastating flood? All one gigantic global tidal wave? Maybe devise a room for each emotion - and then filter them out from the sac into each room - and then later, create an acquarium when they can all jumble around again... with each other... and re-combine into a new "solution".

[Meh]

Re: Phoenix,

I may just try that room in my mind where I can express my anger that I never did express before. Thanks for the idea! The MAD room.

I'm not sure about the suppression of the emotions, the suppression is some unconscious mechanism that started as a kid..and now I just don't even know what is in there. Sea monsters. Loch Ness. It's not this me, sitting here typing. It is all something that really only therapists probably understand. The parts of self. Gosh, I guess maybe I did split off parts of me.

Did you know that eels can climb up trees? I just learned that.

Ok, gonna build my emotional mansion with lots of rooms.

[Ami]

Dear Helen
 I think that when a person does not HAVE to repress their feelings, then they don't need a therapist to show them how to have a self or how to put it all together. They just "are"
I see that with My Aunt and some more"normal" friends.
My Aunt will see her "bad" parts and say 'That is just human"
It is so simple for her cuz she did not need to go through  the shape shifting of her soul in order to survive as we did.
 There was a "logical" way in(denial) and a logical way out( feeling the pain of denial and seeing the truth)
 Go slowly. True healing comes slowly.     xxxooo    Ami

[Meh]

So sometimes I think my stomach is just a little wonky.
Other times when I think emotions are coming to the surface my stomach sort of feels like I want to throw up.
I wonder if I have so much anxiety about my emotions possibly coming to the surface that it makes my stomach queasy.
This is how I was feeling yesterday after I was laughing then I had a weird feeling in my stomach.

I would cry from exhaustion if I was not in public.

[sKePTiKal]

ugh.... I can totally relate to the wonky stomach... and throwing up... and other excremental means of detoxifying the body. Nose is running like crazy... Going through something like that today. I dunno... maybe it's just the zeitgeist around here lately and what I'm working on myself... but lord, something big is working loose!!

about repressing/suppressing emotions...

for me, it was a defense mechanism - it was my primary means of keeping myself safe from my mom; if I showed my own emotions... it was invariably met with her projecting her own on me... and overcoming "me" with "her"... and blaming/shaming the "me" emotions.

[Meh]

ugh.... I can totally relate to the wonky stomach... and throwing up... and other excremental means of detoxifying the body. Nose is running like crazy... Going through something like that today. I dunno... maybe it's just the zeitgeist around here lately and what I'm working on myself... but lord, something big is working loose!!

about repressing/suppressing emotions...

for me, it was a defense mechanism - it was my primary means of keeping myself safe from my mom; if I showed my own emotions... it was invariably met with her projecting her own on me... and overcoming "me" with "her"... and blaming/shaming the "me" emotions.

I'm sorry you are not feeling good, with the running nose.

I wrote something here about boogers but then I realized how stupid that was, I realized that I have not even used the word booger since I don't know when. I'm not sure what I'm tapping into but it is immature. Sorry.

[Meh]

I'm remembering these drawings I did when I was a teenager of these angels. I fantasized about some sort of angel that I guess would save me. I wonder if I still have these or if I threw them away. Holy cow. It makes so much sense now, what I was drawing and painting about. It was simple. It probably was about love. The concept seemed so remote that love was like this exotic subject matter that I didn't really understand. My angels had these sort of bird-heads. They were not creepy though. I think I hid my emotions in my art, parts of me in there because it was a safe place to put it.

God only knows what sort of self destructive things I would have started if I didn't turn to art.

[Meh]

Oh my gosh, I think I turned it back on, whatever it is that part of me that visualizes constantly. I turned it off when I started my last job, thought I would try to turn it on again, I think the switch is on.

[Meh]

More replying to self:

So the church I have been trying out has a Grieving Group. I thought about going, am sort of considering it. It is something that I never would have considered in the past. I guess until I started posting on this board I did not really know how much shame/embarrassment I have over emoting. I'm also not sure that I can describe to them why I need to grieve now, and why I could not grieve in the past, that the emotions are still there. Plus if I am grieving over the lost or split parts of myself or whatever they are well that is going to sound really selfish to them. Maybe I can just think of another way to put it. I feel luke warm about this idea. I mean I'm not sure if I would feel like I had a right to be there. As in "I have a right to be here".  

It also dawns on me how my parents were not responsible for their own emotions, that it was acted out on me.

I'm sort of wondering to myself if going to the Grieving group is a way for me to be responsible for my own emotions whatever that means.

As I've been writing on this board I have started to feel more comfortable with "tearing up" in public because sometimes I'm in a cafe when I'm writing. So I think that in a little way maybe I'm starting to have less shame about how I feel.  

I never really talked about some stuff, maybe going there and talking about it would be ok, maybe I don't have to cry. But then I sort of ask myself what's the point? Why do I care if I tell them or not. Why do they care?

That is always what I have thought.. "Why would they care" about me, what I have to say etc.

Maybe I have thought that all people are Nar-people. Because that statement above is one that I have always thought but never said.

[Ami]

(((((( Helen))))))) A HUG!                      Ami

[Meh]

Thanks for understanding Ami, I KNOW that you do "get it".

[Meh]

Much of the focus, I think, in these posts is about what I did not receive. There is another side to this.
The other side is that Nar-parents and Nar-people do not receive love in a healthy way. So a child does not get to practice giving love in a healthy fashion.

Not only is a child refused love but the child is also refused the chance to experience the joy of giving love.

I can feel my heart responding to this statement, maybe my heart is dropping a little or fluttering around.

After all love is an active exchange, it is probably never meant to be one way.

I know this is true for me. I think this may be part of my feelings of guilt and responsibility, my parents never reflected back to me the exchange of love, so the child  in me never learned when I was giving love in a healthy way.

It's not just about what I did not get, it is also about what I did not learn to give.
As a kid I was taught that I did not have the ability to give love. I lost confidence in my own ability to love.


PS: I feel so sorry for the "little Helen" part of me that did not get to give love, I'm thinking how children naturally want to give love.
I know this was bad for me. I know, somewhere in me this is another piece of the puzzle.
I feel bad for this. Guilt. My heart.. is doing something right now but I'm in a public cafe and it's sort of a subtle thing.
My heart is telling me that this is true. That not being able to give love causes suffering also.
My heart is telling me that it has suffered somehow, like I don't know. I feel so sorry for my heart. My poor little heart!
In a way my heart had it's own silence because my mind did not understand this aspect of it's suffering.

[Meh]

Ok, today is Saturday, I had no idea I thought maybe Thursday, Friday, Sat?
Also my Calender is still open to the month of July.

I've got Jury duty coming up. This made me think of how we always have an invisible jury with us wherever we go. I guess the introjects is what they are called..?

Our jury is like a medieval blood thirsty mob who has no interest in the facts.

IT'S LIKE WE ARE ALWAYS ON TRIAL. For a crime that we do not understand. The crime of existing. The crime of taking up space on the planet.

And there are WITNESSES testifying against us. But we have no witnesses ourselves... No witnesses to say what really happened.

Every step I take is judged, how many specks of dust did I displace when I put my foot down?
How many times did I blink today? I blinked more then my alloted amount.
Did I emote good enough?
I failed once again today at whipping my whole life into shape in 30 mins. That is what I was suppose to do. I was suppose to fix everything today, set it straight. I was suppose to snatch my dreams and goals back out of the jaws of death. I was suppose to miraculously grow my passion for living again like the bean stalk in jack in the bean stalk. But it did not grow, not in a big way. Not in a way that reaches the heavens and defies the natural laws of nature.

I am always trying to defy the laws of nature and I am losing on a regular basis.

[Meh]

Inhibition
Uninhibited
Emotionally alive and present

I'm thinking that remaining emotionally present and active does not necessarily mean being uninhibited.

Maybe a person can be uninhibited and not be emotionally present at all.

I'm asking myself: What is required for an emotional connection?


I suppose this is along the lines of mirroring but real authentic mirroring. I've been mirrored by my boss, managers take business lessons in this crap. It is so hard to have someone attempt to mirror me when they don't really give a crap. When I was not mirrored as a kid, then to have my boss fake-mirror me, oh gosh this is so frustrating and very very hard to explain.

They had that whole "emotional intelligence" trend in business and some people learned mirroring as a means to manipulate. This is what my boss was doing. Oh Grrrr!

There were these interactions that were so weird, one time she expected me to smile and my face was just blank.
She smiled and then the smile dropped from her face, and then she smilled again and then the smile left, and then she smiled again.
She did this a few times. So weird to watch. It's hard to explain.

I was on overload with all this crap and I retreated into a blank non-emoting state, I just looked at her with loathing. Of course when it was all over I cryed. I believe this state is called flat affect. It was a response to emotional abuse and manipulation.

[Meh]

The right to be selective.

I have the right to be selective of who I am friends with or acquaintances with.
I guess I don't have this choice at work..
But in my personal life, I now am learning more about the kind of friends I might like to have, instead of just befriending any old person. I'm learning that it is my right to gauge people, that I don't have to please every single person.

That for my own well being I can set personal boundaries, I may even think more about boundaries and what boundaries I wish to have with people. I never use to question people who would befriend me. I was so easy going and never wanted to turn any person away. Partially maybe out of loneliness but also because I did not expect much from people. I did not think I had the right to expect much from people.

I recently had a friend ditch me when I was in a bind and then she wanted to make up again afterwards.
I had been a really really good friend to this person, I was there for her when she needed someone.
I'm now questioning, do I need friends like this?

I did not make up with her. I just did not feel compelled to do it. In the past I would have I think, but no longer.