Strange Star

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - you do sound much better and I hope you can hold onto that calmer energy despite your daughter's approaching meltdown.

Congratulations on getting that book done. What a major achievement! It is such a shame that they are so energy-consuming that the fun goes out of them by the end. I hope though that a sense of pride will return.

I love doing pottery, too, though have only had a very few classes in my lifetime. I found it totally mesmerising and absorbing. I hope you can find a cheaper alternative to those expensive classes. Sometimes potters themselves hold classes in their homes and it is less easy to hear about them, but a lovely way to learn. It sounds like you need a creative outlet, too.

I am so pleased that you have found your birth mother. However the relationship pans out, it is very important that she wants to know you, rather than rejecting you. I hope it means you will find out information that put things into perspective or gives you answers to assist your healing. It is probably no coincidence that it all happens now.

 

[Hope4Now]

I have had a breakthrough understanding. It's kind of horrible, actually, but suddenly something makes sense...like disparate jagged pieces of something knitting together loosely.

What led to it? Obviously months of doing the inner work I've been doing, but more recently a bunch of things conflated--just merged into a single insight this morning.

• The conversation about safe spaces and houses on the Visualization and Therapy thread (thanks Hashi, Pencil, Shimmerz, Echo, et. al.)
• my conversations with Pietro about all sorts of things
  
• my recent dreams about the house, and the basement and attic
• the "safe" place I've created to engage with my inner parts, and it's relation to the house in my dreams
  
• my realization that I am terrified of being "seen," a.k.a. vulnerable? (physically, emotionally, spiritually), and I don't "see" myself in any integrated way (e.g. in the mirror/proprioperception/behaviors/feelings/beliefs/time sense/etc.)
  
• the comment Echo made about her mother's response to her accomplishment
  
• the parade of memories of my childhood and adolescence
• the problems I've been having feeling safe in myself
• the odd difficulties I've had engaging with the child parts of myself

The insight is that I don't perceive myself as myself/from my own deep-self perspective. I see myself through my mother's lens (and, less so, my father's). I cannot process my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my beliefs except as they get filtered through some internalized energy I took on from my mother. In my various reflections I've used words like "violated" and "possessed" and perhaps this is what they were pointing to. I think this is the energy I call the Tornado...it is a really violent, thick and complex amalgam of energies that perpetually threaten me.

"I" in some large sense of the deep and spiritual self, abandoned my physical and emotional selves a long time ago in order to stay safe. Though wounded and often distant, my spiritual self is generally healthy and vibrant, but it's not connected to the physical and emotional/cognitive parts of me. I've been aware of this for several months now and have written about it. It floats in and out now and then and it is WONDERFUL when it does...I feel connected and alive and filled with love and compassion. But most of the time it's hunkering down somewhere, still protecting itself, because it isn't safe to integrate with the embodied me.

Totally weird, I know, but I also know it is right. Ever since I can remember I have not felt safe or real. Except once in a while for brief moments when everything synchronizes (I call those my Emersonian transparent eyeball moments).

I am far from comprehending all the complexities of why or how this happened. I only have bits and pieces of understanding. The piece that came into clear view today was that my mother, through her profound need to control, managed to hijack me somehow so that I didn't ever feel real to myself--only real in that I reflected what she wished me to look like, think, feel, behave, accomplish, etc. I guess I never had it in me to fight back...even now, I'm just realizing--consciously--the extend of how she affected me. Perhaps she was able to do this because I was adopted and already lacked some inner coherence/organization...probably had/have attachment issues (I still don't understand those). The psych report from when I was 6 weeks old said I was rigid and held tightly clenched fists until after I'd been held for a while, when I would relax..."she clearly enjoyed being held." (Pencil...you'll not be surprised by that comment!)

All the anger and outrage that ought to be directed at her got turned back on myself. Mostly because it has always felt like there was no reason to be angry...that nothing particularly terrible happened...but those are messages that came from her too. It's like being in a house of mirrors. I am trying to find my way through to an exit without getting lost in all the distortions. I feel I am to blame for everything...I was too clueless and too weak to do anything effective to save myself other than just disappear, or beat on myself for how bad I was.

So, there we go. Here I go. Whatever. I'm grateful to my forum friends whose reflections about their own experiences as well as responses to mine have helped me make a lot of connections. I guess this insight may be considered "progress" in terms of healing. It really just feels devastating. Makes me feel untethered from reality, nauseous, dizzy, and extremely weak.

In the words of my favorite songster, Dougie Maclean, "And where do I go from here?/Where do I change?/Am I waiting for something/Or has it just passed me by?/More fool I." I swear this man must have experienced a lot of trauma in his life to write the songs he writes.

 

[Echo]

@Hope4Now - too not able to respond properly tonight, but hugs, and I think this is a massive realisation. I echo (!) those sentiments and hope this shattering I'm experiencing (and you seem to be, too) is a smashing of the old false self. Let's hope we can quickly and easily vomit it out and return it to where it belongs, and then set about finding out who we really are. We may have to mother ourselves to grow all the way up from our tiny baby selves in the process, but I know I'd far rather be working with my authentic self than this evil dross that belongs to my mother and father. So hugs again x

 

[Hope4Now]

Yeah, @Echo, I was thinking this morning that I (we) need to start all over again...

I'm not sure whether I feel liberated or devastated by that.

Just came from my therapist...message loud and clear...slow down. Lots of energies vying for attention and you can't heal any of them if you're overwhelmed by them. He's right, but it is so hard as you know. One thought or feeling or occurance can be like a super-sticky power magnet that draws scores of others to it.

Time for tea. No herbal stuff for this girl...need some good bracing black stuff!

Especially warm hugs to you, my friend.

 

[Echo]

Wish I had enough energy to start over again, though I know in many respects that is what is needed. I would love to have a day or even half a day when I wasn't in overwhelm. It's getting ridiculous, but my project this evening, is to switch off from any demands whatsoever. Let's see how that flies.... I wish you a peaceful evening with no daughterly meltdowns.

 

[Pietro]

The insight is that I don't perceive myself as myself/from my own deep-self perspective. I see myself through my mother's lens (and, less so, my father's). I cannot process my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my beliefs except as they get filtered through some internalized energy I took on from my mother.

The result of having a narcissistic parent(s), oftentimes. This is much of my problem as well.

I don't have my own identity -- my identity becomes what I think others want it to be, in order to gain acceptance, affection, etc., and, more primitively, as a means of preventing abandonment. I am an excellent chameleon; I have a facade for every occasion, and every person I meet. Sometimes the facade can be removed, as trust builds, but it's always there to start.

I have also viewed myself through the filter of my parents' "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts", and still get drawn into it with my mother, sometimes. At least now, though, I am able to recognize this and weigh my actions with regard to her -- am I doing something because she thinks I should, to please her, because she'll be upset if I don't, or am I acting based upon my own morals and beliefs? Hopefully, this won't be such an effort in the future.

I'm glad you're having some breakthroughs. It's amazing what truths are hidden in all of this, for our lives. :)

 

[Hope4Now]

One step forward, ten steps back. I am in a bad place. Tiny bit better after reading about your Austro-Hungarian analogy @Pietro. Laughter is so very healthy.

I've been in the meltdown process since my therapy session yesterday evening. I'm not sure why. It just seems to happen. Last night, I managed to bring on the engaged and talkative part of myself for dinner with my husband's family to celebrate his birthday, but as soon as we got home the self-destructive overwhelm overwhelmed me again. I fended it off, but ended up sitting locked in the bathroom for almost an hour trying to pull myself together so I could say goodnight to my kids. My husband fell asleep instantly upon returning home, and I didn't want to wake him as I think the dinner overwhelmed him (his relationship with his dad and step-mother and sister is rather mixed at best). I hate not being able to manage my emotional state better.

I didn't sleep much all night...sort of in and out every half hour or so. No dreams, but haunted/tormented by all sorts of body stuff, images, memory fragments. Trying so very hard to "soothe" myself...to find some safe place. It doesn't work very well. Woke up today pretty much over-taken by what my therapist calls my "exiles"...the seemingly bazillion young parts of myself that are violently demanding my attention. They seem to just keep throwing more and more muck at me and emotionally dragging me into their own horrible little ever-present torment, and I feel like I'm drowning. And none of it is earth-shattering. It's not like I've suddenly remembered some horrible event that I'd repressed. It's just a constant barrage of stupid micro-memories of miserable, frightening, lonely, upsetting moments that spanned my childhood and adolescence.

Therapist's voice in my head...from yesterday and so many other times..."slow down," "ask them to give you some space," "you don't need to listen to them all at the same time," "they will show you some pretty awful stuff; that's normal," "they can stay in the places you've created for them, they'll be fine," "you can't comfort them until you're unblended with them," etc. etc. I would call him today except I know what he will say, so why go through the exercise? I'm about to do an exercise he suggested to me that is strikingingly similar to what I've been doing a bit with my often toxic protector parts (drawing pictures/labeling parts on index cards), but his has a different twist to it...he wants me to add to the pile pictures/labels of my exiles...the child parts of me. I hope maybe this will help me gain a little distance.

I am also nervous about my rheumatology appointment today. I missed the appointment a few weeks ago, so today is the day. Although I absolutely dread a diagnosis of some disease, I also have this hope that the doctor will take a look at me and say, "Oh! I can't believe nobody figured this out. Here's why you're always in pain! Just do x and you'll be fine!"

Arrgh. I wish I could go run a mile really fast. I've got to do something with this wild energy pulsing through my system.

 

[Echo]

You and me both with the riotous messages from inside. I hope we both manage to quieten them down. I do wish it wasn't so intense. Much fellow feeling coming your way. And I hope the rheumatology appointment goes better than you think. I don't know how far you have got with the Belleruth Naparstek book yet, but she has such a lot of eye-opening stuff to say about auto-immune diseases and their connection to PTSD - it is our good old friend, Mr Cortisol getting right out of balance that is behind it all. I am thinking of getting mine tested, if there is some place that does it in the UK. By now, we are probably running on very low cortisol except when it massively spikes and whacks us out. I hope to find some way of regulating it nutritionally. BN thinks imagery and guided visualisations are the way to go, and I'm sure she's on to something there. I may also order one of her many DVDs/CDs. Her website, healthjourneys.com looks promising too.

 

[Pietro]

@Hope4Now, if you can get your "inners" to respond via firm but gentle requests, that's best. But, if that doesn't work, sometimes being very firm works, as in "Stop!" or "Enough!"; this is based on a concept called "thought stopping". In general, you do with your "inners" what you do with your real-world kids when they are don't respond to normal requests -- you escalate to the "parent voice". They need and want a parent and protector, like all children do. The more you can act definitively as that parent, the more possible it will be to quell your "inners" when they get to be too much, and to direct them on how to communicate with you. Sometimes one's "inners" become so overwhelming, this doesn't work, but I have had it work with moderate mental chaos.

I'm about to do an exercise he suggested to me that is strikingingly similar to what I've been doing a bit with my often toxic protector parts

My therapist is always trying to get me to draw, but it never gets me anywhere. ;) I can't replicate on paper what I see in my head. I need to hire a police sketch artist, maybe.

she has such a lot of eye-opening stuff to say about auto-immune diseases and their connection to PTSD - it is our good old friend, Mr Cortisol getting right out of balance

PTSD and auto-immune issues?! Interesting. I have a few of those. I've had cortisol testing, and, so far, it's come-out normal. But I need to have more testing done. I may have to look into this more myself. :)

 

[Hope4Now]

All normal for me on the auto-immune front even though one of the blood tests was very slightly elevated (Yay! Although something in me already knew). The verdict was: keep doing what you're doing and add exercise. I asked, "Even when the pain spikes so excruciatingly that I fall?" The answer: "Go incrementally."

I'm not good with "incremental." She suggested that I try to find something that didn't make me feel like I had to push myself too much. Hah! She suggested swimming. The joke on that is that I used to be a competitive swimmer, so when I went swimming with my daughter a few months ago, I was left feeling devastated that I couldn't even kick a basic breaststroke kick. It really shook me.

I'm delighted I do not have some awful disease. I'm distressed that this hoop I had to jump through will cost me probably $500 and I am no further enlightened on what to do than I was before.

The doctor was very nice. Not one of those that's chafing at the bit to get out the door and make you feel guilty for asking questions. She seemed to be vaguely aware of mindbody issues. She asked how long I had been in therapy (7 months). Then she gave me one of those sympathetic looks (which feel rather patronizing) and said, "Oh, you are in the very early stages of therapy, then. It will take time." AAARGH.

Just returned home from another family birthday celebration for my husband (mother and stepfather this time). It was actually quite nice. I love both of them a lot, even though they drive me nuts sometimes. But I am feeling terrible that I have not gotten my act together to do ANYTHING (even an f-ing card) for my husband. Guilt, guilt, guilt. Will try to do something on Saturday night. We had been planning (like a year ago) to do a BIG cocktail party as a 100 party (we both turned 50 recently). Like so many things, though, that plan went down the drain between financial issues and my health issues. Sigh. My husband seems fine about all of it...it's me that is having the problems.

I'm also still reeling from learning about the death of another good friend from college. I found out about it on facebook, like I did for my college boyfriend. Yuck. Like a sucker-punch. Every time I open fb I see more pics of him. And it was an an awful death...he was found by some railroad tracks with a head injury on Tuesday and died yesterday. I'm not sure why I'm reeling...I haven't seen him since our reunion, but he was always one of the people in the group that I connected with. It's been interesting, though, to observe my own thinking/emotions about it...I had real, genuine emotion, then some other energy came in (my mother's voice) minimizing and denying all of it...e.g., "You shouldn't be so upset because..."

I'm in a weird place in body/mind/spirit tonight. Have been all day, except for a lovely respite when I was writing tons on the forum this morning. Violent pain alternating with dissociation. Intense body movements that have left my abs sore like I've had a workout. Way too many voices and images and memories from the inner children.

@Pietro, I've been working on that firm voice. I'm not so good at it, even with my own actual kids.

Trying to get it together so I can enjoy my daughter's May Day concert and a lunch with her friends tomorrow. She has a solo singing gig in the concert. Hoping to sleep tonight, at least a bit.

 

[Hope4Now]

I did it. Read five poems at the open mike at the poetry festival this afternoon. Very nervous but the audience was generous (even the published poets)!

Also wrote one promising tidbit during one of the workshops this morning.

I am feeling very shaky but proud that I took this leap.

 

[Hope4Now]

Ah, the highs of yesterday have given way. Some parts of myself seem to backlash on me whenever I experience truly excellent moments.

Yesterday...a published poet who also read at the open mike handed me a copy of her newest book inscribed: "Dear T, I loved your poems." This made me feel amazingly good, especially because I really liked her work. Another one gave me her card and said we should talk because she does science-geeky stuff in her poems too (which were also amazing). There were some monumentally awful poems shared as well, so I didn't feel like mine were hideously bad. Mediocre and unschooled, basically, but I think maybe there's something there.

In the evening, we attended a party thrown by some friends who bought a new house this year. Within the first 20 minutes I realized that I was the only woman in a group of like 50 people (our friends are a married gay couple and all the people there for the first hour or so were also men-couples). Yet it didn't feel uncomfortable at all. For some reason, I feel at my safest amongst gay men, and yesterday I was kind of flying high with good emotion. Things got a bit odd later...I ended up standing outside with a close friend who had been dragged to the party by his wife and was desperate to escape, so we went outside to talk and ended up in a very intense conversation until my husband (who was also ready to go by that time...unusual I thought, but turns out he was running a high fever) came out to find us.

We dropped my/our friend at his house, and on the way back to our house, my husband told me something that really upset me. He didn't seem overly upset by it...more annoyed and taken aback. When we first went into the party, some guy basically assaulted him (touched him really inappropriately). I asked him who did it and could he describe the guy, and he said no, it was just some guy in the kitchen and he got out of the kitchen fast just to get away, never looked at the guy, and wouldn't be able to identify him. how he felt about it, and we talked some. The only thing he said that let me understand he was upset by the incident at all was: "If that had happened to a woman, it would be considered sexual assault." I agreed, but also told him that what he experienced WAS sexual assault. He told me this has happened to him before, once by a woman, and three other times by men. I tried to talk to him again today about it, but he doesn't seem to want to take it seriously. Not sure it's because he's sick, or in denial, or it really just didn't bother him much.

Today has been really hard for me. I've been discombobulated since I woke up. I skipped church and did some yoga and some meditation...trying to re-combobulate. No success. I had to take my mother out today, and this may have been why. My mother was in rare form today. I think maybe I will try to reproduce part of the conversation we had at lunch because it still has me tangled in knots. Maybe in a new entry.