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- #757
I am still having a shit time of things. Working on using the skills :banghead:. Distress tolerance. At least now I know I'm distressed. Sometimes a bit belatedly. It's real. I'm not imagining things. I suppose that is progress. I still can't name some of the feelings, but I recognize fear and panic and sadness and sometimes even anger (which seems to come more from fear than anything else).
I am breathing. Wearing soft, baggy clothes and comfy shoes. Drinking a lot of hot drinks. Curling up in bed whenever I can. Talking with my parts when I can...reminding them that they are safe here now inside of me. I know this is just neural circuitry but it does actually really help in untangling the chaotic mess to identify "parts."
Yesterday I got a massage. Less for pain, more to get the help I need to feel safe in my body. I don't know why I feel safe when I get a massage. I think it is the physical connection with another person who has no expectations of me at all...who is there to help me feel better. I can do this for other people. I wish I could do it for myself. But I seem to need another safe person to make me feel safe enough to be inside my body and with my parts. It's like I need a substitute body of someone else to help my system understand that I am a person. I think this must go way back to infancy. Somehow my system missed the cue that I exist as my own person who is separate from other people.
I get touch regularly...from my husband, my children, even my friends. I went to church yesterday for the first time in a long while and it got kind of humorously embarrassing how many people were coming up to me and giving me hugs and kisses (friends). It was really nice. Then it started freaking me out because I suddenly didn't understand it. Why would people want to hug and kiss me? I'm either invisible or disgusting. Aren't I? :ninja:. This started the whole cycle of scramble all over again. This is how it goes:
I need safe and tender care and touch. I don't deserve it. I cannot get it. Because I am either invisible or disgusting. When I get it, it feels good but then really confusing. Because there is going to have to be some huge price to pay for it that is terrifying and overwhelming and excruciating. OR, because whoever is being kind to me must be experiencing some kind of pain and awfulness for having the courage to be close to someone as awful as me. I don't want to contaminate them. I don't want to poison them. Because if I let them get too close, they will see how horrible I am, or that I don't even exist (these seem to be two different parts), and they will hurt me in an attempt to protect themselves from my dangerousness. So I have this fear of being harmed, and also this fear of harming others. These slam up against each other so powerfully that it shuts me right down. Ugh. I can't even make sense of this in writing, much less in my heart and brain.
There is something really important, really powerful for me about physical contact. I suppose I am safe-touch starved. I know I have biggie attachment issues...totally disorganized. I am starting to feel that inside my system more and more. The desperation to be held protectively and with care slams up against the fear of being harmed. The hunger for gentle love slams up against the overwhelm of paying love's bitter cost. I guess I'm a sort of classic case, from what I've read. I had to rely on people who hurt me physically and emotionally to get what I needed to survive. And this really, really messed up my brain. I so wish that just reading about it and understanding it could solve it. It can't. I am still trying to figure out how to solve it. To become an emodied self who feels safe enough to unfreeze.
But all that comes from parts stuck in the past. And I am learning ever-so-slowly and in deeper ways than just intellectual, that I must risk now. I must be courageous enough to reach out for support and to accept what support comes to me...to take it in...to see that NOW, love isn't going to kill me or annihilate me. God it is really, really hard. But if I am going to become a real live human being again...a person who exists in this world and has a body and has feelings...I have to be able to get used to how scary it is so my parts who are stuck in the past can see that I am safe enough now. That there are lots of people in my life who care about me. It's not all just one way with me caring about them. They can't give me what I missed in the past, but they can help me rewire my brain if I'm willing to trust just a little.
At the massage yesterday, I was able to stay present and in my body for most of it...which meant I was able to be WITH (not IN) some of my exile/child parts. I learned some new things. I learned where the 6 month old with the lovely memory of being embodied in a happy way (even if she thought she was a dog) lives in my now body (left calf!). I learned that my body "disappeared" at around age 3 or so and I didn't reconnect with it in any coherent way until puberty. Bits and pieces, yes, but not as a whole. (I am still working on processing that I exist in one whole body...not there yet). Puberty was when the sexual abuse stuff with my father stopped. I do remember clearly that my relationship with my father changed dramatically the day I got my period. I didn't understand why, but I do now. That night in my bedroom with him and my mother is burned into my brain permanently, I think. I gradually came back into my body (sort of) starting then, but it wasn't mine really. I had a part that used it. Then over the years different parts took turns hijacking it. Or so it seems. Now after all these years I've figured out that most people don't live like I have...kind of simultaneous lives. And the more I get little glimpses of being a whole person who exists here and now and maybe is not grotesque or dangerous or invisible...maybe is just a regular person...the more I want that. But I just can't seem to get there for long enough or often enough for my brain to rewire.
I need a Norman Doidge for the amputated soul, @shimmerz!
At the massage, I also learned that I still have stuff stuck in my neck and arms and hands. I don't know what it is, but it goes back to that night when I exploded around 3 years old. I have written quite a bit about that night in my journal and am debating about whether to copy and share it with my therapist today. Because I don't think I would ever be able to say what I wrote in a way that another person could understand.
I don't know what it is with me about the writing vs. oral expression. I can write. I just have a really hard time talking. There's some kind of sensory overload that comes with that. I don't understand it yet, but I am very curious about it.
@Eleanor, I have been thinking of you recently because my husband was so angry all week. I kept reminding myself of what you taught me about the difference between the rage system and the panic system. 99% of his anger really does come from his panic system. When I can remember that, I can stay more in SELF and be there better for him instead of fleeing (either literally or just mentally/emotionally). It really, really helps both of us grow closer together. YOU are to thank for that. So thank you.
I am breathing. Wearing soft, baggy clothes and comfy shoes. Drinking a lot of hot drinks. Curling up in bed whenever I can. Talking with my parts when I can...reminding them that they are safe here now inside of me. I know this is just neural circuitry but it does actually really help in untangling the chaotic mess to identify "parts."
Yesterday I got a massage. Less for pain, more to get the help I need to feel safe in my body. I don't know why I feel safe when I get a massage. I think it is the physical connection with another person who has no expectations of me at all...who is there to help me feel better. I can do this for other people. I wish I could do it for myself. But I seem to need another safe person to make me feel safe enough to be inside my body and with my parts. It's like I need a substitute body of someone else to help my system understand that I am a person. I think this must go way back to infancy. Somehow my system missed the cue that I exist as my own person who is separate from other people.
I get touch regularly...from my husband, my children, even my friends. I went to church yesterday for the first time in a long while and it got kind of humorously embarrassing how many people were coming up to me and giving me hugs and kisses (friends). It was really nice. Then it started freaking me out because I suddenly didn't understand it. Why would people want to hug and kiss me? I'm either invisible or disgusting. Aren't I? :ninja:. This started the whole cycle of scramble all over again. This is how it goes:
I need safe and tender care and touch. I don't deserve it. I cannot get it. Because I am either invisible or disgusting. When I get it, it feels good but then really confusing. Because there is going to have to be some huge price to pay for it that is terrifying and overwhelming and excruciating. OR, because whoever is being kind to me must be experiencing some kind of pain and awfulness for having the courage to be close to someone as awful as me. I don't want to contaminate them. I don't want to poison them. Because if I let them get too close, they will see how horrible I am, or that I don't even exist (these seem to be two different parts), and they will hurt me in an attempt to protect themselves from my dangerousness. So I have this fear of being harmed, and also this fear of harming others. These slam up against each other so powerfully that it shuts me right down. Ugh. I can't even make sense of this in writing, much less in my heart and brain.
There is something really important, really powerful for me about physical contact. I suppose I am safe-touch starved. I know I have biggie attachment issues...totally disorganized. I am starting to feel that inside my system more and more. The desperation to be held protectively and with care slams up against the fear of being harmed. The hunger for gentle love slams up against the overwhelm of paying love's bitter cost. I guess I'm a sort of classic case, from what I've read. I had to rely on people who hurt me physically and emotionally to get what I needed to survive. And this really, really messed up my brain. I so wish that just reading about it and understanding it could solve it. It can't. I am still trying to figure out how to solve it. To become an emodied self who feels safe enough to unfreeze.
But all that comes from parts stuck in the past. And I am learning ever-so-slowly and in deeper ways than just intellectual, that I must risk now. I must be courageous enough to reach out for support and to accept what support comes to me...to take it in...to see that NOW, love isn't going to kill me or annihilate me. God it is really, really hard. But if I am going to become a real live human being again...a person who exists in this world and has a body and has feelings...I have to be able to get used to how scary it is so my parts who are stuck in the past can see that I am safe enough now. That there are lots of people in my life who care about me. It's not all just one way with me caring about them. They can't give me what I missed in the past, but they can help me rewire my brain if I'm willing to trust just a little.
At the massage yesterday, I was able to stay present and in my body for most of it...which meant I was able to be WITH (not IN) some of my exile/child parts. I learned some new things. I learned where the 6 month old with the lovely memory of being embodied in a happy way (even if she thought she was a dog) lives in my now body (left calf!). I learned that my body "disappeared" at around age 3 or so and I didn't reconnect with it in any coherent way until puberty. Bits and pieces, yes, but not as a whole. (I am still working on processing that I exist in one whole body...not there yet). Puberty was when the sexual abuse stuff with my father stopped. I do remember clearly that my relationship with my father changed dramatically the day I got my period. I didn't understand why, but I do now. That night in my bedroom with him and my mother is burned into my brain permanently, I think. I gradually came back into my body (sort of) starting then, but it wasn't mine really. I had a part that used it. Then over the years different parts took turns hijacking it. Or so it seems. Now after all these years I've figured out that most people don't live like I have...kind of simultaneous lives. And the more I get little glimpses of being a whole person who exists here and now and maybe is not grotesque or dangerous or invisible...maybe is just a regular person...the more I want that. But I just can't seem to get there for long enough or often enough for my brain to rewire.
I need a Norman Doidge for the amputated soul, @shimmerz!
At the massage, I also learned that I still have stuff stuck in my neck and arms and hands. I don't know what it is, but it goes back to that night when I exploded around 3 years old. I have written quite a bit about that night in my journal and am debating about whether to copy and share it with my therapist today. Because I don't think I would ever be able to say what I wrote in a way that another person could understand.
I don't know what it is with me about the writing vs. oral expression. I can write. I just have a really hard time talking. There's some kind of sensory overload that comes with that. I don't understand it yet, but I am very curious about it.
@Eleanor, I have been thinking of you recently because my husband was so angry all week. I kept reminding myself of what you taught me about the difference between the rage system and the panic system. 99% of his anger really does come from his panic system. When I can remember that, I can stay more in SELF and be there better for him instead of fleeing (either literally or just mentally/emotionally). It really, really helps both of us grow closer together. YOU are to thank for that. So thank you.
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