The Next Version Of Me

[CactusFlower]

Thank you for the info, Bach! I hope your daily stressors reduce. Sometimes it's really hard not to give up, but I do get inspired by seeing your and other people's journeys on here. Wishing you the best!

[Bach]

Eating more and more. Enjoying it less and less. It's a problem!

[sanmagic7]

right there with you bach.  i'm going thru the same right now.  not fun, not fulfilling, not friends with myself.  still, it's where i am.  i have no doubt you'll find a balance that works for you as you continue your recovery.  love and hugs

[Bach]

Sometimes it seems that there's nothing in my life that really feels comfortable and familiar and safe that isn't self-destructive.

I need to put myself under threat to feel SAFE? What kind of messed-up garbage is that?

[rainydiary]

This resonates with me. 

[sanmagic7]

hey, bach,

it's truly a paradox to have to take a risk in order to move forward into a better place for ourselves.  i've felt very similar to what you describe.  hang tough, ok?  hangin' right beside you.  love and hugs

[Armee]

Having control helps in my own personal experience. So if you PUT yourself in a threatening situation you have control of it and can therefore keep yourself safe. It's how things work for me when I get scared about my kids....if it is all my fault, then I can control it and keep them safe. If it isn't my fault...then...then I can't fix anything and I have no control. Not sure if that's true for you. But as messed up as it seems that you need to put yourself in a threatening situation to feel safe....it makes absolute sense to me.

[Bach]

Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed after spending the morning working on sorting my stuff to move, and I lay down to watch TV for a while before I had to head out to the new house to meet the internet installer. An emotional moment on the show I was watching made me start to blub. Not real crying with tears, but sobbing vocalisations. I went with it and it turned into quite an emotional outburst that went on for a while and progressed from the unexpected sobbing to slightly hysterical howling to hitting a note loud and hard and clear from the very bottom of my diaphragm quite intentionally. All that vocalising loosened up something in me and even though I didn't feel better right away, I was able to get on with a productive afternoon, and ended the day feeling pretty good. Today I was feeling overwhelmed again and was wishing I could find a way to access that at will.  But like all other forms of meaningful somatic release for me, it doesn't seem to be under my control.

[rainydiary]

I appreciate you sharing this experience of staying with what was coming up.  I am thinking of you as you move - it is so difficult and brings up so much.

[sanmagic7]

bach, so much of my emotional releases have come the way you described - from some show i was watching.  it's quite tremendous to me how incredibly triggering a word, song, situation on a tv show or movie can be, including reaching down into the gut of me.  i'm glad for you, tho, that you were able to be with it, let it go and grow, and ultimately feel better afterward.  love and hugs

[Not Alone]

That you were able to let yourself go with the feeling is great.

[Bach]

I'm completely losing my mind with this move.  The movers are coming for the furniture on Sunday.  After that we'll be living at the new place.  I am both so, so ready and so, so NOT ready.  I honestly can't even imagine how it's going to happen, and how it's going to be.  I'm more-or-less managing to keep up with the things that I really need to do, but it's incredibly difficult and requires a lot of downtime lying on the couch watching TV instead of sorting and packing.  Although we'll still have three weeks to finish getting the house cleared out and cleaned after the furniture is moved, I reckon that there will be more unsorted boxes of crap than I wanted coming with us to the new house.  Oh well.  I didn't succeed in making this move as smooth and organised a process as I had hoped I would given how much time there's been to do it, but at least I tried.  I'm feeling overwhelmed and unsafe.  I have lots to be thankful for, and believe me, I am thankful for it, and I am okay, but at the same time, I am also REALLY NOT OKAY.

I haven't been seeing my somatic therapist for a month or so because of time and money constraints, but I did a session with her last Friday because I wanted to talk to her about my experience with the TV show.  Something interesting came up as a result of that session, which is that I recalled the experience I had with my tapping meditation a while back when I connected with a place way down deep in my gut that I never felt before.  I realised that although my physical sensations are nearly all of fear or discomfort, way down deep in my gut underneath all of that there might be anger.  I think it might be baby-me's anger.  I'm told that my father really doted on me when I was an infant, and I'm sure that he cuddled me and handled me lovingly (the way I saw him handle my baby half-sister and brother when they were little), and I think it may have made baby-me angry to be tended by my mother.  So maybe that's what led to my mother trying to suffocate me.  Baby-me was angry, which provoked resentful mother, which further distressed baby-me, which upset my mother to the point of having impulses to kill me to shut me up (She must have felt so rejected.  I kind of feel for her in that way, but not very much because SHE STARTED IT).  Since I figured that out, I have had some anger creeping into my stress somatically.  I have been experimenting with vocalising the way I did from the TV show as a way to safely let it out.  It's a bit difficulty to tap into that, it's not very comfortable.  It doesn't really make me feel better, exactly, but it does seem to help continue to function.  Not at a particularly high level, but at an acceptable one.  Another thing I've been doing is deep breathing.  I've gotten very good at both 4-7-8 and 6-square.  In the past, any kind of focused breathing was a huge struggle for me that would usually end up making me even more anxious, but I seem to have finally gotten the hang of it. 

I want Other 

[Armee]

It's really hard to move and especially without the help and support of Other and I think TV time is totally justified.

It wasn't baby Bach's fault that your mom was angry and tried to smother her. Babies get to just have and express their feelings. They aren't responsible for managing their parents connection, the attachment bond, or otherwise making them happy. They are supposed to just get to be babies. I can see why there would be immense anger locked up deep in your gut.

[paul72]

Hi Bach
I just want to give you the biggest hug if you'd let me.
I hope you won't mind if I read through your posts/story today if I can.
Our baby me's share a special connection and whether it's that part or others, they all want to love you right now. I hope that's ok to say. 

[Bach]

I'm in a state of extreme anxiety today.  It might be fear surrounding the move, or it might be because I've been thinking about and talking about anger.  My anger.  Owning my anger.  Trying to feel that it is healthy and acceptable, and trying to allow it to be instead of seeking to deny it or reason it away, trying to live and function in its presence instead of shutting down.  That is incredibly difficult.  I always thought it was hyperbole when I said that anger makes me fear for my life, but I guess I was being literal all along. 

Thank you for the replies on my last post, Armee and Phil.  Phil, I certainly don't mind if you read, and I appreciate your reaching out to me with that love.  It's really hard for me to deal with right now but my wiser self knows I want and value it, so again, thank you. Armee, you say that it wasn't baby Bach's fault and part of me knows that, but that is very difficult for me to really feel and accept that.  There's a part of my mother in me.  Imagining the experience of the baby that I was seems like theory, conjecture, maybe even fantasy, but what I imagine my mother felt towards that baby at that time seems absolutely real.  I can almost feel it right now.  It's all very confusing and terrifying.  I've got to fight it all off and work towards my move, even though I feel like I'm falling off a high cliff towards a deep ravine, falling and falling and falling and falling, with anticipation and terror building with every breath.