Marcine’s journaling forward

[Chart]

 

[NarcKiddo]

I'm glad you are finding a path to self-acceptance and being a friend to yourself.

 

[HannahOne]

I love the quote by Hecato, Marcine! The Stoics got me through many a time. Being a friend to oneself. I have continued to think about this, beginning, becoming.

Hooray for direct experience! 

[Papa Coco]

Marcine,

What great posts. I've been moving into a spiritual understanding in a slow progression that started at birth. I believe I've been living in an existential crisis since the day I was born 65 years ago. As of late, I'm learning more than in all the 64 years before now.

Reading your posts gives me the impression that we are onto some similar healing paths.

I've been working toward authenticity for several months now. I've recently finally understood that fawning is the opposite of authenticity. All I can say now is, "Duhhhh. Of course it is! How could I have not seen that before now?"

I like reading your notes about how you are living authentically. I have a ways to go with that.

But it's encouraging to read your posts and see you are working to feel something similar to what I'm working to fill. We're social beings. Actually, we're one race of beings with 8 billion personalities, so in the reality of oneness, it always feels good to know other people are feeling or thinking similar things to me. I'm not so alone this way.

I have recently finally stopped hating myself also. I like reading your posts where you talk of loving yourself too. That holds a lot of meaning for me. The old saying is "Love your neighbor as yourself", not "Love your neighbor instead of yourself" which is the instruction I was raised to follow.

I hope the absolute best for you and also for myself and for anyone else working toward finding our authentic selves and living the lives we were originally born to live before our narcissistic families altered our courses.

[TheBigBlue]

 

[Marcine]

I've been closely observing the migraines that strike me within 24 hours of experiencing a new high-water level of fun/ connection/ self-advocating/ healthy boundary-setting.

It's a strange phenomenon. For example, I recently was a substitute teacher in a 4th grade class and we particularly hit it off— the kids responded well to me, we covered a lot of curriculum, some life lessons were learned, fun was had, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class.

Later that same day, my son and his girlfriend visited from out of town and it was a delightful, relaxed, fun time together.

The combination of these positive, human events set a new high-water mark in my brain/heart and the next day I woke in a migraine.

It's like some kind of metaphorical ankle monitor embedded in my brain. (Those devices locked onto a paroled felon's ankle that electronically supervise location and report to the authorities if the person is out of bounds.)

My hypothesis is: if I leave the extremely limited zone of emotional enslavement that was set long ago by the parental cult leaders and "trespass" into emotional joy or set a healthy boundary on my behalf, then the deviation is reported. And I'm in trouble like a criminal.

(I am not a criminal in any way, shape, or form. But I am, in the darkest recesses of my mind at the darkest moments, certain that I deserve to be treated as one.)

And, I auto-punish with severe headache pain.

Maybe it's a vestigial, complex, neurological system that had one goal: to keep me alive in those prenatal and infant, dangerous, life-or-death times. During those intense developmental periods of massive neuron growth, the message was encoded: stay within extremely narrow confines, sacrifice all emotional development, comply with severely mandated behavior... or else die.

I notice my brain thinks it's being helpful by following this programming. This faulty, perverse wiring that I didn't set up, but has been running in the background since forever.

The migraines have steadily decreased in frequency and intensity over the years. I keep bullheadedly going towards Good and Love and Joy. I keep rewiring.

But any punitive pain linked to healthy choices is unacceptable to me.

So I've had a sit down with my brain. I appreciate what was necessary to do in order to survive back then. My organism understood somehow the existential danger I was born into. I accept that my survival had to be assured at any cost, biologically speaking.
The cost was very high.

Now. I ask my heart, brain, and soul to work together as a team, as One. Knowing that:

Good= good
Evil= evil
Boundaries= essential for integrity
Calm= safe
Listening to my feelings= smart

Love is my birthright.
I never deserved punishment.
Now is not then.

[TheBigBlue]

Marcine, I love how you're noticing this so clearly and staying with what feels true for you - even when it's hard. That's really beautiful. 💛

I wonder if there might also be a physiological piece to what you're describing, something called a "let-down" migraine. This is where a drop in stress from one day to the next can trigger a migraine within the following 6–18h hours.[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4001194/⁠]

Just a thought alongside what you're already seeing.