Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

Thank you NarcKiddo, Hope67, What'sNext for the cheer and support. Truly thank you for reading and commenting and for caring.

[HannahOne]

I'm having chest pain. My heart hurts. I am taking the dog to the oncology appointment. I am in a spat with my partner, we cannot find each other, we are under enormous stress, stress of caregiving for our own family and for his extended FOO, stress of his work, financial stress, stress of my health, stress of endless home repairs as everything is failing at once and needs replacement, just stress.

I have to eat something. I am working on eating and noticing that I don't eat when it doesn't feel safe to reach for what I need emotionally.

the more attention I pay to "emotional neglect" as a concept and experience, the more I understand myself. It feels slippery, I get the insight and then lose it, I see it and then get confused. It's painful to see and understand. Easier to take a slap than to experience a lack of presence, attunement, mirroring, warmth, care. So much easier to describe the sound and feel of a slap and numb it and keep going, vowing to watch more carefully, than to slog through minutes, hours, days and years of the fog of unknowing who I am, what I am, in the absence of any presence.

My dog was such a presence. When I touched her fur, I felt myself, my hand against her body from the inside of myself. When I looked in her eyes I saw myself. And she broke eye contact in a way that felt safe, I didn't have to "try to make good eye contact convincingly!" with her. I could tell her anything and she would react to the emotional content with no mental judgement because she doesn't have the mental apparatus to judge that way. If I said something true, she'd lick her lips or yawn. If I said something untrue she would stiffen or adjust her position. I don't want her to die ever, or yet.

There's been a theme of denial in my life that's new the last year or so where I can't wrap my brain around my health situation, can't always act fast or in my best interest, can't make a decision, feel confused. I'm in the same situation with the dog. I can't get myself to accept the situation. I feel stuck.

I've always been able to pretty easily maneuver, move on, find what I need, cut off what needs cutting off, I've been pragmatic. I have wondered if all the softening and getting in touch with feelings that I did over the years made me too soft now. I've lost my edge.

I know this is also a kind of EF. The denial that allows you to go downstairs in the morning and quietly get a glass of water to fill your stomach, go to school. I don't need this level of denial, it's not helping me. I can get resources, I can get another dog, I can find the emotional care that I need. Part of me just doesn't believe it. Or just doesn't want to go through it. If I'm so good now at feeling my feelings, why am I not willing to feel the feelings of loss, loss of control, of grief? Haha. Gotcha, kiddo.

[Hope67]

I am so sorry to hear that you're having chest pain Hannah and that your head hurts.  You have so much going on at the moment.  I hope you were able to eat something.  Sending you gentle hugs of care   

[WhatsNext]

 

[dollyvee]

I think to myself, I've identified the EF---but actually it's much more extensive than I thought, more pervasive. Colors my whole mood.

One of the things I think I found most helpful about NARM was the processing and deepening the understanding of connection, and what that is and what the absence of it maybe is. For most people with a connection survival strategy, connection wasn't safe and I have lived with a somewhat dissociated sense of connection. It's intellectualized rather than felt. However, I have deepened the understanding of what I need to have to have that connection I think, even if I'm not fully there at times. I also think because as a child I was so dependent on people to have connection to survive, I taken this broken sense of connection with me where I feel like I have to shoehorn myself into situations where it's not good for "me" because that's just what I had to do growing up. That space for me didn't exist. I know, or have been coming to understand, that there's a part that rushes into things to connect, but still holds back a bit because I don't trust it fully. And I guess some of those times, my fears of it being unsafe have been justified. It's a winding road to navigate.

Sending you support,
dolly
 

[HannahOne]

dollyvee, thank you for sharing your experience with connection. I was interested in what you shared. I did NARM for about nine months but honestly I just couldn't make much sense of it, I couldn't connect What I took from it was the idea of "what do I want for myself right now?" and I often ask myself what I can do for myself now. Maybe I should give it another look as so much depends upon the practitioner.

In reflecting on what you shared, I'm more aware that I carry this "broken" sense of connection everywhere I go. I'm on a trip now with people I love, and feeling very ... alone I came all this way, and yet I am mostly by. myself. I often feel I don't know how to connect, how to find people to connect with, and I'm beginning to think I don't know what this mythical "connection" that I'm seeking is. I'm beginning to think it's an emotional hangover/flashback/habit.

The most connected I feel is when I can just be. With animals I can often just be, because they don't relate via language/verbal processing. I also intellectualize. I became a writer because I couldn't speak. With animals, I can easily breathe with them, shift into a similar biorhythm, become quiet and just gaze, or just listen, listen to what they may be hearing even if it's in a frequency to high for me to be able to hear, or see what they may see even if their eyes can see 340 degrees and mine are in the front of my face and can't even see 180. It was easy to do the same with babies and children, just get onto their level when I was teaching. I guess I know my own kids so well it was easy too.

It's easy to put myself into someone else's world. It's a lot harder to feel anyone can get into my world. I want to be able to "connect" with people. I don't know what that would look like or feel like or if I would know if it smacked me in the face. I've been going"out" a lot more and saying hi. I've been going to a class where you see the same people each week. I think the next step would be to be more into a community and see the same people more often for longer. Familiarity can lead to friendship.

[HannahOne]

I'm becoming aware of how I neglect my emotional needs. There's ways in which I reenact the trauma of neglect by neglecting my feelings. By overworking, doing for other people, achieving, spacing out. I notice as I track my eating that I stop eating when I want emotional nourishment, connection, attunement, understanding, or shared emotional experience.

I don't know how I define "connection." I just know I feel alone a lot. Even when I'm not alone. So these are old feelings, old needs, or a habit that's stopping me from being emotionally present with other people now.

Wherever I go, I'm alone.