Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

Thank you NarcKiddo for reading, it's good to know you are there. Thank you SanMagic7 for reading and for the reframe! Thank you, SenseOrgan. "Despair that passes for drive." That's what it was. "The absence of urgency feels like something is missing." That's it. And yes, how to adapt? How to feel at home?

I hadn't thought of it as self-abandonment but that's what it is. The part that thinks going to the wildlife center will make it good, undo something, make me someone it didn't happen to, it's the same old habits dressed up differently. It's so tricksy because there's nothing wrong with going to the wildlife center and it could be a good and fine thing to do. It's just whatever I do gets quickly coopted by this drive. And then the thing becomes another battlefield, a battlefield within me.

A battlefield is not a home.

I have been focusing on choice. To embrace the possibilities, to do as Yitzak Perlman did and play with what is left. The power to decide. I choose.

All my life growing up I was trying to win in an impossible situation. I was living with a man who always had to win, who would win a snowball fight by grinding my face into the snow. I was four. Beat me not with fists but at every game we played. Followed me running for 12 miles and then blew past me in the last 20 feet. Winner takes it all mentality.

Now I have the power to decide what winning means. I can even decide that I've already won! Hooray! Trophies and gold stars for me!!! Now what else is there to do.... I can decide the rules of any game. I can decide surgery is winning, because I foreclose some bad possibilities. I can decide what being a woman means and that I have won at womanhood, lol. I can decide that not needing to support the family right now with a career is a win. I can decide being able to depend on someone is the ultimate winning.... 

Or I can choose not to play! 

How does it feel to be carried by the wind? To not push the water? To not decide good or bad? To flow with the course of events? There is a fear that if I am not "doing" I am dissociated. If I don't see myself actively doing something, I become afraid.

I just don't "know" "how" to "be." My mind can't know how to be, as being is not thinking about being. As soon as I connect to Frank, there I am, being. He doesn't push the wind. But he does have a directed energy, a bit of a routine, ruled by biological needs. When you mention the hierarchy of needs, SenseOrgan, maybe that's part of the home.

Maslov starts with food, water, breathing, warmth. Then "safety and security," which he calls a job, property. Then love and belonging.

But I dunno. For me I feel it starts with basic safety from imminent harm. I don't eat if I don't feel safe. And neither does Frank. I don't sleep if I don't feel safe. First I have to feel safe from imminent threat. Maybe I'm splitting hairs.

Safety from imminent harm. Then eating, sleeping, breathing, warmth, shelter. Then connection, belonging. For me that's how it is.

Maybe that's what I have to know/feel, that I am safe right now. Can eat, can sleep. If I could believe that and feel it, this drive that is despair might sit back more. How to help myself feel it, believe it? I can't think my way into it, talk myself into it. Maybe some plant medicine is the only way

Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I continue to ponder.

[HannahOne]

Ask and you shall receive. SO, I just saw the IPFP post you made. I have been working with this for a few months.

I wrote recently about having been my mother's therapist. In SenseOrgan's post, it said "How Does the Ideal Parent Figure Protocol Work?
A neuroimaging study at University College London found that the brain processes things we experience and things we vividly imagine in very similar ways. In theory, the IPFP might work because vividly imagining a secure, attentive caregiver can give your brain the real experience."

That's part of my trauma. My mother is right, my life was better than hers. But by graphically describing her horrific abuse to me when I was 2, 3, 4, 5, when she was totally dysregulated and sobbing into my hair, my brain experienced it.

One of my therapists, when she retired, made me a recording to listen to. It helped a lot. I still use it sometimes, or just think about her. She was very proactive, very expressive. Her hands moved, her eyes, her head tilted, her voice went up and down. I was fascinated by the body language, facial expression and tone and drawn in. I needed that proactive presence.

Although I Struggle to do this for myself, to be and feel safe, I was able to do it for my kids. Really do it, biologically. Be safe for them, feel safety in my body so they felt safe. I was like a giant mother bear, fat and happy, rolling around, sucking honey off my paws with not a care in the world, except these babies. The hormonal bomb of birth is so powerful, all that oxytocin, the dopamine high of delivery, all of it. Breastfeeding only continued the chill, the prolactin making me relaxed and sleepy and happy to spend two hours sitting around while the baby slept, nursed, slept nursed... I had no drive to get up and do, then. Was in a perpetual pool of being and being-with. Felt very safe. Solid. Present. Real. So much "Ooooh! THERE's the BA-by!" and "Upsie do!" and "Ooh ooh ooh!" The baby says "ha", I say "ha." Going with the flow. Not directive, no drive. Following the wind. Time stretched out long, and also stopped, both at the asme time. The milk pooled in concentric circles, like a meditation chime's resonance. Skin to skin. eye to eye. Roll over, roll the other way. No thinking.

Now I have no estrogen at all, LOL. I feel like a witch, a crone. I dont' feel a caregiving bone in my body. I'm so far from that state of bliss. Maybe part of that state was also severe sleep deprivation, LOL. Luckily my kids are young adults now! And don't need a blissed out Earth Mother caregiver whose body and psyche is entirely on loan to them at all times. I know menopause also cost me some of my chill, some of the haze of love. It's good to come out of that, because love is, in some ways, blind. Now I see some of what I gave up to mother, and I'm getting some of it back, and it's time for that. To everything a season. But it's interesting that I could "be" when my kids were younger. It was truly a different gear. Maybe much of it hormonally driven.That's part of how plant medicine works, too. DMT/aya shifts prolactin. Prolactin was the magic hormone for being present.

If a small part of my trauma is having been hypnotized by my mother's trauma, and the profound fear that engendered not only because of the content but because my own mother was not safe, was falling apart, disintegrated in front of me....

Maybe part of how to "be" again is to hypnotize myself with the IPFP. I already was doing it with the recording of the therapist who most embodied for me the ideal parent insofar as she was so proactively present, so responsive, so active with me.

One thing that's not working with the current therapist is she is so much a blank slate type, and very non-expressive. Very much thinking. It's not her fault. I just don't need more insight, I need someone to play relational therapeutic footsie with me, someone to lean back when I lean back, sit up taller when I slump, someone whose eyes naturally widen, narrow, someone who thinks with their hands. I need much more presence and responsiveness right now and it almost doesn't matter what we talk about.  I don't even need to talk about trauma or try to get better. I just need someone very responsive.

I'm seeing a new one next week in the city, it's a schlep but I"m going to try it.

In the meantime I'm going to listen to my recording and spend a little time with IPFP. Being with IPFP. That's being with All of Me, not just the driven part. Naturally the baby begins to move away from the mother and explore, but the baby isn't "Driven," it's called, pulled, moved. There's a difference. And the baby always returns to the mother to check in. That's the dance of attachment, a dance I want to do with myself. It's not about go or not go to the wildlife center.

[NarcKiddo]

One thing that's not working with the current therapist is she is so much a blank slate type, and very non-expressive.

How long have you been with the current therapist? I only ask because I would have said mine leans towards that approach, but I have been quite surprised to notice recently that as I let her in she becomes more responsive. I tend very much to being the blank slate myself and perhaps she has just been mirroring me all along. That may not apply to you of course but I just noticed much more connection in my session with T yesterday, and then came on here today to read your post.

I loved reading about your experience of being a mother to your children, of being safe for them and with them.

The imagination study is interesting, and speaks to another study I read about (or maybe it was part of the one you reference, I don't know). Anyway, the one I read about was fitness related and it said that if an athlete is injured they can retain much more of their muscle strength and ability by imagining the exercises they cannot currently do. Really, really imagining them. Getting into gym gear if necessary. Mentally feeling the load on each muscle and how it moves through the body. I tried that approach after gallbladder surgery when I could not lift weights. I was going to the gym anyway to do rehab work and then I would just lift a broomstick. I don't know if it helped but I certainly bounced back very fast when I started with actual weight again.

[HannahOne]

NarcKiddo, that's a good point I hadn't considered. Not very long---maybe 8 weeks? It's so confusing with therapy. What's me, what's her? I can't open up until I feel safe, she can't be more expressive until I open up... I dunno. I never know when to stick it out and when to bail. Sometimes I've regretted staying a year with someone that just wasn't clicking.

I do think imagination helps the body! Like after an amputation, people can look in the mirror and move the limb they have, it can calm the brain from phantom pain to "see" the "missing" limb. Our brains are powerful projection machines, creating reality constantly.

[HannahOne]

I was in a mood today, stayed in bed. No eating, drinking. I got up once to use the bathroom. Stared, tossed and turned, couldn't cry just pulled on my face. Everything hurts. It's amazing how strong these states are. There was a transition this weekend, which maybe was a trigger? I don't know. Lost touch with all the other parts of me, things I care about. Holding Frank didn't help. He looked at me with one big eye, moved his head up and down, up and down to put together a three dimensional picture of my face. But I also didn't want to impose my state on him, and let him hop away when he so chose.

Everything feels pointless. I am angry and feel helpless. Part of me imagines running away, quitting, part of me thinks my life is great and I just need to calm down. It really doesn't make sense to me right now. Hoping tomorrow to wake up in a different state. Planning to shower, to eat yogurt, to drive a kid to camp. Will look at making some art. Rereading here it's all familiar, I just can't feel it right now.

I Feel hopeless about finding a therapy that will help make sense, help me act more normally, help me function. That feels sad. I feel ashamed of my behavior and not being better.

I read some Tao today and I liked that. Clearly I'm not the only human who's had these kinds to thoughts, struggles, polarities.

[NarcKiddo]

I'm sorry you feel sad and ashamed, angry and helpless. These feelings are horrid and in my experience when they are there they feel like they will last forever. Please be gentle with yourself while you wait for them to pass.

 

[SenseOrgan]

@555

I'm so sorry you started life in such a cruel environment HannahOne. Some of that I'd call downright sadistic.

I'm glad you could make sense of what I tried to convey with words. I felt like I was almost speaking in tongues there. I struggle greatly with languaging my intuition. Rumi wrote something much clearer: The cure for pain is in the pain. Nothing fundamentally changed for me before that clicked. It wasn't an intellectual insight. It was the result of having exhausted all options to make life into something livable. Most of those attempts would likely be considered constructive by many, myself included. There wasn't anything wrong with them, really.

Yet I was barking up the wrong trees. The answer to my despair had to be somewhere else, something else. Whichever shape it took in my mind. What I was simultaneously doing, was trying my utmost not to be here, now, with this. And precisely that is what I found myself marinating in at the end of that road. There was nowhere left to go. No more carrots. I could not keep the existential terror out of my awareness anymore. A little later aya amplified it a 1000 times. It was unbearable. And I understood why I could never get "there", to deal with it and get it over with. Even though I thought I had tried to do just that with all my might. I could never have willed myself there.

This isn't about doing, getting anywhere, or control. I had an agenda for life, but bossing it around isn't quite working, is it? Life had an agenda for me. Already. I just didn't agree with it. Because most of it was very painful. And whatever I did, pain wasn't taken off of the agenda. Something changed, when I was finally dragged to my appointment, kicking and screaming. It was a pivotal moment.

What was that suffering? It was a bundle of experiences I had "refused" to have. They were already a part of me. My refusal to allow that to be so was also a rejection of myself carrying that pain. Deep down I was still completely on my own with unbearable feelings. My "refusal" kept me stuck there. Glimpses had appeared in awareness every so often, yet I hadn't recognized it for what it was. It was a movement towards integration. Yet I was looking to solve that. I had defined it as the problem that needed to be addressed. That was one way of dissociating. And the answer to that is association. A 180 degree turn. Actually relating to it. To myself. Here, now. This. There's a paradox underlying trauma. At a deep level, space for things to change opens up after they are allowed to be exactly as they are. The crazy thing about it is that they already are. That we don't agree with it is a different story. Quite literally, a story. What's wrong with right now, unless you think about it? Sailor Bob Adamson.

By definition trauma doesn't fit within our window of tolerance. My understanding of a constructive attitude towards these immensely intense emotions, is to aim to widen that window until it includes all of it and all of us. Compassionately. We have already survived. We're not dealing with the past. We're dealing with what arises in awareness, now. The basic choice there is no or yes. I brought up the hierarchy of needs because I think earlier unmet needs will keep making themselves known (EF's) until we relate to them and ourself differently. Welcoming and loving. Owning a nice car means nothing if part of us is still stuck without food. Truly seeing and loving the one without food has infinitely more meaning. That's coming home. The earliest stuff is often the deepest, I guess. I see in myself how it tromps subsequent needs in intensity. It's unfinished business that lives in us. And there's a movement towards integration if you wish to or can see it as such. That's a different frame than a problem that needs to go away, so life can be as it should be. A lot of weight fell off my shoulders when that shift happened. It may sound like I figured this out. But I haven't. I let go of a lot of that. That's kinda the joke. A lot of my agenda for life went out of the window. It's more free to happen as it does. Which it does anyway. If only that dog...

You're not splitting hairs I don't think. Only you can know how this lives inside you. It's on me for bringing up the hierarchy of needs. It's more like partially overlapping circles, I think (as some have suggested).

Plant medicine, few. Saved my life. So many aspects to that approach. Unrivaled healing potential. Also risks. I think PSIP is just brilliant, combining low dose psychoactives, somatic, and a robust relational container of safety. The therapist comes with the client, wherever she goes. Dissociation included. Imagine going back to those pitch black places and bringing connection into those. Profoundly transformative experiences for me.


Much love 

[sanmagic7]

hey, hannah1, i'm not quite as eloquent as SO, but when reading what you're wrestling with, the thought came to mind that i've heard a million times:  the only way out is through. i do believe that includes acknowledging, embracing the wholeness of who we are, what we're going thru, and allowing it to flow, to find its way out of us.  i don't believe it's always possible to do that w/o help - hence, therapy.  someone who has our back, someone who is supportive, who guides us to where we want to go.

i'm with you on the type of therapist who works best for me.  i want someone involved, making the right noises at the right times, facial expressions, eyes that widen or shut against my pain in compassion, guidance to get me back on a safe track.  i've also had the robotic type of therapist, and especially in the beginning, when i only knew that something was wrong, i just needed someone to listen.  now i need more.  i hope you find what you're looking for, someone who will make you feel seen and heard. best to you with finding someone you're more comfortable with.  love and hugs

[TheBigBlue]

Much love to All Of You, HannahOne.

SO, I will have to read your last post a couple more times. 🤯🤗 I know that, at least for now, I would be far too scared of giving up that much control. But there is something in your description that I want to understand better. ☺️

I haven't been on the forum much lately - not really sure why. I think I need to pace myself while catching up. Sometimes reading here is hard and painful, but I also don't want to forget how connected I feel when I'm here ... this darn "both can be true." 😉💛

to All Of Us.

[HannahOne]

Thank you all for reading and commenting.   

TheBigBlue, it makes sense to pace yourself, titrate how much you expose yourself to. Connection itself can be hard and painful, no? Connection can touch raw places. And, we need connection. 

SanMagic7 Yes the only way out is through. The way you described what I want in a therapist was so right on I had to smile. You have your way with words. I saw one therapist today. It was ok. Wednesday I try another. Such a process. Who will accept All of This, LOL? And it takes so long to find out.

TRIGGER WARNING DEATH

SenseOrgan, thank you. The cure for the pain is the pain. The experiences I'm refusing to have that I've actually already had. As Daffy Duck famously said, "I don't like pain, it hurts me." Refusal to be with myself/refusal of the past as a form of dissociation. At the time refusal was so important, it was how to survive without losing my mind, to say no I don't deserve this pain, this pain is Not Me, I am these other good things....

And what's wrong with it other than a story. I no longer need that story.

 Yes, I need to widen the window to include All of Me. Parts of me were created to prevent precisely that, to exclude and compartmentalize things. Some of these parts are very strong. Had to be.  I define the problem as "I can't get the dissociation to go away" LOL "I can't get the going away to go away". You propose a movement toward integration vs a problem that needs to go away.

How? You say something really important when you say that you could never have willed yourself there. My will isn't strong enough to make my will surrender, if that makes sense. There's something other than will that has to operate here.

And it's not something you figured out, you let go of that. And still the dog...

I think I understand about the hierarchy of needs. Yes parts of me want to attend only to the higher needs, where's my business card and my briefcase? While ignoring the one who didn't have the food. Doesn't work.

The one who didn't have enough food. I can't forgive or accept. What I did to get food. The one who didn't have food is the one I need to turn toward. It got me here, to where I have a decent car. Back then it was essential not to accept that one as a part of Me. I couldn't identify with that, or I'd end up like some in my family, in prison, on the streets, prostituting, murdered. I had to be the one who would go to college, get a good job, get a car.

And that's all in the past. Now, could I accept that one without food? It would be a weight off my shoulders. So much of me still revolts. I will sit with it.

TRIGGER WARNING DEATH

In the last three weeks two members of my family have died. One burned in a fiery car crash, one lit himself on fire. I'm waiting for the third shoe to drop. It's very strange, like a strange midwestern fever dream where they're all in an apocalypse. The despair, violence, some kind of curse. I left all that, haven't spoken in decades to these.... wont' go back for this funeral either... it's surreal and also very real to me at the same time. Yup, that's why I left!!! At ALL costs. And, yup, that's where I'm from, that's part of Me. I know that despair, that violence, I know those flames, both unchosen and chosen. I know that futility when it all adds up to fire. This is what I am from, what I am running from, what I couldn't tolerate, what I had to become Other than, what I have to tolerate now, what I can tolerate as I am no longer there, that is all in my past. 

Life can be so beautiful and also so cruel. Hundreds of animals dumped, now at the center. Frank lounging on his rug, testicles flung out behind him. My fridge full of food. Twenty minutes away, an empty fridge. Some escape the futility, some don't. Part of me did, part of me didn't. Can I make space for All of This? SenseOrgan said Rumi said the pain is the cure for the pain. A=B=A. Nothing to add or subtract here. It's an identity. Nowhere to run to, and nothing to do, since the pain cures itself, if you can stay. I get lightheaded plucking the heads off the squirming mealworms and I get lightheaded portioning out the dead rats. But I want to stay with it. All of this already is, and I would like to come to some agreement about it, I would like to get to Yes.

Today I did get up, with little trouble at all. Took kid to camp, load of dishes, load of laundry. Grocery shopping in person, picked up hay for rabbit. Went to therapy. Out to dinner with partner. Actual communication occurred. Spicy food was eaten. Then a walk in the park. Time for bed. Tomorrow, wildlife rehab. I will drop of kid and try to go. I will try to get to Yes, as the book title said. There's a shared interest many parts of me have in the mission, that the animals not suffer. They can be in pain, if they can survive. If they can't survive, they can be humanely terminated quickly. But they won't suffer. I will be quick to pull the heads off the mealworms that they not suffer.

[sanmagic7]

hannah1, sounds like today was a good day for you.  i can only wish you have many more and the pain leaves.

i found it awful that you've been attached to all that fire for such a long time.  i'm so very glad you got your car.  love and hugs

[SenseOrgan]

It's incredible you made it out of that death place HannahOne. I'd love to see all of that moved out of all of you.

The healing paradox is maddening, isn't it? Apparently the dissociation itself can be the entrance into the underlying material. It is being done. This is what I've learned from watching PSIP sessions and from my own experiences. It always starts with what is directly experienced. It could be floatiness, emptiness, feeling spaced out, separate from the body, and so on. Even nothingness is a certain quality. That is what's experienced in that moment. There are ways to go deeper into that. If you zoom in enough on the dissociation, the link with the dissociated material starts to enter awareness and you are opening that essential door to inside. There's no force involved, and there's no fixed target. The key is attention and the sincere wish to explore deeper layers. The process is unique for every individual. From a therapeutic perspective, dissociation is basically a big sign saying DO look here! Not saying PSIP is the be all and end all, just want to shine some wu wei light on what may appear to be an impossible spot. What is here now is a powerful question to ask if the answer is allowed to be experiential. There's a 9 min vid going into splitting and dissociation here in case you're interested.

I have put getting to yes on my to read list by the way. I loved how you were able to re-negotiate the relationship with your partner with what you learned from it. It also helps to distill the core of your interests apart form the form they can take, doesn't it? I like that clarity and flexibility a lot. Thank you for sharing that resource.

much love