The Next Version Of Me

Started by Bach, December 31, 2021, 09:24:51 PM

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Bach

Quote from: sanmagic7 on December 18, 2022, 06:02:27 PM
bach, i'm so with you as you go thru this.  may i just sit w/ you, drink something warm and comforting (i love hot cocoa), read your favorite book to you?  or, i'll read mine - alice in wonderland - just to escape to a magical marvelous place for a little while.  i think escaping from those dark places is the best medicine at times.  if not for you, please know i wish i could do more to help ease this distress.  sending love and a hug full of care and compassion. :hug:

Thank you, san.  This is such a comforting vision and is exactly the kindness I need right now. 

Papa Coco, I have realised that I have very little active present-day anger that causes me problems.  Mostly my problematic anger is historic and somatic, stuck in my body from all the years of my younger life and tangled up with the pain from the lack of loving touch and the inappropriate sexualisation.  For most of my life I honestly did not know what that was, did not understand it or even realise that it was there.  But now that I do understand it and accept it that it is there, I have realised that until I release it, I will not stop falling into self-destruction.  So I've been trying to figure out how to release something that isn't a definable mental/emotional thing but is a deeply buried set of physiological and biochemical responses.  I've never been very aware of my body, and have never had a very good relationship with whatever aspects of it I was aware of. I have realised that this is a subject that needs attention, so I've been working on it.  It is VERY uncomfortable, physically uncomfortable. But I think I'm on the right track.

Papa Coco

Bach,

I love what you're written here. As of the past few days I've been exposed to my own lifelong anger again, and honest to god I have no idea how to deal with it.  I have neighbors who are letting dangerous dogs run loose. Our fences were damaged in a recent windstorm, and those dogs corner us in our own back yard growling and showing their teeth. We patched the fence enough to keep them out for a few days now, but they bark, 10 feet from our bedroom window, all day long. My city's animal control refuses to help, and all the other neighbors who are being cornered and barked at are afraid to report. I'm so angry I can barely make it through the day. Here we go again. Once again I'm a victim of crimes, and once again, all my peers step back and let me suffer. I've stood up for my neighbors in so many ways, and now that I need some support, they all hide in their little bubbles and hope I'll fix this.

My wife is not as bothered by it, so she's not really being too supportive either, so I'm in a rage that I know is an extension of an historic 60 years of pent-up rage that I've never been able to control or release.

THis morning, I made a drastic decision to move out of the house on the day after christmas. My wife and I have a cabin on the coast. I'm moving into it. She says she's okay with that. It's not a divorce or even a separation, I'm just going down there and not coming back, but for a few days every month to spend some time with her, do my yardwork duties, and head back. I now have to wear headphones all day and all night in my own home. If I could control or release this anger, perhaps I could calm down and deal with this in a more appropriate way. But my whole life has been defined by having been betrayed by all my peers and family and left to the mercy of mob bullying, and, though this may not be a repeat of my past, it SURELY FEELS LIKE IT INSIDE MY HEAD AND HEART.

Bach, if you find better answers than what I naively gave you a few days ago in this thread, please share them with me. I am at my wit's end. My anger is from 50+ years ago and it's raging right now again.

Funny how life moves along and suddenly turns on a dime, eh?  A few days ago, I thought I had an answer for you, then BAM!  I'm on my face again. Forgive me for thinking I knew more than I did.

I know, but can't control, the fact that if we can't turn and face our dragons, those dragons turn and face us instead.  I've not faced my dragon as well as I thought I had, so it has come back to life and I'm not doing well right now. Not even remotely.

Bach

Papa Coco, what I've been doing to try to deal with/release my anger is to put aside as much as possible my thoughts, logic and emotional feelings, and focus on my physical feelings.  I focus on the thought of "Release the anger" and try to tune in to how my physical body reacts.  Because I'm so unfamiliar with and disconnected from my physical body, it takes concentration to get those signals.  I help the process along with certain kinds of physical stimulation, such as chanting, tapping, lying on an acupressure mat, havening, and vocal exercises.  It also helps sometimes to sit in the sun and look at the river I live on and the woods on the far bank, and listen for natural sounds like water flowing and bird calls and tree branches rustling in the wind.  I try to imagine the anger leaving my body.  Sometimes I imagine it steaming off my body and dissipating into the atmosphere, and I look for where in my body I feel the most energy moving.  Sometimes I try to feel positive sensations in my body, feel any hints of little places within me that are relaxed and breathing and really notice them.  I've been trying to set aside short periods of time each day to work on this little by little, because it really does take a lot of effort and I don't want to burn myself out on healing like I've done so many times in the past when I felt that I was really onto something and charged ahead and overloaded myself because I was so eager to HEAL and BE WELL ALREADY.  I suppose it's a good healthy thing that I have finally learned that trying to FIX THIS NOW usually just makes everything worse, and that getting angry at myself for not progressing fast enough is the epitome of defeating the purpose.  So parts of me are feeling a real sense of hope because it seems like I finally have all the pieces of the puzzle, but there's also a lot of weary discouragement with streaks of despair, because it all feels so unsolveably too much. 

CrackedIce

Thanks for sharing these Bach, there's some wonderful techniques here that I'd love to try sometime soon.  I feel like I've hit that same "k, you know what you need to do to heal, now go do it!" wall once or twice over the last year, your post is a good reminder to take things a day at a time.

Hope you have a great week!

Papa Coco

Bach

Thank you!  Mostly for calling to attention that I too try too hard. When something works, I embrace it and push it and then get frustrated that it doesn't work like it did that first day.

There was a Seinfeld episode where George's dad, who had serious anger issues, went to a retreat called "Serenity now."  He learned that when his anger raged, he needed to calm down and repeat "Serenity now" but, because this show was a comedy, George's angry dad would get mad and scream at the top his lungs "SERENITY NOW!!!!!"

Your comments about pushing it too hard make me laugh because all too often, I'm screaming "SERENITY NOW!" at myself.

I'm heading to the beach house on the day after Christmas. This is a Pacific Ocean beach with a surf that is nearly always roaring. I am going to read and reread your post and find some times each day to bicycle down to the beach, sit on a warm blanket and let the roar of the ocean surf wash through me the way your river is doing for you.

The biggest thing I'm taking out of what you've posted here is to NOT try to force it. If I can move forward one quarter inch per day, then that's progress.  When I was in AA learning how to stop drinking, I learned the I would succeed if I strived for progress, not perfection. That rule applies here too.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for jotting this down for us to read.

Bach

#245
Thank you for your reply, CrackedIce.  The somatic stuff is new to me within the last year, and is often very confusing because I have spent my whole life living in my head treating my body like a subordinate with little to catch my notice and nothing to contribute to my emotional healing.  I have been so unfair to my body.  I am hoping to be able to make amends.

Papa Coco, your beach plan sounds really wonderful and like it could be of great value to you in getting through this painful time you are enduring.  Many things about the ocean and beach are soothing to the body and mind.  Remember not to think too much.  Talk therapy has been very helpful to me over the past many years, and it still is, but it’s been utterly revolutionary to me to discover that my mind and my rational understandings of my life experiences are not the be-all and end-all of healing, and that my physical body offers a significant additional path that I never knew existed. 

Hope67

Dear Bach,
I've not been in your Journal for a while to write anything to you, but I have thought of you almost daily, as I do the exercises you told me about - including the cold shower - and I am ever grateful to you for sharing those - thank you!

I wanted to wish you the best for 2023, and send you a hug too, if that's ok  :hug:
Hope  :)

Bach

Hope, I am so happy to hear that I helped you! Thank you for telling me about it. Happy New Year with warm wishes and appreciative hugs to you, too  :hug:

sanmagic7

hey, bach, i totally relate to this:
Quotemy physical body offers a significant additional path that I never knew existed.
altho i've been aware of the connection betw. mind and body, as i've grown older and understood myself a bit more, i can see the connections more clearly.  the length and breath of them can truly be amazing.

sending love and a hug full of connectivity  :hug:

Bach

san  :hug:

All this stuff is scary because I've spent my life basically unaware of everything but the broadest and most obvious aspects of my physical existence, and now that I'm starting to experience my body as a entity separate from my mind even as it is closely intertwined, I'm understanding that most of the time my body is not happy or comfortable.  In fact, just writing this out I came to a sudden understanding that my body is the part of me that most of the time doesn't want to be here anymore.  I'm not sure what to do with or about that.

I've written before about my distress at not being able to cry tears, and in the past few days I've been experimenting with screaming as a way of releasing that energy.  It's awful and very hard to make myself do, especially if I fear I might be overheard, but it definitely shifts my energy in some strange and interesting ways.  Not a throat-scream.  The keys are to bypass my throat and seek power and steadiness from my diaphragm, to sustain the sound as loud as I can for as long as I can, and especially to do it only once and then wait before judging the result, especially if I feel like I want to do it again.  Writing this out is very threatening, and I can feel waves of tension and aversion rolling along my arms.  I don't like it. 

(a few minutes later)
That almost got overwhelming.  I thought about going upstairs to scream again but that was too scary, so I called on my vagus nerve with the exercise where I clasp my hands behind my neck and keep my head still while looking to the right until I yawn, then looking to the left until I yawn, then a face rub and some havening motions.  Now I'm yawning and yawning and I need to lie down and try to find physical sensations of relaxing, but my mind is fighting against doing that.  Or maybe it's my body!  I DON'T KNOW!


WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY? 

Bach

I am really not doing well today. My body is all scrambled up. I'm shaky and clumsy like I've had too much caffeine. I'm doing my best to keep calm and carry on, as they say. Am a little afraid that whatever I try to do about it will make it worse.

Bach

I have to figure out how to keep Other's unpredictability from poking the touch-deprivation wound and bringing on the body-flashbacks.  When he's off in Otherland, that great dark chasm of my fellow mother-wound sufferer, and doesn't communicate with me, or when his schedule changes and he can't visit when he has said he would (an occupational hazard in the transportation industry), even though I know he is doing his best and it has nothing to do with his feelings for me, lately my body has been reacting as if he is actively rejecting me, which has been causing me intrusive thoughts and intense emotional distress.  "Nobody loves me.  Why doesn't anybody love me?  Why am I here?  Why do I even have to exist?"  That sort of thing.  It makes me want to hurt myself.  I will always love Other and never be able to stay away from him when he's available, but I have to find some way to not get so horribly triggered when he isn't. 

rainydiary

Bach, I wanted to check in to say I am reading and thinking of you.

CrackedIce

Hey Bach, just wanted to empathize a bit - I've definitely been there.  I think it's easy for those of us with all these unresolved traumas to go to those dark places sometimes, as they're unfortunately places we've had to walk before.  I've definitely felt slights against me, whether they were accidental or not, build up to be huge traumatic problems internally with nowhere to discharge.  Before I know it I'm stuck in a shame spiral and my entire body and mind are sapped of their energy.

Working with my therapist, what's worked for me in the past, once I became aware of how I was feeling physically and emotionally (before therapy it was just a draining force in the background of my mind) was asking myself the question - "is it 100% true?"  Often that thought (repeated a few times) is enough to derail the spiral a bit and work on grounding and trying to work my way out of my negative thoughts.

I hope you're able to find some quality time with them in the near future and work through all these feelings together.

Not Alone

Thinking of and caring for you.