Exploring and experiencing

[helliepig]

There's a bit of a story here I want to share because it feels silly to try to talk to any of my friends about it. I guessed you guys might understand.

I've been working on my recovery a long time and recently started to work at the really deep stuff about self worth, intimacy, being seen - and facing my fear of people.
One day my therapist said that she'd been, with her husband to series of dancing classes over 3 months. She said it occurred to her that it would be a good thing for me to try something like that as what she'd found was that over the course of the class she'd got to practise dance moves with a succession of partners and to experience how she felt with each one. I t had made her think of me and how useful it would be. Some made her feel comfortable, held and supported, others uncomfortable, a few even repulsed. She said I needed a safe simple environment without complexity to just experience different people without them wanting something from me or triggering me to run.
At the time I kind of understood, and did look into it but everything I found was too distant or seemed too scarey. I don't think I was truly ready at the time.
However, what I did find was a "cuddle" workshop, a safe place "to explore platonic touch". I discussed it with her and she thought it'd be great - on some level my nervous system would be able to experience touch in a safe way and start to heal.
So fast forward a few months and I've been to several. At first I found myself just wanting the touch. And still feeling wary scared and judgemental of people and slightly repulsed by the whole thing. But I did think I felt different in myself.  And then slowly it has become a place to explore my boundaries, daring to be myself and resist what others want from me. As an abuse victim I have never had that concept before. So it has become less about the touch but more about listening to me and listening to how I feel with people. Exactly what my therapist wanted!!!
At times it has felt weird and I have resolved not to go again, and then something happens that hits you deeply and you realise what a great place it is to learn. I had one experience of giving a chap a shoulder massage, someone obviously in a lot of need, who suddenly grabbed my arms and held me to him as if his world would break. I had no idea how to handle or process that but it was a profound moment that stayed with me for days.....For someone who has shied away from any relationship (after a very traumatic marriage and long childhood history) for over 10 years it was odd to experience being held... memories stirred of pleasant times, of being enough:, confused, momentary and odd, but nonetheless real.

Meanwhile over the last few months I've done some real grieving and facing shame and found myself freed in ways I find it hard to explain. I found "me" again, somewhere in there. Uncertain but there. And so started to embrace much more of what my therapist intended about exploring being with people. I made a deal with myself to just go out and experiment, to promise to go to 100 social events and just experience being with people in a new way - now that I was in a better place, much freer of fear and projections and judgements.
So I have. I'm only on 6 ( and  still having to talk myself out of wimping out each time!! ) and already I have learnt so much, observing things in people and our interactions that before were lost in my panic and projection and shame.
I've started to feel warmth, connection, see other's defences operate, been able to explore holding onto me and not being pulled into other's worlds or dramas. I am experiencing being enough and occasionally seeing value in myself. WOW!!
It has been exciting even if at times the old panic has arisen.
So what I really wanted to talk about was the cuddle workshop I attend this weekend as something happened I don't really understand but was so lovely. For someone who has been so confused and controlled and uncertain about men it is hard to figure out!
There were 12 of us and you do various exercises that set boundaries and build up connection. Then you have a break and a cuppa and then start again with more exercises. During the cuppa we were idly chatting and I asked one of the men, who only vaguely been on my radar and who had introduced himself at the start as feeling sad that day, where he was from. Sure he was quite cute but that wasn't it. As he responded there was just this amazing connection between us. Soft, lovely, mutual, intense, joyous and really open. It wasn't like any attraction I'd felt before. It wasn't even attraction. It was just this exploding sense of joy and belonging and mutual connection and it was beautiful. It quite literally took my breath away.
I just felt like we LIKED each other and there was just this bond. It was weird. Anyway I had no idea what to do. I have a pattern of chasing unavailable men and the generosity of this guy's attention to me was just - well, there aren't words. Usually I get embarrassed and feel cornered by someone's interest in me and eye contact is excrutiating for me but this was so different, it was liberating and emboldening.
During the next half an hour we exchanged a few really connected smiles, all feeling equally lovely. And then we separated in different groups and we seemed to lose the connection, and my inner doubts started and I noticed he had a wedding ring. In the last exercise when he was being held by someone he cried and then he was withdrawn and left fairly quickly at the end  -without any of the connection of earlier. (I know THAT feeling too well. Bereft , mistaken, not able to understand or capitalise on something. Disappointed.)
I just wanted to reflect on it because it seems important. I probably sound like a teenager to the rest of you, but for someone so damaged and exposed only to nasty narcissistic people, this is all new. If that is what real connection is then I'm hungry for it.
I feel like I've always missed out on love and connection and always people are married or otherwise engaged.  For a brief moment it felt like there was only him and I  and I and it wasn't a sexual connection but almost a soul thing. As if everyone else in the room should disappear and leave us in that bubble just to smile inanely at each other. I just wanted to hold him.
I guess he felt it too? Something like that has to be a mutual thing, doesn't it? Maybe not maybe it's just new for me.
I know next to nothing about him I have no idea what's going on back at home for him. Maybe he isn't looking for what I am.

Sorry for babbling.  I guess I'm after some feedback and I've only just started to come alive and realise connection love and how wonderful other human beings can be after a lifetime of isolation abuse and indifference. 
My very wise therapist was right. I need to experience a different way of being with people and the only way to do it is to do it.
Thank you for reading this!!

[Rainagain]

Thank you for writing it!

That is just lovely, must mean something important. You will work out the significance I am sure.

[helliepig]

thank you I hope so
I seem to be coming alive bit at a time and feeling things I don't really understand after years I suppose of being dissociative, codependant scared  and shut down.
Feels like a roller coaster but a mostly exciting one. Almost watching myself in life now experiencing it in a different way
I guess it will settle down
Thank you for commenting, it meant a lot to me