Rbswan's Journal

[rbswan]

Thanks for the encouragement decimal and sanmagic!  I do feel pretty lucky that I found my T and the group therapy.  Crying or showing any emotion was always hard for me because it was punished harshly in my FOO.  Now that I have been grieving it's been easier and very healing.  It's still hard and the nurture was a pretty big step.  It's great to have a community of people who understand and can relate to all of this.  Thanks so much to all you for hearing me!   

[rbswan]

11-2-17 - I read a good article by Pete Walker last night about abandonment depression.  I'm feeling my typical abandonment melange/depression the last few days.  The article on his website was very interesting and he contends that feeling depression can be therapeutic if it's not shamed (typical of the worldview that depression is a character defect) and processed by staying with the feelings and observing them so they can be integrated.  He gets pretty deep in the article and I like the idea of not automatically trying to avoid my depressive episodes with one of my 4F responses.  I agree that the typical American worldview tends to be "happiness is the only healthy state of being", which I think is BS.  I'm not saying that I enjoy my depression but I'm starting to honor it and process it in a different way.  First, I usually can't avoid it, so it's inevitable.  Also, I feel it's a healthy reaction to years of trauma and self-abandonment.  That stuff is sad and wrong and the feelings it produced can't be simply pushed aside.

Over the past months, I have been trying to stay with those feelings and "notice" them.  I haven't done this in a while so last night I tried it again.  I was feeling very low and it was affecting me mentally and physically.  Mentally, I noticed that my critic was trying to disassociate by making up stories in my head.  Also, I was craving sugar and bread.  Instead of eating a bunch of unhealthy food and spacing out watching TV, I found a quiet room and laid down.  It was hard to stay with my feelings but I was able to do it after coming back to my awareness over and over.  Here is what I noticed:

Noticing my body (Somatic) reaction:  The most noticeable sensation was in my stomach.  It started with the ball of slightly painful emotion in my stomach.  It felt like a balloon that had a dull ache on the outside.  I tried to stay with it and it would pulse with more and slightly less intensity.  Also, I feel aching in my chest, more near the sides under my armpits.  After extended attention of these sensations I intuitively knew that I've had these physical feelings all my life, especially during depressive episodes.  I also remembered that the original fear that started these feelings was way more painful and intense.  Instead of trying to suppress the feelings I stayed with them.  It was hard at times to try and keep myself from tensing up.

TRIGGER WARNING: Brief Descriptions of Emotional, Mental and Physical Abuse

Noticing my thinking:  While focussing on the physical feelings, every once in a while I would have a memory of my mother in a rage state,  her face gigantic and red while screaming at me (maybe pre-verbal memory as I couldn't understand the words in the memory).  I had a few memories of being hit and thrown around, again my mom seemed very large so I think this was pre-verbal.  Also, memories of being left alone in strange places (rooms I've never seen) and feeling extreme fear.  The hardest memories to stay with were the shadow figures in a darkened room.  They were looking at me and moving toward me.  I had to sit up at one point as this was too much.  My chest would start shaking while these memories came up.  It was very hard not to disassociate, and I would occasionally by going numb or sitting up.  Luckily, the scariest memories were very brief.  Back and forth, back and forth, I kept bringing my attention back to noticing my body and allowing my thoughts.  I feel that these are the things that fuel my ongoing depression just under my awareness.  This was significant for me.  I was having moments of being mindful of what usually causes internal alarms to sound.  I may never have full remembrance, and I'm not really seeking that.  I want to learn to feel and integrate the painful feelings if possible.

End Trigger Warning

I grieved and cried after about 30 minutes of doing this.  I felt physically drained but also some relief.  Mainly, I have much less shame about my depression.  At the end of Walker's article, he talks about honing "staying present with depressive feelings" to a point of a sort of spiritual experience.  That sounds cool but I'm nowhere near that point.  I don't know why I was able to do this.  I think I'm ready to really explore my feelings.  I think I'm starting to see they won't destroy me.  They sure do hurt sometimes though and I still fall into the 4Fs.  I'm also working against a part of myself that likes disassociation, maybe even loves it (inner critic, inner child?).  I still find myself in daydreams of when I was acting out on all sorts of process addictions and substance addictions.  It's been many years since I have used mind altering substances but only a short time on the other addictions and I'm still addicted to sugar and caffeine.

I'm glad I'm still journalling about this and that this community is here.  I'm meeting a friend at an ACA meeting tonight and will talk to him about this as well.  I'm grateful for recovery and this community and a safe place to share.

[DecimalRocket]

That's great, rbswan.

When I first tried somatic awareness, I was skeptical. But it turns out there is a lot of value in being able to be aware of these in your body. There were emotions I've never noticed and subtleties I've never reached. There were memories and hurt thoughts stuck in my body ready to be released.

I've been grieving recently too. It feels horrible to me but I'm oddly interested in how much trauma has been kept in my body all this time. Nice to have it released.

I hope you take things at your own pace. No pressure. And good luck.

See ya around.

[rbswan]

Thanks for the insight Decimal, somatic awareness is new to me and I did start to notice the subtleties.  I'm interested in seeing where it goes.  I hated grieving when I first started it.  Now I allow it and sometimes welcome it.  I mostly do it in group therapy but it is now part of my recovery.  I continue to be surprised at how much stored trauma is in there even though my T continually tells me that there is a lot I haven't experienced yet.  Thanks for your post and see you later!

[sanmagic7]

sounds like some good insight and different perspective on the depression thing.  interesting. 

i also think grieving is difficult, and has been ongoing for me for a very long time.  i'm beginning to believe that a lot of my crying at situations or depictions about love, caring, kindness, etc., are actually grieving tears for what i haven't had, what i'd deserved, or what was taken from me and replaced by the opposite.  i think it's something you've just inspired me to stay with and examine.  thanks.

i give you a lot of credit for now staying with your bodily sensations and letting those realizations come up.  that's some pretty intense work.  good for you.  sending you a hug filled with continued progress and love. 

[rbswan]

Thank you sanmagic for the support.  Before all of this I think my crying, rare as it was, had a lot to do with grieving the loss of my childhood and loss of my ability to relate to people.  When I would cry, before recovery, it would be very intense and I would usually desperately try to disassociate.  I really related to Pete Walker's article and he expands on that subject in his books.

It's an interesting subject and hard because I don't want to seem like I am welcoming depression, but I am ready to acknowledge it as a natural process of my recovery.  The most difficult part is not "reacting" to it with my 4F responses when it hurts too much.  Thanks for the hugs, hugs back and I hope all is going better.