dollyvee's recovery journal

[Larry]

hi Dolly,   i hope you have a nice day

[dollyvee]

Thank you Larry, I hope you have a good day too.

______________________________

I've listened to a podcast on ancestral medicine and IFS and took away some insights into this work. She said that we are very much a reflection of our ancestors, and are an embodiment of their gifts and blessings. I guess that's a more positive way to connect to the idea that there are healthy ancestors to connect to. I mean there must have been one that made it right?

She also said that ancestral work is a way to work through our legacy burdens. For me, it also seems as if it's forming a connection to legacy burdens in order to understand better what's going on. I know I've had and suspected legacy burdens in some of the IFS work that I've done. However, I haven't always been sure of where they originate or how to elaborate on them and perhaps this would be a good way of doing that.

I still definitely feel that, with trauma, there is hesitation about connecting to the "family." Maybe part of that is being able to choose, or discern, between what is a "well" ancestor, and what is an "unwell" ancestor.

[Papa Coco]

Dolly

I hope you're doing well. I am happy to hear you did some energy work with your metaphysical studies. The metaphysical and spiritual healing I'm participating in is working better than any other angle for me right now. I haven't been as active on the forum because the metaphysical/spiritual activities I'm doing now are making me feel really good, and I don't know how to talk about them without crossing a line of political correctness. So, I'm not sure what to write on the forum while I'm feeling good. I hope your spiritual activities are helping you as well. I'd love to talk more about it, but I am cautious not to talk much about spiritual stuff on the forum.

[Hope67]

Hi Dollyvee,
That podcast sounded interesting.  I attended something recently (although can't remember what it was!) where they mentioned about the ancestors and how they would pass on wounds that needed resolution - and someone asked a question about whether those intergenerational wounds would finish if there were no further children to pass them onto.  Someone answered that the spirits would then connect to someone else (not necessarily with any blood connection) - so they could also be passed on that way.  I thought that was interesting.

I wanted you to know that I've purchased Joanne Twombly's book about Trauma and Dissociation - thanks to your mentioning it.  I am looking forward to reading it.

I also wanted to send you a hug. 
Hope 

[dollyvee]

Thank you PC    - I sent you a message which appears has been blocked by a firewall, but I'm happy to talk about this anytime if you want to DM me. I'll try resending it in a bit.

Thank you Hope - Welcome back  I hope you find the book as interesting as I did. Well, not just interesting, but helpful in explaining my internal geography and responses. I'll be looking forward to hearing your thoughts, good and bad, after you finish reading it.

_____________________

So, after a dating experience, which I won't go into too much detail about, but there was, to me, a lack of up front communication about what the person was capable of/what was going on with them that felt like it was drawn out over time to save them having a difficult conversation, or coming off as the "bad guy" for not bringing it up sooner, none of which they actually acknowledged, I realized a big trigger for me, and other FAs apparently, is being taken advantage of. I came back to this situation, after telling them that it felt like there was a lack of reciprocal effort, because I think underneath I felt like I was being taken advantage of, or that they weren't being honest with me. I guess there's a question of whether they were intentionally, or unintentionally not being up front, but it did happen nonetheless and I felt like I was strung along.

Apparently, after a little digging, there were a few sources that mentioned FAs can feel taken advantage of because they "take advantage of themselves." I had a little trouble processing this at first. I mean, how am I taking advantage of myself? I feel like I'm on my side. I guess, looking back, it's maybe a boundary issue. There were a couple instances when I asked this person about certain things and they avoided, or held back, from answering. Not wanting to be one to "push things," I left it alone, thinking they would be up front with me in they way I had with them. Looking back, this is an assumption that has gotten me into "trouble" before. I guess maybe I've had to hold back from saying things for so long, so as to not upset people, that I will still take it on, thinking I have to minimize myself in order to make/keep other people. I also realize that there is a line here where you're not supposed to push things in the beginning as it means having expectations, or not giving space to the other person as you're still both "figuring things out."I guess it's one of those things that makes dating with trauma hard, and takes time to understand.

I've been doing more reading on working with ancestors and on the history of my ancestors on general. I think it's brought up underlying things/ideas that have maybe always been there, but existed just off the frame of my awareness. Ie the ideological creation of what it means to be from this country and how that was sort of a construct beginning in the Romanic period, a form of nostalgia/creation and maybe not so much to do with the ancestors themselves.

It also came to me the other morning while driving how much of an issue I have had growing up feeling like I don't have a family, or feeling like there is something "wrong" with my family and it's something I've had to "hide," that I am essentially, cut off. I guess this makes sense that I would have a problem connecting to ancestors or feeling like I belong in my family.

[dollyvee]

I'm realizing how much this dating experience has fed into a pattern of me making concessions for people because I don't feel lovable on some level. He was lukewarm in pursing though was positive, and not clear in his communication about what he wanted, it must be about me. However, at that point when I noticed, I think I was angry for making those concessions in the first place which I don't think I realized that I had already made. I guess it's the line that's walked between giving someone the benefit of the doubt and being the crazy girl, though perhaps I could have questioned things more when they came up. Instead, I think deep down it was about me and feeling like I was unlovable. If things didn't work out, there was something wrong with me. Again, I guess all stuff I very much didn't want to be true and overlooked these things.

_____________________

I put a paragraph in Papa Coco's recovery journal yesterday about looking to our ancestors for healing, or some type of support. A concept that I've been finding challenging coming to terms with. I had already written around the paragraph that, "I Think this is a challenging concept when your family has oppressed you or you've had abuse/trauma. To see a higher power, to have deference in where you've come from and the people who have done those things to you."

Today I read the following, which might be the antidote for these feelings by placing our "families" in a larger context. I wonder if that's what many of us are trying to do here, to make sense of why our parents "did this to us" when it fits into something bigger.

"Understanding family patterns also makes it easier to externalize or detach ourselves from any given pattern or legacy—and not take our own lives so personally.

For example, if I know that my challenge to be more open-hearted and expressive is something my father, his father, and the recent generations before them all struggled with, I can see the pattern as its own kind of living thing or configuration of energy. It is no longer something of my essence, but rather a complicated habit in the house of my life, family, and culture. In this way, I can spend less time indulging in shame about it and more time working with family and friends to together transform our burdens.

As a psychotherapist and community leader, I have also observed the unrealistic psychological expectations people place on their parents and elders in the United States. Longing for our caregivers to embody the divine mother and father is entirely natural. But it's also unrealistic.  Some cultures anticipate and address this problem in certain ways. First, children often have multiple parent figures (e.g., aunts, uncles, elder siblings, extended family), which can reduce the intensity of the divinity projection onto one's actual parents. Second, adolescent rites of passage encourage young initiates to forge direct relationships with the gods. When these rites are successful, they can soften expectations placed upon parental figures by facilitating direct, nourishing relationships with the sacred feminine and masculine and thus prevent a potentially devastating level of disappointment in family.

Finally, traditions of ancestor reverence help people see parent figures in an inter-generational context and in this way shrink (or inflate) family back to a normal size—not too large, not too small."

It makes me remember the thought I had the other year that it was just my mother's time on earth to do the things that she needed to do. Her behaviour is/was not about me as a person. This comes from a line of people doing those things, or living out those patterns. It's not just about me.

[StartingHealing]

how much of an issue I have had growing up feeling like I don't have a family, or feeling like there is something "wrong" with my family and it's something I've had to "hide," that I am essentially, cut off. I guess this makes sense that I would have a problem connecting to ancestors or feeling like I belong in my family.

I totally relate to this dollyvee.  I have had / have the same feelings. since there was no info on my genetic ancestors at all when I was growing up.. never had the stories of wonderous deeds done by my ancestors.  in my mind I "know" that my ancestors were doing the best they could at the time being fully human.  Some were "complete rascals" to borrow a phrase from Alan Watts, and some where upstanding citizens of their time period.

I have done the genetic genealogy and have built out a family tree.  There is a great deal of knowledge there but it's all mental it hasn't been incorporated into my sense of self as of yet.  that is something that is an ongoing process for me.   

My spiritual path that I am on does have aspects related to ancestors and using discernment to tell the difference between "good for" and "nah" ancestors.

Wishing you all the best

[Papa Coco]

Dolly,
I see my dad in the mirror every morning. I hear his voice in my own. I see my mother in my own eyes. I feel her anxiety when I'm challenged. I can believe that their traits did pass on into me. I  have my mother's sense of humor. She had her mother's sense of humor. My son has my sense of humor. Some ancient spiritual texts have mentioned that these traits embody 4 generations. So, my great-great grandparents are partly in me, and my great-great grandchildren will have a little of my spirit in them too. I think you're really onto something, and I'm going to start reading some of the books you recommend. A lot of what you are saying is ringing true for me too. Just hearing a psychic who didn't know me, tell me what my grandmother's name was, and that she's watching over me, and then finding out from family later, that Anna really WAS my grandmother's name, proves to me that on a spiritual level, we are connected to some parts of the generations before us.

StartingHealing, I resonate also with your comment that a geneology might not need to be incorporated into our sense of self. I'm no longer seeing PTSD as just a physical or emotional issue. I'm starting to really grasp the spiritual nature of our trauma disorders. It's starting to look to me like the reason people with CPTSD tend to be better people than the bullies who put us here has a spiritual component. I had 4 siblings. We were all abused by the same family and church. I'm the only one finding healing because I'm the only one who sees that healing is needed. My brother uses drugs and workaholism to ignore his spiritual growth. One sister is a workaholic also. Another is a narcissistic monster who takes every chance to hurt everyone she comes into contact with, and the youngest of us lost her battle with depression in 2008. I'm the only one of us who has a strong spiritual belief that things should be better than they are, and I'm the only one of us seeking help and finding it. I think it's the spiritual aspect of my healing that's finally starting to move me forward into a more "awake" way of seeing reality.

[dollyvee]

Thank you StartingHealing - it's really complicated.  In my family, family was paramount. I was often told that there is no one that will be there for you, but family will always be there for you, which, I felt, was a messed up way to justify or excuse behaviours, but also feeling like there is a grain of truth in it when thinking about ancestors. Maybe this is why the concept is difficult. There was also a sense of guilt on behalf of my gm that she had let her family down by doing the things she did, and she felt like she made mistakes and needed to make up for that.

In my heritage, there is a focus on graves and cleaning up the graves of your ancestors (maybe this is normal?) where you go to pay your respects etc. I guess the emphasis on this and accepting the kind of behaviour that there was in the family, just felt really heavy and made me feel really cut off.

I've done parts of my genetic tree too, and can see how maybe the patterns of trauma formed given the time periods, events etc. I guess it helps to know that I'm a part of these things and as a result, things coming up aren't my "fault." I'm glad you've found a way to incorporate your ancestors into your spiritual practice. Wishing you all the best too 

Papa Coco - in the Daniel Foor book he talks about noticing coincidences as potential signs/communications from the ancestors. A few years ago, when I was going through my aunt's record collection with her at Christmas, she pulled out the Knack and mentioned how my dad loved, "My Sharona." I had no idea and never heard him listen to this song before. A year later, on his birthday, I had the radio on tuned to Radio 6, and My Sharona came on. I've listen to this radio station a long time and they play ALL kinds of music, but never had I heard My Sharona. Of course, it could be that I just didn't remember it etc as I didn't have a reason to, but that being said, it is such a memorable song.

Years and years ago, when I was first starting to learn about these things, I had some energy work done and she said to me that my dad is really proud of me for all the things I've done. I guess it's a difficult concept to accept that maybe he is healed/doing ok given how he died. I guess part of that is me confronting everything that I had to deal with surrounding his death (and things with my m/family etc).

[Papa Coco]

Dolly

You bring up some good points. When you say that your dad is now proud of you, but his life didn't reflect that kindness, I've been told that when our parents die, they leave their meanness and selfishness to die with their bodies and while they're in spirit form, they are spirit. Spirit is love, kindness, gentleness, etc. They can't be their old selfish human selves while they're in spirit form. Maybe my grandmother, Anna, really was rough and tumble when she was here, but the Anna I know now is a loving spirit that watches over me.

My sense of humor is always on. Even when I'm depressed I can still find things to laugh about. I find that sometimes a cute, or humorous way of looking at complicated issues helps me understand and express them. For now, I've begun to say "What happens on earth stays on earth." Which helps me to remember always that our problems and our personalities stay here when we pass. Our loving souls are eternal. So when our parents passed, they left their human issues here and they are pure love now.

As far as I'm concerned, the My Sharona story is definitely your dad coming through. My hot water tank went cold one morning. My Jeep was blocking the temperature controller and no one could reach it. When I pulled the Jeep out of the garage, I saw someone had turned the temp nob all the way to zero. I had used the hot water only a few hours before and it was piping hot. I called a plumber who laughed at my story and told me that there are no motors attached to that temp nob. It can only move when a person moves it. She jokingly suggested I have a ghost in the garage. I turned the temp back up and the problem was fixed. I later told Coco that the plumber said we have a ghost, and Coco said, "Today's the anniversary of Mom's passing." Her mom died in our home in 2017. She had been living with us for 14 years. She passed of old age in her bathroom. We believe that was not a coincidence. That nob couldn't have moved on its own and nobody: NOBODY had access to it during the night. So your My Sharona story is just another Tuesday in my world. I'm not shocked or amazed. I'm just hearing a story of how your dad reached out to you with a song.

I don't believe in coincidence either. And as of this week, I'm moving toward believing that there is a spiritual solution to every human situation. Our IFS parts are not just figments of our imaginations, but are soulful connections to real entities??? Okay, now I'm starting to sound crazy. I'll stop here before men with straight jackets come to take me away.

[dollyvee]

Thank you PC - I think that's a very powerful story of your MIL. my dad was kind, but troubled with his own generational issues wherever they came from (alcoholic mother, but great grandmother was ok, and her siblings are/were quite straight). Why I bring up the way he died is because suicide is seen as a troubled death, and perhaps it could be the religious and legal ramifications surrounding it until very recently. There's a lot of "stuff" surrounding it. I never told anyone really about how he died growing up because of what their reaction would be. I was also told by the new owners that my dad was still in the house (however much they shouldn't have said something like that to a 14 year old). So, in Daniel Foor's terms, perhaps my dad is well, but not at a 7 or higher on his scale. He's not the ascended ancestor that would, let's say, help me heal parts of the family line, but perhaps is doing much better "in spirit" than I thought. Who knows, maybe that came through because he was asking for help (and maybe this is the reaction of a person who had to grow up and take care of things at a very young age because here now is another person asking for help that I don't know what to do with).

And no, I don't think that IFS parts are a figment of our imaginations either, nor are they really just "archetypes" that we work with. I don't think men in straight jackets should take you away. However, there is a very real and recent (religious) history of people being persecuted for having "different" beliefs. Actually, not just religious, but you're right, medical too. I'm thinking of people who were taken to asylums for being gay. I read not long ago, and just checked the dates, that being gay was listed in the DSM in 1972. That's really mind blowing, but shows how quickly we forget recent history even thought they might persist on some level.

I listened to this podcast last night, which gave me a lot of food for thought around the idea of working with ancestors. It came up that maybe the reason I'm resisting this so much is because I was brought up to do things for my family at my expense of Self. I was given a lot of responsibilities of things to do in the family, and from a young age, of things that weren't mine to do like a lot of other children raised in NPD families. My sf even made me do chores in an unreasonable way (wow, I'm really being diplomatic with that another learned behaviour - don't lash out). He was a (insert swear word) that often made me do chores in a very demeaning way, for very little money/allowence, and gloating when I was made to do these things. The family also used/misused/abused my willingness, out of love, to do things for them. Working with and healing the ancestral line perhaps feels like an extension of that in some way. Although, I think the podcast clarified this somewhat.

She says that we are part of something much, much larger and it isn't necessarily about us. This really came through to me. As much as the world we live in tries to tell us it is only about us (social media to put out our opinions, cater algorithmically to our tastes, so we can buy stuff etc, narcissism rising as fast as obesity since the 70s where thinking about yourself only is becoming normalized) in the end it's not.

She also talks about the very deep changes we need to undergo together to change these patterns, that we need to do shadow work that comes along with this and face the difficult things in our past. She says that our anger about things will only get us so far, and that if we don't work on these other aspects, we end up creating a different version of what we've tried to heal from. I also like that she talked about having many more healed ancestors than unhealed, and it's only been the recent past that we haven't been taking care of our ancestors.

Here is the podcast is anyone is interested. It starts around 25mins in. The earlier part she is talking about the structure of online courses, but also a little about clearing. So, you could listen or potentially skip ahead.

https://whyshamanismnow.com/2020/06/ancestral-healing-where-to-begin/

[dollyvee]

edit: she also says that unhealed ancestral wounds prevent us from seeing reality clearly, that ancestral healing changes the reality in which we are functioning. Reality is coloured by the past, which is the reality of the world around us, the reality of ourselves and the reality of what is possible. As long as this reality is coloured, and being distorted by these unhealed ancestral wounds, we will lack the freedom to be the living and to create, innovate, and see in new ways.

Really powerful stuff.

[Papa Coco]

Dolly,

This is really powerful stuff you're saying. And wow, is it ever timely.

I wrote a long reply, and then thought that I was using up your recovery journal to talk about ME. So, if you look at my recovery journal for this morning, you'll see how closely related your day is to mine today. My entire day today is all about weeding through the fallout of my family making me do THEIR chores while destroying my own sense of self in the meantime.

To see my response, go to my recovery journal for today. The ENTIRE journal entry is about me, but it was inspired by your post today.

Papa Coco
---

[StartingHealing]

Thank you for the link dollyvee.

[dollyvee]

Thanks SH, I hope you enjoyed parts of it/found parts of it useful, or maybe didn't and that was useful too

So, ah yeah.

I've been exploring some new things, which I've written a little about above, but also not sure how much I want to talk about here. I think there's definitely some things coming up, all good. I spent a day reading about flowers and growing hydroponic flowers. It didn't have a price, or was something that would have an "outcome," or was for healing (an outcome too). I read about a guy who made this very efficient indoor hydroponic farm inside of a shipping container and was working to supply local city restaurants with produce this summer, and was fascinated. What I noticed too, and only recently became aware of, was that I tried to make other people excited about it, like it was for them to be interested in. I could never be interested in this, it wasn't about me, or I didn't feel like I could take up the space to make it about me.

While I was out walking this summer, I really marvelled at all the different wildflowers that would come up. At times, I would be like what is that?! and see this delicate thing that would only be there for a couple days. In my mind, I would be organizing flower arrangements, thinking how lovely it would be to combine this with this, but also not thinking that this was something for me. Of course, there is something to that, if everyone came along and took flowers etc, it could have an effect on the natural biodiversity. However, it's maybe more about the idea in my mind that these things, as superfluous as they seemed, weren't for me. I was brought up to do things, to get results, get good grades, do things for other people, and to an extent, we all share that as a society, but what about play and just doing things because it brings you joy? I wasn't allowed this space growing up (except when I lived at my  dads). My gf would say that that's just a waste of time. Why are you wasting your money on that? I think this is similar to what Papa Coco was talking about in his journal too.

So, I picked a couple flowers, three exactly. A piece of yarrow, a wild snap dragon, and a meadow flower. My reasoning is that they were mowing the fields anyway. I've also bought some fresh flowers, and am learning about growing flowers hydroponically. Just for fun.