Recovering Gently

[Gently]

I like the reflection that was prompted in my mind as I wrote the title of this recovery journal. It can mean so many different things. At first, as the words toppled out into the little text box, it felt like a description of the way I am recovering, I am recovering in a gentle manner. Immediately the honest part of me said "Um, not always gently though, right?" No, not always gently. Often it looks quite the opposite of gentle on the outside, the way things come out through expressions of pain and frustration with what's happened, what's still happening. The next thought was that those two words describe what is happening to Gently, Gently is recovering. That felt very true. I can fully agree with that statement. The last reflection feels more like a mission, should you choose to accept it: We are on a mission to recover Gently. Here is all of your fancy tech and a super fast sports car. Duh duh duh!

There is a gentle part of my recovery. It happens very deep inside of me, amongst parts of me that are very timid to show themselves to the outside world, even the most trusted of my people, whom are very few. The tenderest, gentlest parts of me are also the ones who have been most hurt, and hurt because they have allowed themselves to be seen and touched by other people.

It's people! I hear the revelatory cry of Charlton Heston's character in the movie "Soylent Green" as he discovers the horrible truth. Our horrible truth is that the source of our trauma is people, closeness with people, trusting people, needing people.

I've been taking photos out of frames today, decluttering. We had to take all of the photos off of our narrow stairwell walls when a new wash tower had to be taken up to the second floor laundry room, and they've been sitting on the landing for several months. We have so many family photos from our wedding eleven years ago. His family, my adoptive family, my birth family, my late abuser husband's family. Looking at all of them sends a pang of panic through me. Very few of them stir up fond and comforting feelings. The ones with my own kids do, the ones with my, now, husband, my true husband, do.

I ripped up the one with my late abuser husband's family and threw it in the trash. That felt like a dissenting act. A liberating act. They all appear to be so pleasant. That's part of the problem.

Choosing not to put up photos of all of these people feels radical, risky somehow.

My attachment to people is so tenuous. All of these people. It feels so arbitrary.

I found myself feeling a sense of acceptance of that in me today. I have been so afraid of that feeling, like I have to fix it. Today, I thought: What if that's just how I feel with people in general. What if that's an okay way to be in the world. What if that's me, and okay. What if nothing bad will happen to me if I just allow that to be true.

I don't know what we will end up putting on our walls.

Maybe wallpaper!

[HannahOne]

Welcome, Gently! So glad you are journaling here.

Welcome to all parts of you.

What to put on your walls is your choice now. 

[Gently]

Thank you, HannahOne 

[SenseOrgan]

Welcome here Gently! 

[NarcKiddo]

Gently is recovering.

I am happy to read this. Your whole journal entry feels gentle, kind and thoughtful.

[Gently]

Thank you, SenseOrgan and NarcKiddo 

Time with "the kids". No other way to refer to them, although they are both above thirty years old and one has his own child, now. More time with the kids and the grandchild lately. A family hang-out once a week. It calms me, regulates me, having that anchor, that reassuring regular contact. Makes me feel that everything is okay. And, I guess it is if we are all willing to spend time together.

"I guess" is the tricky part of this life, this cptsd life. The not knowing, not for sure. The knowing that connections are tenuous or can be exploited or discarded.

Ruminations this morning after time together yesterday. Starting to feel "under it". Feeling myself begin to fall, things going grey, shame creeping in.

"No, don't do that to yourself." A cry, a lament rises towards the soft self, the afraid self, the worried self. Care, compassion, affection, support. An internal response of openness to it, allowing it to lift me back up, bring me back into the land of the living. Tender Loving Kindness. Tears of release.

"Be kind to yourself today, you need some extra care today."

Yes, I do. The tide is turned. This newly discovered posture of compassion towards my tender self is becoming familiar, responding to it more natural, believing it more possible.

I turn my face away from ephemeral anxieties and distress, rumination and fear. I turn my heart towards loving kindness, care-taking. I will practice this day through a posture of loving kindness, self-care and recovery towards myself.

On the outside, my activities will likely look the same as if this shift had not happened.

On the inside, a universe, a galaxy of difference. From darkness to light, from oppression to freedom, from death to life.

I turn my face away from all of the demons "out there" and instead turn my loving gaze onto myself, this moment, this place, feel my own self, my own needs, my own body, my own tender heart, and actively offer care and support. I stay.


Stay here, stay with me, I need you.

I'm here. I see you. You're safe here. Breathe with me.

[HannahOne]

being able to choose your own direction is a gift of freedom that you have access to now!

It's good to see you being kind to yourself and letting yourself know you're safe now.

[Gently]

Thanks, HannahOne 

I noticed this morning that I had been feeling anxious since the evening before, after spending a really nice time with long term friends we haven't seen in a while. The visit was great, and I felt grounded the whole time, centred and calm within myself.

When we got home, I found myself feeling anxious about the family plan this Friday. All of a sudden I felt the insecurity and stress of that family time coming up. What if it doesn't happen, how long until Friday?, that seems too long to wait, it's really important that they come, what if they don't come, what will I do for the two days waiting until they come, it feels stressful that they're coming or not coming, maybe I've had too much people time, craving, slight feeling of scattered desperation about it happening or not or or or...

I realized this morning that what I was feeling was similar to addiction. I recalled a video that I studied early in my recovery by Paul Sunderland about adoptees and addiction. He stated that adoptees are over-represented in treatment, and that the struggles we endure are like a love addiction. As I explored the feelings I was having through a recovery from addiction lens, it made a lot of sense, and allowed me to separate those feelings from my true feelings towards the people involved in the scenarios of the anxious thoughts and feelings.

The other day, I found myself able to navigate some stressful interpersonal dynamics in our strata management structure, trying to solve some conflicts that had arisen over the arrangements of some work on our patio. Normally, those kinds of situations would throw me into an emotional spiral. That day, I was able to detach and think clearly, make good decisions, and engage calmly and assertively. My therapist had recently told me that, as I moved through recovery, I would find myself just more easily able to manage different kinds of situations that in the past were very triggering and unmanageable. I was delighted to find that she was right!

Following that calm day of engagement, there was another subsequent day of very successful interpersonal exchanges which resulted in a very positive outcome in our strata situation. I felt so great. I felt so competent. I felt such a high. Maybe it was dopamine? It felt amazing! The day following that one was the day with friends. The evening of the friends was when the anxiety started.

My guess is that the "hit" of dopamine from positive engagement with people triggered a loop of stress not knowing when I might get the next "hit". It became all about getting the feeling again, or maintaining it, or not loosing it, and the fear that it may not happen. That sounded and felt like an addiction cycle to me.

Once I used that as a way of understanding the thoughts and feelings I was struggling with, I was able to use self care, self understanding and comfort, a reminder that I know how to find deeply satisfying feelings of love and connection within myself, remind myself of the true feelings of affection I have for my kids, my own family, and that they are not for "hits", but they are people who have needs of their own and I want good things for them, I don't actually want to use them as my supply.

It was remarkable to have the ability to distinguish the stress and anxiety feelings about not loosing the good feelings, from my own actual true feelings about people I care about and who care about me. It's like a super-power. I would never have been able to do it without all of the recovery of Self I've been doing for the last three plus years, without all of the good therapy, self-love and self-compassion and building an affectionate intimacy within myself, cultivating a feeling of safety and love within myself, feeling it for the first time, seemingly, and then being able to recognize that out in the world, slowly.

That feeling of safety, care, compassion, and love that I began to cultivate within myself was the first time I remember ever feeling that in such a true and pure embodied way. Being relinquished at birth and adopted into a family without emotional attachment instincts, I was shut down from the beginning. I "knew" what love was supposed to be only as a cognitive construct, as information, not as a body memory. Often in my abuse recovery women's group, someone would say that we would slowly be able to recover our Selves that we knew before the abuser go to us. I didn't have a "before". My before was in utero, and even then I was unwanted. My birth mother said she remembered trying to forget she was pregnant.

No, I have been working on creating and cultivating a sense of love from and to my own Self, the parts of myself, almost from scratch. It helped that I raised my own kids, and had a sense of protection and love for them. But even that love towards them was limited by my own lack of personal experience of feeling love. I think I love my kids much better now than I was able to do when I was raising them. It's a hard thing, but I think it's true.

I am a better parent to my inner child than the parent I was born from or the parents I was given to. That's pretty cool, to know that I know how to take care of myself better than anyone else can. I am a reliable resource for my own well-being.

It sounds like I'm really starting to believe that. Wow. That feels really good.