Marcine’s journaling forward

[Chart]

 

[NarcKiddo]

I'm glad you are finding a path to self-acceptance and being a friend to yourself.

 

[HannahOne]

I love the quote by Hecato, Marcine! The Stoics got me through many a time. Being a friend to oneself. I have continued to think about this, beginning, becoming.

Hooray for direct experience! 

[Papa Coco]

Marcine,

What great posts. I've been moving into a spiritual understanding in a slow progression that started at birth. I believe I've been living in an existential crisis since the day I was born 65 years ago. As of late, I'm learning more than in all the 64 years before now.

Reading your posts gives me the impression that we are onto some similar healing paths.

I've been working toward authenticity for several months now. I've recently finally understood that fawning is the opposite of authenticity. All I can say now is, "Duhhhh. Of course it is! How could I have not seen that before now?"

I like reading your notes about how you are living authentically. I have a ways to go with that.

But it's encouraging to read your posts and see you are working to feel something similar to what I'm working to fill. We're social beings. Actually, we're one race of beings with 8 billion personalities, so in the reality of oneness, it always feels good to know other people are feeling or thinking similar things to me. I'm not so alone this way.

I have recently finally stopped hating myself also. I like reading your posts where you talk of loving yourself too. That holds a lot of meaning for me. The old saying is "Love your neighbor as yourself", not "Love your neighbor instead of yourself" which is the instruction I was raised to follow.

I hope the absolute best for you and also for myself and for anyone else working toward finding our authentic selves and living the lives we were originally born to live before our narcissistic families altered our courses.

[TheBigBlue]

 

[Marcine]

I've been closely observing the migraines that strike me within 24 hours of experiencing a new high-water level of fun/ connection/ self-advocating/ healthy boundary-setting.

It's a strange phenomenon. For example, I recently was a substitute teacher in a 4th grade class and we particularly hit it off— the kids responded well to me, we covered a lot of curriculum, some life lessons were learned, fun was had, and I thoroughly enjoyed the class.

Later that same day, my son and his girlfriend visited from out of town and it was a delightful, relaxed, fun time together.

The combination of these positive, human events set a new high-water mark in my brain/heart and the next day I woke in a migraine.

It's like some kind of metaphorical ankle monitor embedded in my brain. (Those devices locked onto a paroled felon's ankle that electronically supervise location and report to the authorities if the person is out of bounds.)

My hypothesis is: if I leave the extremely limited zone of emotional enslavement that was set long ago by the parental cult leaders and "trespass" into emotional joy or set a healthy boundary on my behalf, then the deviation is reported. And I'm in trouble like a criminal.

(I am not a criminal in any way, shape, or form. But I am, in the darkest recesses of my mind at the darkest moments, certain that I deserve to be treated as one.)

And, I auto-punish with severe headache pain.

Maybe it's a vestigial, complex, neurological system that had one goal: to keep me alive in those prenatal and infant, dangerous, life-or-death times. During those intense developmental periods of massive neuron growth, the message was encoded: stay within extremely narrow confines, sacrifice all emotional development, comply with severely mandated behavior... or else die.

I notice my brain thinks it's being helpful by following this programming. This faulty, perverse wiring that I didn't set up, but has been running in the background since forever.

The migraines have steadily decreased in frequency and intensity over the years. I keep bullheadedly going towards Good and Love and Joy. I keep rewiring.

But any punitive pain linked to healthy choices is unacceptable to me.

So I've had a sit down with my brain. I appreciate what was necessary to do in order to survive back then. My organism understood somehow the existential danger I was born into. I accept that my survival had to be assured at any cost, biologically speaking.
The cost was very high.

Now. I ask my heart, brain, and soul to work together as a team, as One. Knowing that:

Good= good
Evil= evil
Boundaries= essential for integrity
Calm= safe
Listening to my feelings= smart

Love is my birthright.
I never deserved punishment.
Now is not then.

[TheBigBlue]

Marcine, I love how you're noticing this so clearly and staying with what feels true for you - even when it's hard. That's really beautiful. 💛

I wonder if there might also be a physiological piece to what you're describing, something called a "let-down" migraine. This is where a drop in stress from one day to the next can trigger a migraine within the following 6–18h hours.[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4001194/⁠]

Just a thought alongside what you're already seeing.

[sanmagic7]

hey, marcine, i, too, love how you're tackling this.  i've just been learning to 'lean into' pains i get, but i believe mine are triggered by unfelt emotions, or emotions left over from the past that weren't allowed to be expressed.  i think this is simply huge for you and it makes a lot of sense to me.  keep going!  i think you're onto something big!  love and hugs

[Marcine]

TheBigBlue,
Thank you for the support and the scientific data! I read that Neurology article with interest.

What a fascinating correlation: "Reduction in stress from one day to the next is associated with migraine onset the next day."

The mechanism isn't fully understood. And clearly there is an infinitely complex balance of internal systems at play.

In my experience, migraines began 30 years ago, coincident with starting therapy. That was the first time of feeling safe enough to unpack the horror and yuck.

In recent years, the migraines come less frequently and with less intensity. In a progressive, ratcheting-down fashion. Disconnecting and absorbing old neuron pathways? Releasing residual, deeply embedded stresses? An unknown process?

I trust my body and its wisdom.
Thank you again, TheBigBlue, for the data and the care! 

San,
Thank you for the encouragement! I completely relate with you on the importance of allowing emotions to be felt and expressed. My sense is there's immense ways our bodies protect us from existential threats at a given dangerous time. Survival is top priority. Then, later, the collateral damage shows up and we have to deal with it or repress it further.
Kudos to us for choosing to express and explore and connect.
Love and hugs back to you

[HannahOne]

Yes to the mind-body connection, and the deep knowing of boundaries that comes from that connection. Yes to joy! Yes to being bullheaded. A bulls head is hard because it must push against the walls and headbutt to set its boundaries. Bulls know things we need to know. And, a headache might occasionally result from being bull-headed, even as being bull-headed is required to push so hard against the grain of what was ingrained in us so young.

[sanmagic7]

  love and hugs to all the bullheads out there!

[Marcine]

On this adventure of being a good friend to myself— today's update:

I'm continuing to slough off old, programmed behaviors and distorted, embedded beliefs that sap my energy and don't serve my true self.

More and more, this means I claim authentic me, identifying with my inherent good and my intrinsic, loving, fierce strength.

(Yes, I solidly qualify as INFJ/Advocate Myers-Briggs personality type.)

My intuitive, kind nature was enslaved in early life and I see clearly how that required me to become expert at people-pleasing and fawning in order to not die.

Deform and sacrifice self to survive.
I was punished and humiliated for any shred of personal boundaries.

In adulthood, this rotten foundation was impossible to built anything solid on, even though I desperately kept trying. I feared nothing would be left if I stopped trying so hard to hold it all together, beating myself up in the process.

A kite without wind looks like it's flying if the person holding the string never stops running...

An unsustainable situation. Crash and burn. Grief.

And surprise, in the crumbled wreckage, in the charred remains after the inferno, Seeds of true me resprouted... tiny, pale, determined vulnerableness.

I nurture and protect myself naturally as I grow, learning as I go.

I am here— with my compassion and curiosity intact, learning to advocate for myself and to live with a loving heart. Because that is who I am.

[Moondance]

Hi Marcine,

Wow I can so relate and appreciate what you have shared.

A kite without wind looks like it's flying if the person holding the string never stops running...

An unsustainable situation. Crash and burn. Grief.

 

[TheBigBlue]

I can see the INFJ 🙂.

I tested as ENTJ (MBTI) about 20 years ago, which, looking back, fits my high-functioning survival mode so well. Driven, organized, getting things done, holding everything together ... but now I find myself wondering: what am I really? Or who would I have been without CT and the need to adapt just to survive?

It's actually kind of mind-bending to think about how I even "ENTJ'd" that test back then, considering how much of me was enmeshed, fawning, without inner safety, without a stable sense of self ... so much self-erasure. It makes me realize how powerful those adaptations were: they didn't just shape behavior, they shaped identity, or at least what looked like identity from the outside.

A kite without wind looks like it's flying if the person holding the string never stops running...

That line really hit me. Deeply. I'm actually tearing up reading it - there's so much recognition in that image. The constant effort, the pushing, the illusion of functioning ... and underneath it, exhaustion and fragility.

An unsustainable situation. Crash and burn. Grief.

Yes, that part too. The crash, and then what comes after - the grief of seeing it clearly.

And then this:

Seeds of true me resprouted... tiny, pale, determined vulnerableness.

There's something incredibly powerful in that. Not loud, not dramatic - but persistent. Alive. Real.
🌱 → 🌿 → 🌳 

The way you describe nurturing and protecting that emerging self ... it feels very grounded and very true.

You give me hope. 💛

P.S.: Disclaimer - my therapist would want me to reframe: "I'm not looking for who I should have been, but for who I can become now"

[Dalloway]

Marcine,
the picture of the kite is beautiful and deep and heartbreaking at the same time, I can understand why everyone responding to your post highlighted this part. For me, this sentence represents a little bit of you - very precisely formulated and at the same time beautifully poetic thoughts. I´m very glad that you keep having these profound experiences. The love and kindness you give to yourself is deeply touching.