Living As All of Me

[HannahOne]

SanMagic7, thank you for reading and commenting! I was quite interested in the idea of instinctual boundary. I have been pondering this idea. How I had to overrule this instinct in the past. How I might tune into it more, now. Thank you!

[HannahOne]

Whiskers.

How to feel along the edges. How to know the boundaries. Can I fit? Is there space for me? How to scan, read the room. What is coming near?

The light catches Frank's whiskers like a halo. He moves his muzzle and they quiver. They pick up the airstream, the bunching up of air molecules that indicates the leg of the chair, the vibration of the dog's feet on the wood floor on the other side of the house. He walks foot by foot to the edge of the couch, sticks his head under. His whiskers feel along the edges. Will his rotund hind end fit through? He backs up. Sits up, whiskers vibrating. No more dog footsteps. Just the breeze from the ceiling fan, the clump of air at the leg of the chair. And me, my breathing. He twitches his whiskers to double check. He lowers himself, loafs. All quiet now.

And my whiskers? I feel I've been given a whisker-ectomy. I can't always feel who is near, who is coming, the size of an opening in life and if I can or cannot fit through. Instinctual decisions don't come instinctually. Instead, I start thinking. Did she mean what she said? What did she mean? She didn't mean that. She said something opposite before. But what if she did mean it? How can I know? I'm overthinking it. No I'm not! She must have meant something else....And round and round and round...

Frank sits up, alarmed. TOO LOUD, he says. TOO MUCH THINKING.

Sorry Frank. I am cluttering the air with mental noise, raising the vibration too high.
Is there a wolf? he asks.
No.
Ok then, he says. Shh.

Right, got it. Sorry. Shhh, shhh. Back into the body, the warm velveteen sack of fur, meat, bone, nerve. Well, I'm not so velveteen. Back into my meat suit, bone, nerve... I loaf. Frank flings his back feet out behind him in superman pose. He's not going anywhere anytime soon.

[sanmagic7]

Instead, I start thinking. Did she mean what she said? What did she mean? She didn't mean that. She said something opposite before. But what if she did mean it? How can I know? I'm overthinking it. No I'm not!

Hannah1, this quote got to me.  i live in a part of the country where people are very 'nice', as in, they don't always tell the truth for fear of hurting someone's feelings.  not that they have to come out and say 'yuck, i hate that' or anything harsh - there are ways to say something just doesn't work for you, or it's not of your personal taste w/o being brutal or unkind - but too many people i know do actually lie or skirt the truth in a way to leave me confused, and, yes, i now have to question many things told me by these people.

example:  i asked my friend if she like quacamole, and she gave me an enthusiastic 'yes', so i made some the way i learned from living in mexico.  i gave her a container of it, the next time i talked to her i asked her if she liked it, she said 'it's all gone'.  then i said, ok, cool, i'll make more when i get avocados, and she hesitated before whatever it was she said.  so, the next time i saw her, i asked about the hesitation, the 'it's all gone' statement, and she told me neither she nor her hub liked it, and it was tossed (gone).  he happened to be there at the tie, i said 'i hear you didn't like the guacamole i made' and he froze, stock still, deer in the headlights, looked at his wife, and i said that she'd already told me neither of them had liked it. 

then came the time-aged strategy explanation - we didn't want to hurt your feelings.  i said, you know, i heard you liked it, and i was going to make more for you (to me guac is a treat!), but you would've let me go thru all that work just to throw it away?  i'd rather be hurt by the truth than by a lie, and just cuz you don't like something i've given you doesn't hurt my feelings.

what came from this is much more wariness around these people, all the questions you asked, cuz on more than one occasion there has been promises made and broken, say one thing one time, the opposite another time, expectations that weren't followed thru on, and i've decided i really can't trust them to be honest with me.  so, yes, all those questions you asked, i think they can be pertinent in such situations.  w/ such 'nice' people we can rarely be sure they'll follow thru on what they've said, or mean what they say in the first place.  it's too bad.  but, please, don't make yourself crazy over it.  too many people have been taught to lie to 'save face', or not hurt someone's feelings.  just tread carefully, i think, and understand what might be going on underneath what someone says.  i think that's one way we can protect ourselves. 

by the by, this friend has other very good qualities, which is why i'm not going to eliminate her from my life - at least not now - but i remain wary, and take what she says w/ a grain of salt till i see proof.  love and hugs
 

[HannahOne]

SanMagic7, isn't overthinking such a witch? I exhaust myself!

[HannahOne]

In ACT and DBT they talk about circles of suffering. How there's the original trauma and then how our responses can add to the suffering. This could become self-blame, but it can also become a way out. Depends on how you look at it.

I notice ways of being in myself that are adding to my suffering. I have the original trauma, resonating REALLY hard right now. Unfortunately. It's a bell that is easily rung and then I'm vibrating with it in my teeth for weeks and weeks. My jaw hurts, my bones hurt. I can't see straight.

So what do I do?

I isolate. I stay in bed and stare at the wall. I guess I'm spacing out. I think about what I need to do that day, and I activate some part of me to do the things. A bit robotically. Make the sandwiches, feed the beasts. And then back to bed. Once I'm in bed I think about what I'll have to do next and I shut down until that time. When the alarm goes off, I robotically get up and do the next set of things. The kids are very active right now, one in school and a part time job, one in school and several activities so they are like ships in the night, stopping home at 4 pm to get refueled (sandwiches!) and then off again, coming home before bed. I greet, hug, I can be a mom. But then back to bed and spacing out. I'm sundowning at 8-9pm, I get anxious, everything feels smaller and darker and I don't want any demands. Twelve hours of fitful sleep. I wake up with my eyelids glued shut. I know winter is making everyone stir crazy. I'm also doing suffering. I'm doing the thing I do to avoid the pain I carry. I'm creating more suffering, more problems, leaving problems unsolved. It's not great.

For a good period of months I was undoing it. I was doing clothes, going out, talking to people, taking more clients, making art. I was undoing all of that.

The last few weeks I am doing it more and more. I'm doing something I don't want. I can't seem to undo it. I don't have what I need to undo it right now and I don't know how to get it. In the past I feel I was much stronger in many ways. I had a lot of energy to go get the things I needed. To do, in the outer world. To go get what I needed, to seek and find, to plug into things and create energy, create a home, a community. I created many communities.

I don't know why but I turned 50 and I can't do it anymore. Some of it may be the pandemic, I know everyone is struggling right now to create community. I fear some of it is post-traumatic decline catching up to me. Even though I was in therapy for 30 years and worked so hard, I was always at the cutting edge of the latest trauma therapy and the therapist was always building the plane as we were flying it, going to get more training, let's try this, let's try this, and I tried it all. Some of it helped for sure. Some of it was retraumatizing. And also I'm just a little jaded now. I've jumped through all the hopes. Sure, let's play DBT. Let's play CBT. Let's play NARM. Wanna play EMDR? Sure I'll move my eyes/hold your tappers/go with it. Wanna play Gestalt? Sure I'll talk to a chair. I was game, I'd try anything.

Now? Eh. I mean sure. Let's play psychodynamic and talk about countertransference. Yawn. It's like someone else is "doing" therapy and I'm just watching going, "eh." I CBA.

for many people midlife includes a loss of faith. Check. I used to be very religious, I was raised in a crazy religious stew. I spent years straitening if out, got a degree in religion to fully grasp the field, tried this one, that one. Religion helped me survive, it gave me a sense of meaning and justice and a purpose, a sense of safety, a Sky Daddy to replace the earthly one. A community. It gave me so much.

Now? Eh. I'm ok without it now. But without faith in religion, and without faith in therapy, I'm not really sure what to have faith in. Who to have faith with. How to go forward just me, naked in the storm? No sky daddy, no earthly therapist mommy. No supervision. No vision. No community. No meaning, justice, purpose. No shelter in the storm.

[TheBigBlue]

I would love to have an answer, but I don't.

What you wrote - the robot mode, the spacing out, the sundowning, the loss of faith in all the frameworks that used to hold you - that doesn't sound like "doing suffering"; it sounds like surviving another wave with the tools that are left.

If you find an umbrella that actually works in this storm, please hand me one too. 👀🔍🌧☔

In the meantime, I'll sit here with you in it - just two soggy humans scanning the horizon and looking for it together. ☔💛

[sanmagic7]

well, that's 3 soggy humans, hannah1 (thanks for the visual, TBB).  i think we do the best we can at any given moment.  yeah, age does change some things - physically and emotionally.  physically, well, how do i count the ways?  emotionally - we've seen so much more now than 20 yrs. ago, we've experienced more, we've tried more, we've fallen more, we've gotten ourselves back up more - for better or worse, we're on the treadmill of life.

as i've heard many times here on the forum, this, too, shall pass.  as we go thru it, it often seems like it really won't, but i've discovered it always does.  just get thru it as best you can.  sending you a warm blanket filled with healing color to help absorb some of the worst of it.  the fact that you are still mothering, still being there for your kids says a lot.  don't ever count that out, ok?  it's huge.  and it's doing a lot.  love and hugs

[Chart]

The dark night of the soul is just that... the descriptive absence of any spark of luminosity doesn't come even close. Just before falling into the pit I called out how once I'd been blind...

[HannahOne]

Chart and TheBigBlue, thank you for commenting and being soggy with me   the BigBlue maybe you're right... the tools that are left. Sometimes run out of tools. SanMagic7, thank you for the virtual rainbow blanket you sent! Very warm and rainbow-y. You reminded me of something important.

I used to use a lot of imagery. I am going to return to that. I was very afraid of giving birth, and I am afraid of doctors. So I needed to use a midwife at home, and that meant no pain medication. And for various reasons birth was a little more risky for me. So I had to get the baby out smoothly so I could stay home and avoid going to the hospital. So I had to learn how to be unafraid and manage the pain. And self-hypnosis worked very well. I did hours a day of guided imagery on how to have a rainbow waterfall of main medication, how to have a pain dial, how to ride through pain. And I had no pain in either labor, both babies born healthy, both a natural high. The high of my life. I know imagery works for me. When the first baby came out I said, "That was easy, let's do it again!" LOL. And....we did.

I am going to work on that "internal dial" to manage the intensity of my experience Slashy and I were talking about. I'm going to reimagine the safe spaces I used to use. And the rainbow waterfall. And add this rainbow blanket from SanMagic7. And I used to have a black bear. A mama bear. I had a thermometer where I could turn pain up and down. Not dissociate, not turn off my senses entirely. Just turn pain up and down. I had one therapist who helped me create all kinds of internal resources during the infernal EMDR, which I do not recommend EMDR for us.... but the internal resources really helped. Since my external resources are a bit shaky right now, this will help. It's also much more productive to do imagery than to just space out, and it's only  a small step. It's one I can do.

Meanwhile I'm trying to make strides. Went to my kid's horse clinic today, they rode SO WELL. it was amazing to see every time they adjusted their body, the horse responded and went rounder. Every time they opened the hand, loosened their back, dropped their heel, the horse moved out bigger, dropped its head lower. In the same way if I make small adjustments, my horse, my soul, will drop its head and breathe and go. more forward, more round, more bend. I can keep making small adjustments. It's not a big dramatic move, most people wouldn't see the small shifts my kid was making. Small.

Came home from the horse clinic, small steps. Did not get into bed. Did some dishes, rotated laundry, picked up my room, repacked my hiking suitcase. 4 weeks to go. Resting now for 20 minutes, I'm going to stay up and moving today.

After talking with some friends I am considering more seriously what I wrote yesterday. Ok I don't believe in a sky daddy and I don't believe in therapy mommy. I'm fifty. Maybe I need to believe more in myself. Myself. Me. I know some of my experience is "outside the realm of normal", that's what "trauma" is defined as. And so I'm a little outside the realm of typical in some ways. Most people don't notice it. It's a small difference overall. And, I'm still good. I can do. I can be. I don't need to hand over so much authority to others. I can author my life and make it fit me. I'm scared, I'm scared of the responsibility, what if I run my life off into the ditch, what if I mess up. But that's dependency. I need to shoulder my own life.

I will have to be aware of falling into the trap of comparison. I will have to be leery of my inner critic who tears me down. I will have to notice when old tapes start playing. I will have to trust myself. If I once trusted a therapist, surely I can trust myself. If I once believed in God, surely I can believe in me.

And I can make small adjustments. I can feel. I feel my body, my horse, my soul, wants to move forward. Wants to breathe, drop its neck. It's not actually afraid... it got spooked but it's ready to move. If I can let go a little in my hands and find balance, if I can loosen my back and look up where I want to go, it will move. I don't need to be on a leash, I'm in a safe arena here, just my little house, little town, little life. Sunlight through the white curtains. Forward into the future. My resting time is over. Back in the saddle.