Month: February 2020

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All by myself

“This far away look. She is somewhere else. In another time and space, one devoid of any warmth and comfort. Who would ever venture back to that to collect themselves ? Isn’t it unnecessary ? If you want healthy love, you must be able to bring your whole self to the table. If you want healthy love the way I do anyway.”

It’s been a day. I’m just sitting here thinking about the difference between transparency and vulnerability.

I realized today I’ve been going through life preaching all about vulnerability, and I’ve never truly been vulnerable. I utilized transparency to battle the narcissist dynamics from whence I came. But true vulnerability is much more terrifying. I thought what I was doing was being vulnerable. It’s more than startling to realize that isn’t the case.

I spoke it but I wasn’t living it.

So I’m sitting with that. I’m sitting with lots of things right now. But they aren’t on top of me any longer. I can sift through them while safety is in place. Pick one thing up as I’m ready, turn it over in my hands, and put it down when I need. There’s no overwhelming frenzy. I am no longer held at gun point. Who will I be when I’m no longer there?

The unknown whispers at me, again no longer screams, only gentle whispers. And my software is trying to catch up.

When did the screaming stop? When did I stop being afraid?

I think the real answer is I didn’t. Wow, and that line brought more tears. It never stopped because it has all been locked up inside of me and carried along the whole time. I have never unpacked it with anyone truly, and I’m always surprised when people don’t put it together themselves by looking at me. It’s such a disconnect.

So recently I’ve been taking several journeys into vulnerability. I am doing EMDR with a therapist, I am seeing a trainer so I can simultaneously strengthen the house I live in while going through this hell, and I am RE-examining every inch of love. The way I love, why I love, what I need, who I am in my relationships.

The view in the mirror is interesting. It’s standing with all sorts of scars and imperfections and not cringing, walking away, but also not picking apart every flaw. I am looking at me lovingly as is: and it’s waves and waves of feelings. They crash over me and I try not to do anything with them, but feel them.

That’s vulnerability.

To feel something but not do anything with it is vulnerability. No flight, no freeze, no fawn, no fight. No intellectualizing. I’m on a battlefield and I’ve been stripped of all my weapons and armor. Now is when I close my eyes and see if the terrain was an illusion all along, and I’ll open them and the war will have been over so long, and I won’t have realized.

My song for my trauma All by myself

Because this is what I found while trying to describe my childhood. The loneliness was more profound than the chaos. I thought all this time it was the many fearful things having the deepest effect on me. But I think it was the loneliness.

And currently I’ve manifested a similar situation to simulate this while doing EMDR. So I am all by myself in this. I have support, lots of it actually. Genuine people who love me. But no one sits in those flames with me and currently there is no comfort after either.

There’s a kaleidoscope image of all the people who have ever held me and believed in who I am that scrolls through my mind, that gets me through lately. The good morning text that is consistent from a father like figure who I was blessed with. Whether I respond or not. That love is unconditional. I am hoping to cultivate it for myself and the experiences I have been through that no one else can see with me.

Right now however I have two new players who are my safest places. They are my therapist and my trainer. I knew during my session yesterday that my therapist would have to feel every inch of what she watched me re-experience and what emotions that opened in me. It did in fact work. I thought it wouldn’t work on me, but of course I did.

And by the time I got to my trainer for the day I was already shaking. I had to stop twice for nausea. Yesterday was injection day. And she was so warm and so kind to me. Every single one of these people fill the holes that parent roles never did. I just keep patching them up. It has felt like it will never amount to anything at times, all my work. But this time I have visions of the vessel staying afloat, and not being lost at sea.

It’s the rawest thing I have ever been through. “We cannot ask clients to travel further than we have ourselves”

I am on my knees and maybe now I’ll learn how to pray, and find something to believe in that isn’t just my capabilities. Ironic as the story my trauma left me was that I had none, that anyone else must be more capable than me; where is that adult that will show or tell me how to do this thing, but all I’ve been my whole life is more than capable of finding ways to meet my needs.

I’d like more from here on out. I’d like a clear picture of what my needs and wants are. And I’m not even sure how to find those things out.

For now it looks like 50 “I am” statements, weekly therapy, and facing the body I have avoided and neglected that I just expect to keep carrying me through.

For now it’s one day at a time in the fire….

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Addicted to Love

“Whoa, you like to think that you’re immune to the stuff, oh yeah
It’s closer to the truth to say you can’t get enough
You know you’re gonna have to face it, you’re addicted to love” – Robert Palmer

Hi my name is Christina and I’m an addict.

I didn’t realize this until recently as a matter of fact, because it seems natural to be allowed to pursue love. Look at how many articles, books, workshops, movies. So this isn’t a strange affliction unless you look a little closer at how I do love.

Recently I’ve been going to therapy. I finally found a therapist who is seeing me well, or I was finally ready to receive the lessons and my defense mechanisms didn’t block it, however you want to look at it. So I’ve been talking about the woman who brought me into this world.

She drove a 68 Pontiac Firebird. I still remember the window crank handles, silver and polished. The vinyl black interior that my long tan legs stuck to in the summer. The unsticking sound and painful sensation when I got up after a long drive (which was rare). At that time I thought my mother was so cool. She smoked, swore, dressed cool, listened to rock music, and she was beautiful. Blond hair, blue eyes and a smattering of brown freckles across her nose that were more in summer.

I still remember how many times we listened to Robert Palmer addicted to love in her car. What a foreshadowing that was for my life. Funny of the few memories that one stands out so much and those lyrics. It would be a huge part of my whole life. And very few from the outside will understand it. Only those who take the time and effort to truly ask because they care, not just to be in the know.

Having been primarily raised by her very fundamentalist Christian parents, even the fact she would take me out to eat meat was a novelty, and the good music was probably my main draw. I wouldn’t discover til later why Melissa Etheridge caught my spirits so much. My mom was a fan too I wonder what that means 😉

My Mom was addicted to love too. She was addicted to the exciting kind. The kind with bad men. So my addiction became mixed with not wanting to be like her, so mine was to find “a good person”. Why I thought a good person would be the answer to all of whatever it was I’m not quite sure. But what I didn’t know at the time this all started is how love should have been for me, and how much of a deficit I had.

I was so deficient in love that as an adult it became a larger focus than anything, especially knowing about who I am and what I want. Do you know I’m 39 years old and I still don’t know a lot about that?

I’m a lot of things that have identifiers. I’m a counselor, I’m a mother, a friend, a lover. I have lots of things I can perform and do those well. I can be caring of my friends, considerate of the world. I recycle :p But when it comes down to investing time into me, just for me, I freeze or fly.

My immediate reaction is to quickly get near another adult so nothing bad happens. I’m 39 years old and I’m still running scenarios all the time of what bad thing could happen. I’ll live with that forever because no one protected me. So I’m protective almost to a fault, because I don’t realize that I’m lovable. It doesn’t even register someone could love me. So I need more and different and to keep on moving.

I achieve. I learned I could gain acceptance, confidence, etc by facing the many anxieties that became me, but were never my natural self. I’ve had many re-births, college saved and changed me. My children the same thing. And every relationship I’ve ever embarked on has yielded a new self, because we grow the most in relation to others. It shows us to ourselves.

But being loved for free never felt like a thing. I’ve always had to earn it. To dance around begging to be seen. I’ve had to work my way out of a thousand behaviors I had from my trauma to even have a shot at healthy love. I keep trying for it, but I was missing a few things. And every time I think I figure it out I end up back at square one, with an even greater sense of being broken and a failure, as if love is the only measurement of my success as a person, the fact I’m breathing is a success.

I didn’t know until now how much I desire love with my children that is more than utilitarian. I was both parents and roles for so long I got stuck in the working, flight, fight, freeze mode of it all. I think I thought if I could crack the code with an adult I would ensure that I would always be a safe parent. I came from such a lack of safety it was a fear my whole life.

Do you know all they ever wanted was just a second of my attention and it was so often somewhere else. I’ve been stuck inside my head trying to stay safe, be safe, keep them safe, and the result has been a distance I never imagined. And I’ve been distanced from myself, and romantic love didn’t fix that.

What I wouldn’t give to have known that. Known they loved me for free, and that love was easier than I was ever taught, but it’s hard to accept when you’ve never seen how to love yourself. I had no model. I tried to learn from so many scattered sources, movies, friends parents. I tried to learn love intellectually, but feeling love that’s another matter entirely.

I could tell all kinds of stories and say I needed the high of new love. I would be accused of that I’m quite sure by my critics. But it’s not that either….

I’m a seeker by nature, but I wouldn’t even know how to feel it when I found it because the unmet needs were so varied and so great.

Recently I came across something “I’ve never felt before”, my favorite line of course. But it wasn’t the love of another, it was the seeing of myself that naturally came in their presence. It was the recognition I love differently now, and I can’t tell you the immense sadness that I never saw this beauty in the strength of my journey before.

People have told me all the time, but I couldn’t see it. That’s the saddest story. I’m still thawing, becoming, coming out of this waging war I’ve had with myself my whole life of whether I’m a good person or not. Without needing to make sure I’m with someone that validates that all the time.

Who am I outside of this addiction?

Outside the storm I see so many things I didn’t before. I had another rebirth recently and I’ve questioned the windows, the walls, the cosmos’s, the gurus, if this makes me a bad person. Squared up with my yucky stuff again. But the finding is that this question can no longer stand. And since it can’t I have room to see other things.

I have room to see what my relationship with myself looks like. I thought I’d already done this, checked it off the list, like it isn’t an ongoing process constantly in flux. Like all relationships, we have to re up our connection, and my connection with me will always be the trickiest. And if we aren’t connected to ourselves all our other relationships have crossed wires and don’t go so smoothly.

So now I’m having moments with my children I’ve never had in this way before. I get to be the other parent too. The fun one, the nurturing one, the playful one. The one that takes them driving instead of finding someone else to do it because if anything ever happened to them it’s unthinkable. So now I am giving myself a trust I always deserved.

Coming out of the million anxieties I was blessed with and the many health issues it’s caused and the fear it will all swallow me.

I’m coming out again and I’m a newborn right now. There are so many amazing things about being one. You see the world as magical, you’re not ashamed to show your emotions or ask for your needs to be met. You delight in small things.

I’m battling my addiction and learning healthy love…. and that is bringing me moments of joy I can actually feel and not just know.

It’s been quite the ride…..

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Heaven or Hell

A good person, a bad person. Perfect, imperfect. Heaven or hell.

These are some of the conflicts and experiences I am having lately. And the fact I am having them at all means that I am allowing myself a humanity that has never been present near my surface at least before. Not like this anyway.

Why is this humanity always seemingly at another’s expense?

Does healing need to be as relational and experiential and intense as I do it? And whom am I doing it for. Myself or other.

What are the parameters?

We meet our needs with other people. We tell stories about this to make ourselves feel and or look better. But that is in fact what a relationship is, we wouldn’t have one if it did not meet a need.

Meeting both needs for two people in a way that can endure can seem impossible.

Humans are trying to meet their many needs in a variety of ways every single day.

It seems to me that the world is in such a way right now that most of our wires are crossed on even what our authentic needs are.

Take our current political climate. Divisive. Filled with distrust, anger, fear, self-righteous judgments, unrest. I could go on.

I don’t know much right now, but I know to be a human with all of those things swirling around inside you is it’s own personal purgatory.

We tell stories to feel better about our actions in a variety of ways that are primarily subconscious. What those actions are come down to a result of a complicated array of values, belief systems, and mostly are derived from our experiences. Usually within the nuclear family. I have a wide array of experiences here because I’ve been a piece of a lot of different families.

Then there is our feeling selves. That natural innate place we all began. Pure presence. The closest to an innocence (child), we can ever get. Magical thinking, open enough to explore the world in a sensory way.

Cut that process off too soon or have too little freedom in it and the person spends the rest of their life driven primarily by their senses, as a result of the repression of expression and acceptance.

“Who was I before….”

Sensory and logical mind arguing daily. Trying to meet the need. Trying to define the need to even know what to meet.

Being a human being is much more complicated than a set of behaviors and unmet needs. And that realization is aggravating to the mind of a psychologist who would wish to reduce it down to that. Or needs by the very definition of the profession to do that.

But what about what is outside of that? Unseen forces. Destiny. Is that a thing? And why do people believe in it if nothing else than to have a story that makes them feel better.

Agency gives us the ability to write our own story. So how do we trust an unreliable narrator? And someone seeking will always be unreliable wont they?

Abundance or scarcity mindset, and the ability to craft a life to allow for the experiences one chooses most. To be able to live in ambiguity. To have to readjust what security means in this world.

No one wants to be alone in sickness or in death. So what are we willing to exchange for that security?

Fear is a greater motivator than curiosity or even love …..