Work with Parts

Posted on August 30, 2025 by jenny

August 29

Therapy session with Erica:

She tells me “It’s really OK to just be here with how it is, change happens all by itself, we don’t have to make it happen.  Clarity arises out of giving permission to things to be as they are.”

I tell her that a part says it’s unhappy, experiences being lost, alone. It is so scary being alone. I’m aware of being connected with Erica on the phone.  I tell the part it is not alone –  connected to me and Erica.

This is a young part that’s accustomed to being left alone —experiences me as backing off.  It’s not used to someone taking responsibility as an“adult.”  When I do that, the part relaxes.

Part says it’s scary when it’s not connected to me.  I tell it to stay with my breath, and I hum.  Part feels somewhat connected, but because of its experience of being abandoned, it has good reason to not trust that I will be there.

Part says it feels me go away.  I say and that’s scary for you.  What do you notice when you feel me go away?  Part says it feels a difference between when I’m alone and when I’m at meals with other people.

I tell the part that I feel different, too, when I’m with people and not alone.  Being alone is a real issue for both of us.

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Limited by Early Traumatic Wounding

Posted on May 26, 2025 by jenny

Finished reading Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks, about the death of her husband and their marriage.  I felt very jealous of their relationship.  My 18 year marriage with Dana was wrecked by the fact that I was dealing with trauma and didn’t know it.  I look at my life and wonder about what I have done with my life that I could consider worthwhile.  I think of Journey Into Courage — 4 years of performances on the road, and then Bess made a movie.  We woke a lot of people up about the realities of domestic violence.  Then there was teaching Sacred Circle Dance in Neskaya, the building Dana and I built deliberately as a sacred space for movements arts that are also spiritual practices.  We opened with classes in yoga, aikido, and sacred dance.  I taught sacred dance there for 25 years.  I feel very good about having done that.  I had hoped to be able to continue teaching after I moved to Kendal at Hanover, but I was too tired to do the drive and then COVID hit.  For reasons I don’t understand, COVID triggered my PTSD, and I have ended up in assisted living.

Realizing that I have done some worthwhile things with my life, and reminding myself that I have been dealing with PTSD helps a lot.  I haven’t wasted my life, I have struggled with being wounded, and still managed to do some things that were worthwhile.

Posted in Circle Dance, Trauma, Vocation | Comments Off on Limited by Early Traumatic Wounding

Perpetually Disintegrating

Posted on April 27, 2025 by jenny

This is a quote from Elizabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family, p74

Sebastian, who in these days of returning sanity lived in a world where fantasy, dream, and nightmare were so intermingled with actual fact that he felt himself to be perpetually disintegrating like a kaleidoscope…

Sebastian is a Jew who was in a concentration camp, who lost his whole family to bombing in World War 2.  My experience has been similar, though not so extreme. I respond to whatever I’m reading as though I’m living in it right now. Most of the time I don’t feel very connected to the people I’m with.

Posted in Present Day, Trauma | Comments Off on Perpetually Disintegrating

The White Sky

Posted on March 30, 2025 by jenny

Under a White Sky is a book by Elizabeth Kolbert.  It’s about the things that humans are doing that are not good for the earth, and the major difficulties with trying to undo them.  The first section is about the Mississippi River, both the beginning and the end.  The problem at the source of the river has been caused by human waste that was dumped into it.  The problem at the mouth of the river is that the main flow was moving into the Atchafalaya and leaving New Orleans and major industries without access to the river.  So they moved the flow, and then there began to be negative consequences.

A quote from the book:

“… there’s no simple way to talk about the tangle we’ve created.  A Mississippi that’s been harnessed, straightened, regularized, and shackled can still assert a godlike force; it’s no longer exactly a river though.”

The second section is about the pupfish that inhabit a small body of water that fills a cavern known as Devil’s Hole in Nevada.

The third section is about a company that will remove the carbon that you emit from the air and inject the CO2 underground, where it will harden into rock. The company is Climeworks.

The “White Sky”, by the way, will be one result of global warming.

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The Narcissist’s Insults, Translated

Posted on March 16, 2025 by jenny

My sister sent me this, and I think it’s brilliant.  It certainly describes my experience with Mother, and why it took me so long to recognize my positive gifts.

When a malignant narcissist attempts to insult you, it’s in reality a “compliment” even though it wasn’t intended that way from their end.  Because what they are really saying is “You threaten me.  Your light shines too brightly, that’s why I have to dim it.  You have too much support in your corner, that’s why I have to try to alienate and isolate you.  You are too visible in  your gifts and assets, that’s why I have to shame you into hiding yourself.   Your inner and outer beauty are too apparent, that’s why I have to make you doubt yourself.  Your intelligence, intuition and discernment are razor sharp, that’s why I have to gaslight you into disbelieving it.  Your voice is too powerful, that’s why I have to silence it.”

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1996: Fear and Grief

Posted on February 18, 2025 by jenny

I haven’t been able to post anything for a while. I went back to the dashboard and found several drafts, which I can post now.

From my journal for August 2, 1996

In the summer of ’96 I am starting to have a harder and harder time with fear. It lasts much longer.

Dear lord of love, please help me get through this day.  Please take away the fear, or give me the strength to bear it.  Please heal my wounded heart.  Please help me learn how to take in the love that’s available to me in the environment and from my friends.

At Leylia’s after colonic.  Fear still holds me in its grip.  I feel like my senses are shut down, I’m blind and deaf, can see the world but only take in a very little.  Like my wounded heart, tied up in knots, shut against love.  I told Leylia the only thing that seemed to affect the Fear was when I was able to cry, be in touch with my grief.  She said grief is the heart chakra, it’s the heart opening.  Then I found this in The Rosemary Tree: “If you’ve lost the power of love you’ve lost the power of grief.  Hold on and the tide will turn.”  “Hold on to what?” asked Miss Giles.  “To grief,” said John.         p299

But I continue to have a lot of difficulty being able to feel my grief. Maybe it’s the problem that if you have something and lost it, you know what you lost. But if you never got something you should have had e.g. physical cuddling as a baby, Then you don’t know what you lost and it’s hard to grieve. There’s so much I didn’t get in my childhood, emotional support, tenderness, forgiveness, I think it’s only when I got support and tenderness from Erica that I started to cry because I realized what I hadn’t gotten.

The Rosemary Tree is another novel by Elizabeth Goudge.

I realize that I’ve been neglecting my inner infant for the sake of trying to be there for Dana.  I turn back to her with that grim sense of not wanting to be there for that pain, it reminds me of when I had to turn away from “beautiful, courageous, interesting” Lynelle and pay attention to “garbage” Jenny.  I see that I can’t see the baby — so fragile and vulnerable, so wounded, so full of the power of loving, so much closer to god than I am.  Instead I see the adult who seems to be making such a mess of things, who can’t keep her promises to the baby, who can’t take care of herself, who can’t be a lover to Dana, who’s closed down by fear.  I’m so angry at her for being such a wimp and a failure.  Then I think it’s unfair to be angry at her — she’s doing the best she can — but I get stuck there.  Maybe I need to forgive her.  “There, there, Jenny dear, you are trying so hard, working so hard, struggling so much.  You are doing the best you can do. You are doing everything you think might help.  Of course I forgive you for mistakes made and effort wasted — for “disappearing” Dana last winter — for being so needy — for spending money we don’t have on acupuncture and colonics that don’t seem to have helped very much.  You are forgiven, you are forgiven.”

O gosh I see how hard I am on myself. That’s one thing I’ve mostly been able to let go of. I’m much better at forgiving myself than I used to be.

 

Posted in Depression, Journal | Comments Off on 1996: Fear and Grief

What Jesus Taught

Posted on January 8, 2025 by jenny

The third verse of “O Holy Night” is quite amazing.  It is very clearly what Jesus taught and not what the Church made of it afterward.  It’s a world I can live in and feel supported by.

Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His Gospel is Peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease

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Feeling Miserable

Posted on November 29, 2024 by jenny

I haven’t posted in a long time, I’ve been feeling so miserable.  In fact I really lost it at one time, so now I’m in the health center instead of independent living.  At least I’m not alone so much.  I eat all of my meals at a table with other people.  I leave my door open and hear people going up & down the corridor and talk, so I really know I’m not alone.  But I feel totally worthless and uninteresting.  Today I had Thanksgiving dinner with four people I like very much.  They had interesting conversations, but I had nothing interesting to say. All I could have talked about was how miserable I’m feeling, how useless and worthless I am.  Doing nothing worthwhile for other people or for the world, just thinking about myself.

Actually I don’t think about myself.  I usually have a song in my mind, sometimes one I like, sometimes one I don’t like.  I try to stop the song and just pay attention to my breath. I think if I can focus on my breath that — what?  Why do I think it would be good to pay attention to my breath?  It reminds me of when I was first at the Zen Center in Rochester, trying to meditate correctly so I could feel better.  I had no idea that I was living with severe depression that was caused by very early trauma.

Now I have to deal with my possessions, because I’m supposed to move to an apartment that’s on the floor below this one.  It’s pretty easy to know what I want to keep and what I feel free to get rid of.  The hard part is figuring out what to do with what I don’t want. That’s where my energy is going at the moment.

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My Trauma is Triggered by Being Alone Too Much

Posted on November 24, 2024 by jenny

I’m finally feeling more together and coherent.  I had moved to the health center because my trauma had been triggered, and I had pretty completely fallen apart.  The notebook about that is still in my apartment, so I don’t have it and I’m not even sure what date I moved. My best guess for why I fell apart is that I was alone too much.  Here I leave my door open and can hear people talking and walking back and forth. I eat all my meals at a table with other people.

This was written on November 9:

I want to write about what a hard time I’m having, but it’s difficult to find the words. Maybe that’s part of the problem, that for some reason I’m forgetting a lot of words.  I feel like my brain/mind is only functioning at 50% capacity.  Practical things that I have to do, like get things I need from my old apartment, make decisions about what to hold on to and what to let go of, and then make decisions about what to do with things I let go of.  I feel overwhelmed and scared.   How can I possibly do it all?  I’ve tried to find books to read, but they have been disappointing so I go back to old favorites like Pilgrim’s Inn, a book by Elizabeth Goudge, that I’ve read many times.

I’ve stopped typing my journal, and I’m writing only short notes that might be important like what meds I’ve taken, and whether or not I have shit.  The issue of shitting is a big one and has been going on for a long time.  I don’t shit every day, and I haven’t shit any large amounts in a long time.  So is it all piling up in my intestines???  The medical people haven’t been helpful at all.

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Work with Very Young, Non-verbal Parts

Posted on October 30, 2024 by jenny

This is the first post in a while.  I’ve been having a really hard time, had to move to the Health Center where I could be taken care of.  If I hadn’t found this piece of writing, written when I was still somewhat coherent, I wouldn’t be posting anything this soon.

Written in Tuesday night writing group:
Wanted to write about how awful I was feeling before I worked with Erica and found out it was parts.  Very young parts, non-verbal.  Which means I couldn’t think and it felt awful.  Actually I was taken over by a part who was so young it didn’t speak.  So I couldn’t speak.  Very different from meditating, or being in a mystical state — which I’m not sure I know what that is.  What was so awful about it was feeling trapped in a non-verbal state: unable to speak, even unable to think because thinking needs words.  Trapped in a non-verbal state, unable to think because thinking needs words.  I felt without power to communicate, no way to talk about my experience.  What I had to do was separate from the part and become what Erica calls “your youest you,” who you really are.  That one was able to tune in to the past, and sense about what was going on.  Had to express it in terms of feelings because the part couldn’t talk about its experience.  I had to guess at what it was feeling, express it in sensory terms, and see if that’s what the part was feeling.  As I began to tune in to it, I started being able to reassure the part that it was OK, that I cared about it, that I understood how hard it was to have such uncomfortable trapped feelings.  It turned out that one part had been left alone — which of course was how I got traumatized — and that the second part had not only been left alone, but had been rejected forcefully.  I was able to talk to the part about how painful that would be, and so was able to establish a connection.  Then it seemed like the connection between me and the part had to be established over and over again.  We would make connection, but then lose it, and this happened over and over.  It may take some time and a lot of work to establish a connection that lasts.  A long time and a lot of work of connecting over and over again.  Well, I am certainly willing.  I feel connected to these two parts because of their pain, even when they don’t feel connected to me.

I feel that this explains the process pretty well.

Posted in Healing, Present Day, Trauma, Work with parts, Writing | Comments Off on Work with Very Young, Non-verbal Parts