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.

 

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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.

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Tough Going

Posted on October 14, 2024 by jenny

Originally posted in June 2015

Pain.  “What you feel you can heal”

The session with Erica was filled with so much pain.  I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much except maybe long ago when I splashed pain all over my journals.  Writhed with it, ran away from it.  Running through the streets of Athens at night, crying out “Thanatos!”  — the word means “Death” in Greek — did I really do that?

I was only able to let myself feel the pain because Erica was there.  It came in a hard hard painful squeezing and then relaxed.  I would sigh and sometimes yawn, and then it would hit again.  The yawns comforted me because they indicated that something was being released.  Erica said the pain was coming in waves.  I saw that I had experienced it in waves, but was still afraid (am still afraid) that it could last forever.  I see now that “forever” is what the baby experiences.  O I want to scoop her up and help her bear the pain.  I guess in a way that’s what I’m doing when I allow myself to feel the pain.

Finally I relaxed into what felt like a nothing place.  Erica asked what that felt like.  I said my lower half felt very heavy, butt and legs filled with BB shot, then butt and legs like a Henry Moore sculpture, massive, cast metal.  The top part of me felt collapsed on top of the heaviness and also held down by it.  Erica asked what was the wisdom of the heaviness, what did it have to say to me?  That was hard, searching and searching to find the feeling and give it words.  Finally I got “to hold you in one place” but I knew there was more.  Why did I have to stay in one place?  I didn’t want to, I’d do anything to get out of here     “…until you learn to…”  What? what!     “…rest.”  Gosh, what irony.  I’m so tired, I desperately need to rest, and yet I’m experiencing this being held as being trapped and fighting against it.

I can only remember experiencing pain like this during the David episode, and I splashed it out of me, smashing his windows, writing crazily, turning myself in to the Health Center where they filled me with tranquilizers.

Rest.  If I could truly rest.  I’m so exhausted.  I can sit still, often do, just staring, but it’s not rest, it’s more like lack of motivation to move.

Erica said “I’m so grateful to you for being willing to experience this pain.”  I asked why.  She said that it helped everybody else wake up more.  I guess that’s the same as my idea that I’m healing the human energy field.  If that were true, then I would know that my life hasn’t been wasted.  Some days I believe it, some days I don’t.

This pain I’ve been experiencing tells me that the wound is very deep and very old.  I see that it’s going to take a lot of hard work.  I don’t know if I’ll even finish it before I die, if I’ll ever have a “real life” except for moments like the two days of feeling “extraordinary.”  I told Erica something I told Kevin long ago, that I wanted to get as close to healing as I could, so that the next person who incarnates out of this energy will not find it such tough going.

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What it’s Like to Live with PTSD

Posted on October 13, 2024 by jenny

Originally posted in June 2015

It’s sunny and beautiful out, and I can’t bear it.  It’s a day to go out and enjoy the world, and I just want to hide.  Yesterday was so much easier, it was grey with drizzly rain.

Now I understand something about why I have such a hard time with beautiful days.  I thought that I “ought” to go out and enjoy the beauty, but I couldn’t because of some stupid narrow reason of my own, and I got angry at myself to not being able to do it.  Today I see that I did really want to go out and enjoy it, but it was just too painful because I was so dark inside. The darkness was not who I am or what I chose but how I was wounded.

After breakfast.  Walked Mocha (the name finally given to my new dog) around the loop.  Came back breathless and terrified.  This is called “getting triggered” by a bright beautiful day.  I can’t think of any reason why, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not triggered, it means that the reason is far back and buried in the non-verbal part of my psyche.

Sitting here looking out at my beautiful woods, I think of the survivors of Chernobyl looking at the forests they love but can never again go into because they are filled with radiation.

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Difficult Grief

Posted on October 11, 2024 by jenny

Written after a session with Erica in April 2015, and posted at that time.

So what happened with Erica?  I told her about the pain of spring — the earth waking up and I’m still frozen.  Also told her I was really wanting a dog.  And the grief that I wasn’t able to take in how much Bella loved me until the end.  Here come the tears again.  I guess that’s big.  And Tiny was in grief too, when I went to write about it her grief was also that she didn’t know she was loved.  I guess I have a lot of grieving to do.

Bella is the dog who died in September 2013. “Tiny” is the part of me that I discovered and describe in Deep Work.

It took me awhile after the session to really get how sad I am that I wasn’t able to take in the love that was there for me.  I think this is only possible now that I’m starting to be able to see myself as lovable.  It makes me so so sad.  How different my life would have been.  But the first thing I learned from mother was that I wasn’t lovable.  I tried and tried to do the right thing to make her happy, but she was never happy with me.  Finally, the youngest part of myself, who needed to be aware of being loved in order to be aware of herself at all, had to split off and close herself up so nothing could get in.  Mother’s poisonous energy was too toxic for her to take in, so she had to block out everything.

I think Tiny must be that youngest part of myself, the first one who had to split off to protect herself. I realize I have too little understanding of the possible Attachment Disorders, though the one I am dealing with is where the attachment figure is a source of fear rather than comfort. Easy to imagine how much damage that does.

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From “First Memory” to Sacred Circle Dance

Posted on October 10, 2024 by jenny

Written in Tuesday night writing group.    First memory

I remember skipping down a brick sidewalk and falling.  I think I was four years old.  We were in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  My father was back from the war — World War II — and going to Harvard Business School.  I fell and hurt my knee and started to cry.  Both parents got angry.  “You shouldn’t have been skipping around.”  “Stop crying you’re not that hurt.”  I learned that making a mistake was a terrible thing.  I should be very careful to get everything right.

That’s a pretty tough assignment.  Of course, I didn’t get praised for getting things right, I just got ignored.  But that was better than punishment.  Luckily for me, when I got to school I did well.  The things I did right were praised, and what I did wrong was corrected.  And the same thing wouldn’t be OK one day and unacceptable the next.

Still, the fear of doing things wrong has stayed with me all my life.

And what about things I’ve done right.  The best thing I did was build Neskaya, a piece of sacred architecture for movement arts that are also spiritual practices like Yoga, Martial Arts, and Sacred Circle Dance.  I discovered folk dance when I went to Europe after I graduated from Wellesley.  I did a bunch of Greek dances with Greek friends I met in Paris on New Year’s Eve.  It took me a while to find folk dance in this country, but when I bought a house in Brunswick Maine and settled down, I found that a folk dance group met on Wednesday night and I started going.  The first time I went, the teacher came in with a record under her arm — this was 1970 — and taught us a new dance — a very simple dance.  Three steps to the left and three in place.  She put on the record and it was bagpipes — my Scots and Irish ancestors rose up in my blood and I was on a moor in Scotland with a bonfire and a full moon rising.  Actually, the music was by a Breton named Alan Stivell who started the resurgence of Celtic music that long time ago.  I had never heard of Brittany — it’s part of France that sticks out parallel to Cornwall, and for years in history the Bretons and the Cornish was more connected to each other than to the English and French governments in London and Paris.

I moved to Franconia New Hampshire to get married and brought some tapes of my favorite dances.  I started teaching a small folk dance group.  Someone told me there was Sacred Circle Dance on the green at Danville for the Equinox, so I went and they were doing dances I already knew with a candle at the center

I notice that when I fell and hurt myself, my parents were angry, not comforting.  For a very long time I got angry at myself whenever I did something “wrong.”  Finally, I learned to be compassionate instead.  But it took a long time.

I say that “the same thing wouldn’t be OK one day and unacceptable the next.” That tells you something about my mother in particular

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