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Choices & Dysfunctional Beliefs

Posted on December 29, 2011 by jenny

(Written in April 2003)
I’ve been reading thru Byron Katie and feeling really discouraged because her process doesn’t work for me. I think it must operate more at a cognitive level, has to do with beliefs that are taken on later in life, not those that are set in infancy. I think of the time when I saw that I wasn’t applying to Bowdoin because “If I get a higher degree, I’ll be so threatening that no one will marry me and my life will be wasted.” As soon as the belief was out of my mouth I could see it wasn’t true. That sounds more like the kind of experience people are having with her. But my belief about how deeply defective I am, how my life is miserable and it’s all my fault because I’m choosing to be unhappy with conditions that I know objectively are pretty good. I can see intellectually how useless that belief is, how it creates my misery —— “Who would you be if you couldn’t think that thought?” I’d be happy with my life as it is. I wouldn’t take discouragements and setbacks as a personal affront, as indicators of how wrong and worthless I am. I’d be like I was that short time in December when I’d stopped being afraid of making a mistake. And I’m angry at myself for not being able to get back to that state. Well, Katie says it’s possible to meet any thought with unconditional love. To do that I have to get some distance.

So here’s this woman, born with a genetic predisposition to depression. Her early childhood provides many experiences where she doesn’t get what she needs, and she comes to believe that she’s wrong for having needs. Her parents clearly expect her to do something for them — she hasn’t a clue as to what it might be, but they are so frequently disappointed in her that she comes to believe that she’s always doing “it” wrong. She’s just a child, she has no way to see that what they want is for her to make them feel good about themselves — which is impossible. But she can’t see that, so she believes their unhappiness is her fault. She’s done a lot of work in her life — a lot of therapy which she hoped would fix her — learned about what happens to children in alcoholic families, done workshops, tried medication and the first experience literally traumatized her so she’s struggling with those symptoms too. She’s struggling and struggling in a deep pit, a black hole, quicksand, and she makes it be that it’s her fault that she can’t get out. She should be stronger and wiser, she should just be able to walk away from these painful beliefs, like Katie did, and Tolle. So the fact that she can’t just do that means she isn’t really trying, instead of meaning that she’s up against bigger forces — different forces — than Katie and Tolle know about. But both of them are so sure that they’ve got the truth and their way is the one that works, and there isn’t anything that’s not amenable to their process.

Well, I see that it’s buying THIS story that’s making me miserable. Where would I be without those thoughts? I’d be much kinder to myself, much more patient with my difficulties. If I take Levine’s story as the one to live by, that it’s a physiological process, not psychological, not cognitive, or emotional, or moral, just a complex and difficult physiological process that I have to come to terms with, then I’m content to keep working, patiently, with this very confusing and difficult process of staying with the physical sensations and not making myself wrong because they don’t change — when I’m stuck I need to remind myself that immobility is part of the trauma process. I am truly paralysed, not failing to make a choice I could actually make. I have no choice but to submit to the process as best I can, to be willing to be terrified, stuck, etc. To accept that there’s no easy way out, just this patient discipline of watching sensations in the body. When I think that way, I notice that I’m not overwhelmed by terror any more, not blind with it, that I’m able to see the beauty of the world without the glass wall, then I see that I’ve come a long way instead of being angry at myself for not being “all better now”. I “should” be OK now. Haven’t I done this enough? No. There’s a way to go yet. Just keep doing this process, keep paying attention to sensations in the moment, stop comparing yourself with people who get it quickly & are able to turn things around.

I “should” just be able to choose to be happy & then be happy. It’s not fair that I have to struggle so much & others get there quickly.

Well! There are a couple of painful beliefs that keep me stuck in misery. I should just choose — but I don’t. Is that because I’m perverse & really want to be miserable? Or because it’s not possible. Which belief creates stress? Which one frees me? IF IT DOESN’T WORK FOR YOU, IT’S NOT TRUE FOR YOU.

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“Common Sense” by Paul Williams

Posted on December 28, 2011 by jenny

I found this among my documents of “Thoughts” that I’m converting to a newer word processor. Most meaningful to me were the words quoted by Joanna Macy during a workshop at Rowe Camp and Conference Center. They strengthened me for a long time.

“How dare I be discouraged in the work
by anything so trivial
as the fear of personal failure?”

Excerpts from Common Sense

We have been born
into a moment
of unprecedented danger and opportunity.

Our failure to act
is itself a choice.

There is nowhere to hide
from this awareness.

It is time.

Our purpose here
is to build a bridge.

The purpose of the bridge
is to span the distance
between our present situation
and our vision of a better world.

The beauty of a bridge is that,
once it is in place,
anyone can walk on it.

A few people can build a bridge
that can be walked on by many.

. . .

On the edge of the dream
we face our deepest doubts.

Now that it all is almost real
a terrible fear of success takes hold
and we grab desperately, incontrollably, for failure.

One last chance to get off easy.

Who among us really wants to save the world,
to be born again into two thousand more years
of struggle?

How much sweeter to be the doomed generation,
floating gently on the errors and villainy of others,
towards some glorious apocalypse now . . .

Hallelujah! It’s not my fault–
Bring on the end times!

We hate our enemies
to provide ourselves in advance
with excuses for possible failure.

Only when we give up
the comforts of pessimism
the luxury of enemies
the sweetness of helplessness
can we see beyond our own doubts.

I am speaking today of a great possibility
a chance to return to life
a chance to create a world for our children
not worse than the one we have

How dare I be discouraged in the work
by anything so trivial
as the fear of personal failure?

. . .

There are bridges to build
new maps of consciousness to be delivered
to every planetary address
in every planetary language.

We are ironworkers, skywalkers,
stubborn messengers
of light and life.

O friends
don’t forget
why we’re here!

The truth is, we have the skills
and we have the courage
if we could only keep our minds
on what we really want.

. . .
How to prevent world catastrophe:

1) Admit that it could happen.
2) Decide that it will not happen.
3) Commit your vision and energy to number two

without ever forgetting number one.

To choose to build a bridge

is the essential act of love.

– Paul Williams

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My Tribe

Posted on December 27, 2011 by jenny

My joy in the Winter Solstice celebration in Stanstead makes me think of a passage I wrote for The Feminine of History is Mystery. It was written when I was still living in Brunswick Maine, and could not imagine ever finding my “tribe” of people who would celebrate the Solstice with singing and dancing. I wrote a description of an imagined celebration at Stonehenge, and in the middle of the writing I called out to “my people” — and they answered! And now I feel unbelievably fortunate to have found them and celebrated with them.

in the pale pre-dawn light, men, women, and children, wearing animal skins and bright colored woven cloth, carry banners and flutes and tambourines. down the hill, through the valley of the avon, up the shoulder past the mound and the heelstone. a sense of joyful expectancy, of reverence, but no rigid formality, dogs bark, children laugh. there is a moment of solemn silence at the sun’s first flash, then they will sing old songs and new, dance thousand-year-old dances with new variations, feast and share the year’s gossip and wander home again . . .
o my people, how I envy you, what a sense of loss that I am not there too —
are you the past or the future?
we are both the past and the future, we are where
the circle meets itself, never fear, you too
are enclosed by the circle.

from The Feminine of History is Mystery, opposite right hand page 133

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Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2011 by jenny

Christmas when I was growing up was mostly about presents and parties. Our family had its ritual — stockings on our bed when we woke up, no access to the tree and the presents underneath until breakfast was eaten and every dish washed. We had enormous numbers of presents, it almost makes me ashamed there was such a big pile under the tree. Of course a lot of them were practical: sweaters, socks, mittens. I always loved a new book. But when I got finished opening 12 or 14 presents (could there really have been that many?) I felt a vague disappointment — something essential was missing.

Of course we went to Church, the outward show of religion was very important to my mother. After Church we went to my Grandfather’s house for Christmas dinner. It was a huge house, and a huge party. There were seven siblings and step-siblings and their spouses, and twenty-two grandchildren. Each child had a place marked by a card, and there was a present from GeeGee, our step-grandmother, and a present from whichever adult had drawn our name. Each parent drew as many names as they had children which was a good plan. At first the grandchildren all ate together, and the grown-ups ate in another room. Gradually, in groups of 4 or 5 we got promoted to the grown-up table.

Christmas, for my parents, was a little bit about conforming to cultural norms, a little bit about presents and decorating the house, but mostly it was about drinking. I survived by retreating to a hidden corner and losing myself in a book.

The Christmas I finally found out what it was about, was the first one I did not spend at home. The year after I graduated from college, a classmate and I went to Europe for the year. We started in the British Isles, stayed in London with some special friends of Bettie’s, then picked up a car in Paris that our parents had bought for us. It was a Volkswagen Beetle, and it carried us through many adventures. We spent most of the winter in a penzione in Florence, but went back to London for Christmas. As we left Paris on the train, we found ourselves in a compartment full of young Britishers going home for Christmas. We talked and laughed together, shared stories of our families and our travels. I don’t remember how many we were, six or seven perhaps, but by the time we got to the Channel Ferry we were such friends that we stayed together, crossed the channel together, got the same compartment in the train to London. We sang some carols, shared an orange and a bar of chocolate, and said heartfelt Christmas wishes and goodbyes at Victoria Station.
Bettie and I stayed with Anthony & Nora and their only other guest was a priest. Nora gave us some money to get the priest some handkerchiefs, but in the store we saw a lovely maroon cashmere scarf and bought him that instead. It turned out that Father Philip was a scholarly type who liked good food, and it was clear that he was pleased with the scarf. Bettie and I had brought a leather jewelry box in Florence to give to Nora, and as Anthony had finally saved enough money to buy Nora a diamond ring it was a perfect present. Bettie gave me a Florentine wood carved madonna and child — I still have her and sometimes she appears in the centerpiece at dance. I gave Bettie a marble egg, she was collecting them. Anthony & Nora gave us small sets of books of Great Poets. So few presents, and I remember them all. But what I remember more was good fellowship and love, very clearly there with all of us. That was what had been missing in all my childhood Christmasses. What’s saddest is that the love might have been there, and was hidden by all the stuff.

There’s a story by Barbara Kingsolver (“Lily’s Chickens”) in which she talks about her grandfather. He “used to tell me with a light in his eyes about the boxcar that came through Kentucky on the L&N line when he was only a boy—only once a year, at Christmas—carrying oysters and oranges from the coast. Throughout my own childhood, every year at Christmastime while an endless burden of wants burgeoned around everybody else, my grandfather wanted only two things: a bowl of oyster soup and an orange. The depth of his pleasure in that meal was so tangible, even as a child, that my memory of it fills me with wonder at how deeply fulfillment can blossom from a cultivated ground of restraint.” (from Small Wonder, p118)

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Winter Solstice

Posted on December 24, 2011 by jenny

I got back this morning from an overnight trip. I went to Canada for a Winter Solstice celebration, and spent the night at a friend’s house about halfway home. I just sat here for a while, looking out at the sun on the new snow, glittering in the ice on the trees, enjoying the fire and Bella, and just feeling happy. REALLY happy.

I think the Solstice celebration last night filled needs so deep I hadn’t been aware of them. A need to celebrate together with a bunch of like-minded folks, a need to gather outside in a place made sacred by stone and fire and the sun’s path, made sacred by our celebration and reverence for the Earth, and the Sun, and by our calling of the four directions.

We processed into the Stone Circle at Stanstead by a path that entered between two torches, and went past twelve small fires, one for each month of the year.

We entered the Stone Circle by a trilithon — a “three stone” arch like the ones at Stonehenge — and walked on to create a big circle of people within the circle of stones. Two of our group went to each of the Four Directions, called the Spirits — in English and in French — and lit a torch in front of the stone to the East, then the South, followed by West and North. Kim explained to us that the fire should contain something left from the Yule log of last year, but there wasn’t a log, so greenery from last year’s wreath was on the fire. She lit the fire which blazed up nicely. Sylvie translated everything into French. Then we were each given a pine cone and stood holding it, thinking of the past year, the successes and the challenges, and what we wanted to leave behind. Standing there in the crisp snow, fingers and toes freezing, facing the blazing fire, seeing the big stones and the torches, and beyond us white and black fields and trees fading in the dusk. Beyond our circle and the stones, I could sense circle after circle of our ancestors, who had come together for millennia to celebrate the shortest day and the rebirth of the light. Standing there in the cold, we put what we wanted to leave behind into the pinecones and threw them into the fire. The sodium vapor lights of the town around us were the same color as our torches.

As we left the circle we carried the energy within us to the place of feasting and dance. A short drive, and a long climb up three flights of stairs, brought us to the Chapel in the Manoir Stanstead. The Manoir, which used to be a boarding school and monastery, is now a residence for retired seniors. The chapel had been renovated to make a great space for dancing, and a table at the end was loaded with food. We did many dances — to celebrate the dark, to celebrate the light, to celebrate our gathering, and as prayers for Peace in the world. On this border between the north and the south, America and Canada, English and French, we dance to celebrate our differences, not fight about them.

I was reminded several times of the lines in Susan Cooper’s poem which I dearly love:
“And everywhere down the centuries
of the snow white world
Came people singing, dancing,
to drive the dark away….
All across the ages you can hear them, echoing, behind us,
listen —
As promise wakens in the sleeping land
They carol, feast, give thanks
and dearly love their friends,
and hope for peace.”

The whole poem was read to us in both English and French. My cup overflowed.

The Shortest Day
written for the Christmas Revels by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came
and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries
of the snow white world
Came people singing, dancing,
to drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees
They hung their homes with evergreens
They burned beseeching fires all night long
to keep the year alive.
And when the new day’s sunshine blazed awake
they shouted “Reveille!”
And all across the ages you can hear them, echoing, behind us,
listen —
All the long echoes sing the same delight
this shortest day.
As promise wakens in the sleeping land
They carol, feast, give thanks
and dearly love their friends,
and hope for peace.
So do we here now, this year, and every year
Welcome Yule!

Yule is an ancient Germanic celebration of the winter solstice that has given us many of our Christmas customs.

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“Thoughts on Self-Worth” from 1988

Posted on December 20, 2011 by jenny

(Written in January 1988)

So how does one “acquire” self-worth — if that’s a legitimate verb which I suspect it’s not. Self worth is not something one has but something one does, or even deeper than that, it’s a sort of foundation for everything one does. “Self-worth” even is a bad word because it implies being “worthy” and that implies that one has some positive qualities that have “worth”. How can I have self-worth when I’m sick in bed, can’t keep the house clean, can’t even mail out the books on time — why is that a value, why is that so important? I set it up as a kind of standard for myself, something I like to do if possible, and then immediately it becomes something I must do or I’m bad. I don’t praise myself or get much sense of satisfaction when I do send the books out on time, but I feel guilty and angry when I don’t. But how can I value this person who is inefficient, sick, confused? Yes it’s true that I want to help my friends and that I seem to be able to do so and that they express gratitude. But if I make my self-worth depend on being able to help my friends, then what? Then I get angry at them when I can’t help them, as I’ve been angry at Beverly. And still my self-worth is tied to some sort of achievement.

So who is this person, this unique, irreplaceable individual? Lynelle said something about self-worth being a commitment to that person — which would mean taking care of her and understanding her instead of beating on her to make her conform to someone else’s idea of what she should be so that she can get their approval so she can build a self-worth which is spurious because it’s not based on who I really am (which would be an unshakeable foundation) but on approval for an action which is not necessarily “me” but something that someone else would approve. Round and round it goes. How to break out? I don’t know because I have no idea who I am. I only know the parts of me that achieve and get approval — the astronomy teacher, the writer and lecturer. Sometimes the one who helps her friends, but lots of times I don’t give myself credit for that.

How can I find out who I am? Who would I be if I weren’t weighed down by all the oughts and the reactive resentment. What comes to mind are the Kripalu workshops which use art (masks, dance) for self-discovery. Why is it so hard to let myself dance? Because it calls up the resentment conflict. I don’t feel that I want to dance but can’t because… (whatever excuse of duty or responsibility.) I feel that I “ought to” dance because it would improve my health, it’s my spiritual path, I should explore this possibility… but I don’t want to and if I make myself then it just brings up the resentment. How can I work with this? It comes up with painting — I got out the material last week, but never actually pushed myself over the hump to do something. I don’t know how to deal with this.
Perhaps explore intent. My intent is not to learn because if it were I would be able to explore in painting. So my intent is to protect. So I feel a great reluctance to paint because if I did I might do something clumsy and ugly and that would mean… that I’m a clumsy ugly person? But then perhaps that’s who I am. I don’t like looking at my art work because it looks like me and I can’t bear looking at me. Why? Because I’m not perfect, because I’m not what my parents wanted, because if I had been different they would have loved me, so when I look at my ugly self I feel the pain of not being loved, of not being loved for who I really am, of being offered love only for being something else.

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More from 1986

Posted on December 19, 2011 by jenny

When I had first got on medication, and was working with a therapist who specialized in mood disorders, she told me that the ability to enjoy was destroyed by depression. This was such a relief to me. I realized that appreciation can be done on will, but being able to enjoy needs both a willingness to enjoy and normal brain chemistry. I remembered watching my mother refuse to enjoy all of us kids having fun as we washed the dishes on Christmas morning. I was afraid that was what I was doing.

(Written in March 1986)
Perhaps I can work on this business of all the joy being gone from life. At one point I felt that I had been broken by the candida, that I would never be able to enjoy life again. Then about last December, when I had a lot of energy, I felt that life was worth living after all. This last round of poor health seems to have left me in a kind of limbo — I don’t feel so broken as I did, yet I’m not really enjoying my life, and it’s clear that some sort of effort will have to be made for me to recover that joy that I once had. But what effort? Or should I just work at enduring with patience and stop trying to be happy? Elizabeth Goudge says in more than one place that personal feelings are not that important. Then what is? If you have faith in a transcendent reality then service to that is what is important. But if you don’t? Then it has to be the effort to live in the light of that transcendent reality anyway, as though it existed, since that is what you want to exist, what I want to exist. I guess it’s the same decision as when I chose to serve the God of Love even if He/She didn’t exist or wasn’t the most powerful God in the universe. But I haven’t had any good feelings yet, she wails. You’re too dependent on good feelings, that’s not what we’re doing it for.

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Struggle with Depression

Posted on December 18, 2011 by jenny

(Written in March 1986)
There’s so much work to be done around the house and I just don’t seem to have the energy. Or the discipline. Or the faith that it ultimately means anything to keep this house neat and clean. Impossible and discouraging to try to do because so much is unfinished and there’s no place for storage. I want to sort out the filing cabinets, and the box of old financial records. I want to repot the plant, and the ones that are rooting in jars of water. I have to do the work for my class, much easier this time than last, and fewer students so less homework. I want to get together the talk on legends that I’m going to do with my slide show for NEARA. They’ve got me on as the evening speaker and I’m actually excited by the prospect of a new incarnation for the slide show. Yet when I think about doing the work I feel the familiar nausea. I don’t know what to do about it. I feel guilty and lazy and think that it just takes the application of will power. Sometimes that seems to work, gets me over the hump of getting started, other times the stress of forcing myself, or the resistance to it make me worse than ever, no concentration. Writing this out I feel disgusted with myself. There’s no excuse for not at least trying, doing a little bit perhaps, then putting it aside for awhile and doing a little bit again. I’m so self-indulgent and undisciplined, just what angers me in my father.

Here I am blaming myself for “self-indulgence and lack of discipline” — I had NO IDEA what I was up against.

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Reading Old Journals

Posted on December 17, 2011 by jenny

I’ve been going through old journals, copying and pasting into a new word processor so I can update my operating system. For reasons I don’t fully understand I can’t do the whole document, but must copy 3 or 4 pages at a time. This means I’ve had to look at a lot of old entries from the 70’s and 80’s. What strikes me is how much pain I’ve been in for most of my life, how I struggled against the symptoms of PTSD without any idea of what was going on. I had been diagnosed with Candida – systemic yeast – in 1984. The candida program (strict diet, Nystatin to kill the yeast in my intestinal tract) brought about considerable improvement, but I still had a feeling there was farther to go. My discussion of how the sensory system operates was quite accurate, what’s missing is the information that what’s happening is because my brain function has been distorted by past experience of trauma.

(Written in March 1986)
Today was a quiet day at home. It was very warm out and I felt that odd sadness at the change of season and also the fear that’s been a part of the last few years because of the noise of the airplanes. As I watch the snow melt I feel as though a comforting muffling blanket is disappearing and soon I will have no protection, will be again exposed to that appalling noise. I know I didn’t always hear the sound of every airplane the way I do now. I think what the candida does is interfere with the ability of the brain to select which sensory information gets through to our attention. Normally, though all sights enter our eyes and all sounds enter our ears, we perceive only a small part of it because some part of our brain censors it, “This is not important for you right now” and damps it down. But the toxins prevent this protective function from operating and we are forced to perceive everything in our environment, which can quickly be overwhelming. Without this power of censorship, one is easily distracted, which accounts for the loss of the ability to concentrate and the loss of short-term memory, and the ease with which candida victims are subject to sensory overload. Well, I’m much better now, no longer hear every vehicle on the superhighway, and it’s been a long time since I heard the BRRRRT of a car going over the bridge at the bottom of the road.

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Thoughts about Death

Posted on December 14, 2011 by jenny

A good friend died last month. His death was expected, unlike Evie’s in July which was a horrible shock. She was young and healthy, Michael’s health was failing. He was waiting to qualify for a liver transplant, but his body was too tired and weak to survive the surgery. I was completely in sympathy, I know that I no longer have what it takes to survive and heal from major surgery, or a heart attack or stroke, or a bad accident. There are days, even now when I’m feeling so much better psychologically, when I feel like the chore of getting through the day is too much for me.

For the two years after my breakdown in the fall of 2008, I wanted to die on a regular basis. Sometimes, when the thought went through my mind, I could counter it with “You don’t want to die, you want your life to be easier.” Sometimes I couldn’t even do that. I never considered taking action, I believe in waiting for Spirit to let me know, but if Death appeared in front of me, I’d fall into his arms with relief. Not at THIS moment, when I’m sitting here writing with my dog curled up warm next to me, I have a fire going, I can see the familiar trees and shrubs. If I knew I were going to die tomorrow, would I do anything different? No. Except maybe call all the people who are dear to me to say good bye.

I used to be afraid of death. Especially when I was badly depressed, I would think “I want to die” and then I’d add “I don’t want to die in this depressed state.” I’ve been told a story about an ancestor of mine, Jenny Murdoch, who I like to think of as my mother’s mother’s mother, but it’s too late to find out now. The story is that she was on the boat from Scotland, down in steerage, and there came a big storm. She scrambled up to the deck, crying out “If I must die, let me not die in darkness.” It was told to me with a Scots accent: “If a mus’ dee, let me not dee in darkness.” That’s how I remember it. That cry, in some ways, has been my guiding star: I do not want to die in darkness.

I haven’t been afraid of death since god met me at the gate of heaven with a huge welcome.

Someone who did some work for me, told me the story of his dad, who’d had lung cancer but been in remission. When the cancer recurred, he said he didn’t want any surgery, chemo, etc. In four days he was dead. I think I can also choose to die instead of hanging around for one of those long slowly disintegrating illnesses. I don’t want to do what my parents did, both of them hung on and hung on. They were afraid of death, even though their quality of life had deteriorated.

I do believe, to some extent, that we can choose our time to die. I think of my grandfather, the summer of my sister’s wedding. He was too frail to come to Maine, but my Aunt Carolyn, on her way home to San Francisco, stopped in Cincinnati to see him. She took him a piece of wedding cake. He asked several times if the wedding had happened, and Aunt Carolyn reassured him. The day after she left, he called to the nurse to bring him his glasses. So she did, and he said “Not those, I want my BEST glasses.” She brought him his best glasses, he put them on, took a deep breath, and died. It seemed to me that he knew at some level that the wedding was happening, and if he died before it happened, that would spoil it, so he was hanging on, until he was sure that his death would not disrupt anything. That was just like Gramps, to leave courteously. And I love that he wanted his best glasses. He knew he was facing an extremely important experience, and he wanted to honor it.

By the time my father died, he had been unconscious for a number of days. I had been home for the 4th of July (see monologue). Before I left, he was taken to the hospital. He was supposed to come home after the new treatment, so I had a plane ticket for July 23. By that time it didn’t look as though he would be getting out of the hospital, but I went home anyway. When I got home, mother told me I was the last to know. He’d died while my plane was in the air. It was pretty clear to me that, though unconscious, he somehow knew that help was on the way to my mom and it was OK for him to let go.

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