Somatic Experiencing

Posted on October 10, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2009)
Drove down to Caryn in the snow.  I didn’t expect it to be so bad.  After all that work to get there it was a disappointing session.  Perhaps I was just too tired from the drive.  I cried a lot, enacted banging my head against the wall, pounded very slowly on a cushion in front of me, finally collapsed onto the floor, but nothing shifted.  I could find no desire or motivation for doing anything.  I did yawn and shake a little bit.  But it was discouraging.  I left feeling as bad as when I walked in and still faced a long drive in the snow.

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on October 9, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2009)
Saw Caryn yesterday.  It was good to see her.  I told her a little about how the week had been and then began to pay attention to my body.  Odd, sad, heavy feelings, more in my stomach than in my heart.  Gradually I found that my body wanted to shrink and hide.  Caryn brought me a blanket and a square flat cushion.  I held the cushion in front of me and that felt right except that I wasn’t entirely hidden.  I put the blanket over my knees and held up the cushion.  Then I started peeking over the top and around the sides.  Caryn was smiling at me.  I can’t remember how it went on — there was laughter and then some tears.   At one point, still hiding behind the cushion, I reached out and grabbed her knee so I’d know she was there.  She asked me to feel her presence through the cushion, but I couldn’t do it.  More than once, feeling how strange and scary this was, I said “that poor little kid.” What an impoverished childhood.  It took quite a while for me to be comfortable coming out from behind the cushion.  Then I leaned against the wall and my neck felt stiff.  I asked if I could get on the table.  So we spent the last 30 minutes with me on the table and Caryn put her hands on my knees, shoulders, neck and feet.  I was able to have some sense of my body drinking it in.

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Trying to Connect with God, Revisited

Posted on October 8, 2011 by jenny

Got a comment on my post called “Trying to Connect with God” which was posted November 28, 2010.  I was really inspired to reply, I’ve been on the same path, struggling to make sense of a god who apparently allows so much suffering to happen.  My reply got so long, and I still had another story to tell, so I thought I might as well post a lot of it here as well.
I do not believe that god is “he”, I tend to use a blend of pronouns “he/she/it/they”, and am more likely to use the word “spirit” when trying to talk about the divine. I think the first time I started to connect with the divine was when I began to do Buddhist sitting practice. I found the Bodhisattva of Compassion a presence I could relate to. The statue of Kannon at the Rochester Zen Center was a lovely androgynous being with a compassionate face. I also went on a trip to Europe, and in Brittany saw a sculpture of Jesus with the most compassionate face I’ve ever seen. He was bending over a large fish with little tiny figures in his open mouth, and I was told that these were the beings in Hell being rescued by Jesus. I thought that to see that compassionate face looking down at you would bring anyone out of hell. I began to get it that Jesus was an incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
I have a favorite story about Jesus and the Bodhisattva.  When the Christian missionaries came to Bhutan (I think it was Bhutan, it might have been Sikkim, one of those tiny Himalyan kingdoms anyway) and told the people  stories about the man who taught forgiveness and died for the people, the Bhutanese replied “That’s a good one, we’ll put it in the list of stories we have about Padmasambhava’s many lives.”  The Christians said “O no it happened only once!”   The Bhutanese said “We know that being.”  I’ve forgotten the source of this story, so the names may not be correct.  I expect the essence remains the same.
I also think about the story in the last of the Narnia tales, The Last Battle.  Aslan, the great Lion who dies and lives again in the first tale is clearly a Christ figure.  In the last tale the Calormenes invade and conquer Narnia.  Their God is judgmental and cruel.  Aslan says: “I and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.  Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.  And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.” A similar notion to “By their fruits shall ye know them.”  (Sorry I can’t provide the Biblical references.  You can perhaps tell that I grew up Episcopalian, and it’s the King James version that comes to mind.)
I also think of Jesus saying “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it also to me.”  That God is saying that people who exploit and abuse others are doing it to God. I think that God cares very much about what happens to people. That God also FEELS everything that is done to any one. The fact that he/she/it/they doesn’t always interfere is a mystery. I’ve had amazing responses to direct prayer, and also complete lack of response.  Some say it’s not that God didn’t respond, it’s that he/she/it/they didn’t respond in the way we wanted or a way we can see.

People who are interested in this topic might like to read my post on “God Image.”

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Guidance

Posted on October 7, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2009)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, the wind is still blowing, the snow has stopped and the sun is shining through the haze.  I’ve been feeling very sad and lonely all day, and now I’m feeling scared.  Can you help me?
Dear Jenny, we suggest curling up with the baby doll and the Napier tape.  Also, email Caryn and get another appointment.  The book you are reading is very intense and painful.  Lost children, abused animals, lots of feelings are being stirred up in you, mostly fear and grief.  At a deep level you are feeling many losses.  They are not obvious like the ones in the book, so they remain nameless, unfelt, unexpressed, unhealed.  You need very specific, skilled help to get to these feelings and process them.

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on October 6, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2009)
I’m feeling sad and scared.  I got the baby and talked to myself as I did with Caryn.  “It’s OK.  I’m here and I’ll stay with you and I’ll protect you.  Mother is dead, she can’t hurt you now.” That helped a little.  I’m still feeling sad but I feel bigger and fuller.  Caryn says building the resource incrementally is good.  Just a little improvement is good enough.  So we worked with me holding the baby — she brought me two babies so I had the larger one hold the smaller one.  Realized this was my childhood as oldest sister, a child trying to parent a smaller child.  When I first got there, I curled up in my corner and tried to be as small as possible.  Caryn asked if I could do it differently, and then I relaxed and paid attention to my breathing and stopped frantically trying to get smaller.  Then I sat up & discharged: shaking and yawning.  Caryn suggested remembering times when I was doing OK, and I told her about teaching Az last Sunday at the end of the first half, and about teaching it at Helen’s memorial celebration, and what Randi said about me being a good person.  “This is who I am.  This is what I do.” I was thinking that maybe my recent realization that I am a good person set off this backlash.  But I think it’s probably more about reading Dream Country, with its theme of parent & children, of children taken away and then rescued, of animals abused and freed.  I realized that I identify with the animals that were kept in cages that were too small so their spines got curved and their legs bowed.  I’m no longer in the cage — Mother is dead — but I’m still trying to stay small.

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Guidance

Posted on October 4, 2011 by jenny

Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling tired & discouraged.  Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we love you.  We love you very much.  You do need to keep reaching out to friends.  We know you’re doing a lot better, but you need nourishing human contact every day.  This is the most important thing, as important as walking your dog.  We know it’s hard for you.  It’s been easy to do when you’ve been triggered, you call for help.  But on ordinary days your phone phobia and your fear of “inflicting” yourself on others keep you from calling friends.  There, there dear, we can feel that your heart is cold right now.  Supporting yourself is hard.  Reaching out to friends is not an assignment that you’re failing at, but, like eating good food, it’s necessary to help keep you out of the pit.  The good work you are doing for the world you love happens anyway, no matter how you are feeling.  You can rest on this.

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Finding the Will to Live

Posted on October 2, 2011 by jenny

A couple of days ago I posted something from August about “no will to live,” and my struggles with it, trying to understand why it’s so hard to take in positive feedback.  Looking back from a month’s perspective, and after the work with Caryn learning to say “stop,” I saw that my fear was rooted in trauma, the fear of death if I dared to feel good about myself.  That’s a way of standing up for myself, to see that it’s not just some trivial problem, some easy choice that I’m failing to make.  I think that helps me side-step it somehow.  Caryn said it wasn’t possible to answer the question “why.”  I have answered it but that doesn’t immediately solve the problem.  But it does explain why I’m having such a hard time with this.  Practicing saying “stop,” being able to say it firmly, is the antidote to the trigger that knocks me into “no will to live.”

Beverly called in the evening, she had read the blog post and was concerned about me.  She was concerned that even “feeling good about myself” is a kind of judgement, that I needed to be doing something that “gave me pleasure” and then I wouldn’t have the focus on me at all.  I think what she’s saying is quite true, it’s like when I’m being able to do my creative stuff I don’t worry about whether I’m good enough to “deserve” to live.  The issue of “feeling good about myself” may be a red herring.  It’s not so much about judging myself according to other people’s ideas.  It’s really closer to feeling OK about myself just as I am.  I think the point at which I’m able to see through the uselessness of the whole struggle to find out why, was made possible by practicing defending myself.  When I can say “stop” to protect myself, and say it in a way that’s firm, not apologetic or defensive, that action itself reconstitutes the will to live.
Byron Brown explains very clearly why the ability to defend yourself is ITSELF the will to live.

From “Soul Without Shame” by Byron Brown
The complete quote can be found here posted 7/6/10

“The energy for active defending is available to you the moment you recognize that your deepest nature is being constricted by the experience of being attacked. …  The sense of outrage awakens your essential strength and with it the capacity and clarity to defend your own truth in the face of judgment.  Ultimately, this truth is nothing but the integrity and aliveness of the human soul.” p 219
“Essential strength  … may begin as anger at the debilitating effect of self-judgment, but it emerges as an assertive strength to be yourself without the need for acceptance, approval, or acknowledgement of anyone else.  Most fundamentally, it is the strength to be yourself without a self-image but with a sense of presence that is grounded, clear, and vitally alive.  True strength is the basic instinctual energy of survival and self-protection, which we recognized as missing or blocked in the judgment process in Chapter 4….  You as a child did not have the physical presence and capacity to embody this instinctual energy for your own protection.  Even if you could have, it was dangerous to do so because you were still very dependent on adults for survival.  That is no longer the case.  Now you can begin a vital aspect of your journey: recovering that compassionate, intelligent vitality — the strength essence.”   p 220
“The judge’s activity is aimed at blocking contact with the freedom and expansiveness of the living soul.  So each form [of defending yourself] points to a way of tapping into the dynamism and aliveness of who you are now, unconnected to your history.”   p 245
“You must step out of the judgment loop.  This is the real soul work. …  This is when you assert your fundamental aliveness and freedom.  This is when you align yourself with the deep longing to be real and present in your life against the self-defeating experience of judgment.”   p 291

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Need I Say More?

Posted on September 30, 2011 by jenny

Occupy Wall Street grows up
Let’s do something about climate change
Moving Planet

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Duh!

Posted on September 29, 2011 by jenny

Elizabeth Warren:
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Juan Cole, Op-Ed: “The United States, castigated by its critics as recently as a decade ago as a ‘hyper-power,’ is now so weak and isolated on the world stage that it may cast an embarrassing and self-defeating veto of Palestinian membership in the United Nations. Beset by debt, mired in economic doldrums provoked by the cupidity and corruption of its business classes, and on the verge of withdrawing from Iraq and ultimately Afghanistan in defeat, the U.S. needs all the friends it can get.”   Nation of Change

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“Demoralization Box”

Posted on September 26, 2011 by jenny

For the last couple of months I’ve been struggling with “lost the will to live” — the last stage of trauma when the organism has concluded that death is inevitable.  Sometimes I’m OK with it, sometimes it’s really hard.  I’m caught in the “Demoralization Box” and need someone else to help me out.

I told Karen how I’d been getting good feedback from people and really having trouble taking it in.  Sal & Jan were just here, & Jan said “all the people at the Worry Tree love you.”  Sal’s reading for me — I finally got the CD — says I’m a “world-server” just by my presence.  So how do I prevent really connecting with this information?  There have been moments when I’ve felt the truth of my being a good person who’s done a lot of good in the world, and been amazed at its truth, and then somehow it gets lost, I fall back into worthless-hopeless-no-will-to-live.
What do I feel in my body?  squeezed heart, heaviness in my belly.  How do I know I’ve lost the will to live?  Difficulty deciding what to eat for lunch, difficulty putting together a shopping list.  Wouldn’t it just be easier to stop eating?  I’m sitting slumped over with my head stuck out in front.  Too tired to sit up straight.
Make myself sit up straight.  Actually I’m leaning back against the cushion.  What is my resistance to letting myself know that I’m a good person who’s made a positive change in the world?  What’s the voice in me that says it wouldn’t be OK for me to know that?  What am I afraid would happen if I really took it in?  I’d get conceited?  (makes me laugh) I’d stop doing good?  but if I’m doing good even when I’m not doing anything but being present, how can I stop?  Is it possible that I’m angry at myself for not having the will to live?  Well.  There’s some resonance there.  So I’m angry at myself for not being able to jack myself up into enthusiasm for my life.  Well, I suppose it’s the same thing as being angry at myself for not being able to will myself out of depression.  Am I holding onto the idea of “no will to live” because it sounds more grandiose than depression?  What does my body want to do?  I just want to lie down & do nothing.  Might as well do it.

From today’s perspective, September 26, I can see that what gets in the way of my feeling good enough about myself to have the will to live is the fear that the being who is responsible for my continued existence (i.e. mother) will throw me out on the street where I can’t possibly take care of myself because I’m only an infant.  That’s the fear.  If I let myself feel good about myself —> I will die.  No wonder I can’t take it in.

The “Demoralization Box” is described by Bruce Levine.  The difficulty for me is that in order to regain my morale, I need someone else to validate me in some way.

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