PTSD

Posted on May 26, 2011 by jenny

After the women’s retreat I decided to do some therapy with Phyllis because I could trust her. It was in a therapy session with Phyllis that I had a very odd experience.  I just checked my journal for 1976 and couldn’t find a reference to this particular session.  I remember that I was down on the floor, sitting on the carpet with my eyes closed.  I think she might have regressed me a little.  Then she moved a cushion across the carpet toward me, saying “This is your mother.” My body scrambled to get away from “mother” before I had time to think about it.  I remember being surprised, and thinking that I didn’t have any respect for my mother, but I wasn’t AFRAID of her was I?  It wasn’t until I got to Somatic Experiencing that I understood that that was evidence that I had been traumatized.  Like the Veteran who hears a car backfire in the street: his body dives behind a couch for cover before his brain can tell him it’s just a car.

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“feel good about myself”

Posted on May 25, 2011 by jenny

In April of 1976 I went to a women’s weekend retreat. It was very illuminating for me.  Afterward I did a number of therapy sessions with Phyllis. This is what I wrote in 1976:

the core of the weekend for me was Saturday night.  we had split into two groups, I was in Phyllis’ group.  She had worked with Nan, with Sandy, with Brooke, with Shiela, and asked for our feelings as a way to close.  I had felt that I wanted to say something, but could not think what, but now my stomach began to feel very anxious, so finally I said that.  Phyllis asked if I wanted a body massage like the ones the group had given Shiela and Brooke.  I was not sure, but said yes — and was very aggressive about asking for what I wanted.  But afterward my stomach still felt tight, though i felt very relaxed.  Phyllis asked me how I felt and I started into a routine about whether or not my anxiety was important enough to deal with.  She put her hand on my mouth and said ‘I don’t want to listen to your head.’  Immediately i felt utterly safe.  I could say whatever came to me, and trust Phyllis to decide if it was important.  So I just lay there quietly and the word ‘woman’ came swimming up.  So I said ‘It must have to do with being a woman because thats why I’m here.’  a long pause.  ‘I don’t feel that I am nurturing and compassionate, and I would like to be.’  a pause.  Phyllis ‘why would you like to be nurturing?’  I thought or said ‘It would make me feel good about myself’ and then started into a routine about how one should be nurturing for the sake of others not to feel good about oneself.  She stopped me again and suddenly I realized that ‘It makes me feel good about myself ‘ was a perfectly good reason for wanting to be nurturing, I started to voice it but just saying ‘feel good about myself’ brought up all sorts of emotion and tears and I knew we had hit the core.  Phyllis made me sit up and face her, and I said ‘you mean its ALL RIGHT to feel good about myself?’ and she said yes, and I asked the group and they said yes, and then I asked them if it had been OK with them the first night when I had gotten all enthusiastic about journal keeping and they said things like ‘it inspired me’ and ‘im glad you wanted to share it with us’ and I burst into tears and said ‘you mean it wasn’t bragging?’  Phyllis said ‘how do you feel now?’ and i said ‘like a little bird that has just broken its shell and is looking around.’  In some ways a very childish scene on a very childish level, but the very strength of my emotions convinced me of the damning reality of my belief that it was wrong to feel good about myself.  Now I see the source of my difficulties in trying to feel good about myself, even though I’ve been struggling to do so for the last year and a half, believing that this was the only way to begin to be loving and outgoing to other people.

This is exactly how I wrote it, 35 years ago.  I notice my disclaimer at the end, calling what I had done “childish”.  Don’t think I’d do that now.

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Good for me!

Posted on May 24, 2011 by jenny

It took me a long time to be able to appreciate the things I actually accomplished.  When I took the DMA course in creating what I wanted in my life, one of the exercises was the 10 successes of the day.  The definition of a “success” was “you intend to do X…  And you do!  A success!” As a person who chronically labels what she gets done as “not good enough” I realized that here was a powerful tool for changing my life.  It’s a way of building momentum on a project, and it’s also a way of giving yourself a sense of efficacy when you’re deeply depressed.  You intend to get out of bed, and you do!  A success!   You intend to make a cup of tea and you do! A success!  You intend to drink the tea and you do! A success!  Unfortunately, though I used the technique regularly, I never actually felt a sense of satisfaction.  I would periodically go back to it — in my studio I found a little book where I started to record the successes in colored pens.  But I didn’t keep it going more than a month.
After I began Somatic Experiencing, and understood that what you felt in your body was what really counted, I deliberately began to use “(good for me!)” whenever I did something relatively big, and then I started doing it when I did something small that was or had been hard for me.

March 2006
Got past the picnic table to the 8 mile mark (good for me!) Baked the flowers & fish for the World and made an apple crisp (good for me!)

November 2006
Did walk the dog to the picnic table (good for me!) That’s an index of how much better I’m feeling.

February 2007
Dave said the triggers were “relational”, that I should avoid toxic relationships like R and surround myself with supportive ones, which is what I’ve done.  (Good for me!)

April 2007
One if the things I did yesterday morning was type up the minutes from the board meeting.  It was hard, in the teeth of that breathless feeling but I did it.  (Good for me!)

June 2007
On Saturday I went to Agway to get geraniums for the barrel outside Neskaya.  I got some marigolds and ageratum and baby’s breath too.  I didn’t feel scared at all! as I have in the past.  So exciting!  I got a bag of manure/humus too.  (Good for me!)

October 2007
I had been playing Od Lo Ahatvi Dai to check the version for Cathy and I started dancing to it.  I haven’t had that kind of energy for over a month (good for me!)

February 2008
I took all the tax stuff in to McMahon & Christopher.  I went through all 3 checkbooks & wrote down the medical checks & added them up (good for me!)

I alphabetized the Bach flower remedy information, and trashed about 150 emails (good for me!) I still have to take charge of the Charitable Contributions.  I want to get it down to a system so I don’t feel so overwhelmed.

July 2008
I got the cuttings (that have been sitting in water for a long time) into pots and did a laundry. (Good for me!)

September 2008
I managed to call Peckett’s about the holes in the driveways due to rain yesterday in my window of feeling OK.  (Good for me!) He’ll come today or tomorrow & fix both.

October 2008
Saw my psychiatrist.  She has been reading Waking the Tiger & was interested in the process.  So I described the activation & got a little activated & then described the images of geologic process and it helped the activation dissipate (good for me!) I also saw how the geologic cycle mirrors the trauma cycle: activation meets resistance and freezes, resistance titrated away, frozen mass begins to disintegrate and collapse.  Amazing!

Spent most of the day ironing cloth & putting up cup hooks.  Made & decanted soup in the evening. (Good for me!)

In the afternoon I did a huge bunch of errands: hardware store for stovepipe plug, post office, Rhino, bookstore, Mac’s, library, and bank.  (Good for me!)

Printed out a lot of pages (about 30) of 2008 journal and started reading from the beginning.  It’s been a big year, it almost feels like a lifetime since January.  I also hung up the brown box in the bedroom (good for me!)   8)

November 2008
I did manage to straighten up the house quite a bit, deal with mail, take care of gift subscriptions.  I even trashed a lot of email (good for me!) 8) tee hee

This one was posted May 11, 2011
SO. I did all these things despite being afraid when I thought about them:
1) taught dance
2) took a shower
3) made supper & ate it
4) called Lore for an appt
5) called Kellie for an appt
6) watered the plants
7) made an appt wed to get snow tires on
8) cut Bella’s nails on her front feet (good for me!)  8)

I notice that I REALLY began using the technique when I fell so badly into depression & terror in the fall of 2008.  And it finally began to work.  Now I’m able to actually HAVE  a feeling of satisfaction when I get something done (no matter how small) I typed all that up today!   (Good for me! 8) ) And I’m really enjoying putting in smiley faces!!  But I still don’t know why they happen when they happen.  I took out the ones that stayed (8))

DMA is a course in creating your life developed by Robert Fritz, now called Technologies for Creating.

Posted in Healing, Present Day | Comments Off on Good for me!

Somatic Experiencing – Hard Work

Posted on May 23, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2008)
Work with Caryn was very hard.  I kept having waves of complete discouragement and hopelessness.  I was reminded of that step in my pattern where I conclude “I can’t do this” when one step in a process doesn’t work.  I also think of the deep discouragement of a neglected baby who truly can’t get its needs met.  Caryn said the damage happened in relationship, so it has to be healed in relationship.  O god that just feels so impossible.  I clearly need friends that I can just hang out with, and I don’t have any.  Except for my dance circle and that only meets once a week.  I said to Caryn at one point “I expect to be judged”, and it was horrifying and painful to see how powerful that inner critic is.  I’m much harder on myself than I am on anyone else.  “Children of alcoholics judge themselves without mercy.” In the session I came to a place of saying “I can’t do it”, but I was frustrated and angry and still expecting myself, needing myself, to be able to do it.  I know that it’s possible to accept not being able to do something and experience it as a relief, but that doesn’t seem possible right now.  If I can’t change myself and my life then I’m stuck in this unlivable misery.  Can I bring love to this baby with the cold rejecting judgmental mother?  Yes.  Can I bring love to this woman who’s so frightened and lonely and blaming herself? Yes.
There was a piece about getting resourced — the only resource I have is my weight on the couch, letting it sink down as much as possible, letting myself experience being supported by what is under me.  Stay with it as long as I can, until a thought or discomfort comes in.  “That’s activation” says Caryn, the job is not to follow it out, or figure it out, or make it go away, but just to be with it with acceptance.  See what happens.  With Caryn’s comforting presence, I was able to be with whatever it was with acceptance and it faded.  I did it several times in the session, and I’ve done it several times this morning.  A Success!

So, dear Jenny, remember this: you don’t have to change yourself and your life.  You can create a vision and make a choice.  Then you can focus on the present moment and the next step, accept yourself just as you are every step along the way.  God’s grace will help you, and your life will change.
Vision: I have lots of friends who enjoy having me hang out with them.
I choose to have lots of opportunities to hang out with friends who accept me unconditionally.

I’m beginning to be able to look at my whole life with a lot more compassion, and I see what a desperately hard life it’s been.  I think of myself walking the corridors at Kripalu because I couldn’t sleep, walking around behind Jane’s house at night in the rain chanting the prajna paramita, and my heart goes out to me.  I think I’m beginning to see it with compassion instead of denial, self-rejection or self-pity.  This is the good that’s coming out of this bad time.

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Guidance

Posted on May 21, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2008)
Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I woke at 3 and didn’t sleep again.  I’m exhausted and depressed and scared.  Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we love you very much.  We know it’s hard for you to feel our presence, but we are gathered all around you loving you.  The cold stoniness that you are feeling is that of a baby who has been traumatized.  Remind yourself of this, and let your natural compassion soften your heart.  The baby is in trouble and in pain, just like the people at the retreat that your heart went out to.
My heart feels wide open to the cold wind.  I desperately need warmth and comfort.
There, there, dear. This is very difficult work.  The baby is not a failure because it is frightened and frozen and doesn’t know what to do.  The baby was truly helpless, and what she needed was someone to scoop her up with a lot of warmth and love, and she didn’t get it.  She got judgements and criticism and cold hard edges.  This is what you are up against.  What you are doing is hard, hard work and you don’t have enough support.  You need medication just to make your life workable.  It has worked before, it will work again.  The thyroid supplements will help too.  Hang on, dear, things will get better.

Posted in Breakdown, Guidance, Trauma | Comments Off on Guidance

Compassion

Posted on May 20, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2008)
Got up at 6 feeling very bleak.  Trying to bring compassion to wretched Bella — I was angry at her for not letting me sleep — and to my miserable self — I turned to the Jesus prayer.  Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.  I also prayed for Bella — Deva of the Tibetan Terriers have mercy on Bella — and gradually it began to soften.  Then I thought about something I read yesterday and was grateful that I have a roof over my head and food to eat, and wasn’t trying to sleep under a bridge or dying in pain in a VA hospital.  So then I was aware of the traumatized baby, and the homeless one, and the dying soldier, and I was able to hold us all in love.  I thought how we are all going back to the Great Love that called us into being.  I felt quite warm, sitting here holding the baby and sending out love.  I also called on Jesus and he came right away.  I was worried about taking up his time and he laughed and said he could be with many people at once.  He was very affectionate and warm and said he loved me: my creative outrageous parts and my shut down parts.  He said he was always with me, even when I was cold and stony and couldn’t feel his presence.  That was all very comforting.

Moon going down — one of today’s little joys — and sun on Garnet Hill.  Thank you.

I told Lynelle about the retreat last night.  She thought I had done some good work and understood how hard it was.  I talked about the coldness of Buddhism — the spaciousness and emptiness and no warmth, no loving god — she said that’s how a baby feels when mom is gone.  Right.  It all goes back to that.

I told Kayla that the retreat had been hard work, that I didn’t have enough support in my life.  She suggested I might want to think about having someone come live with me — room & board in exchange for housework & cooking.  It’s actually a good idea — I think of Elizabeth Goudge and Jessie Munro — but I’m daunted by the task of trying to find someone.

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Too Much Pain

Posted on May 19, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2008)
I’m at a retreat with Jack Kornfield at Kripalu.  The last time I came it was very helpful, but this time it isn’t working.

This is just being too hard.  I’m wondering if I should leave and go home but there’s nothing better at home.  I had trouble listening to Jack talk about Buddhist psychology — it all felt like things I can’t do, that I’m stuck in self-hatred and delusion, and although he says it’s possible to be free, to step out of it, I can’t do it.  All my efforts have resulted in being more stuck.  I can vaguely remember times intellectually, when I understood something and it was liberating, but there’s no feeling that comes to confirm it.

This morning, in the sitting, I tried to sit with depression.  First I imagined a grey stony figure sitting in front of me, then I had it be depressed Jenny.  She was in a small room paved and walled with stone, she was writhing and beating her head against the wall.  I did my best to stay with her, to witness her pain, but it was very difficult.  I was able to be with it for a bit, but I was also on the edge of overwhelm.  It’s just too much pain.  I called on Spirit to help me but no one came.  I tried to come out of it, to be in the room, feel my body, etc, and that helped a little but didn’t really give me a vacation.  I thought about that other time, when the pain was so intense that I understood why people would abuse children, take drugs, kill to avoid feeling that much pain.  But it didn’t last very long.  This time it’s too much for me, way too much.  I feel hopelessly inadequate to the amount of pain entrusted to me.  Isn’t that the definition of trauma?  I think “This is a traumatized baby,” and feel a movement of my heart in sympathy, but I also feel a degree of hopelessness and helplessness that keeps me frozen.  Isn’t that the definition of trauma?

What do I need to hear from some very kind, very loving, very wise being?  Dear, this is too much for you.  It was too much when you were a baby and it’s too much now.  You need to be very kind to yourself.  You need to stop trying to do a task that’s too adult for you right now.  You are putting in so much effort, yes beating your head against the wall, because you believe that this is the only way you have to help the world you love.  You do truly love the world — the world of nature, and the community of human beings that is capable of loving co-operation — you do care, and you have done many things to help the world, not least among them your intention for good.  But right now, you are unable to feel your own caring, your wish and capacity to do good.  You are caught in the pain of a traumatized baby.  Due to circumstances beyond your control, there is no community of support available to you.  Your life has become unworkable, and you need to support yourself with medication, you need to find a medication that works.

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Guidance

Posted on May 18, 2011 by jenny

(Written in December 2008)
Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I’ve been feeling bleak and sad and my heart has been hurting a lot.  I’ve been doing my best to surrender to it instead of resist it.  What do you think?
Well done, Dear Jenny!  This is EXACTLY what you should be doing with the pain and sorrow and loss and disappointment in your life.  This pain comes from many sources: childhood wounds and trauma, losses that were not mourned in your family, and the pain of trees cut and animals killed on the road, the natural world being exploited instead of reverenced, people living narrow oppressed stunted lives, and people living greedy, materialistic, empty lives.  There is a lot of pain on your planet right now and you are helping to bear some of it.  Your work at these times is simply to sit with the pain and bring compassion to it, as you have been doing.  You do not need to do anything more to be of service to the planet that you love.

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Genesis II

Posted on May 17, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
Yesterday evening I kept reading Fox & Sheldrake (Natural Grace) and was reconnected with a wonderful vision of the shamanic realm: overlapping morphogenetic fields, overlapping souls, all of us intricately interconnected.  There was a discussion of ritual and liturgy — that one of the jobs of ritual is to reconnect us with our beginnings, and of liturgy to educate us, so I’ve just been off on a great riff of telling the story of the beginning of the universe…

“In the beginning there was hydrogen.  And the hydrogen was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.  Magnetic fields created sheets and ribbons and clumps of hydrogen.  In the clumps hydrogen began to condense under gravitational attraction. As the clump became more dense, the inner temperature rose. When the temperature reached 1,000,000° absolute, nuclear processes began.  Proton merged with proton to form helium, with the release of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation of very short wavelength.  Once energy began to be produced in the interior, the sphere of gas stabilized.  For about a million years, the radiation from the hydrogen fusion wound its way outward, being absorbed and re-emitted by the layers of hydrogen until it reached the surface.  What was now a star began to shine with electromagnetic radiation of all wavelengths from unbelievably tiny gamma and x-rays to meter and kilometer long radio waves.  In the middle of this spectrum is radiation measuring 3,900 to 7,700 angstroms.  And there was light.  And it was evening and it was morning, the first day.”

(Written today)
Inspired by a sentence in an astronomy textbook which literally said “In the begining there was hydrogen…” I rewrote Genesis.  I was in Davis, California, at the University, in April of 1970.  I had just been released from the health center after my first nervous breakdown, my system was still full of Mellaril, a powerful tranquillizer, I was still trying to go to classes. I wrote my first version of “Genesis II”.  It was April 22, the first Earth Day, and I was wandering around the campus feeling lost.  On the green I saw a geodesic dome, with an empty table inside.  I left my first version of Genesis II, handwritten on a piece of lined paper torn from a spiral notebook, as an offering.

The knowledge behind it is what I learned at Wellesley in the early 60’s.  At that time the “big bang” was considered one possible cosmology, and didn’t have the aura of “proven concept” that it does now.  I’ve used concepts that come from the “plasma theory” of the beginning because I like it better.  (It’s also true that “big bang” type cosmologies are created in authoritarian cultures, and “steady state” cosmologies are created by cultures that are going through some kind of Renaissance.) I think most of what I’ve said here could be substantiated by recent science.  Many years later I read somewhere that in indigenous cultures, when an individual or a tribe was recovering from some big disaster, they rewrote the beginning of the world as the end of their ritual of healing.

For plasma cosmology see “The Big Bang Never Happened” by Eric Lerner

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Via Negativa

Posted on May 16, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
Reading Natural Grace by Sheldrake & Fox.  I started the chapter on prayer and found Matthew Fox on the via negativa: “The negative way is the way of darkness, suffering, silence, letting go, and even nothingness.  Emptying.  All these are prayer: experiencing silence; being emptied of images, verbal, oral, and imaginative; letting go; and suffering.  It’s not just about asking to be relieved from our suffering, it’s about entering into the process, to learn.” p115    That’s where I am now, that’s really all I can see to do.  Entering into my suffering instead of resisting it, making myself wrong for it, etc.  The truth is, I have nothing else to offer.  I wish I were one of those people who is able to find hope when things are really bad, and be an inspiration to others.  But that slides too easily into the cultural ideal: Rise above suffering, refuse to give in, deny and repress and carry on — all of which is unhealthy.  So maybe it’s my job to do the work that most people are refusing: to open to my own suffering and be there for myself with compassion.  When Fox talks about praise, it feels like an assignment I’m failing.  When he talks about the piercing beauty of the world I feel cut open, vulnerable, raw and full of pain.   “…that you were not adequate to the amount of the pain that was entrusted to you.” I’ve done my best, and my best isn’t good enough   ——— and what kind of impossible expectation is that, DAMMIT!!   —— but it’s also true that “my best” can’t be enough to save the world, or stop me from aging and death.  So then my best has to be to show up, pay attention, tell the truth, let go of results.  To be present to the experience of aging and death with as much compassion and grace as I can muster.

That quote about the “magnitude of the pain” goes on to say “You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.”  No way I can manage joy.  Yes I have fallen into self-pity.  O but what about having some compassion for myself?  That feels more true and eases my heart a little.  Then I think if I can’t meet it in joy, at least I had a feeling of willingness, of this is something I can actually do.  That’s got to be good enough.

There is another version of this quote which says “You are called upon to meet it in compassion… ”  possibly from Kornfield.

I’ve been imagining that if I had “real” problems to deal with — an addicted daughter, a dying parent — that it would be easier to validate my difficulties, but I find this in Kornfield: “As it turned out, sitting in the dark forest with its tigers and snakes was easier than sitting with my inner demons.  My insecurity, loneliness, shame, and boredom came up, along with all my frustrations and hurts.  Sitting with these took more courage than sitting in the charnel grounds.”

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