No Agenda

Posted on April 5, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
How to describe how it’s been for the last few days, maybe even a couple of weeks — I’ve had no agenda, time has felt free and open, it’s been OK to just do puzzles & read mysteries.  & not force myself to do ANYTHING even walk the dog.  The old push push push is gone.  Needing to prove something is gone.  When I first stated the belief — “If I do something and you are angry and upset, then I am bad worthless and rotten and should be dead” I thought about Byron Katie’s question “Who would you be if you couldn’t think that thought?” and I just felt sick and sad and trapped and stuck.  I couldn’t imagine how that would feel.  There might even have been a thought “I wouldn’t be me.” I didn’t see any way to shift it, so I just dropped it.  I didn’t even talk about it, found myself unable to talk to Kayla or Lynelle about it even though a tiny voice said I was wrong not to tell them something that I imagine might relieve their minds about my recent withdrawal.  But now, having this new experience of having no agenda, no push, no need to prove, I’m thinking maybe this is who I would be if I couldn’t think that thought.  It’s gone.  It dissolved in the reorganization I was allowing to happen.  O my!!  There’s an odd sense of emptiness, but I don’t feel bereft as I did in ‘95 when I realized that my attempt to make a publishable book out of my journals was just an attempt to “prove that I deserve to live even though my parents were disappointed in me.” No opinions, no stories, no agenda.  What a relief.

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on April 4, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
Session with Caryn.  Several powerful experiences of relief and release — like confession and absolution.  I told her about this recent period of “retreat”, of avoiding talking to my friends, staying in solitude, etc.  Although I’ve been oddly comfortable with it, there was at least one member of the committee judging me as “selfish.” Caryn reframed the whole thing, she said “This is HEALTH.” She said I was taking space for myself, needed for the inner work to be done.  I told her about the Montessori teacher’s book, and the children who would run around the classroom, knocking over other children’s projects.  Caryn asked me to let that energy appear & play the Montessori teacher to myself.  I realized immediately, she didn’t want to hurt other children, but she did want to make a mess.  “How does that feel in your body?” So I told the child part of me about painting the Red Woman.  Most of me was back “in the zone” with Aviva, but there was a little piece on my upper chest who still felt separate.  She was soft & flat & sensitive.  I said maybe this was a part brought back in this recent shamanic journey so of course she wasn’t there when I painted the Red Woman.  I also remembered the image of the children who’d been in the tsunami knocking down towers of blocks as part of their healing.  I told her how glad I was to have her back as part of me.  Maybe that was when she integrated.
When I first went in, my corner had been dismantled so I chose to sit on a meditation cushion between the windows.  I propped myself up — knee pillows as well — until I could sit comfortably.  It felt wonderful.  Caryn said “You’ve never been fully supported.” I cried.
When the work with the “destructive” energy felt complete, I wanted to “pour and roll” so Caryn set up two mats and a rug and I rolled around on them.  She talked about the “pour and roll” stage — I see I’m going to have to read their book.

Caryn and Kevin’s book is How Life Moves

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Speechless with Outrage

Posted on April 1, 2011 by jenny

Outrage.  That’s the word.  Normally I’m very articulate, but I’ve been finding it difficult to find words.  I’ve been stunned by the information about the budget passed by the New Hampshire House of Representatives.  I knew it was bad, but I never imagined how bad.  It is immoral, unjust, unfair — I can’t find words for how bad it is — I would say inhuman, but we’ve seen human beings do some pretty awful things.  What the Nazis did to the Jews was bad enough — and what the Turks did to the Armenians, and the Americans to the Cherokee nation — but it was done against a relatively healthy population of adults who at least had some strengths.  This budget — taking money away from programs that, with already inadequate funding, are trying to help the poor and needy, the homeless and disabled, to take money away from the most helpless — this is worse than killing civilians in war time, this is deliberate cruelty to people whose lives are hard enough as it is.  The most shameful part is the information that returning veterans are the “fastest growing populations in the homeless shelters”. They risk their lives for our “freedom” and then are treated like this?  I don’t feel like an “American”, I feel like a third world country occupied and exploited by “America.” I keep thinking of the quote from Matthew (Chapter 26 at the end) where Jesus says “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it also to me.” I hope that those who passed this budget will one day understand what they’ve done and be ashamed.

Picture taken by Beverly Woods at the State House, March 31, 2011

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Rally in Concord, New Hampshire

Posted on March 31, 2011 by jenny

I went to the rally in Concord today.  Something like 139 organizations participated, from police and firefighters to people pushing disabled people in wheelchairs and numerous religious groups.  What I found most moving were the number of handmade signs on a huge diversity of topics.  What does democracy look like?  THIS is what democracy looks like.

What makes me angriest is the budget cuts for the people who most need help. This is what the New Hampshire Council of Churches had to say:
They denounced the House budget that downshifts burdens onto the very people most affected by hard times, the mentally ill, physically or developmentally disabled, impoverished elderly and children, and the lowest income households.
Unacceptable, immoral, House cuts reinstate a waiting list for developmentally disabled adults needing support, eliminate state childcare subsidies so poorest parents can work, support their families while children receive safe, quality care.
All non-profit and faith-based organizations in NH already experience severe strain by this recession and the increased need it brings. The resources and the ability of individuals, their families and faith- and community-based organizations are stretched to the limit already.  The Senate’s responsibility to craft a new budget that does the least harm to our oldest, youngest, poorest, disabled can get us through these very difficult fiscal times for state government.

But this budget creates undue hardship and hopelessness for so many in our communities and churches, including the chronically mentally ill and the developmentally disabled who are threatened by new waiting lists for services. Also threatened are parents who work but need subsidies to help them find quality care for their children.

Perhaps most astonishing is that this budget turns away entire populations and tells them there are no scraps left from our table of bounty to sustain them in troubled times. Tragically, veterans since 9/11 are the fastest growing population in the homeless shelters; our youngest returning veterans have the highest unemployment numbers by far in our already stressed economy. Enlisted men and women, some of whom return from war changed in body and spirit and in need of medical, psychological, and social support, will find our communities are not equipped to help them and their families heal.

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Re-negotiation

Posted on March 30, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
Karen was very helpful.  I told her about all my contradictory feelings — even saw a kind of collage of torn & colored paper — joy about Obama, anger & sadness that I wake up with, crankiness and irritability.  I’m beginning to feel uncomfortable about spending my days in “non-productive” activity.  Because I’m not terrified and fragile, I’ve started considering which of the necessary things I can do, and that opened a door to the voice of judgement from childhood “selfish” “lazy”.  Karen confirmed that what’s really going on is I’m needing to make space for a massive internal reorganization.  It’s going on below consciousness, so I’m having to keep the neo-cortex occupied so it doesn’t interfere.  I need to not ask myself to try to make decisions that will draw energy away from that inner work.  That in itself is vastly different from my usual tactic of bullying myself to do what “has to” be done.  I also talked about my anger at CEO’s who paid themselves 262 times what the average worker got while outsourcing jobs so that worker lost what little he had, and Exxon Mobil posting record profits while people can’t afford to heat their homes, and…   Karen gave me a towel & said (with a gleeful evil grin) “wring their necks”, so I did, happily.  I told her about the kid inside, and her angry energy, and wanting to make a mess and how my creative energy is coming more easily now.

got a lot done yesterday — surprised myself — I think it came from Karen’s validation that I’m not being lazy and self-indulgent, I’m taking needed space for myself, to allow re-negotiation at a deep level.  “Re-negotiation” really is the best word because it suggests that there’s both conflict and dialogue going on, that bits and pieces are moving around, finding new alignments.

“Re-negotiation” is Peter Levine’s word for the process by which trauma is healed.  It’s integrated into ordinary memory, instead of remaining a frozen, fragmented chunk that keeps pulling you back into the event.

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Anger

Posted on March 28, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
Thinking about Liv Whitelaw the Outlaw, in Elizabeth George’s Playing for the Ashes, and her anger and pain and her need to feel powerful and her self-destructiveness, and wondering if that arose in reaction to a mother who was a do-gooder, who “always knew best.” Also how that mother destroyed the young man that she loved by knowing what was “best” for him.  And reading about the children in the Montessori School who expressed their anger by running around the room knocking over other children’s projects.  This kind of angry energy is awake in me, I think partly in response to seeing that belief that if my doing something for myself results in disappointment or discomfort for someone else, then I am bad and worthless and rotten and ought to be dead.  I’m furious that mother’s selfish, narcissistic behavior resulted in the infant that I was taking on that belief.  I’m angry because I don’t see what I can do about it.  Who would you be without that belief?  I can’t imagine.  And when Karen said things that contradicted that belief I could feel in my body how deeply I didn’t believe her.

It’s almost as though that angry one, who is willing to put my feelings and needs first, has taken over my life.  The older sister, the co-dependent, the one who’s trying to be good enough to prove that she deserves to live — they’ve all retreated into the background.  I don’t know what to make of it.  I feel a little judgemental of myself just enough to bring up discomfort and resentment, but not enough to trigger another episode of terror or despair.

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Collages

Posted on March 27, 2011 by jenny

I was talking to a friend about a workshop in “Soul Collage” and it reminded me of some collages I’d done a long time ago.  I found the book, I think these were done in 1991.  What’s amazing to me now is how accurately they picture PTSD in infancy.  They are an attempt to do a creative journal exercise called “My inner and outer self.”  The first one shows a bland outer self with horrors inside:

The second one is another attempt:

This one is the third:

Under the soldier it says: Omigosh I’ve gotta stop it.  It’s just too dangerous, it can get out of hand while its still small.  Better squash it before it gets any bigger.  We don’t want anybody around here who can’t take care of themselves.  We don’t want anybody who will be a drain on our dwindling resources.  Shut up kid.  You better grow up fast, or else we’ll leave you to DIE

Under the baby it says:please help me I can’t take care of myself  I need food & water and loving hugs.  Please tell me you’re glad I’m alive   Please help me     Please help me   or else I’ll           DIE

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Painful Beliefs

Posted on March 26, 2011 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)
A couple of painful conversations with Eleanor.  She asked about staying here more and I wasn’t able to say it would be OK.  My dismay clearly showed on my face, and she called and left a long message about not wanting to stay here if it wasn’t good for me.  She understood that the difficulty of her life would be hard on me, would weigh on me, and of course that’s the major difficulty.  I told her so last night.  The reality is that her life is unrelentingly painful.  I want to be able to listen to her, to witness for her, I don’t want her to feel that she can’t tell me about her life because it will upset me — but it’s also true that the conditions of her life weigh on me, bring up feelings of sadness, anger, despair and helplessness.  I’m not strong enough, generous enough, loving enough to really be there for her, to be able to help contain all the difficulty and pain.  I feel sad about that.  Though maybe it’s an unfair judgement — it’s really deep unhealed wounds of my own that make it difficult to be there for her.

I’ve uncovered a core belief that’s possibly the main piece in all this.  It’s where the fear that I could be poisonous to babies comes from.  The belief that just my presence can injure other people, that if I take care of myself, that injures others, that if I say “no” to someone, that injures them.  Most of the time it doesn’t operate — at least recently, in the wake of this last round of PTSD, I’ve gotten much more comfortable saying NO and doing what I need to for myself.  It’s become abundantly clear, as a practical not a moral issue, that I absolutely have to take care of myself first.  But for whatever reason, that doesn’t work with Eleanor.  I realize that every time I look at the little boombox I bought for her — the radio works but the CD player stopped working, I feel guilty that I haven’t replaced it.  Eleanor hasn’t asked me to, she doesn’t expect me to, but I expect myself to do it, and feel guilty that I haven’t.

More thoughts: when there was the Deupree family reunion in Washington DC I didn’t go because of my health.  But Mother told Susan I didn’t come because she was there — the implication being that I wanted to hurt her.  Susan told me about it, also telling me she didn’t believe Mom.  But that was typical.  I’m sure she said many things like that over the years, implying that I hurt her when I did things for other reasons.  And the stuff with the insurance.  I realized that unintentionally making Kayla’s life more difficult, and her anger and upset about it, was the final straw that knocked me into major PTSD.  It triggered the belief that if I do something to fulfill my own needs, it will hurt someone else and that means I’m evil, wicked, worthless, and should be dead.  No wonder I lost it completely at that point.

The other belief that gets triggered is the one that if I don’t do what they want, I don’t care about them.  Then I get angry at myself for not caring, and someone in me knows that I really do care and is angered at being invalidated, and the conflict makes me feel so sad and angry and ashamed and of course when I’m in that state I can’t possibly feel my caring, and I don’t trust my intellectual knowing of my caring. And it’s just a mess.  I’ve been fighting this damn belief since early in my marriage with Dana when I accused him of “not caring” and he reacted with anger.

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on March 25, 2011 by jenny

(Written in October 2008)
Session with Caryn: I told her about getting activated with the psychiatrist and then calming it with the image of geologic process.  Went thru several cycles of activation & discharge.  Noticed that my head stayed cool, that when the activation was on the surface it was easier to handle, it seemed like “not me” any longer, when it’s inside my chest it feels like “me.” Caryn asked how I could tell the difference between “me” and “not me” and I don’t think I ever answered her.  I’m reminded of the time with Ingrid Bacci, when my father’s sleazy energy seemed to be on the surface in such a way that I could actually peel it off — it was no longer “me.” Now I’m thinking that it’s something about the sensation on the skin that makes the difference.  Later in the session I had a sense of a positive energy which started at my hara and expanded to my skin — that “plump” feeling.  Very different from the activation on the skin.  It’s like coming to understand that the disintegrating feeling, which used to scare me, means disintegrating of frozen armor, not disintegrating of “me.” I think I’m finally learning to have healthy boundaries!  The last two times I saw Caryn I went right to my corner, pulled the pillows in around me, and said “Mine!”  It happens spontaneously.  Perhaps I’ve recovered a two-year-old part of me who tried to set boundaries that Mother just crashed right through.  I spent some time in a state of relief and relaxation —o yes there was a whole piece with tension on the side of my neck, and a voice, finding the strong voice that comes out, instead of the frozen one that struggles.  I began to realize that the pain I was feeling was the pain of the earth.  Words came: “It is not kept, or guarded, or cared for,” so I sang that part of the Road to Ixopo.  That felt satisfying.  I hung out with relief for a while, and then I wanted to crawl, so I did that on my belly —oh! first relief led me to supported child pose & I got more & more relaxed, sliding into a sort of frog pose — then I crawled, then I got up & walked.  There was a whole bit about my ribs, how they still hurt on both sides, especially when I did a twist.  So I worked with the theraband, stretching my arm across my chest, both sides, & that freed up my rib cage so I could walk with more rotation of ribcage.  She also asked me if I felt resolved with the Nia fall, I said yes, I had been able to find what I would like to have said in the NVC training.  So we did the contralateral stretch, & then the lunge against the wall, which I can practice at home.  She did some work with my feet and I practiced walking with much more articulation in my feet.
Well no wonder I was tired!  That was a LOT of WORK.

For session with Ingrid Bacci

“Road to Ixopo” is a song from the musical “Lost in the Stars“.  We had the recording in my house when I was a child, and I was powerfully moved by the music.  I was too young to really understand what it was about, but I had a sense of a great disaster to the planet. “Where you stand the grass is rich and matted, but the rich green hills break down, they fall to the valley below…  The streams are dry.. too many cattle feed on the grass – it is not kept or guarded or cared for, it no longer keeps men, guards men, cares for men.  The titihoya cries here no more….”

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on March 24, 2011 by jenny

(Written in September 2008)
Work with Caryn was fascinating.  I started by crying, and then shaking, and then talking about my fears about Bella.  She said it was too much, to stop piling it on and connect with resources, with the present moment, location etc.  So I did that and then my shoulders kept jumping/discharging while I was aware of my lower body containing and grounding me, and also being able to talk to Caryn about all kinds of things.  Nia, the drama workshop, Journey, the fall from the ladder, my pain about never really being part of theater.  The warrior reappeared (with 6-pack abs!) Kali reappeared, the articulate spokesperson for the journey women appeared.  Caryn suggested I find a story to reframe what happened at the Nia training — the fall and not being able to insist on what I needed — but I couldn’t quite do it — it feels like the pieces are still moving and not yet ready to integrate.  I’m being OK with the slight discomfort of that.

Another interesting piece from the work with Caryn — I was talking about how the drama project had been disappointing, how there is no way to show what it’s like to live with PTSD.  Then I said maybe a movie could do it, I’d be walking down the streets in Littleton and suddenly it becomes a battlefield: grey, dark, ruined buildings, burning cars, dead bodies…  She asked how did my body feel and I realized there was a sort of layer of greyness, like grey armor, down the whole front of my body — beyond it was the battlefield — but at the same time I was aware of my body in the corner of the room, pressed into the cushions, the floor, and the walls, held securely in present time.
I talked a bit about the scientist, my search for truth, my training in paradigm shift — Caryn said I was building bridges between the trauma vortex and the present.  Certainly I am much more present than I was the first time I saw her.  I’m also back in touch with many resources that I just couldn’t find when things were really bad.
At the end of the session I was tired & lay down.  There was a feeling of exhaustion, relief, and also satisfaction, as after completing a task that required a lot of effort.  What does satisfaction feel like in my body?  That plump feeling, being re hydrated.  Being full but also relaxed, weight sinking down.

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