Angry at Myself

Posted on March 14, 2011 by jenny

(Written in September 2008)
I’m worried that Bella’s medication isn’t working.  I listened to Napier tapes which sometimes provide relief.  I’m extremely angry at myself for being so stupid as to try to get off meds, and changing Bella’s food.  I tried and tried to forgive myself first for being stupid and then for being angry at myself for being stupid.  Finally I began to pray “Please help me forgive myself” and something softened.  I also realized that the one who tried to get off meds is the same one who’s been fighting so hard for a better wider life.  That helped.  I feel a softening even as I write.  Because of course things got bad again.  Weak & shaky.  Cold on my skin.  I’m not being able to shift things by my own efforts which suggests that the underlying physiology is bigger than I can deal with.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Trauma | Comments Off on Angry at Myself

Frozen Despair

Posted on March 13, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
Still doing very badly.  Bella has a bladder infection.  Kayla drove me to Littleton to get the medicine because I couldn’t drive.  I’m feeling very weak & shaky.

Woke early & used the Salzberg CD. Prayed for Bella.  Felt a level of frozen despair I don’t think I’ve ever felt before.  At first I tried to avoid it, but then tried to be with it.  It doesn’t last, comes and goes.  “May I be free of suffering.  May I be filled with loving kindness.” It makes sense that this is the way a baby would feel when it’s been left alone too long.  It’s a kind of ultimate helplessness.  I feel like I’ll never move again.  Sitting here trying to describe it, I felt a momentary movement of compassion for the baby that happened to, then I’m back to being completely swallowed up by her suffering.
This is, in a sense, a shamanic journey to find another lost part of myself and bring her back.

Please help me
May I be free from suffering
May I be filled with loving kindness
Please help me.

This is what is worth doing: to be present to my experience in each moment.  To “soften around” as much as I can.
My heart is so sore and I am so sleepy.  I don’t know what to do.  Be present to sore heart, sleepy, don’t know.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression | Comments Off on Frozen Despair

Struggle

Posted on March 12, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
Took 100 mg of Seroquel last night.  Woke after 3 in a state of complete self-hatred, frozen self-rejection.  Bella peeing a lot again after seeming a little better.  I’m so angry at myself for possibly wrecking her fragile balance.  I’ll try to get a urine sample today.  I’ve been praying for help but have no sense of anything but cold stony indifference.  I listened to both Sharon Salzberg CDs, tried to feel compassion for myself, prayed for compassion for myself.
I keep thinking “I just want to die.” Then I say No— I want life to be easier.  And I want Bella to be OK and I want to be in touch with the sacred.  And I want to have compassion for myself — my poor foolish arrogant stupid self who wanted to have more and wrecked what she had.  Wanted more excitement in my life & got overtired.  Wanted Bella to have more variety in her food & set off an allergic reaction? a bladder infection?  And am finding it incredibly difficult to forgive myself.  Tho maybe I just got there — imagined I was somebody else and how bad they would feel, and then something softened.  There, there, dear, you didn’t mean to do it.

Managed to get a urine sample and took it to Littleton.  On the way back I started playing the slow Kyrie — my prayer – or one of them — has been for mercy.  I tried to imagine the face of Jesus and suddenly saw this face looking at me with great compassion.  It helped a little.  I don’t feel quite so lost in outer darkness as I did.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Trauma | Comments Off on Struggle

“Severe Practice”

Posted on March 11, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
Kevin said the fall at the beginning of the Nia training was a bigger injury than I realized, that he had worried about me.  (I fell on some wet steps, such that the corner of a step hit me right in the middle of my back and knocked the wind out of me.)  It’s my typical pattern — to minimize something that hurts me.  And the other pattern I keep doing over and over: to fail to see my limits, try to do too much, and crash.  And now I’m angry at myself for not seeing it coming and behaving more reasonably, and angry at myself for not having the strength to do the things I wrongly imagine I can do.  Well, what was it like for me as a child?  I was told “you should have known better”, instead of being given compassionate guidance, and loaded up with responsibilities that were beyond my capacity, so I think that’s normal.  I did manage to get to the crying with Kevin — the one where the belly wall moves in & out involuntarily.  I also reminded myself of times when I trusted the process and things worked out all right.
Kevin says my life is a “severe practice.” That seems like a very accurate description.  In the work with Kevin I remembered how the Dancer painting came out of disappointment acknowledged, felt fully, and then allowed to find expression.  We also talked about letting go completely and trusting the process.  I was able to remember times of trusting the process and how it worked, contrary to my learning early in life that the process/environment is not trustworthy — but I can’t remember any now.  Kevin knows to ask of good memories “How does that feel in your body?” and it felt more alive, like muscles were muscles again not just stuffing.  I had a brief hit of that feeling of being like a planet.

Kevin Frank is an amazing bodyworker in Holderness, NH.  His wife is Caryn McHose who is my trauma therapist.  They both work with the mind/body interface.  See their website for more information.

Posted in Breakdown, Healing | Comments Off on “Severe Practice”

Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes

Posted on March 10, 2011 by jenny

I’ve been reading Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes by Peter Levine and Maggie Kline.  Peter Levine is the person who developed Somatic Experiencing as a method for healing trauma.  The book describes a number of ways children can be traumatized from being born in a standard hospital, to falls and bicycle accidents, to simply having their basic needs neglected.  Trauma is NOT in the EVENT, it’s in the nervous system’s inability to cope with the event.  Babies and young children with highly sensitive nervous systems which are still developing are far more likely to be overwhelmed by events that wouldn’t faze an adult.

Imagine you’re a baby lying in her crib.  She’s so young she can’t even turn herself over yet. She’s hungry and she’s crying.  Crying is her only coping skill to try to let someone know she needs help.  The truth is that she is completely helpless to feed herself, and if someone else doesn’t bring her food, she WILL DIE.  Once the reptilian brain stem concludes that she is going to die, she enters the realm of trauma.  Mother may walk through the door with a bottle five minutes later and it’s too late.

I first read Waking the Tiger in June 2001.  This is Peter Levine’s earlier book about his theory of trauma based on studies of animals, and his development of a method of healing trauma.  When I got to the chapter on Hypervigilance, I went into a hypervigilant spiral, my terror went through the roof, and it lasted for months until I was finally calmed down by medication.  It was only at this point that I began to take seriously the idea that I had been traumatized, and started to see a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.

The mechanism behind hypervigilance starts with a nervous system that is easily triggered by innocuous happenings — a word said a certain way, a particular smell, even a door slamming.  Once the nervous system has been triggered into red alert, the person starts looking around for the danger.  When they can see nothing dangerous, the body doesn’t relax, as it would for a non-traumatized person, it stays in red alert.  The feeling is “I know I haven’t been able to see it, but it must be there because I still feel scared.” The search becomes desperate, and can’t end successfully because the scary event happened in the past.

Unfortunately, but as I expected, reading about traumatized infants and children definitely re-stimulated my own trauma.  Fortunately, because of years of Somatic Experiencing I’m much more resilient and able to handle it.  I knew what I was dealing with, I got the baby doll and held her as close as if to say “I know you’re having a hard time, and I’m here.” I let myself “hide” in a book, in computer solitaire, and didn’t force myself to go out and “enjoy” the beautiful day.

I suspect that what I was dealing with was birth trauma, because in the past I have often been uncomfortable on bright sunny days and been puzzled by it.  One day started out grey and rainy as I drove to Montpelier for a therapy appointment.  Part way over, the rain stopped, the clouds opened, there was brilliant sunlight, and I felt completely blasted, in a state of shock.  Later, when I thought about it — at that time I didn’t know enough to bring this up with my therapist — I saw that I had suddenly been transported from a dark wet environment to one with bright light and everything glittering.  I thought how this mirrors the transition from the dark wet womb to the brightly lit hard-edged environment of the hospital room.

Gosh!  Just writing that all out helps.  I feel much more solid.  AND, it’s clouded over since the morning.

To find out more about Somatic Experiencing and to find a Practitioner

Posted in Depression, Interesting link, Somatic Experiencing, Trauma | Comments Off on Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes

BEYOND Exhausted

Posted on March 9, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)

I’m BEYOND exhausted.

I’ve been here before and I’ve come out of it.  Many times.  The sense of “forever” is the baby’s, is part of the brain chemistry.  I’m just typing up from the beginning of July when I was full of energy and hope.  That part of my life is just as real as this dead hopelessness.

It’s so strange to be typing up from July when I had plenty of energy and was feeling good about myself and my life.  Nothing has really changed since then — I already knew my investments were down — but I got physically tired, there was too much bad news & not enough good news last week — so I raise my meds and hang on hoping it will work.  One thing I can do is cut back drastically on the money I give away.  My highest priority is to have something to leave for Neskaya.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression | Comments Off on BEYOND Exhausted

Defeated by Life

Posted on March 8, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
I’ve stopped trying.  I feel completely defeated by life.  I’m on a death march, and I want to keep going as well as I can, to strengthen my comrades, or at least not be a nuisance, but to stop fighting the inevitable.  It’s so funny, I was so proud of myself for being a fighter, for keeping going despite all the odds, and to arrive at a brief flowering of what my life might have been.  I’m glad I had that experience, I’m glad to know that what I always thought was possible, and kept striving for, is real.  But I see that I can’t sustain it by my own efforts, and that I don’t have enough support in my life for that level of good living to be sustained.  It takes everything I’ve got just to keep going, to keep feeding myself, walking the dog, and honoring my commitments.  At least I feel strengthened, that I can/will keep going as best I can.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Trauma | Comments Off on Defeated by Life

Exhausted

Posted on March 7, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)

(This is part of the ongoing series describing my breakdown that started with the entry for March 4, 2011.  I haven’t been able to deal with this material before without getting extremely anxious.)

Karen thinks I’m exhausted, that the visit to B.P. cost a lot more than I realized, that I hadn’t fully recovered when I entered the two weeks of Telling My Story, Hazel, Dance Camp, etc.  which was way too much.  Karen says I’m doing my best and I will recover.  What I see is that I’m doing my best and it’s not good enough.  It’s a struggle just to feed myself properly.  And I’m missing the community piece, I just don’t have enough support.  Karen suggested trying to find a Chi Gung class — I was saying how I hadn’t been able to keep up yoga since Sarah stopped teaching.  Actually, I’m hoping Nia classes will fill that empty space.
Wounded too badly to live.  I’m sitting here looking at the broken pieces of my life and acknowledging that I don’t have what it takes to pull it together and to even live a little of that wild, wide, and creative life that I think I had the capacity for.  Though who knows, maybe I’m wrong.  But I feel a tremendous pressure of unlived life inside me — that led me to the Nia training and the drama project — but I don’t have the physical strength and psychological robustness to keep going, to make up new Nia choreographies, etc.  I don’t have the base of support — a community of like-minded friends, some way to have meals be easier.  Without that greater level of support, I don’t see how to live that bigger life — but without some aspect of that bigger life, why go on?  Why go on fighting the daily battles: to get food, to walk the dog, to deal with the bureaucracy, to keep up the house, etc?  Only if it could support a life worth living.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Trauma | Comments Off on Exhausted

Why Go On?

Posted on March 6, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
Why go on?  This is a serious question this morning.  Not that I would try to kill myself today.  My chest hurts, it’s grey out, I’m deeply discouraged.
The Planet I love is in deep trouble, what little I can do to help seems so small and pitifully inadequate.
I need a sense of community — my community feels tiny and scattered.  I need to be effective and I’m too tired to keep my house clean.  I need to make a contribution and what skills I have and what wisdom I have gained are not much use to anybody, not much in demand.  I need a sense of hope, of a larger context and meaning, and it’s all gone.
Went down to Dover with some musician friends to do a “diversity” program for a company — it was a little discouraging.  Very few got up to dance which triggered all my stuff about being unattractive and inadequate.  We talked about ways we might do it differently to get more people to participate.
Well, I can see how an experience like that could re-stimulate my daily experience in my family of origin that what I have to give wasn’t valued or wanted.  This is the opposite of my experience in Laura’s training last spring where the women were delighted with and grateful for what I was offering.  That one was disconcerting because it went so strongly against my previous beliefs.  The other one — yesterday’s — feels like the way it is.  It also felt — highly familiar feeling — like I was trying to lift a huge heavy weight all by myself.
I wish I were part of a group engaged in a project — doing something good for the planet — and the group was basically effective (I think of Heifer) — and I just played a little supporting role.  So I did not have to do it all myself, so I wasn’t in the limelight, so my failures and inadequacies would not matter so much.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Trauma | Comments Off on Why Go On?

Bleak

Posted on March 5, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
I’m in some very bleak place staring at a very bleak truth.  I really don’t believe that I have any worth or value in myself, I really profoundly believe that the people who are my “friends” only stay around as long as I’m helpful and positive, that as soon as I become a “nuisance”, i.e. need or ask for help, then they will go away and leave me.  This belief is so deep, and so obvious, that it’s hard to verbalize.  It doesn’t look like a belief, it looks like reality.  Well at least I can make that distinction intellectually.  And I can see that I learned that belief from a mother who treated me like I had no value (except when I could entertain her, except when I would do what she wanted) and who abandoned me when I was a nuisance — i.e. cried for food.
So what do I do about it?  How do I learn — or choose — to value this worthless lump of protoplasm?  Intellectually — maybe even spiritually — I hold the belief that every thing has value, every organism has a place and a part to play in the whole.  (God didn’t create the universe, God became the universe) there is a “seed of god” inside me as there is inside every other being.  I need to find that seed of god.  But when I go to that deepest place, I hit the hard stoniness of my worthlessness.
Two things I can do.  1) Why do I value the people I value? 2) investigate the stoniness.
1) I was thinking that I love Eleanor, my friend who struggles with PTSD — because she has done good things for me?  Not really. Because she is not a nuisance?  No.  She is a nuisance, she has meant a lot of hard work — but work that I value because it has taught me compassion for myself.  The actual things she has done are not as important as the fact that she cares about me, and is willing to be present to my pain.  I don’t value her for the things she does but for the values she holds and strives to live by in her very difficult life.  I love her for the things she values, not for the things she actually manages to do.  So can I value myself for the things I value?  Truth, integrity, compassion?  All the beings on the planet? For a moment my heart grows warm — this is the seed of god inside me — and then it gets cold again.  I value these things because I value them, how can I say that’s “god”?
Why do I love Bella? Well partly because she’s beautiful, and partly because she loves me, but also because she’s Bella with her unique personality, her stubbornness, feistiness, and passive-aggressive behavior.  I adore her and she’s a pain, and she makes me laugh.
Other tack.  2) investigate the stoniness.  How do I know I’m worthless?  The huge dull dead weight in my chest, the lump in my throat.  The heaviness that clogs my limbs and makes it hard to get up and … wash dishes, clean up the dog mess, make a cup of tea.  This heavy dull weight.  I can feel it in my jaw. Now my stomach feels nauseous.  The color is grey.  I see a grey blob sitting in a colorful world — there’s just a moment when my heart goes out to her — now there are tears behind my eyes and a lump in my throat.  Connected to the nausea.  I feel weak and frozen.  What does weak & frozen want to do?  Find a place of warmth, find someone to love me — o god. And then if there were someone who loved me I wouldn’t believe it.     And that’s the place I’m stuck.

Posted in Breakdown, Depression, Spirit, Trauma | Comments Off on Bleak