Guidance

Posted on October 28, 2010 by jenny

(Written in January 2007)
Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling pretty bleak. My heart feels like a stone, & nothing I do, or think of, helps it soften. When Lynelle said “too much pain” something cracked open, but it’s closed again. Please help me.
Dear Jenny, your stony feeling is another dark night of the soul. Your task is to witness it, stay with it, offer compassion, or at least have the INTENT of compassion. There is nothing wrong with you or defective, that you are stuck in this cold unfeeling place. The fact that you refuse to live your life from this place shows who you really are, and attests to the truth about the universe. The universe is not a cold, uncaring place. It is full of creativity and a vast compassion. Bring your cold stoniness to this compassion and relax. You only need to hold them together, you do not need to make anything change.

Posted in Guidance | Comments Off on Guidance

Guidance

Posted on October 27, 2010 by jenny

(Written in January 2007)
Woke early feeling very lost. We stayed up late watching Spitfire Grill. I think I may have seen it before, but can’t remember for sure. There was a Viet Nam vet living in the woods, and at one point the heroine says something like: “Some wounds are so deep it hurts worse to heal them.” That really resonates for me. It’s the only thing that makes sense of my life — that I’m trying to heal wounds that are huge and deep and old, that to heal them, I have to feel them again. So the lost feelings are those of a baby whose mother has rejected it, a child who has no where to turn for help or comfort, an adult who keeps being overwhelmed with feelings of despair and terror, and all the unnamable feelings of isolation, cold, lostness.

Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling pretty bummed out and very lost. Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we love you. We gather around you sending warmth and affection your way. You work so hard! And you so badly want to give good things to people. Dear, you YOURSELF are the gift of your life. All your hard work on yourself, and the wisdom you have learned from the struggle with despair and terror are what you embody in the world. When Jane says she feels safe to talk to you about ANYTHING, when someone in a workshop comments on your authenticity, they are responding to the energy of compassion that you embody. You change the world by your very presence. Relax, dear, stop trying so hard. It is perfectly appropriate for you to focus all your energy on taking care of yourself. WE LOVE YOU.

Posted in Guidance, Trauma | Comments Off on Guidance

“Don’t Care”

Posted on October 26, 2010 by jenny

Karen, my therapist in Montpelier, was helpful though I didn’t have a lot to say. Somehow I got onto the belief that not doing something was equivalent to not caring. I think this is part of what gets me in trouble with Eleanor, when I can’t do something for her. I feel so desperately awful, that I’ve failed her so badly, and I also feel the ugly feeling of having my very real caring be invalidated. But because that doesn’t come up in words, I can’t do anything about it. Instead I feel wrong and bad and like I shouldn’t be here. I told her about Mother and “You don’t care about the Colonial Dames” and how I couldn’t think of an answer until later when I realized I could have said “It’s true I don’t care about the Colonial Dames, but I’m glad you have something you’re excited about.” Of course that wouldn’t have satisfied Mom, but at least I would have spoken my truth. I said to Karen that the only thing that would have satisfied her would have been if I were interested in the Colonial Dames and joined them. Karen said even that wouldn’t have worked, and I realized that was probably true, and then I started to cry. I cried for that little girl who wanted so much to make her mother happy, and tried so hard, and because her mother refused to receive her offerings and love her back, she took that as meaning she was unloving and unlovable. I cried and cried for that little girl who deserved so much better. I can feel the sadness now and tears in my eyes. It’s so painful to accept that nothing I could do would have made her happy. I think of all the evidence in the 4th of July monologue that NOTHING would work. I hurt so much for that little girl. I hold out my arms and she comes running and I hold her while she cries and I tell her “You are a good person, a caring person, and your mother was wounded in ways she couldn’t let herself know about, which would have been the only way she could have healed.”
Karen kept asking what the feeling was — “don’t care” is a thought. What’s hard is I can’t begin to describe it, in fact I think part of the dynamic is to hold me unaware of what’s going on. I dissociate and go into denial. I feel terrible, my heart squeezed and hardened, and perhaps my body trying to shrink. That’s what Karen observed and translated “it’s not OK to be here. I’m not safe.” There’s probably a feeling of conflict and also of invalidation, as when someone tells me something about me that’s not true but I accept it, because the part of me that knows it’s not true is not strong enough to insist. The invalidation is so conditioned into me that I have to deduce it, I don’t experience it. God, how is it possible to change something so deep? I’ll ask Caryn when she comes back.
How did I start to separate out caring about a person from caring about their property? One was the time I told my husband he “didn’t care” and his answer was that he DID care, about me, but just couldn’t do what I wanted him to. (See the post for October 17, 2010) I see that Mother taught me that caring about a person meant caring about their things and ideas too. The second time I began to see the two things were not the same was when I was down at our summer house in Maine, and my sister’s daughters had left their beach towels draped over furniture on the porch. Mother was complaining about the mess, and I said “Aren’t you glad they’re here? Of course they don’t care where they put their towels” and Mom said “Yes, they don’t care about me.” I was stunned, realizing that Mother couldn’t make that distinction, and then remembering the time Dana had challenged me about the same issue.

Posted in Depression, Healing, Present Day | Comments Off on “Don’t Care”

Try to do Too Much

Posted on October 24, 2010 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
I’m feeling so discouraged and defeated. I see how, when I was feeling better in the summer, I did the COA black & white thing “I’m all better now.” And so I immediately wanted to widen my life — to take workshops in counseling techniques etc — so I piled more stuff on myself as well as trying to get off the medication. I see now how foolish that was — I’ve lost ground so badly — I’m back in the place where it’s too hard just to get up in the morning, just to keep up the normal schedule here at Neskaya. I’m very angry at myself for being so stupid. And I’m very disappointed because somewhere in me I want to have that wider life — to go to Jalaja’s workshop, the Windhorse training, visit Bobbi on Cape Cod. I can see better the cycle that Karen talked about, how when I’m in an upswing I pile on more & more instead of building in time for the down cycle and so I crash instead of coming down gently.
So discouraged. But at least I don’t feel as lost as I did yesterday. I didn’t do anything to try to bring myself out of it. I started the music for “Turning Toward the Morning” and did the dance to express my bleakness — but it helped. I look at my painting of the dancer that appeared when I surrendered to disappointment. That’s the sort of transformation that Greenspan talks about. I suppose if one could get skilled at allowing these emotions to move, it would not be so upsetting that they keep coming back again and again. I imagine/hope that I can be completely free of them — that’s what I thought last summer — Dave tried to warn me, but of course in the up place the downs don’t look like a big deal. Somehow I have to find a balance — enough little joys every day to strengthen me for the inevitable losses and disappointments.
OK. I don’t want to move and I need to go on with my day. There there Jenny, what you are doing is very hard. Courage my dear.

Breakfast, wash dishes, water plants, dance to Shoror. My heart aches so that it’s very hard to keep doing things, but now that I’ve stopped I’m feeling the fear again. There’s no place to rest, no place safe to be. It’s a beautiful day out there, autumn gold — intensified by mist earlier, and it doesn’t touch me, doesn’t lift my heart. I feel so bleak and dark inside, and I so love the beauty of the world and grieve that I’m unable to celebrate it.

Dear Spirits, I’m pretty bummed out. Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we think you should raise your meds back to 100. This is being altogether too hard for you. Medication is neither good nor bad, it is a way you can support yourself when other kinds of support aren’t available. There is no support for you in the culture and too much pressure in the opposite direction, not to mention all the COA stuff: judging yourself without mercy, making things too black and white, etc. Yes, if you lived in a therapeutic/spiritual community you might be able to get by on less medication, but that’s not a realistic option for you right now. Yes, go ahead and call the doctor.

Posted in Depression, Guidance | Comments Off on Try to do Too Much

Struggle with Depression

Posted on October 23, 2010 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
A dream about grade school – where I learned not to let on that I wanted something for it wouldn’t be given. Family was that way too. I think about babies who die because no one is there for them emotionally. This is no foundation for a life — for living with any sense of energy or delight or vitality — for being able to go out and meet both the joys and the disasters with a sense of adventure — this is what I really value and so want to be able to do: to meet life with courage, every fiber of me engaged, fully in the present… and this is why I’m so angry and disappointed in myself, for being so numb and dead, for shrinking from the daily tasks — as though if I would only choose to, I could go out and meet life with a gay spirit…
I felt a little better while I was writing about the dream, and I did feel some love in my heart— yes, DAMMIT, I do love life, and that’s why it’s so painful to go out into the world, to go to the laundromat and see people isolated in their cars, the world around them all paved, vacant-eyed people going through the motions, reading the ‘want ads’ while their laundry spins in machines — instead of going with others to the banks of the river and using their bodies to get the clothes clean. Some of this sense of isolation and hopelessness is projection of my own state, not everybody was numb. There were the two young men wrestling and laughing, the woman who came up and helped me…

Dear Spirits, please help me!
Dear Jenny, we encourage you to stay in this place of emptiness. There is great richness here. Do not be afraid. You cannot be stuck here forever, or rather this place is no different than any other place you’ve been, it’s still in the hands of god, still part of the territory of life that you are exploring.
There was another thought and I lost it! Please tell me again!
Dear Jenny, it doesn’t matter. It will come around again as dreams keep coming until you are able to pay attention to them. There are infinite numbers of “second chances”, there is no way that you can make an irredeemable mistake. Dear Jenny, do you not see your profound love of life, that makes you so angry when you see it squandered? Angry because you imagine that those others are doing it willfully, whereas you are stuck with no choice having been inflicted with depression like a birth defect… or else the story changes and it’s you who are willfully refusing to enjoy a life that you know is good. Dear, no one willfully refuses the gift of living with energy and eagerness, unless they have been hurt. Everybody wants to be happy, and everybody is either reacting to pain by pulling away (understandable and forgivable) or else they are struggling, as you are, to learn how to use their hurts in the service of greater consciousness and compassion. No matter how lost you feel, this is your intention, this is what you are doing with your life.

Posted in Depression, Guidance, Spirit | Comments Off on Struggle with Depression

Struggle with Fear

Posted on October 22, 2010 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Yesterday evening was pretty good. I felt quiet & peaceful & tired. Made supper, enjoyed the sunset, read and washed dishes. That’s how I’d like my life to be. Woke OK this morning but then hot flash and fear which faded. Sat up & did the forward bend. Still some edges of fear — lay down again & tried to bring compassion to my discomfort but couldn’t really feel it. Alas I seem to have beginners’ luck with these things. They work brilliantly the first time & then don’t work again. I guess I must have some expectation for how it’s “supposed to be”. I wish I could wake up in the morning feeling comfortable and then get up because I want to instead of making myself get up because it’s become too uncomfortable to stay in bed.
I don’t know how I’m going to get through this day. Maybe I should do an “ashram day” — meditation, reading/writing, housework. There are a lot of little nibbitchy things that need to be done that would fit in just fine.
Neighbor dog barking. Bring compassion to poor Jenny whose nervous system reacts badly. There, there, dear, you are not in charge of how you react, only in what you do with it. There, there, dear, it’s painful to be so sensitive.

Feeling so sad about the state of our planet — the enormous numbers who are suffering from war, famine, refugees, and all the animals & plants that we are destroying in our greed and ignorance. I can feel how much I love the earth and how sad I am because of all the suffering. I need us to be acknowledging our interdependence, and cooperating for the greater good of all of us. I had a strong sense of oneness — how what we do do the creatures we do to ourselves. I have a feeling of carrying the planet — our desperately wounded planet — in my heart. I’m staying with the sadness as best I can while going on with the housework. I feel the fear that just staying with it, and not doing anything to change it, means I’ll stay stuck in the sadness. Bring compassion to that fear.

Feeling pretty bummed out. Can’t tell any more if I’m sincerely staying with my pain about the world or if I’ve just got lost in my own misery. Bring compassion to the misery, bring compassion to the sadness. There, there, Jenny, you’ve been frightened and sad this morning, easily upset… And the phone rang, and it was Kayla. I told her what was going on for me and she gave me a quote from Pema Chodron: “The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.”
Paid all the bills. Got in trouble trying to reconcile the account in the computer — failed to check off one deposit — didn’t see how to go back and change it. Burst into tears and I continue to feel upset. I think I must be very angry at myself — first for making the mistake and then for letting it upset me so much. I tried reading Pema Chodron (Things Fall Apart) but it didn’t help. Just another assignment that I’m failing at. She talks about seeing ourselves with both clarity and kindness — and I think I’m doing that and it’s hard work and it doesn’t make me feel any better. I want to feel better. I want to be a different kind of person. I want to be able to live in the moment ——
Actually, I’m not looking at myself with clarity — I’m too caught up in how awful I am and how painful it is to be me. I feel like I’m just grinding myself down, and I don’t know how to stop it.

Posted in Depression | Comments Off on Struggle with Fear

What Depression Does for Me

Posted on October 21, 2010 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
Woke at 5:41 terrified. Tried to bring compassion to my fear. No softening, all is meaningless. No sense of contact with the spirit realm.
Last night at NVC check-in I talked about my despair. I said I need to know that what I do makes a difference — and then something about fear for the world — how things are getting worse — needing to know that there’s a spiritual realm. I see now that what I need is to know that the spirit realm is much bigger than the earth and holds it gently and lovingly. I said at the end that I thought we needed to practice empathy and recommended that we do Chapter 12: Liberating Ourselves and Counseling Others. I see now that I was dimly perceiving the importance of supporting each other in the place we are now, rather than trying to push ourselves to get where we want to be. (O my, what an easing in my heart. This is the answer to my own problem — I’m so desperately trying to be somewhere else than I am — wanting to “have my life again” and not be stuck in this place of despair and meaninglessness.)
Despair/depression takes away everything but the core — and the core is truth, or true self. So there’s integrity in the willingness to face the darkness and not brush it aside with medication.
So what has despair/depression done for me? By making everything meaningless, it forces me to renew my commitment to the dances: as expressions of human pain and joy, of connection with community, nature and the divine, as expressions of diversity. When even Neskaya becomes meaningless, then the place I come back to is that my work on the transformation of myself — in particular bringing compassion to my pain — is also work on the human energy field — and it’s really the only work that has any possibility of making a real difference because all manifestation/change in the physical realm is subject to death and disintegration. So if Neskaya really does function as a “healing sanctuary” it’s not because of the building (tho it’s important that it exists as a container) or because I keep the building clean, but because of my work on myself, my continued efforts to become more conscious of what is going on in me, and to bring compassion to all of it.
I’m so surprised. Waking in fear, I thought I was in for another bad day, but this writing has helped a lot. Still, I don’t think “I’m fine now”, I still feel pretty precarious and unable to make decisions, function in the world. I hope I’ll at least be able to shower and wash my hair. And if I can’t, then compassion for this poor woman who’s having such a hard time.

Posted in Depression, Healing, Journal | Comments Off on What Depression Does for Me

Despair

Posted on October 20, 2010 by jenny

(Written in October 2003)
What I am feeling is despair. I feel “like” my life has been wasted in a meaningless struggle, etc. But that’s a thought. What am I feeling in my body? Ache and heaviness of heart, weakness of limbs, nausea in stomach. I’m afraid that I can’t take care of myself — but I do know where the next meal is coming from, it’s heating on the stove. Gosh — I haven’t a clue how to work with this.
I’m scared because the current political situation looks so huge and hopeless. It’s worse than a war, it’s a war of the rich and powerful on the poor and helpless — everything worthwhile is disintegrating — “resource wars” — no sense of community — our circle dance community is over-extended, etc. I feel like a small person trying to keep a small candle alight in a huge and windy darkness. Is it worth holding on to the candle? Yes of course. And the huge windy darkness is also spirit. The current political horror show is just a design on the hem of the robe of god. Am I wrong to try to alleviate suffering in the people closest to me, and to acknowledge that there’s not much I can do to affect the big picture? NO. I’m doing the best I can and that’s enough. The rest is on the lap of the gods. There’s no guarantee of success on the material plane. Therefore the battle, and the victory, occur in the spiritual realm. My efforts to bring compassion to my despair, just the continuing effort, is itself victory. “The world is always turning toward the morning.” There. I feel strengthened.

I realize I’m angry at myself for “lying around doing nothing”, for not being able to “push past” the nausea and weakness. OK, can I bring compassion to my misery and anger? This poor woman — she’s feeling sick, for god’s sake, and the dog has been sick and she’s worried about her, and tired from two days of driving and a weekend deep in the Pit. I was going to let myself “convalesce” today — thinking that I’ve done enough — but I thought I’d be comfortable resting. Instead I’m giving myself a bad time. I love the natural world, and I want to enjoy it and it’s very painful to be unable to.
Too much analysis, too much left-brain, too much trying to figure it out.

Posted in Depression, Journal, Spirit, Trauma | Comments Off on Despair

Guidance

Posted on October 19, 2010 by jenny

(Written in February 2007)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling a little bit lost. I feel like I’ve been soldiering on through depression and headache, and today I feel enough better to what? try to do some “real” living for once? expand out of strict survival mode? Please help me.

Dear Jenny, there is no need to do anything different, no need to push yourself — except perhaps to get yourself to the studio — and it’s OK to sit up there and do nothing. We suspect that you are thinking that you “ought” to push yourself and we say NO, don’t do that. How about seeing how much you can enjoy today?

On that thought something painful comes up in my heart.

Yes. You were taught to believe that it was not OK to enjoy your life, and you’ve had too many experiences of starting to feel enjoyment and then being hurt by someone else — e.g. David V, your mother. Shelter your wounded heart, and gently let yourself enjoy small things — the chickadees, bringing in wood, etc. Remember that we love you. Remember that there is an enormous amount of love coming your way, that Spirit created you just as you are because you were needed to complete the universe. It’s OK to be you, JUST AS YOU ARE.

Posted in Depression, Guidance | Comments Off on Guidance

“Should” and Compassion

Posted on October 17, 2010 by jenny

Reading from my journal from June 2010 I see how I create misery for myself by a convoluted and distorted thinking process, and my inability to trust my own goodness. My heart just went out to me, lots of compassion for this person who creates her own misery and doesn’t know how to stop it. And she works so hard to heal. There, there, dear. I put my arms around her and we cry on each other’s shoulders.
The entry that brought up these feelings is from June 26, 2010. My father’s birthday. I talk about how thinking that I “should” do something really wrecks it. Like “I should fill the hummingbird feeder.” But the truth is it’s not a ”should.” Who /what is telling me I “should”? I WANT to fill the feeder, because I enjoy the hummingbirds, but I don’t have the energy. When I have the energy I just do it and don’t get into conflict about it. I think if it’s something I really want to do, and I really don’t have the energy, instead of bringing compassion to myself for being in this painful place of wanting to do something and not having the energy, I make myself wrong for not having energy, and pull out “should” to force/manipulate myself to do the things. Well of course that makes me feel bad. This also makes me think of Mother’s “don’t care” by which she meant “you don’t care about me so you won’t do the things I want you to do.” Mother never understood that it was possible to care about someone and yet have good reasons for not doing something they want you to. I remember telling Dana he “didn’t care about me” when he wouldn’t do something for me. He got angry and said “I do so care about you, I just can’t (or don’t want to) do the item.” This made me see that there was a big distinction here. I still do it to myself, I still make myself wrong for not doing something for someone I care about. (It happens automatically, I don’t consciously do it, and have to deduce from my feelings that I’m making myself wrong.) But there was another time when I wanted to do something and didn’t have the energy, and Dana said “You don’t really want to.” That was painfully invalidating for me and helped keep the dynamic going. I think I wasn’t able to begin to drop it until I was diagnosed with low thyroid (something it took an alternate practitioner to find.) Now when my energy is low, I can remind myself that I’m dealing with depression and immobilizing fear rooted in PTSD, and my thyroid is underactive, and I can forgive myself.
Alternate practitioner Kurt Vreeland

Posted in Depression, Healing, Journal | Comments Off on “Should” and Compassion