Not enough support

Posted on March 10, 2010 by jenny

(Written in May 2009)
Last night when I got home I just felt completely exhausted and discouraged.  I’m so tired of trying to remember all the things I need to keep doing to heal, and I don’t know if any of these things are actually helping.  Last night I just felt so despairing that I quit trying, spent the evening reading Lord of the Rings.

Why do I care if people know how I feel?  I do want people to know how I feel, not so they will feel sorry for me, but so they will forgive me for not doing better with my life.  I guess it’s really me who needs to forgive me for not doing better with my life.  Why do I wish I had done better with my life?  So people would admire me and think I was special?  The irony is there are a lot of people who admire me and think I’ve done something wonderful in building and maintaining Neskaya.  But it doesn’t touch me, I can’t take it in.  And I didn’t do it for them anyway, or to prove something to my parents.  I did it for the dances, which I love, for the sacred calendar, for the sacred dimension of the world.

So before whom do I feel like a failure?  Before Spirit.  Spirit gave me this life, and a set of talents and a lot of creativity — and I haven’t begun to live the life — wide, wild, creative — that should have sprung from these roots.  On the other hand, I was badly wounded, damaged at the beginning, in such a way that living my creative life was impossible.  I’ve had to fight for it every step of the way, fighting internalized voices that tell me that expressing myself is wicked and/or worthless.  I haven’t been able to bring the creative seed into full flower.  Could I have done it?  Spirit remains silent.  I think I should have done better, should have worked harder to heal…   But it’s taken everything I’ve got to get this far.  And I’m exhausted.  I haven’t got the energy to keep doing things that might help.  It would probably be good if I could do yoga, but right now I can’t do it without the support of a teacher and a class.

What was I supposed to have done?  What could I have done differently?  I tried so many different things, that didn’t help, or helped a little but then stopped working.  I could have gone on medication sooner, but given my resistance to using drugs because of my parents’ alcoholism, it was really unlikely.  I could have tried Somatic Experiencing sooner — but I didn’t realize I had been traumatized.  It took me quite a long time to believe it.  And I had seen the ad for the tape set in Sounds True which said “get better without years of expensive psychotherapy”, and I was suspicious because I had tried other “quick roads”: NLP, the auditory training, healers that others recommended, which didn’t work.  So what could I have done differently?  Worked harder, been more disciplined…   That inner voice has pushed me all my life to “soldier on” in the service of some impossible ideal, and some illusion that I could actually do more than I’m really able to do.  Perseverance is needed for Somatic Experiencing it’s true, but pushing and striving don’t work.

What is really needed to heal from these kinds of wounds is gentleness and patience, and I’m not very good with those, despite years of Karen’s repeating and modeling the words.  Well, at least I don’t feel like I messed up my life with conscious choices — or even unconscious ones.  There must be a lot of people out there with huge regrets — If only I hadn’t done X or Y or Z.  At least I don’t have that.

I finally asked Spirit “Do you forgive me?” and Spirit said “of course” with a lot of warmth.  So I’m the one who’s having a hard time forgiving me.  I should have known what to do and then done it.  I should have figured out the right thing.  Instead I stumbled around, struggling with anxiety and depression, desperately trying to find someone to love me and choosing men who didn’t want to commit, desperately trying to prove I deserved to live.
So I’m really angry at myself for not doing better.  I’m angry at myself for not being able to go out and work in the garden on this beautiful day.  Or even haul in loads of wood.  I was able to work in the garden when I got back from the good session with Caryn.  I was at least able to hang out with Linda while she worked in the garden.  I wasn’t able to do much.  I am truly doing the best I can.  Here come the tears and the sadness.  I simply haven’t got what it takes to do more, my moral and physical energy has collapsed.  Perhaps that’s from soldiering on to get a lot done yesterday.

So do I forgive myself for not doing better?  Yes.  The truth is I don’t have enough support.  I don’t have enough friends who are willing to accept me as I am, and spend time with me, do grief work with me, feed me.  I do have Janet, Linda, Pat, Ann, and Randi.  Beverly is too far away, Lynelle has enough on her plate already.  Doing this really deep emotional work doesn’t leave much energy for the surface practical level.  I’m barely hanging on.

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Somatic Experiencing

Posted on March 9, 2010 by jenny

(Written in April 2009)

Intense session with Caryn.  I described my sense of total despair at the beginning.  Caryn suggested sitting with it, being curious about it.  My body felt relaxed, flat, no energy.  I think then some activation happened which started the process.  Started with crying, followed my body to lie down and writhe, which became pounding & wanting to bang my head.  Pounding became the gesture of wanting to push something along — I thought of my rope of grief and misery — there was also a sense of wanting to vomit, get something out of me.  Caryn asked where in my body did I not feel the misery.  I said in my arms & legs.  She said to stay with that for a while.  Then Caryn said she had a long piece of black cloth, and went to get it.  I stuffed it in my front, pulling the end out of the neck.  I pulled it out slowly with that same gesture of pushing along the seaweed rope.  I pushed it all out and flung it away from me into a heap on the floor.  Caryn asked me to talk to it, so I did.  More effectively than an earlier time — I see I had done that from the head because I thought I “ought” to, because of what Barbara said and intellectually knowing I must be angry…  This time the anger came from the body, that’s what counts, that’s what works.  So I told mother she was a nasty woman, that she’d wrecked my life by leaving me alone too long.  I talked about the nasty things she said to me.  All I could feel coming from the black lump was denial so I said “Go ahead and drink.  You don’t what to know what’s happening, you don’t want to hear my pain.” Finally I felt finished.  Caryn and I talked a little — maybe her trip to Wales and Greece.  I thought of some good times with Mom: the birthday party and small transparent plastic animals, bringing out the Christmas decorations, going to the theater — Playhouse in the Park and Shakespeare at Litchfield.  I should probably add when she gave me the loom, and the Russian box, and a good visit in Portland, perhaps one in Brunswick, and a good time with her after Dad’s death when she wasn’t drinking.  A pretty pitiful harvest for one of the most important relationships in my life.
Left out a piece. After pushing out the cloth, my hands wanted to claw and tear so Caryn brought a piece of paper and I tore most of it to bits.  I left a few big pieces, suddenly realizing I was done and didn’t have to keep doing it just because the amount of paper wasn’t finished.  I threw the pieces up in the air, and lay down in the middle of them and waved my arms & legs.  Then I was tired and Caryn brought a cube that I could rest my legs on.  Then I pushed the cube away and Caryn held it and turned it so I could both keep contact and have the satisfying feeling of pushing it away.  At the end, lying in the middle of the torn paper with my knees on the cube, she said it was new for me to be lying flat in a symmetrical pose.  Also, she asked me what it was like to have got rid of all that stuff.  I said I felt hollow in the middle and protective of that space.


The “seaweed rope” came from a gesture in an earlier session, and became a piece of woven scraps of dark cloth, with white strips saying names of people who had abandoned me, and cruel things that Mom said to me.  Eventually, I plan to use it as part of a ritual.

Caryn McHose does Somatic Experiencing in Holderness, NH     See her website

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Circle Dance

Posted on March 7, 2010 by jenny

One of the things I love about our Circle Dance Network is the grassroots quality, the liveliness, the “anarchy” which can lead to abuses like someone teaching a distorted version of a dance as “authentic”.  But I don’t see how you prevent that from happening without developing bureaucratic restrictions and rigidity.  Or losing the input from some truly creative person who comes in from another lineage.  I see Sacred/Circle/World Dance as part of the folk tradition and I see the folk tradition as a huge river of many sources, braiding them together, and creating a wide delta with many mouths.  So much richness!  And to me it contains the best of the human spirit, the richness and diversity that bursts out into communal celebration. We worry about trying to preserve something, but I think that’s a mistake.  Preserve as many dances as possible, not as museum pieces, but as living entities that change and evolve as they move into changing conditions.  Specific dances will get lost along the way, and that’s an occasion for mourning, as is the loss of species from our beautiful planet.  But the creative spirit that generates dances as community celebration will go on.  I am firmly convinced that there will be people dancing in circles around campfires in the far future — even if there are only 10,000 people living near the poles on a shrouded and overheated planet.
for more about Circle Dance

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Guidance

Posted on March 5, 2010 by jenny

Written in February 2009

Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling very lost and confused.  I’ve no idea what happened to me, why I’ve collapsed so badly.  I’ve no idea what to do except follow Dr. Seigle’s program and keep working with Karen and Caryn.  The life I had is gone, and I don’t know how to keep going.  I’ve been asking God to please show me what he/she/it/they want me to do with what’s left.  But I haven’t had any answer. Can you help me?

Dear Jenny, you are greatly loved.  Relax and try to let some of it reach you, drop by drop.  You are needing to grieve that your childhood was so barren and that the lack of support set you up for a lifetime of stumbles and failures.  Despite this you have managed to create good things and good changes in people’s lives.  Your task now is to let yourself heal.  This is what “god” wants you to do.  Following Dr. Seigle’s program and asking for help are very important parts of your healing.  You are in a healing process.  We know it’s hard for you that it moves so slowly.  This is an indicator of the depth of the damage, not that you are doing anything wrong.  Dear Jenny, you are much too hard on yourself and you have totally unreasonable expectations of what you can do, and you fail to give yourself credit for the hard work you have done and for your courage in keeping going.  Remember that we love and support you and are all around you.

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Tough Times Living with PTSD

Posted on March 4, 2010 by jenny

I think I must be in a pretty bad state of self-rejection.  I’m angry at myself for being depressed again after the good session with Caryn.  I’m angry at myself for not being able to use the success of the project — everyone had fun — to combat my sense of helpless failure.  I’m angry at myself for not being able to think of something to do to bring me out of it.  I’m angry at myself for just sitting here on the couch, hardly able to move.  I just want to lie down and die.  I wish I had someone to talk to who cares about me.  That thought brings tears.  May 2009

Lynelle was very helpful.  She reminded me that Caryn (my trauma therapist) leaving would be very hard for me because we have been doing such deep work.  She also reminded me that growing up in a family that forced me to be an adult, to act like an adult when I didn’t have the resources to be an adult, left me with the expectation that I can and should be able to do more than I can do.  I have no realistic sense of my limits.  This past year I have been forced to see how limited I am and how fragile, and how much support I need.  But I continue to carry this expectation that I can do more than I can, and disappointment and anger at myself when I can’t do it.  No wonder I’m depressed.  Lynelle also said that with Caryn gone I need to treat myself with great gentleness.  Being witnessed and understood and crying a lot helped enormously.  My heart eased and I was able to feel fairly normal as I went on through the day.
In the evening I felt very lost again.  I can’t do a lot of things I’d like to be able to do because of my unhealed wounds, and I’m working as hard as I can to heal them.  But it’s hard long painstaking work, that leaves me exhausted, and that depends on having a skilled guide, I can’t do it by myself.  And just surviving from day to day takes all the energy I’ve got.  I do have some support, but could use a lot more.  Trying to do this work is against the flow of the culture, there’s no help or understanding or validation out there.  Most people really don’t know what I’m up against.     June 2009

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Art Show

Posted on March 2, 2010 by jenny

Lore said there was a chance for a showing of my work in May, at the same place the other show was.  The theme would be “Art as a Healing Process.” I like the idea.  Took the paintings I showed to Lore to Neskaya and laid them out on the floor.  A pretty impressive body of work.  I also like the evidence of artistic growth.

Hung my show, called My Healing HeART, at Springfield College yesterday.  Lore helped.  A woman from the staff interviewed me.  It looked quite amazing up on the walls.  I have no idea what the impact would be if I hadn’t seen them before, if I didn’t know they were mine.

I still have to print out some commentary, get the cut open heart and the Gremlin House ready to go, and take the framed ones to Lore.  And make a cover for the Art/Heart book — I went down to FBC and copied the pages — it was a lot of fun — the pieces that hadn’t been glued down slithered around and I could use some of them over & over.  I really liked the result.

Did a heart painting, printed out the title from my computer with a different type face and color for each letter.  When I got to Lore I cut out the letters and glued them to the painting.  There was a space in the upper right corner so I signed my name in markers on a separate paper, tore out the one I like best and put it in the space.
She liked the commentary I had written, so we’re going to make copies for people to read as they walk around the exhibit.  I still have to make titles and finish the three-chambered heart.

Took some friends to see my show yesterday afternoon.  They were excited about it.  I got a lot of email congratulations which really warmed my heart.  I realize how deep the expectation is that no one will respond.  I took a bunch of pictures.

May 2007

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Positive Feedback

Posted on March 1, 2010 by jenny

(written in July 2009)

I think of Elizabeth’s letter to me [10/25/05] where she talks about my commitment, my vision and my generosity.  I remember when I first read it, I had a wonderful feeling of “I’ve done it.  I’ve become the person I want to be.” And relief — I don’t have to keep trying so hard.  But it faded.  The conditioning that I’m not good enough is so strong and deep.  I’m thinking of listing all the good things people have said to me, and reading them over and over.  People have suggested that I do this, but I haven’t really taken it seriously.  So I’ll start right now.  I can find in my journal a lot of passages about good things I’ve done or people have said to me and make another document.  I started to make a list.  It’s feeling good to write it all down, I still feel odd but warmer and more solid.  Then a momentary thought — I’m being conceited — NO! I’m letting myself see and feel my real worth.  What if I really got it that I’m a good person doing good things in the world?  Would I swagger around bragging?  Would I get lazy and stop doing things?  NOT AT ALL.  I would be able to relax.  I would stop pushing myself.  I would stop making myself wrong and being angry at myself for being not good enough.  I might even have more energy for the things I love to do: decorate and care for Neskaya, teach dance programs.
Elizabeth said “You go off into uncharted territory — your wounds are your opening.” I talked to her yesterday.  A really good talk.  She said she always feels better after talking to me.  I read her the letter she wrote me about my “boundless generosity, breadth of vision, depth of commitment,” and my reaction, having trouble believing it at first, and then the relief.  I don’t have to keep pushing.  “I am changing the world by my mere presence.”  I’ve got those pages printed out, sitting right here on my table.  We also clarified the issue of becoming “conceited”, agreeing that acting superior is based on a fear that one is really inferior.  Also agreeing that being able to take in the good we do would probably make us more effective.
In therapy I talked about Elizabeth’s letter praising my vision, commitment and generosity, and started to expand on those.  Caryn asked me to slow down, so I did and began to go into detail about the hugeness of the galaxies and the amazing complexity that is the body…    A fragment drifted by “.. so great” and I spoke to Mother (what I remember most about my mother was her telling me “Don’t think you’re so great”) “I don’t think I’m so great, I think the Universe is huge and miraculous and beautiful and I want to share my excitement.” Caryn said she’d never heard me speak from that embodied place before.  I have been able to do it in the past few years: speaking my truth and not worrying about whether she got it or not.

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Working with Archetypes

Posted on February 27, 2010 by jenny

Working with Archetypes      Feb 27, 2010
I first learned about archetypes when I took a dream class with Charles Ponce.  Finding universal archetypes showing up in my deams widened my life considerably.  I also read Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and learned a lot from how he lived his life.
I see archetypes more as patterns than as figures, empty patterns that we then fill out from our own experience.  Keeping track of my dreams and watching major figures change over time gives me an indicator of how I’m growing and healing.  Watching images of “mother” changing from damaging to nurturing shows how I’m transforming my inner landscape.
Jung doesn’t speak about God, but about the “god image in the psyche.” I have watched my god image change from someone punitive and judgemental to a being that is loving and forgiving.  Initially I believed in a white bearded god sitting on his throne, watching and judging us all the time.  By the time I was an adolescent, I didn’t believe in god any more.  I remember thinking (not sure what I was so angry about) “God can go to Hell,” and then waiting for the lightning bolt which didn’t happen.  In college I majored in Astronomy, and I was lucky to have a very fine teacher.  I was very well trained in scientific method, learning to identify assumptions, data, and hypotheses, and I’ve found that training to continue to be useful in my struggle with PTSD.
So I replaced god with the universe, a universe beautiful, creative and complex. At one point, I don’t remember now what sent my thoughts in this direction, perhaps people were talking about their images of god.  I thought “I don’t have a god image, I haven’t believed in god for years.” So then I thought about what the universe was really like, and three words came to mind: “capricious, malicious and wilful.” I was shocked, since the image of the universe that astronomy had given me was of something orderly, beautiful, and impersonal.  Where did those words come from?  Who in my experience was “capricious, malicious, and wilful”? A pair of alcoholic parents, that’s who.
Since then, I’ve watched my god image change.  I’ve prayed a lot, and rarely got any answers.  On the other hand, sometimes I’ve spoken to god and been greatly surprised by what god said back.

Here’s a journal entry from October 2007
I’ve been sitting here thinking of all the failures — the things I tried to do that didn’t work — like the kayak, the screen tent — and that still have to be dealt with.  I’m looking back over my life and seeing nothing but failures — at the moment, Neskaya feels very far away.  Have I made a difference to any other being?  Well, I have made a difference to Lynelle, and to Kayla, and to Gene.  To the people who wouldn’t have found Circle Dance if I hadn’t built Neskaya.  And surely I’ve made a difference to people who’ve been helped by Heifer and FINCA, and the whales, and the buffalo…   but that’s all mostly money.  Money, generosity, and good will — it’s how I’ve chosen to use my money.  What will god think when I bring this thin harvest?  And I have a sense of huge compassion and delight, a sense of being welcomed and gathered in to a being to whom it doesn’t matter at all what I’ve done or not done.  O my.  My heart feels all warm and soft.

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The “Committee”

Posted on February 26, 2010 by jenny

(Written in November 2008)

Exploring my mix of feelings at my friend for not joining us in dancing to celebrate Obama’s victory, I was able to see that many parts of me are there.  (What Kevin calls “the whole committee.”) Not just Jenny the co-dependent who can’t celebrate because someone important to her is upset, but also Jenny who creates celebrations, and Jenny who misses her friend and wishes she could be part of it, and Jenny who’s angry at her friend for not being able to “get past it.” And also Jenny who is supposed to make it OK for her friend, not because she is wiser or more spiritual, but because if she doesn’t she’s bad-worthless-and-rotten-and-should-be-dead.  Well, at first I thought I was spending too much time on something trivial, but now I see that any detail can provide grist for the mill, a place of opening, and I’ve just done a good piece of work.  I can feel them all here.  And the job is not to get the more adult and spiritual ones to win out, or for the wounded and co-dependent ones to see the error of their ways, but just to hold them all in compassion.  O my, I’m feeling a huge surge of love for this little group of Jennys, god bless them.

I’m feeling an amazing amount of love for myself.  This is different from back in July when I was feeling good about myself and my life, about how hard I had fought and had finally arrived at a good life.  What I’m feeling now is a lot of warmth and compassion for this person who suffers so much, and struggles so hard, and has no idea of her limitations, and tries to do good, and makes stupid mistakes.

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Guidance for Despair and Anger

Posted on February 25, 2010 by jenny

(Written in January 2007)

Got the usual invalidating message from R telling me that pain doesn’t exist and I can choose not to think those thoughts. My first reaction is to want to die.  My second is to get in touch with my anger at his failure to understand what my life is like.  I understand why someone would fly an airplane into a building.  First I imagined beating R to a pulp with a baseball bat.  Then I imagined smashing a person-sized piece of pottery.  Nope, not violent enough to relieve my feelings.  Then I imagined driving my car head on into a truck.  Still not there.  Then I imagined driving my car (smash!) into a rock wall.  Then I imagined flying an airliner full of people into a sky scraper — Ahh.  Satisfaction.
The pain of having one’s feelings and needs ignored and invalidated.  So if this is the helpless angry pain that produces terrorism, my willingness to feel it and refusal to act on it is one way of stopping terrorism.  Perhaps the only way.  This is work worth doing, worth staying alive for.

Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I’m as bummed out as I’ve ever been, I’m completely discouraged and I want to die.  Please help me.
Dear Jenny, you don’t want to die — what you really want is a life that works and you have no idea what to do to make that happen.  Dear One, we love you and we don’t want you to die.  You are needed on the planet at this time.  Your work in witnessing these feelings of despair is necessary to help shift humanity from the path of vengeance to the path of healing.  Remember that the despair you are feeling is that of a child who has tried everything they know to change things, to fulfill their needs for affection, acknowledgement, comfort and support, only to find those needs completely ignored by the adults they are dependent on.  This is one of the worst pains a human being can feel.  Staying with it helps all those children trapped in that despair now, and the child you were who suffered this way in the past.  Do not give up.  All those children need you and we need you too.

My intent is to help the earth, my prayer, my vision, is that people will live sustainably on the earth, that no more children will be abused and no more wars will be fought.  We will find ways to live together in peace and harmony and creativity and celebration.  That’s my intent.

Guided meditation on going to the most painful place: I went to myself in the yurt wanting to die after reading the letter from R.  The being who came to the door was Kuan Yin, and I didn’t feel any different when she inhabited my body, but when I wasn’t paying attention she started building a wall.  The gift she gave me was a sword and shield and she said: “Never be afraid to stand up for yourself, never be afraid to protect yourself.”

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