Collapse Phase

Posted on February 15, 2023 by jenny

I knew I needed to ask a couple of people for some practical help: to deal with medical insurance and how to work my new phone. I wasn’t until I was terrified by the strange noise the phone made when I tried to call Jeff, that I understood that I was terrified to ask for help. This is a result of being made wrong for asking questions and for asking for help when I was very young.

From my journal for February 13

I tried to call Jeff.  The phone made a terrible squeaky noise.  So I called Reception to find out if the phones were working.  Nicole answered, said the number in the book was wrong.  I wasn’t quite ready to call him, so I called Don Vogt and left a message.  I don’t actually know if he can help with my phone.  After I hung up I burst into tears.  Don’t feel capable of talking to Jeff.  Mocha left to drink some water and then went to her crate.  I feel rejected by everyone.  Well, I know that’s not reality, that’s the fear that is triggered.  Especially by asking for help.

Can I talk to myself kindly?  There, there, dear.  You are badly triggered into a very young helpless state.  Trying to explain it to someone who doesn’t know about trauma.

Writers’ group in the evening:

I want to write about what’s going on for me, but I’ve found it very hard to describe in words.  I was so exhausted for a couple of days I could barely function.  When I talked to my therapist about it she asked a lot of questions.  For example I talked about going to Rose to learn about the fitness machines.  She asked how important was learning something new?  How important was my sense of agency?  How helpful was Rose?  She asked if my tiredness was really boredom — I don’t think so — or loneliness — I burst into tears.  Loneliness was a huge part of what was going on.  I don’t have enough people in my life, not ones I have a comfortable relationship with and meaningful communication.  What about outings: theater? museums?  I used to go to theater, it’s something I really enjoy, but I haven’t been to anything since COVID.  What if I go out into the world?  I would be criticized or punished.  Erica said that I was dealing with the collapse phase of trauma, which happens when the reptilian brainstem concludes that you’re going to die.  I remember seeing the video of a leopard chasing a herd of antelope-like creatures.  It was leaping for a young one, but before the leopard had even touched it, it collapsed.

Notes from work with Erica:
Work with machines
did something new in terms of working on osteoporosis     new = 70%   working = 85%
Rose 90% helpful
[She asked me to tune in to each item and assess how helpful it was as a percentage]

Getting up this morning lonely — 95%       [I burst into tears]
tedious — 95%
unsatisfying — 95%

Missing theater but feeling really scared.
“Exhaustion” is more: loneliness, scared — COVID?  scary because…
Going to theater — so scared — going to be attacked or made wrong —
makes me believe the world is unsafe.

Looking back, I realized that the diagnosis of extreme osteoporosis was a shock.  I felt like my bones couldn’t hold me up any more.  I started feeling wobbly when I walked.  I started feeling really isolated, disconnected.  When I couldn’t see the waning gibbous moon on two mornings when there was blue sky with only a few clouds, I felt bereft.  I don’t know why seeing the moon grounds me, but it does.

There were two days when I managed to connect with people at dinner and felt a lot better and I thought I was pulling out of it, but then an empty day knocked me down again.  I realize that I’ve been in the trauma vortex since COVID began and we were in lockdown.  I was comfortably numb during lockdown, in a state of freeze.  When we started eating together again, without masks, I remember feeling like I had been flat as cardboard and had suddenly filled out.  But then I went through a period of terror — flight.   [TIME!]  Had to raise medication and work hard with my therapist on rescuing younger parts.

I had hoped to write more, but time ran out — we write for 20 minutes in writing group — and two days later I can’t think well enough to continue. So I’m in a pretty tough place. All I can do is try to treat myself kindly and do the lovingkindness prayer.

Trying to find a post where I talked about feeling three dimensional, I found one from May 2021, which actually describes how I felt in lockdown so much better:

Then, because of the social distancing, especially when in quarantine or when the whole community was in lockdown, I started finding it harder and harder to be alone.  Because I was traumatized by being left alone as an infant, being too much alone can trigger feelings of being very isolated and helpless.  This has gotten worse and worse as the months went on, and finally I have started having episodes when I feel totally disconnected from everything and life is totally meaningless.  I also feel helpless to do things I need to do, like making appointments for medical checkups.  Even brushing Mocha has become difficult.  I don’t feel “terror through the roof” which I have felt in the past, somehow this helplessness and meaninglessness feel worse.  I realize I simply can’t explain it adequately in words.

Then they started allowing us to have dinner together at small tables set far apart. Only a third of the community could do this at one time, everyone else had to get meals to take out.  After my first meal with four friends, eating together in the body, with masks off, I felt “three-dimensional.”

But soon I began having too much trouble with terror, which I describe at the end of the timed writing.

I feel like this post is somewhat cobbled together, maybe even doesn’t make a lot of sense. That’s a pretty good reflection of how my brain is working right now.

A post that might help make sense of this is one on the Five Stages of Trauma.

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Three Haiku

Posted on February 2, 2023 by jenny

After I did that writing, there was still more time — we write for 20 minutes — so I wrote about what I could see: on the table with me, reflected in the window in front of me, and finally on the ground I could see through the window.  I felt that haiku were called for, so I wrote:

coral fan in front of window
pottery lamp reflected
thoughts of suicide out in the night

dark night of the soul
o night more loving than the rising sun
where did it all go?

The second line is from Loreena McKennitt’s song, Dark Night of the Soul, which is a beautiful translation of St. John of the Cross’s poem.

From last week, after walking outdoors with Mocha, and paying attention to details.

lumps of snow on twigs
bleared sun in grey sky        softly glowing sun behind grey sky
why does my heart hurt?

After writing it, I realized my heart hurt because, as I unwrap a bottle of supplements, I have to throw away a small piece of plastic “for your protection” and I know that small pieces of plastic are killing all kinds of creatures in the ocean…

PS  I consider these haiku attempts, rough drafts.  Also, on Wednesday, two days after the writing, a friend’s grandson committed suicide.

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Tong-len

Posted on January 31, 2023 by jenny

Written in Writing Group:

Woke up this morning feeling sad, lonely, discouraged.  Then I thought that there must be a lot of lonely old women, without family, who wake up feeling like that.  Feeling the presence of all these people supported me in some way.  I still felt sad and lonely, but I didn’t feel alone with it.

Later in the day, feeling more tired, having trouble doing things that needed to be done, I began to want it to be over, that life is a chore, that the world I love is in desperate trouble and I can’t do anything, I keep throwing away bits of plastic wrapped on my bottles of supplements printed with “for your protection” and I know I’m helping kill all sorts of creatures in the ocean, and I just don’t want to go on…

Again I began to feel that there are so many people who feel this way, mostly younger people but older ones too, and I feel connected to all of them, especially the young people thinking about suicide.  I think about the practice of tonglen, of breathing in feelings of deep discouragement, lack of energy, wish to be done with it, and breathing out something warm and comforting.  I remember, long ago when I first tried it I couldn’t do it, I was too overwhelmed with discouragement.  This time I have no problem breathing in the painful feelings, I know what that feels like, I feel connected to all of you.  But I can’t breathe out anything positive or cheerful.  All I can breathe out is compassion, it’s what I truly feel for all of us in this struggle.

Looked back through my posts to find what I said about Tonglen, and found links to pages that no longer exist.  This is how I understand it: it’s a Buddhist practice, to breathe in the negative feelings from someone you care about, and then breathe out comforting feelings.

Checking Wikipedia, I find Pema Chodron‘s instructions:
“On the in-breath, you breathe in whatever particular area, group of people, country, or even one particular person… maybe it’s not this more global situation, maybe it’s breathing in the physical discomfort and mental anguish of chemotherapy; of all the people who are undergoing chemotherapy. And if you’ve undergone chemotherapy and come out the other side, it’s very real to you. Or maybe it’s the pain of those who have lost loved ones; suddenly, or recently, unexpectedly or over a long period of time, some dying. But the in-breath is… you find some place on the planet in your personal life or something you know about, and you breathe in with the wish that those human beings or those mistreated animals or whoever it is, that they could be free of that suffering, and you breathe in with the longing to remove their suffering.

“And then you send out – just relax out… send enough space so that peoples’ hearts and minds feel big enough to live with their discomfort, their fear, their anger or their despair, or their physical or mental anguish. But you can also breathe out for those who have no food and drink, you can breathe out food and drink. For those who are homeless, you can breathe out/send them shelter. For those who are suffering in any way, you can send out safety, comfort.

“So in the in-breath you breathe in with the wish to take away the suffering, and breathe out with the wish to send comfort and happiness to the same people, animals, nations, or whatever it is you decide.

“Do this for an individual, or do this for large areas, and if you do this with more than one subject in mind, that’s fine… breathing in as fully as you can, radiating out as widely as you can.”[7]

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Folk Dancing Feeds my Soul

Posted on January 23, 2023 by jenny

From an earlier post called “When did you stop dancing?”

“In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited or depressed, they would ask one of four questions:  When did you stop dancing?  When did you stop singing?  When did you stop being enchanted by stories?  When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”                  Gabrielle Roth

This idea shows up in Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Dancing in the Streets, where she connects the rise of depression with the disappearance of community dance celebrations.

Yesterday I went to the first folk dance class taught here at Kendal.  I was surprised to find that instead of being tired afterward — I did feel a little out of breath at the end of the first dance — I was energized.  I was surprised because I have done other movement classes, in particular line dancing, which I like because it involves dancing to music.  But after a session of line dancing I often felt so tired I could barely get up the stairs.

What’s the difference between folk dancing and line dancing? Folk dancing feeds my soul. Part of it is the communal aspect, mostly we dance holding hands in a circle. I find holding hands to be so important that I don’t enjoy dancing on Zoom, or even in person where we socially distance and don’t hold hands. Thank goodness we are far enough out of the pandemic that we were able to hold hands yesterday. I even have more energy this morning, didn’t have to struggle to wake up.

When my friend Lynelle told me there was Sacred Circle Dancing on the green in Danville for fall equinox, I said “Sacred Circle Dancing, what’s that?” I got there, and they were doing dances I already knew around a centerpiece made of a candle and a bowl of water on a scarf. Something inside me said “I knew that.” When I still lived in Brunswick, I used to say that I went to Wednesday folk dance the way other people go to Church.  I didn’t have the language to say “feeds my soul.”

Other posts about circle dance:
Experiential Worship
My Indigenous Celtic Soul

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Letter to My Mother

Posted on January 20, 2023 by jenny

This was written in writing group January 9. Another piece of unfinished business.

Dear Mom,

I’m writing to tell you I’m sorry I always acted so angrily when you were drunk.  I had no idea what you were up against.  Even now, I can only guess.  But I don’t think Granny was a very good mother and I have no idea what your childhood was like.  Aunt Carolyn coming along when you were two might have been difficult.  I had a friend who, when she had her second child, was careful to explain to the first child that they would not be replaced.  She told me just saying “I’m bringing home a new baby” would be like telling your husband you would be bringing home another husband.  So you may have been unhappy to have a younger sister.  I know you and Aunt Carolyn didn’t get along very well.

I wonder what it was like for you when Uncle Jesse died.  He was younger than you & Carolyn, and I remember you saying he was your little boy and you liked to dress and undress him. We live in a culture that doesn’t support grief, so you probably didn’t let yourself grieve after his death.  Not grieving can be one cause of depression.

When I finally got on anti-depressant medication that worked, Char, who was helping me, asked if you got nasty when you were drunk.  I said yes, and Char said “She’s medicating depression.”  Well, Mom, I lived with severe depression for years, and it’s pretty awful.  If alcohol had worked for me, I might have become an alcoholic.  I remember one week when I drank a six pack of beer several days in a row.  But instead of getting comfortably drunk, I would start feeling headachey and nauseous, and would have a king-size hangover in the morning.  So I didn’t have the right physiology to become an alcoholic.

After Daddy’s funeral, you got drunk and I was angry and nasty about it.  But the next night, for some reason, I was able to be kind.  The next morning, you were sober.  You said “I’ve made a decision.  I’m going to be OK.”  I asked “What decision?”  But you just said “That nasty person won’t be around any more.”  We went out to dinner with some friends and when they asked what you wanted to drink, you said “Water on the rocks.”  I was so proud of you.  I wish I had told you so.  In fact I didn’t realize that my being so kind to you that night might have helped you.  I didn’t see it until many years later.

I don’t think you would have been able to stay sober without some help, an AA meeting or a therapist, and you were highly unlikely to ask for help.  But I wish I had been able to go on being kind.

love, Jenny

For an earlier take on unfinished business with Mom.

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Self-Compassion

Posted on January 17, 2023 by jenny

This is from my journal for November 27.  I just typed it up, and am finding it VERY helpful.

Dear Inner Teacher, I am having a very hard time.  Feeling miserable.  Please help me.

Dear Jenny, Remember that you are surrounded by spirits who love you.  You might try making a list of things you are grateful for.  Also think about more “failures” that were actually soul moves.  Something you forget is how much misery you have lived with due to early trauma and what was essentially emotional abuse from both parents.  Try taking a “big step back” and look at this Jenny who is feeling so miserable, whose father told her “you want to be miserable,” who has gone through a tremendous amount of pain in her life.  The fact that most of her pain has been invisible to most people around her does not make it less meaningful than obvious pain like poverty or jail or physical abuse.  Look at that Jenny with compassion.

Thank you.  Yes, I can see her with compassion.  And the demon of dull misery that dogs her steps, I can love him too.

It helped at the time, but it also helped a lot when I typed it up yesterday. I was able to find a lot of compassion for myself, and for my aging body. I was even able to treat Mocha kindly when she got me up at 2AM wanting to go out. Last time she did that, I was very angry at her.

I also wrote a list of things I’m grateful for.

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From 1994: “This miserable wimp is herself my task”

Posted on December 31, 2022 by jenny

From my journal for September 1994, about a session with my therapist Karen:

I wanted to focus on that feeling that it’s not OK to protect myself from the noise of the planes by wearing the walkman.  We explored all parts of it, the intolerable pain, the invalidation of myself for being so sensitive.  She said she also reacts badly to a particular machine sound: the two-cycle engine of a four-wheeler drives her nuts, so that was validating.  Then I said that I enjoyed having fantasies about renting or buying the land and shutting down the airport, but that I also felt guilty.  (And why should I feel guilty for stopping their “innocent fun”?  They feel no compunction about torturing me.)  Karen said we should look at that, why do I feel guilty?  I groped around for a little bit, and then said “They’re more important than I am” and burst into tears.  That resonated with the knowledge, touched long ago, that anything at all is more important than I am, certainly other people’s pleasure is more important than my sanity.  Karen hugged me and said I was precious to her.  She also spoke about the one who speaks the truth on stage in Journey, who has moved people through her writing and her art.  But, I said, I’m not in touch with that one at all, all that’s here is a miserable wimp, who “fusses about nothing” and can’t even keep her house clean.  Karen pointed out that those judgements are introjected voices, and I “know” that, but can’t get the distance needed to make it real.  Karen asked me to talk to “them” — the ones who think I’m not important, and I couldn’t fight back or argue at all, all I could do is agree with them.  And I realized that I was tired of trying to justify myself to them, tired of trying to prove that I deserved to live because I could sometimes write things that move people. 

And finally I came to see (again again) that this miserable wimp is herself my task, this person who is so sensitive and precariously balanced, who can’t even keep her house clean, she’s the one that I’m committed, that I commit myself, to protect and nurture.  Yes that’s the difference.  It’s when I stop resisting the unfairness of God/universe, to have stuck me with this wretched body and damaged psyche, and accept the task, actively commit myself to her welfare, that’s when something changes, and I feel strengthened, and supported by ground under my feet.  Riding in the car on the way home, I realized that the hated task that I must stick with is not forcing myself to “live with” the planes, but learning to “live with” my sensitivity, and that understanding also turns it around to something I can do.

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From 1994: Seeing How Hard My Life has Been

Posted on December 25, 2022 by jenny

From my journal for September 1994

O gosh, I feel so sad and bummed out.  I see lots of things I “should” do, organizing house type things, and I feel “what’s the use.”  The planes haven’t been too bad so far, perhaps they’re flying the more tolerable pattern.  And what will I do with my day?  Downstairs, finishing breakfast, I noted that deadness in my muscles that comes from tension and lack of movement.  It would be good if I could do some dancing today.  Put on Mouth Music and dance around watering the plants — at least I can do that behavior, even if “what’s the use” kills the enjoyment.

For trouble with planes see Plane Phobia.

I see by reading through the exercise on cherishing myself, and trying to do it, how very difficult that is for me, and I become aware of how numbed-out I am, how my artist’s life is strangled by invisible “not allowed”s, and stiffened by disuse, how the soil of my artist’s life is not deep and rich, friable and fertile like good garden soil.  Instead it’s hard, dry, almost stony, the sort of stuff that blows away in the wind.  The only way to nourish my vocation as an artist is to nourish the soil, to do the sort of things that Cameron lists under “cherishing.”

I’m working with Julia Cameron’s Book: The Artist’s Way

I’m having a really bad time with the planes.  I tried to listen, telling myself that it was my “enemy”, the one in me who hates me for being so sensitive and vulnerable, I tried to hear the unmet need behind that, but couldn’t get anywhere.  Finally, it began to feel like I was listening to a freaked-out baby screaming, and its mother screaming back, and I couldn’t stand it any more, so I put on the walkman, and I’ve been under the earphones ever since.  The planes don’t stop long enough for me to take them off and I’m too freaked out to tolerate even the lower level of noise.  There’s one out there snarling right now, I can hear it through the music on the earphones.  I think what I’ll do is leave early for Cathy’s party, not come back til dark, just drive around in the car if nothing else works.  I’ll take this journal in case.

O gosh, I feel so sick, so physically weak, so helplessly angry.  I’ve got to get away.

Reading through something like this I realize how far I have come, and how much I was up against.  Helps me find some compassion and some admiration for that odd struggling creative person.

Hating myself for my reaction to the planes. Mother told me over and over “Don’t be so sensitive,” so I thought it was a choice. That’s why I thought that protecting myself was somehow cheating. But I’m a highly sensitive person, and I do need to protect myself from the toxic environment of the industrial world.

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March 1976: The Journal is Center

Posted on December 14, 2022 by jenny

First posted on July 2, 2012

from my journal, written in March 1976
Today I felt very depressed and sick.  The old fear came back, fear of the ringing phone, of the sun and wind outside.  I went looking for an escapist book, but could not find one.  So I decided to read my journal — have been toying with the idea of asking a friend to read it, but keep thinking it’s childish and valueless and stupid.  So I read the Mimi journal, Apollo’s book, everything typed up to the pages in Ondine.  It was staggering!  I have returned to the center of myself.  The insights in those pages!  The truths that I am now coming to believe completely that are expressed as intuitions even as far back as the Mimi diary.  The description of Don Quixote as the man trying to make the vision live in the world, and the recognition of MYSELF as the one I was talking about.
I used to find it discouraging that I had expressed things so long ago that I am still struggling to believe, to make real in the world.  Now I find it an incredible proof of my powerful intuition, which has always seen the cosmic truths, even when my intellectual and reasoning self couldn’t.  And a sudden strong sense of myself, not as a linear life in time, but as an expanding sphere, continually expanding on all fronts and continuously returning to center.  The journal is center, because it is the place where I come in touch with my “past” self, the effort of my life is not to write the journal but to learn how to read it.

I wanted to post this again because I have recently become aware of its truth.  “Not to write the journal but to learn how to read it.”  That’s pretty much what this project has become: I’m reading through my journal to find out who I am, and posting things I think are significant in this blog.  This time I saw more in this journal entry than I did when I posted it in 2012.

Erica periodically reminds me that I saw this work with my journal as the work I needed to be doing here at Kendal. This turned out to be especially true when it became apparent that I would no longer be able to teach Sacred Circle Dance at Neskaya.

By the way, my names for my journals, like “Ondine,” were in imitation of Anaïs Nin.  See Journal Background for more information.

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“Whatever you have done or not done, Welcome!”

Posted on December 4, 2022 by jenny

This probably happened in 2011, but I didn’t write it down.  I wrote this description and posted it in August 2013:

I was feeling bad about myself and my life and that I hadn’t done anything worth while with it.  I thought “What will god think when I arrive with this pitiful harvest.”  I saw myself climbing up steps of cloud toward the pearly gates, with three stalks of wheat in my hands.  Suddenly a creature burst through the gates, looking more like Caspar the Ghost than anything else.  He, she, it or they were wearing a white robe flung over its head with eyeholes cut into it.  This being flew down to me, flung its arms around me and said “WELCOME!  Whatever you have done or not done, welcome!”   O my what a surprise!

Written in my journal on August 21, 2009

I’m feeling very sad this morning, and also that odd feeling of having no motivation.  I’m doing my best to just be with it.  It really helped yesterday when I imagined all the Jennys from the traumatized baby to the Shambhala warrior.  And I’m feeling better now.  That’s so amazing!  Yes, I welcome all the parts of me in, whatever you have done or not done, I love you all.

Finding that I had already said to myself “Welcome! Whatever you have done or not done” before God in a Sheet said it to me was quite astonishing.  I really didn’t know what to make of it.  Now I think of the Quaker concept of “that of God in us” and see that somehow, it was the same being that spoke to me in both events.

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