{"id":1915,"date":"2011-10-02T10:51:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T14:51:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1915"},"modified":"2012-05-24T10:08:54","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T14:08:54","slug":"finding-the-will-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1915","title":{"rendered":"Finding the Will to Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago I posted<\/a> something from August about \u201cno will to live,\u201d and my struggles with it, trying to understand why it\u2019s so hard to take in positive feedback.\u00a0 Looking back from a month\u2019s perspective, and after the work with Caryn learning to say \u201cstop,\u201d I saw that my fear was rooted in trauma, the fear of death if I dared to feel good about myself.\u00a0 That\u2019s a way of standing up for myself, to see that it\u2019s not just some trivial problem, some easy choice that I\u2019m failing to make.\u00a0 I think that helps me side-step it somehow.\u00a0 Caryn said it wasn\u2019t possible to answer the question \u201cwhy.\u201d\u00a0 I have answered it but that doesn\u2019t immediately solve the problem.\u00a0 But it does explain why I\u2019m having such a hard time with this.\u00a0 Practicing saying \u201cstop,\u201d being able to say it firmly, is the antidote to the trigger that knocks me into \u201cno will to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beverly called in the evening, she had read the blog post and was concerned about me.\u00a0 She was concerned that even \u201cfeeling good about myself\u201d is a kind of judgement, that I needed to be doing something that \u201cgave me pleasure\u201d and then I wouldn\u2019t have the focus on me at all.\u00a0 I think what she\u2019s saying is quite true, it\u2019s like when I\u2019m being able to do my creative stuff I don\u2019t worry about whether I\u2019m good enough to \u201cdeserve\u201d to live.\u00a0 The issue of \u201cfeeling good about myself\u201d may be a red herring.\u00a0 It\u2019s not so much about judging myself according to other people\u2019s ideas.\u00a0 It\u2019s really closer to feeling OK about myself just as I am.\u00a0 I think the point at which I\u2019m able to see through the uselessness of the whole struggle to find out why, was made possible by practicing defending myself.\u00a0 When I can say \u201cstop\u201d to protect myself, and say it in a way that\u2019s firm, not apologetic or defensive, that action itself reconstitutes the will to live.
\nByron Brown explains very clearly why the ability to defend yourself is ITSELF the will to live.<\/p>\n

From \u201cSoul Without Shame\u201d by Byron Brown
\nThe complete quote can be found here posted 7\/6\/10<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe energy for active defending is available to you the moment you recognize that your deepest nature is being constricted by the experience of being attacked. \u2026\u00a0 The sense of outrage awakens your essential strength and with it the capacity and clarity to defend your own truth in the face of judgment.\u00a0 Ultimately, this truth is nothing but the integrity and aliveness of the human soul.\u201d p 219
\n\u201cEssential strength\u00a0 … may begin as anger at the debilitating effect of self-judgment, but it emerges as an assertive strength to be yourself without the need for acceptance, approval, or acknowledgement of anyone else.\u00a0 Most fundamentally, it is the strength to be yourself without a self-image but with a sense of presence that is grounded, clear, and vitally alive.\u00a0 True strength is the basic instinctual energy of survival and self-protection, which we recognized as missing or blocked in the judgment process in Chapter 4….\u00a0 You as a child did not have the physical presence and capacity to embody this instinctual energy for your own protection.\u00a0 Even if you could have, it was dangerous to do so because you were still very dependent on adults for survival.\u00a0 That is no longer the case.\u00a0 Now you can begin a vital aspect of your journey: recovering that compassionate, intelligent vitality \u2014 the strength essence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 p 220
\n\u201cThe judge\u2019s activity is aimed at blocking contact with the freedom and expansiveness of the living soul.\u00a0 So each form [of defending yourself] points to a way of tapping into the dynamism and aliveness of who you are now, unconnected to your history.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 p 245
\n\u201cYou must step out of the judgment loop.\u00a0 This is the real soul work. \u2026\u00a0 This is when you assert your fundamental aliveness and freedom.\u00a0 This is when you align yourself with the deep longing to be real and present in your life against the self-defeating experience of judgment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 p 291<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of days ago I posted something from August about \u201cno will to live,\u201d and my struggles with it, trying to understand why it\u2019s so hard to take in positive feedback.\u00a0 Looking back from a month\u2019s perspective, and after … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,14,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-present-day","category-spirit","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}