{"id":4591,"date":"2015-01-26T16:27:11","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T21:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4591"},"modified":"2015-01-26T16:27:11","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T21:27:11","slug":"returning-someone-to-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4591","title":{"rendered":"Returning Someone to Themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m reading Tattoos on the Heart<\/a>, subtitled The Power of Boundless Compassion.\u00a0 The author, Father Greg Boyle, tells about his work with \u201chomies\u201d (kids from the gangs) in the worst section of L.A.\u00a0 \u201cEmpowerment rests in returning folks to themselves, to the very truth of who they are.\u00a0 Gang members (and everyone, to that matter) are surprised to discover that they are exactly what God had in mind when God made them.\u00a0 To discover that God is too busy loving them to be disappointed is life changing.\u00a0 But there is work to be done besides \u2014 to engage in attachment repair, healing, collating of resilience, and the largest task of all: to redefine who you are now in the world.\u00a0 All these constitute the empowering work a homie must undertake to be free and clear.\u00a0 This is no small endeavor.\u201d\u00a0 This is in the interview with Father Greg at the end of the book.<\/p>\n

This work can\u2019t happen in a vacuum, or be learned from a book.\u00a0 It requires that there be a human being who can love you enough that your life can change in the ways that Father Greg describes.\u00a0 Reading about these kids, whose parents were drug addicted, or abusive, or disappeared, or killed themselves, or all of the above, makes me feel ashamed.\u00a0 After all, I grew up in wealth, my family were \u201cupper class,\u201d I went to an Ivy League college and graduated with honors \u2014 I could have had a lucrative career or married and had children.\u00a0 Instead I stumbled around, trying to learn social skills, trying to find a man who would love me, having lots of painful and destructive relationships, more than one breakdown. \u00a0I thought I was a defective person and hoped therapy would fix me. \u00a0I\u2019ve been in therapy almost all my life.\u00a0 Certainly continuously for the last 20 years of my life.\u00a0 My parents were alcoholics, and I didn\u2019t learn how that damaged their children until I was 42.\u00a0 I did not understand that I had been traumatized in infancy until I read Peter Levine\u2019s book on trauma, Waking the Tiger<\/a>, where he says that an infant can be traumatized by being left alone in a cold room.\u00a0 p49\u00a0 When I read the chapter on hypervigilance, I went into a hypervigilance spiral that I experienced as \u201cterror through the roof.\u201d\u00a0 p155 \u00a0 In the book it warns you that if you are triggered by something in the book, stop reading and find a Somatic Experiencing practitioner.\u00a0 So I did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked with Somatic Experiencing<\/a>, with five different practitioners.\u00a0 It helped a lot, and part of my healing was learning about the physiology of trauma.\u00a0 Now I am working with a new therapist, who deals with both trauma and attachment issues, which means the core experience of attaching to your caretaker at the very beginning.\u00a0 Without this, your life has no foundation.\u00a0 So you stumble around, trying to figure out how to live.\u00a0 I was fortunate in being intelligent and going to good schools.\u00a0 My intellect was engaged, supported, and rewarded.\u00a0 Unlike at home, the assignments were clear and grades provided clear feedback.\u00a0 So my intellect developed in a healthy way, and has given me a powerful tool to help me figure out how to live.\u00a0 Unfortunately, as I learned very quickly, there are lots of difficulties that intelligence can\u2019t help with.<\/p>\n

As Father Greg says, the work to be done is \u201cto engage in attachment repair, healing, collating of resilience, and the largest task of all: to redefine who you are now in the world.\u00a0 … this is no small endeavor.\u201d \u00a0 I have to engage in the same work as the homies.\u00a0 So far my life has lacked a \u201cFather Greg\u201d \u2014 someone who is so loving that they would get through my defenses against taking in anything from outside.\u00a0 Father Greg describes this as someone who \u201cthrough their kindness, tenderness, and focused, attentive love return folks to themselves.\u201d\u00a0 p192<\/p>\n

This describes my new therapist, and she works in a different way than anyone else has.\u00a0 She responds to me actively, and she gives me careful, minute and accurate feedback of a kind I\u2019ve never gotten.\u00a0 She describes what my face looks like or what my voice sounds like. \u00a0The person she is describing is VERY different from how I see myself.\u00a0 That old image is imprinted in my cells and the neurons of my brain.\u00a0 So making that kind of change, at the very foundation, is very hard work and often very scary.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t leave much energy or attention for getting through an ordinary day, much less coping with extra tasks, like getting the oil changed, or dealing with bureaucracy. \u00a0Unfortunately, I have only a few friends who really understand this, so I am forced to be alone too much of the time. \u00a0Being alone triggers the original abandonment. \u00a0Sometimes I get very fierce and decide that this work is worth doing. Sometimes I think it’s just too hard and I would rather be dead. \u00a0So far, the one who is willing to work is winning out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m reading Tattoos on the Heart, subtitled The Power of Boundless Compassion.\u00a0 The author, Father Greg Boyle, tells about his work with \u201chomies\u201d (kids from the gangs) in the worst section of L.A.\u00a0 \u201cEmpowerment rests in returning folks to themselves, … 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":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591","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=4591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}