{"id":6049,"date":"2019-03-30T11:38:09","date_gmt":"2019-03-30T15:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6049"},"modified":"2019-03-31T15:13:30","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T19:13:30","slug":"step-2-again-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6049","title":{"rendered":"Step 2 Again Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been in constant pain in my left hip for a while now.\u00a0 <\/span>Mostly it\u2019s down around 2, but when it really hurts, it\u2019s a 10 on a scale of 1-10.\u00a0 <\/span>Fortunately, it doesn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 <\/span>But it\u2019s very confusing.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, it hurts when I put my full weight on my left foot, then hurts again when I bend my hip to lift my foot.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s no consistency.\u00a0 S<\/span>ometimes I feel better when I\u2019ve been sitting with the heating pad, sometimes not.\u00a0 <\/span>Nothing I do seems to make any lasting difference.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m helpless and frustrated.\u00a0 <\/span>Talking to my therapist yesterday, she defined the situation as \u201cYour nervous system is completely overpowered from outside,\u201d and went on to say that that was my earliest experience with my mother.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s also the definition of trauma.\u00a0 <\/span>My own image for it, when I was in the state of frozen terror and didn\u2019t know it was about trauma, was that I was lying in the road, at night, nobody around except that a steam roller is rolling down the road toward me.\u00a0 <\/span>I am unable to move and the driver can\u2019t see me.\u00a0 <\/span>Obviously I am going to be squashed flat.\u00a0 <\/span>Not until I understood that I had been traumatized as an infant, did I understand the feeling that gave rise to this image.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m back at AA’s Step 1 again again: My life is unmanageable, I am powerless over the pain.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m facing Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity.\u00a0 <\/span>My earliest experience of a \u201cpower greater than myself\u201d was my alcoholic mother, and my experience of her was essentially to be annihilated.\u00a0 She didn’t actually try to kill me, but she didn’t see me as a separate being. \u00a0She couldn’t tell when I was hungry or tired or needing comfort, so she was unable to respond to my needs. \u00a0<\/span>This makes it very hard to believe in a higher power that would help me.\u00a0 <\/span>At Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health<\/a> they gave me an affirmation: \u201cI offer myself to this process.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It took me awhile to begin to say it.\u00a0 <\/span>I knew that \u201cThy will be done\u201d was one of the most effective prayers (there\u2019s actual evidence for that) but the closest I could get to it was \u201cI offer myself to this process.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Eventually I even got to where I could say \u201cThy will be done,\u201d and mean it, but that\u2019s a capacity I keep losing and regaining.\u00a0 <\/span>This recent loss of any sense that a greater power could help me is revisiting Step 2 on a deeper level.<\/p>\n

Eventually, with the help of my therapist \u00a0and my friend Elizabeth, I have been able to see that I am in a process of transformation, made possible by being here at Kendal where I’m in a container and my basic needs are taken care of. \u00a0Erica says that my whole system is re-configuring. \u00a0This sounds a lot like my old image of when I went to pieces<\/a>, it was to have the opportunity to put them together better.<\/p>\n

So here I am, once again, on the journey to \u201ccome to believe\u201d in that Greater Power.\u00a0 <\/span>I want to, but it\u2019s not something that can be done on willpower.\u00a0 <\/span>In fact, it\u2019s not something you can decide to do, it\u2019s something you have to want to do, intend, and be open to and then it comes by grace.\u00a0 <\/span>At least that\u2019s what it looks like to me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been in constant pain in my left hip for a while now.\u00a0 Mostly it\u2019s down around 2, but when it really hurts, it\u2019s a 10 on a scale of 1-10.\u00a0 Fortunately, it doesn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 But it\u2019s very … 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-6049","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\/6049","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=6049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}