{"id":6451,"date":"2020-02-05T13:50:35","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6451"},"modified":"2024-01-01T16:06:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T21:06:47","slug":"blind-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6451","title":{"rendered":"Blind Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

What a strange experience.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m not even sure I can write about it accurately.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought my brain had stopped working.\u00a0 <\/span>I was afraid it had to do with getting old.\u00a0 <\/span>Erica reframed it as a stage in spiritual growth, Buddhist detachment.\u00a0 <\/span>When I was able to get so many practical things done last Thursday, I thought I was better.\u00a0 <\/span>But then I started again having difficulty doing practical things.\u00a0 <\/span>Looking back, I can see that I was actually afraid to go out in the car and do a small shopping.\u00a0 <\/span>At the time it felt like extreme reluctance, or maybe just exhaustion.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I realized that when my brain feels blunt and jammed, that\u2019s the same as the state I call \u201cblind terror<\/a>,\u201d except that there was no feeling of terror.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s a state I often feel when I’m packing to go somewhere.\u00a0 <\/span>The last time I remember feeling it was when I went to California for the Francis Weller workshop<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>I was actually so scared I thought seriously about cancelling.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I realized how important it was to me to do it.\u00a0 <\/span>Once I got on the road, the terror disappeared.\u00a0 <\/span>Of course, there were lots of other times when the terror wasn\u2019t connected to anything.\u00a0 <\/span>And in fact, I don\u2019t know why packing to go on a trip should trigger terror.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m afraid I\u2019ll forget something important.\u00a0 <\/span>Oh! I see it!\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t trust the world to supply my needs, so I have to make sure that I take everything with me.<\/p>\n

What was the knowledge that came with the blankness?\u00a0 <\/span>That I was absolutely alone, that the world was not to be trusted, it obeyed no laws of nature, it would shift the ground under me without warning.\u00a0 <\/span>When Erica suggested \u201csuffocation,\u201d and \u201chall of mirrors,\u201d that was exactly right.\u00a0 <\/span>Suffocation is to be deprived of the most basic need for life, hall of mirrors is not being able to trust your own experience.<\/p>\n

When I saw that the blankness of mind was blind terror without the terror, I started to experience the terror.\u00a0 <\/span>Hall of mirrors.\u00a0 <\/span>It was bad enough that I decided to take some Buspar.\u00a0 <\/span>But I didn\u2019t trust my decision so I dowsed.\u00a0 <\/span>But the dowsing was inconclusive.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I asked if I should take half a tablet, 5 mg.\u00a0 <\/span>Dowsing confirmed, so I took it.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I was able to relax a little, but when I checked with my body, the fear appeared.\u00a0 <\/span>Unable to trust my own judgement, to trust my own experience.\u00a0 <\/span>This reminds me of the idea that I want to be depressed<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>But I don\u2019t want to be depressed.\u00a0 <\/span>But my wanting to not be depressed doesn\u2019t change anything.\u00a0 <\/span>So I must really want to be depressed.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m making it happen, but I don\u2019t have any control over it.\u00a0 <\/span>This is a horrible belief to be caught in.\u00a0 <\/span>Momentarily feeling relaxed, but then checking the feeling and having it immediately change to terror is the same kind of Catch-22<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>I can\u2019t trust my feelings, can\u2019t trust my experience.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I went down to hang out with Dulany.\u00a0 <\/span>I felt safe with her.\u00a0 <\/span>I was able to tell her that I was terrified, and she ordered me to get a wrap from her bed, and curl up on the couch with my book.\u00a0 <\/span>If I started to pay attention to what she was doing, she ordered me back to my book.\u00a0 <\/span>I did start to feel better.\u00a0 <\/span>It had as much to do with her caring and her desire to help as with what she told me to do.\u00a0 <\/span>I realize, as I think about it, that she contained me, put me in a safe place and made me stay there.<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t until I got to grief group the next day, and one woman with a terrible history of childhood abuse talked about her “parts,” that I realized I was caught in a younger Jenny, in the frozen terror of infant Jenny, possibly the youngest one of all.\u00a0 <\/span>That helped me see that the state I was in was not something real in the present, but something real that happened in the past.\u00a0 <\/span>I was totally caught in that infant state with no access to adult Jenny.\u00a0 <\/span>I said something to the woman afterward, that I was caught in the past.\u00a0 <\/span>She suggested I talk to the part, which made me angry because she hadn\u2019t understood that adult Jenny wasn\u2019t present.<\/p>\n

Writing this, I see that to be able to connect with that deepest Jenny, her terrible isolation and lack of trust, I had to be here at Kendal, to be supported in basic ways like having meals always available.\u00a0 <\/span>I had to be here long enough to begin to trust on a deep level that I was cared for.\u00a0 <\/span>I also needed to be in a relationship with someone where there was mutual need of each other\u2019s support and mutual trust of each other\u2019s honesty.<\/p>\n

Realizing that I can trust that caring and kindness are available to me throws a blinding light on the gaslighting<\/a> nature of mother\u2019s treatment of me.\u00a0 <\/span>Hall of mirrors indeed, except that all the mirrors reflect her<\/span>, not me.\u00a0 <\/span>No wonder I keep erasing all my experiences of appreciation from others. I can\u2019t trust them, and I can\u2019t trust my own perceptions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What a strange experience.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even sure I can write about it accurately.\u00a0 I thought my brain had stopped working.\u00a0 I was afraid it had to do with getting old.\u00a0 Erica reframed it as a stage in spiritual growth, … 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":[11,4,23,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-present-day","category-trauma","category-work-with-parts","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451","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=6451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}