From my journal for December 15, 1995<\/p>\n
I went into the session with Karen feeling completely hopeless.\u00a0 <\/span>I didn\u2019t know what else to do, so I\u00a0lay down on the bed and kicked and kicked and cried and shouted \u201cNo!\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I stopped after not very much because I seemed to be feeling better \u2014 things lightened up inside \u2014 though I distrusted my sense that anything had really happened.\u00a0 <\/span>Later I realized that what was new was a strong sense that it was OK to say No, OK to kick back, OK to express my discomfort.\u00a0 <\/span>I think something else that helped was the sympathy and sorrow that I saw on Karen\u2019s face as I told her about the body memory (if that\u2019s what it was).\u00a0 <\/span>I told Karen how I had sat on Robin\u2019s table crying with the words \u201cMy whole life!\u201d going through my mind and how quickly another voice came in to say \u201cYou can\u2019t say your whole life was ruined by this incident.\u00a0 <\/span>You still have blah, blah, blah…\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I see only now as I\u2019m writing it how I don\u2019t let myself have my pain, how quickly I step in to invalidate it.\u00a0 <\/span>I also see that the phrase \u201cmy whole life\u201d meant not that my life was \u201cruined,\u201d but that I\u2019ve lived my whole life in the fear of that shadow.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The “body memory” was of someone (male?) feeling my labia. I have no idea if it refers to a “real” experience.<\/p>\n
I told Karen how I had found myself talking to Mother recently.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cI\u2019m not coming home again.\u00a0 <\/span>You hurt me badly in the past, and you\u2019ve hurt me every time I come home.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0I won\u2019t see you again.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ll come home for your funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n
I found that I was in that neutral place again.\u00a0 <\/span>At first it felt OK to be there, then.\u00a0 <\/span>I could feel a judgmental presence, probably mother.\u00a0 <\/span>So I asked to do the \u201cletting go\u201d exercise again.\u00a0 <\/span>We piled up the pillows and got out the towel.\u00a0 <\/span>I let go very gently.\u00a0 <\/span>It felt good to let go \u2014 I didn\u2019t cry as I have before.\u00a0 <\/span>But I felt the anxiety come back in pretty quickly \u2014 I\u2019ve got to have something to hold on to.\u00a0 <\/span>So I grabbed the towel again, pulled myself up until I felt the tension in my body, and let go again.\u00a0 <\/span>I did this several times, finally realizing that I wasn\u2019t trusting the floor to hold me up, so I ran my hands over the carpet, remembering the dented\/wounded cedar floor.\u00a0 <\/span>Karen suggested that when I had let go of all the old injunctions from Mom, I still needed something to hold on to.\u00a0 <\/span>I think actually that if I could trust the floor, I wouldn\u2019t need to hold on.\u00a0 <\/span>We talked about that neutral place \u2014 how it was \u201cgood neutral,\u201d a place to stay in not run away from.\u00a0 <\/span>Karen reminded me that I had never felt safe enough in my childhood to experience \u201cgood normal.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“I wasn’t trusting the floor.” Years later, after I had begun to do Somatic Experiencing<\/a>, I did experience a floor<\/a>.<\/p>\n
I think I first began to feel “good normal<\/a>” when I was here at Kendal.<\/p>\n
So I lay there on my pillows and began to make sound, first the noises of a baby comforting itself which then developed into a deeper stronger richer voice, actually into my \u201cAh-ah-ah-ah-ah\u201d song which I think of as being my song, almost a warriors song.\u00a0 <\/span>It comforts me to have it, as it comforts me to have my death chant (\u201cThus shall ye think of all this fleeting world…\u201d)\u00a0 <\/span>After singing, something had changed, there was a feeling of finding my voice.\u00a0 <\/span>I realized that I hadn\u2019t dissolved in tears at the idea of a baby left alone to try to comfort itself.\u00a0 <\/span>So I write down SINGING as something I can do to self-soothe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I don’t remember the first song. \u00a0I can still remember my “death chant” and its tune. \u00a0The words are from Buddhism<\/a>. \u00a0“Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world
\nA star at dawn, a bubble on a stream
\nA flash of lightning in a summer cloud
\nA flickering lamp, a shadow, and a dream.”<\/p>\nOn the way back to Franconia, I felt pretty good.\u00a0 <\/span>It felt like I had accomplished something real in therapy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for December 15, 1995 I went into the session with Karen feeling completely hopeless.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what else to do, so I\u00a0lay down on the bed and kicked and kicked and cried and shouted \u201cNo!\u201d\u00a0 I … Continue reading