From my journal for January 10, 1996<\/p>\n
Visit to Hart, the naturopath.\u00a0 <\/span>I told her that I was struggling with depression. …\u00a0 <\/span>We talked about suicide a little, I said I felt even about that \u201cit won\u2019t do any good.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Hart agreed, she said \u201cYou\u2019ll just have to come back and do it again.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Then she said that the lifetime after you have committed suicide is one of the hardest ones.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve been thinking about that \u2014 that could account for my difficulties, it makes accepting them a little easier.\u00a0 <\/span>Except that I get angry, is this a punishment for having made a mistake?\u00a0 <\/span>Or did I choose to have a life in which I could learn the value of life, even when things are very painful?\u00a0 <\/span>I think about the time with Rose Marie when I went back to a life in which I committed suicide.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know what to think.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I like my honesty in saying “I don’t know what to think.”
\nIt’s interesting to think that I might have committed suicide in my past life, so now I’m having to learn to hang on, even when my life is very painful and difficult. I’m not at all sure I’ve learned the “value of life.” Yes, I think I’ve accomplished some worthwhile things, but I’ve experienced very little happiness. So what is the “value” of life?<\/p>\nWhat helped the most was a good visit with Lynnelle last night.\u00a0 <\/span>I told her about the feelings of despair and hopelessness, that I couldn\u2019t even remember what it felt like to love.\u00a0 <\/span>I said it was as bad as it had ever been \u2014 but back in \u201971, I had no love relationship, no job, no real home, no friends, and in \u201984 I was physically sick all the time, much more than now.\u00a0 <\/span>She understood that degree of despair and I think it helped a lot, knowing that someone understood, not having to be so completely alone with it.<\/p>\n
Hart said something about facing the darkness, and when she really did it, she always came out to a place of light.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cHave you done this?\u201d she asks.\u00a0 <\/span>Yes, over and over, and I know that experience because it has happened before, but this time it\u2019s not happening.\u00a0 <\/span>At Hart\u2019s, I wondered: \u201cHave I just failed to face this darkness?\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I find it very odd that I say I have faced darkness and come out to a place of light. I have no memories of any such thing.<\/p>\n
But now, reading \u201cReal Moments,<\/a>\u201d and about the author going off by herself to face the pain of a failed relationship and \u201cstopped resisting …\u00a0 <\/span>surrendered to my pain …\u00a0 <\/span>\u2014 I started to fill up with a deep, comforting sense of peace.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Karen talks all the time about \u201csurrendering\u201d and I find it sometimes very hard to do.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think about my attempts to \u201csurrender\u201d to the pain of the airplane noise, and how I can\u2019t do it because I become overwhelmed.\u00a0 <\/span>Karen said that I can\u2019t do that work while in that level of restimulated pain \u2014 and that leads me to the Kripalu teaching of going to the level of tolerance, no farther, and staying there.\u00a0 <\/span>So I see that she\u2019s leaving something out, and I think this is the difference between crisis \u2014 the normal sort of crisis that can bring out hidden strengths that she describes \u2014 and trauma, where the system breaks down, and the experience cannot lead to any kind of strength or health or integrity because it actually destroys the psychic systems that make strength, health, integrity possible.\u00a0 <\/span>She quotes a guru:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThe wind blows strong and hard on the tender young trees, not to harm them, but to teach their roots to hold firmly to the ground\u201d and goes on to say \u201cI bless the painful moments in my life, and I thank the wind.\u00a0 <\/span>Its relentless force has molded me into the woman I am today.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
At Kripalu they talk about the “zone of tolerance<\/a>.”
\nI don’t know where I got the ideas about the difference between “crisis” and “trauma.” \u00a0It’s true that the system for creating normal memory breaks down in trauma. I go on to talk about what if the wind is too strong or the tree too young \u2014 the tree gets uprooted \u2014 interesting metaphor for early trauma. Trauma happens when the nervous system is overwhelmed, which is all too easy in the case of a child of less than three years old. Their nervous system has not completely matured, and can’t handle events that would not faze an adult.<\/p>\nBut the analogy breaks down when the wind is too strong, or accompanied by flood, or the tree too young.\u00a0 <\/span>What happens to those of us who get uprooted?\u00a0 <\/span>Normal wind after that does not teach us to have strong roots.\u00a0 <\/span>And I think about the question of \u201cfacing the darkness\u201d and become suddenly angry on my own behalf.\u00a0 <\/span>Goddammit.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t lack courage or integrity, I have faced plenty of darkness, plenty of unpleasant truths.\u00a0 <\/span>I have surrendered to many emotions and aspects of my being that have been scary or painful \u2014 I think how swiftly I went down on the floor to be the floor in my dream, and with what integrity I waited for what that floor had to say instead of imposing my own ideas.\u00a0 <\/span>And I am facing the current darkness and despair to the best of my ability \u2014 allowing myself conscious distractions.\u00a0 <\/span>But I can\u2019t surrender to the pain of the planes, so I haven\u2019t been able to move through to whatever truth is hiding in that lesson, and I think it\u2019s because whatever event is being restimulated by the plane noise is truly traumatic, that is it caused a breakdown of the very systems I would need to heal.\u00a0 <\/span>So I need more than just bringing myself to face the darkness, I need help and time and moral support \u2014 I need someone like Karen who helps me find the zone of tolerance and stays there with me, someone like Robin who helps loosen the old tensions at a rate I can handle.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s why this work is so hard, and takes so long.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Actually, the “pain of the planes” is not restimulation of an earlier hurt, extreme sensitivity to noise is a consequence of trauma. That sensitivity is responsible for my difficulties in sleeping, but I don’t realize it’s the same mechanism. There’s no way I could “surrender” to the noise of the planes. What cured the situation<\/a> was getting on an anti-depressant and the help of a brilliant therapist.<\/p>\n
Although at this point I thought I had gone through a lot of pain, and I had, but nothing like the pain of when I started to work with Erica<\/a> and found out what it felt like to be a baby left alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From my journal for January 10, 1996 Visit to Hart, the naturopath.\u00a0 I told her that I was struggling with depression. …\u00a0 We talked about suicide a little, I said I felt even about that \u201cit won\u2019t do any good.\u201d\u00a0 … Continue reading