Year Review

I started this blog one year ago this week.   My goal was to go spelunking in my own consciousness.   Specifically,  I wished to delve into my behavior, feeling and thought patterns relating to my parents' mental illness and alcoholism.  During this year I have touched on quite a range of topics.   Each week I have brought out my process,  wherever it happened to be.   I have tried to be methodical,  while also being true to my process in the moment.    It has been a very, very healthy process for me.   Far from being a straight line,  my writing the blog has nevertheless helped me to grow in ways I never have before.

A primary gift has been,  for me,   sharing what before had been taboo.   My whole adult life I have wanted desperately to be "not-damaged".     Until recently,  a big part of me wanted,  like my family of origin,  to sweep as much as possible under the rug.   I had been reasonably successful with this strategy up to a point.     About a year and a half ago I suffered burn-out in my teaching job and had to transition out during the school year.    In some ways I now have moved on from that experience;  and at the same time it still haunts me.

A big part of this blog is me picking up the pieces of that recent trauma,  and seeing how I can make my life stronger,  rather than feel permanently diminished by the experience.

When I was in my mid-twenties I started a spiritual path.   I was able to see,  to some degree,  into a world that was about perfection and not earthbound.   My higher self was overjoyed to join a spiritual path and my life seemed, from that time on,  to unfold in a wonderfully lawful way.   I probably said to myself something like:  "Maybe I can just focus on my higher self;   my lower self,  the part of me which is deeply wounded,  can just shrivel up and blow away."   I've found that it's not as easy as that.   Pain can make us wiser.

At this stage of my process I still believe very deeply that my higher self will win the day.   But I also see what a task it will be.   It's about my mental habits every day.   It's about my bravely delving into all the nitty gritty bits and crying the tears I didn't get to before.    Each issue I come towards seems huge at first,  then lessens in strength as I muster the courage to tackle it.     For example,  right now I am dealing with this soul spot I come to which I call "stunned".   It has to do with being abandoned by my dad and not having anyone truly console me for this loss when I was a kid.   

"Stunned" seemed like a huge boulder not long ago.   It was a mood that overtook my consciousness.   At times I have been at the total effect of the wound I had sustained 36 years ago.   Now that I have named the wound and have begun the process of healing it,  the boulder seems big,  but not as big as it did just a few weeks ago.   

I received an email from my mom recently.  What she said in it tells me that she has evolved over the past year as well.   She is deeply tied to me;  often not in a very healthy way.   She does not have particularly strong sense of self and can cross very deeply into my boundaries whenever I let her.   I have slowly learned to be more respectful of myself and not allow her to do it.  My wife has been a huge help in this project.    My drawing clearer boundaries with my mom has allowed our relationship to evolve somewhat.   We're making progress.   Here's the email:

"I am learning a lot about mentally I'll mothers in [a NAMI Family to Family] class so I guess we have more to talk about one day.  I am so happy you have a group and your loving family to help you outgrow what you missed growing up.  That is what I had to do too, and you have helped me so much, especially with [your wife's] help.  Keep growing and connecting with other spiritual beings and your life will be filled with growing hope and joy.  I love you.  Mom"

She connected to NAMI very soon after I became interested in it.    That seems like a good place for her to create "reality" around what mental illness means to the families.   What she says in this email is not earth-shattering in terms of empathizing with my experience.  But it is a clear step towards acknowledging how difficult my childhood was and how the problems that made it difficult have been shrouded in secrecy until very recently.   I can honor her progress as well as mine.

The one-year anniversary seems like a good opportunity to state some goals for the coming year.     

*I will continue to delve into,  and transform,  the traumas which come out of my childhood (as well as more recent ones).

*I will acknowledge my fears and talk about them.

*I will acknowledge my unhealthy patterns, talk about them,  and try to find new patterns which enhance my life.

*I will work to deepen the relationships I have,  even if I feel vulnerable and fearful in doing so.

*I will commit to my own well being by taking on life-enhancing hobbies.

*I will actively work to increase my feeling of peace around my dad.

*I will communicate more frequently to friends and family.

Here's to a fruitful year two!

Your comments are welcome,

Warmly, Ben

Limbo

One week from my blog's one-year anniversary I find myself in a kind of limbo.    I feel a bit discombobulated, unfocused,  and feeling sorry for myself.

My wife pointed out today she thought I had been depressed the past few days.   She's probably right.    So why is that happening?

My first thought is that it might be a variety of things that simmer under the surface of my awake consciousness;  they draw me down and sap my energy.   Here are some possible suspects:

1)  It's been rainy and cold for several weeks now.

2)  My back is sore,  so I 

3)  Haven't been exercising

4)  The anniversary of my dad's death (1983)  is coming up in the next few weeks.   

5)  I am anxiously waiting to hear back from a graduate program about whether I will be joining in the fall

6)  I have been steadily opening doors in my therapy group and letting some of my deeper pain be present to others.

I stayed in bed watching episodes of "Dr Who" on my day off yesterday but I don't feel any better today.     I am in a bit of a funk and am looking for the way out.     I have my therapy group tonight.    That may help.   My family is always a help.   I picked up our guitar today and decided to start learning how to play it.   I've been wanting to do that for some years now.   

I think that a big part might be that I have come into the "stunned" place I spoke about last week.  It is a place I have known a number of times in my life.    It is a place in my soul that seems barren.   Lifeless.   What I think it is underneath that,  however,  is the little guy inside of me who needed to cry and cry and cry and who never was given the chance to.   There is so much pain that lives in rooms of my soul.   I have closed the doors to those rooms and tried to "get on with my life".   But ignoring all that pain does not make it go away.

My coping mechanism has had a variety of strategies:    I can  "go stoic".   This is where I lose affect,  clench my body,  and just try to survive.   Another is where I focus on something else than what is causing the pain:  AKA denial.   

The hopeful side of this period of blahs may be that I am on the crux of a transformation.     There is nothing on the outside that is pressing in on me and stimulating this "stunned" response.   From what I can tell it is about the safe space I have allowing the stuff to come up in order to be healed.

I feel safe enough in my life that my feelings,  the ones that were buried ever deeper in my soul when I was a kid,  are ready to come out and connect to real life.    Maybe I am ready to process more of the pain.   Maybe there is a new me on the other side of the pain.   This is an idea that I work with as a possibility,  but don't really know if it is true.   I am trusting my therapist and my wife on this one.  They tell me, in so many words,  that beyond my buried pain there is a new me.

I just stepped away from writing and took a shower.  While doing so I had a realization of where my stunned soul space comes from.  I think it comes primarily from the time in my life when my dad abandoned me.

Episode 1:  I am six years old and am in the course of being molested by my female babysitter,  age 15.   I see my dad on weekends.   On one Saturday he is coming to pick me up and I am playing outside of our apartment building.   I see his car coming and walk quickly towards the door where he is ringing the doorbell.   He rings it twice and then fairly quickly goes back to his car and drives away,  right as I round the corner.   I start running after him but he does not see me.  I am sobbing and screaming.  For some reason my mom is gone and I am by myself.    I get on my bike and ride across town to his house but he's not home.

What stands out to me about it is my reaction.   I am sobbing and screaming;  I take action and ride my bike.   I am active,  dynamic--I am expressing my feelings.   What changes at this point of my life is the context into which my feelings come.   My dad is not home.  I get the neighbor kid to help me get into my dad's house and I wait for him.   After a while I call my mom and she is back at home.   She comes and picks me up.   She tells me in the car,  "He is probably at a bar--he has a disease called alcoholism."   I don't remember her validating my feelings.   And I know she was not visibly upset about the situation I was in--being alone at home and having dad act as if he didn't really want to see me.   If he had wanted to see me he would have waited a few more minutes at the door before getting back in his car.    And my mom was not going to get to empathetic with me about the situation because,  after all,  where was SHE?   She was gone and just assumed that all was going to go fine.     I was six years old!  

I was under a lot of stress and neither of my parents were able to acknowledge my feelings.  Apparently they expected ME to be the adult in the room.    My healthy processing of trauma,  sobbing and taking action,  fell into a context of apathy and denial.  My feelings were not received.   I expressed them into a vacuum.   

Episode 2:  A few months later my dad moved away.   I remember what it was like watching him drive away.   My mom and I had recently moved to a new, much nicer neighborhood,  into our own house.   I was away from the babysitter who had molested me.   I didn't have to see her every day and be reminded of how she had dominated and abused me.  But now dad was leaving and came to say goodbye.   He drove a red VW bug.   He and I stood outside of the new house.  His car was packed up and he was getting on the road.   He told me how he would write me and tell me about his trip south.   He was going to move to California,  and on the way he was going to drive though Texas and visit Houston,  and NASA Mission Control.   Space exploration was a source of inspiration to him.   That was the last time I ever saw him.

We hugged,  and he got into his car.  I don't remember if he told me he loved me or not.   Then he drove off.   I just stood there.   I didn't sob.   I didn't take action.   I just stood there,  numb.

I was stunned.

Other events in my formative years would leave me stunned as well.   But a big transition from my being able to express myself,  of owning my feelings,  drastically shifted with what both my dad and mom did and didn't do and what my soul did to survive.   

I stood there,  overwhelmed with pain, and had to do something to survive.    Major elements of my personality,  behavior patterns I carry with my every day,  were formed at that time.   These behavior patterns do not have my highest good within their M.O.   I must overcome them,  transform them,  in order to see what is behind the thick armor that formed around my heart.     

This seems to me like a big insight; something that relates to how I move through the world.  It points to the source of why am sometimes emotionally handicapped.   And now that I've named the wound,  I can spend my energy trying to heal it.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,   Ben

Stunned

This past week or two I've been feeling stunned.    It's a feeling I've had before.   It comes up for me every so often.  When it does,  my feeling life lessens,   I feel much less dynamic and less confident.   At my therapy group I've called it my "soccer moment".    I had a sports moment in high school that seems to epitomize the "stunned" soul place I come to.

When I was a junior in high school I made the varsity soccer team for my school.   I was fast and pretty good at the game.   I was used to playing offense.   During a game early in the season the coach sent me in to play defense.   We were playing a team who was picked to be one of the best in the league.   We were wondering if we,  perhaps,  were also at a place to compete for the league title.   I was feeling a little green as I had not played in many varsity games to that point.     After several minutes the other team brought the ball towards the goal I was defending.  The ball came right towards me.   I swung at it and missed.   A player of the opposing team rushed and tapped it into the goal.

I felt totally stunned.  Humiliated.   I knew I had let my team down.   My mom was in the stands as well as a few of my friends.   I felt embarrassed to have people I knew watching.  I think it was at that moment that I inwardly decided that I probably wasn't cut out for competitive sports.   My confidence was extremely low.   I wondered if I could do anything right.

The whole experience was actually a picture of how I was feeling in general at that time.     That summer my mom had checked into a mental hospital for about a month.   She had had a psychotic episode about one month after her marriage to my "step-dad".   Our family was under enormous strain.   I disliked her new husband.   He was now freaked out big-time.   Their honeymoon period ended about as abruptly as one could imagine.

All this was happening and no one was talking about it.   My mom was diagnosed as schizophrenic,  then had her diagnosis changed to manic-depression.  She began taking lithium.   We were all very freaked out and unable to talk about what was happening in our family.   I don't remember anyone offering any help.   No one explained to me what my mom was up against.   No one ever said to me,  "wow--that must be pretty challenging."   The way it worked out is that we all just tried to muddle through.    And pretend that what was happening wasn't actually happening.   

The bottom line is that I did not have the opportunity to process any of what was going on for me.   A ton of bricks was falling down on me and I just tried to take it and pretend that nothing bad was happening.   I did not cry.   I did not scream.   I did not even say to myself,  "this fucking sucks!"   Instead,  I just went into a "stunned" place.   I  went on with my life;   I don't think any of my friends even realized what kind of stress I was under.   Summer ended,  school started and soccer season got under way.  Go have fun, kid!

In my stunned place,  my affect goes down,  my initiative goes down and I just try to muddle through whatever it is I'm doing.     More on this next week.

Warmly, Ben

Freedom

Lately I've found myself tearing up as I listen the news on the radio.  I feel deeply moved whenever I hear Tunisians, Egyptians or Libyans speaking about freedom and their struggle to establish it in their country.   I hear the longing in their voice,  their anger,  their absolute clarity about being done with the autocratic system they've spent their whole lives in.   The soul's longing for freedom is very powerful.

As I examined my feelings about the wave of protest spreading over the Middle East I wondered what it was about it that made me cry almost every time I hear a related story on the radio.   Why are these stories so moving to me?   I don't usually cry at news reports.  What is different about this?   

I think the stories are so visceral for me because I can deeply relate to the longing for freedom at a basic level.   But wait just a minute!   How can I say this?   I live in a democracy.   Hundreds of thousands of people are now taking to the streets in various countries, risking their lives,  to try and win civil rights that I largely take for granted.  What do I know of their struggle?

What I am talking about is about a battle that is taking place in my soul.

Just as Moammar Gaddafi has put his personal interests above the interests of his country for forty years,  so too is there a would-be tyrant who would keep me perpetually in a kind of mental bondage;  of servitude to an agenda which is counter to my well-being.   This tyrant is my lower self.     My tears come when I hear the radio reports and feel in my soul my higher self yearning to be free.   I know that this yearning is there because there is a force inside of me which does not want me to be free.   

I understand my lower self to be an amalgam of all of the wounding I have experienced in my life.   And of patterning I picked up along the way which is self-negating.  It expresses itself as mental and behavior patterns which stand in opposition to my higher self.    The lower self is woven into my earthly expression.   I can go back and forth between higher self and lower self all through the day.   It's at the level of my thought that I can track where I am.    The lower self can seem very powerful.  And, at the same time,   it is nothing.   A real paradox.

The vision my higher self carries for me:  I am a radiant, talented and loving being who spreads light wherever I go.    My would-be "Moammar" has a different picture.   It sees me as less-than,  as unworthy,  without talent,  as undeserving of anything good.   The "secret police" that my lower self uses,  the enforcer of the lower thought system,   is called shame.   

Some people think of "shame" as something akin to "guilt",  but there is a very important distinction.   Charles Whitfield says that guilt is about feeling bad after we've done something to harm another in some way.   Shame,  on the other hand,  is about BEING bad in some basic,  intrinsic way.   We can address guilt by atoning with the person(s) we've harmed. However,  our lower self would tell us, in no uncertain terms,  that there is no way to overcome shame--it's part of our basic make-up.    Unfortunately,  a number of religions look at "sinful human nature" in very similar fashion.   They are dead wrong in saying that "sinfulness" is an essential part of who we are as humans.   

We have to overcome our shame.  And we can.

Shame is the weapon our lower self uses to "keep us in line".   To keep it in charge and to keep our higher self down wallowing in low confidence.   Shame is our fear that , at our core,  we are a really rotten person.    We have to hide ourselves because if others saw "the real me" they would recoil in horror.    There is a primal fear associated with the shame.   It tells us that the pain of having others see how rotten we are could actually kill us.   If our darkest secrets were exposed we would not survive.

Fear is the tool dictators use to keep their people down.   Fear is the tool the lower self uses to keep our higher self down.   

The thing is,  this fear and shame that keeps us "in line" with the lower self is essentially smoke and mirrors.

You may be familiar with a well-known quote by Marianne Williamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

After the demonstrations in Tunisia led to the ouster of that country's dictator,    something amazing happened.  It seemed to me like people in Egypt,  (as well as elsewhere in the Middle East),  said to themselves,  "Wait a minute….you can DO that?!"   They made a powerful and empowering realization:  the people of Egypt have the power to choose the political leaders who represent them.   They do not,  as a people,  have to take orders from dictators.  They can experience freedom in their own country if they choose to make that happen.

Obviously,  achieving freedoms in Egypt is going to take many years of work as well as huge effort and sacrifice.   It's probably going to be messy.  There will be ups and downs;  successes and failures;  times of monumental frustration.  But the people there seem to have decided:  We are not going back.

So,  too,  goes the battle between my higher self and my lower self.    I have decided that my spiritual nature must be free, express itself freely within the bounds of the material.   I could tell myself,  "when you die your spirit will then be free".   Just "hunker down" in this life and be glad things are not worse than they are.   

But I can't buy that.   And just as the Egyptians seem to be willing to do for their country,  I am willing to bust my ass to transform myself.   It will take time.   It will be a gradual journey through the rest of my life.   A journey of steadily working,  sometimes on a thought-by-thought basis,  to purify my expression.    

But I have to believe that I can do it.

Moving from a dictatorship to democracy is a tremendous undertaking.   It requires that the whole country get behind a new vision and work it right into the details at every level.    So,  too,  is freeing oneself from the would-be dictator which is the lower self.

No doubt people in those countries will find "dictator thinking" crop up as they chart the road into democracy.   It is no different with the lower self.   What is needed is to monitor one's thinking carefully and with as much honesty as one can muster.  When my thoughts are less than noble I don't have to berate myself for being a bad person.   And anyway,  that would be the lower self talking.   No,  I just need to notice what the thoughts are and gently remind myself that I can do better.  And then I need to follow through and actually DO better.

To gradually free myself from the shackles of my own thought patterns is a goal I am willing to fight for.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben