After Narcissistic Abuse Link

[Copabanana]

I probably should have just gone and thought things through before I sat down to write.

New Leaf, I expose myself routinely, and I get responses that pinch. Sometimes I feel shame.

Sometimes I go too far on the PE threads, and I am checked. But other times, I go too far, and people recognize themselves in what I write, and they say so. That brings us closer. It builds trust and it builds community. The risk I have taken in that way builds me. I build my house, I make it stronger and surer. I know it better.

FOO has been my safe place. SA has been the safe place for others. PE, for others still. Each forum has its rules of engagement, kind of like the unspoken parameters of usage and each forum has its implicit goals.

We are deciding here in our posts, the rules of engagement, and negotiating the implicit goals. That is why this conversation is important and why I am taking it so seriously.

This is not about, in the main, how each of us feels. It is about what each of us using this Forum may become.

I am perfectly able to not participate here, if that is what I decide or others decide for me. What I do not want is that FOO become someplace that is not useful, in the way that it has been.

That FOO remain useful requires honesty and work and courage. All of this you show and have shown.

There have been times before when one of us has been hurt by others posts. Saying so has been a good thing. It has moved us farther and brought us closer. We have chosen to listen and respect the limit, or leave.

Not everybody is still here. Maybe there will be nobody left at all.

While I would be sad and feel a loss, it will still have been worth it. A million times over.

I would never have been who I am and where I am without having had this opportunity and possibility. Here on FOO. That is what is at stake here.

I am open to dialog further about this and any other thing. And I will accept, gracefully, I hope, where I am in error, so that I might grow clearer, more strong, more correct and more flexible.

I see dialog as useful in so many ways.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

New Leaf, I have read the initial posts again.

First, let me say this: I am finding this dialog very useful and valuable. I am learning a good deal about what I think and where I stand, a good thing.

I am grateful to you for hearing me out. And by challenging what I have written. That helps me to understand better what is my thinking, because by doing so, I must clarify my own thinking to myself.

That is the value of all of this. Where we go, where we may travel, in response to the challenges of others. Doing this alone would not work in the way that this does.

I am inviting you to continue this dialog. I would like to do so.

There was a Dr. Seuss book with a title something like: The places we may go. If I remember I will check on the title and perhaps re-read. I saved all of my son's books. My sister threw them away or did something else with them, I do not know. But I can buy another copy. Maybe I will.

If would be helpful for me to know, specifically, which words of my own indicated that I had misconstrued your post (and which parts of your post did I misconstrue)? Then we can go from there. That would be interesting to me and valuable.

I believe I understood your post, but I disagree with certain points. But I have to be open to the possibility that I did not understand. And you have the opportunity here to speak up for yourself. Speaking up for yourself is not the same as blaming others for speaking up for themselves. That I speak up for myself is not intended to be aggression against you. That you may choose to see it that way, is a choice.

When somebody has hurt me here on CD, when I have reflected upon it, I had the choice to see it as about them or myself. I have the potential (but have not always done so) to have realized that my hurt is my responsibility. And the extent to which I feel they hurt me, and it is their responsibility to fix themselves, to right their thinking, their way of expressing themselves, I was wrong.

They did me a favor by pointing out to me where I was either wrong, weak, self-serving or in denial. Or guilty because underneath it all I had felt I had done something wrong. My defensiveness was a weakness.

Those people did me a favor and I needed them in my life. They help me see myself better, and to heal my deep hurts. In looking back, they were my best friends, the people who hurt me. It costs very little indeed, to lie or to overlook or to ignore. How does that really contribute to anything?

I am working very hard to be real and to tell the truth. I am risking being wrong. That is OK. I would rather be wrong than weak and afraid.

So back to the original theme of this post:What do you believe was misconstrued? Maybe we need to start over from there and to dialog about it, so that I can correct any mis-perception and/or try to explain better, what I did mean.

COPA

 

[InsaneCdn]

Leafy, Copa...

I think the biggest challenge is: we are sensitive people!

So... slight nuances in wording will strike a chord in any one of us, for positive or for negative. And it isn't even a particular word, its... the whole context. Which suddenly pushes buttons. Just like it does in the real world.

That's where my reaction came from. The same kinds of words in the same kind of context that has repeatedly been a major red flag in my life, especially since having challenging kids... Sometimes catch those subtleties and miss something else about the context that would have told me that I don't have to react. Because none of us is "perfectly" sensitive - we are more sensitive in some areas and less in others.

 

[Copabanana]

I have to get dressed to go to the doctor but I wanted to tell you Insane how helpful your post is to me. I will try to respond at length when I return to the house.

Sometimes catch those subtleties and miss something else about the context that would have told me that I don't have to react.

But Insane, reacting is not the same as responding. Reacting keeps the power outside of yourself. Responding implies choice.

Each of our posts gives others the choice. When we are honest in what we post.

Because none of us is "perfectly" sensitive - we are more sensitive in some areas and less in others.

This is brilliant. And where we are sensitive is where we can work. And on FOO, we do. The cutting edge is where we have been cut. To be cut, hurts, but it becomes the cutting edge.

Looking at it from this way, how constructive is this conversation.

But we are talking about power here, and bullying. Each of us has been dis-empowered and bullied in their lives. Nobody here has the goal to misuse power or to bully the other. But to be powerful requires that we exercise our own power, and to learn to do so powerfully. That implies that power be expressed directly.

It is like the little child who behaves aggressively. That she does so from the perspective I have now is the most wonderful of things. That she be mean, not so good. But we learn to not be mean.

Nobody wants to be a punching bag in life. But say, we are punching bags. Do we really have any control over whether others keep punching us? Stop treating me like a punching bag, please. Pretty please.

No. But we can beef ourselves up. We can decide we want to be more assertive, which is our right. Which means we begin expressing ourselves powerfully and clearly. So that others know what we want, we know what we want and we go there.

When we arrive we know we can always leave. But we know our limits. And we know our needs. And we demand that both be respected. We demand that of ourselves. That is power.

Power does not require that we make anybody bad, or responsible for us. There is no good guy or bad guy. There are only powerful people with powerful voices.

How is that wrong? The sensitivity is still there. We take responsibility for it. It is our sensitivity. We take responsibility for it. We do not demand that others do so for us.

I am my own little flower. I will build a fence to protect me.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Hi guys, hard day here, will write later. Thank you for your responses. Interestingly enough the Artists Way has just arrived at my office..........Copa of course I wouldn't block you, and Insane I know I touched a nerve with my poorly written explanation.
I am truly sorry. It was not my intent.

Cedar thank you for your encouragement.
I have to drive son to practice and then go for a walk, just had a scary case in the health room and my nerves are frazzled.

Trying to breathe my universe is a bit tilted.

Thanks everyone....,,
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

What it does have to do with is exactly how you opened your first post: What it does to us to have been treated like that by our own families.

You kn ow at Costco today, I bumped into my cousin. She is several years older than I am. She was my accountant for 10 years, and now retired. She is my paternal aunt's youngest child.

She did not recognize me right away, but I did her. Except she had lost some weight and looked older.

I was warm and open. She seemed glad to see me. More relaxed than usual. Usually she is reserved, a little tense and cool. I am somewhat afraid of her. She keeps her cards in her vest. As you know about me, I show all my my own.

The talk went well. She told me about her travels, to Brasil and Peru, and her upcoming trip to. Europe. It was time to part. "I have a mission she said. Oh. Great to see you.

After parting I felt somewhat vulnerable and ashamed. Like I always do with her. Mildly rejected. That I always show too much. She had seemed glad to see me. But I felt she was polite. That I am still little Debbie *not my real name, with nobody and nowhere to go.

Flooded with these feelings, I ran to follow her, for some inexplicable reason and I said this: You know I come to live here in xxx by accident. I have not really chosen it because I wanted to be here. But I find there is something I really love about it here. People are warm and friendly to me. They talk to me. And I talk to them. I am so happy about that. That would not happen in Big City.

Yeah, she said. If they talk to you they want something.

We said goodbye for real, and I finished shopping. For the life of me, I do not know what I was saying by that speech and why I needed so to say it. Was it the shame and sadness that flooded me after meeting her? Was it to speak up for myself? (Because this woman as a girl knew me as a child. Nobody in my life now has known me that long. She knew me as a child that came to her home and her town. And really had nobody.

Is the shame and sadness and mild rejection coming from so many years ago, or not?

Strangely in the store where I had gone right before, as I was checking out, and engaging in animated conversation with the checker *about a certain liquor, which I am wont to do. I love to chat. I love to make friends with strangers I will never again see.

I see somebody in the angry line hailing me. At first I thought it was somebody so frustrated about the build up in traffic that they had begun to flail their arms in the air.

It was my son. He asks for meto wait for him. He returns to his place in the line. I follow him back and say, "please go to the doctor about your cysts. (I had just been to the Gastro-enterologist and one of the questions was about frequent boils.) Please, J. Please ask the doctor. And the only thing more I say is, you are thin.)

He asks me to buy wild caught tuna at Costco and he will reimburse me. I ask him to please lift the 10 pounds of flour into the car. He says he will only be here in my town here until the end of the month. He says, I recognize I will not thrive here. I am going back to the big city and I am going to try to get myself back into residential treatment. (I guess, as a means to try to get subsidized housing there.)

He says he will come to our house to phone the University to make an appointment with his hepatologist. OK.

So that was what had happened prior to seeing my cousin at Costco and feeling all of that shame and sadness. and making the speech.

It feels like the speech was something about sticking up for myself, defending myself, declaring who I am. But why?

Actually, I was not in the main upset to see my son. Except that he does look ravaged and that hurts and concerns me. I was grateful he was kind to me. He was not aggressive. He really does love me. I was glad that I did not feel viciously angry and needing to get him away from me. I love him so, so much.

Imagine the cost to us then, when someone we love, someone who knows us intimately, treats us as someone without value.

You know, Cedar, this is how I feel with my cousin. I do not believe it has ever been her intention to hurt me but I have felt hurt nevertheless. She has never invited me to her home. She has never asked me to lunch. We have never sought each other out. My house is always in a state of process. That is always my excuse.

But I feel it is something else, too. To invite her and the rest of my paternal family to my home is to represent myself as somebody that has the confidence and the resources to offer hospitality and the self-assurance to come to this place. It is to accept myself as good enough. I have yet to do so, in the domestic realm. M very much misses that. He wants to open our home exactly as it is. He feels we are good enough. He is a confident, generous and very hospitable person.

the only question that matters: Why do we listen? What is it about us that leads us to believe anyone else's behaviors define us?

That is a very good question, Copa.

Remember the boorish man who suggested you had no boundaries?

Well, I do not know why. Why do I feel inferior to my cousin when I know that I am not?

All of you here know who proud I am of myself and my accomplishments. Why can I not assert myself as the equal of anybody? Why always at a disadvantage, when such disadvantage does not exist?

Remember the boorish man who suggested you had no boundaries?

The issue is not whether you did or did not have a boundary to call your own. The issue is why you responded as you did.

The same way I respond to my cousin as I do and as I did today.

Is it that I am always that child? Is that who I am still? That could not be.

Is there a functional use of remaining tethered to her? What?

My sister is very, very confident. In fact, she manifests the confidence of superiority. A superiority she has cultivated and has paid for with her integrity, I believe.

For me: The issue is not whether or not I am a manipulator. Of course I am. The issue is why I decided that destroying myself was an adequate or appropriate response.

Same dynamic.

I think we know the whys Cedar. I think the task now is to try to identify the triggers. I do not believe that I am inferior to my cousin. I do not define myself in any way in relation to her. I do not need her or necessarily want her in my life.

But there was a time I did need her very much. Even in the 90's when I lived here. I was not considered by her or by my uncle and aunt to be their family. My son and I celebrated holidays alone. I needed family when I was a child, too.

Now I have M. M is my family with my son. I do not need her now. Why is the hurt still there?

Same dynamic.

External versus internal locus of control.

Rolling belly up.

Is this that ? What was the trigger? Do I feel that she needs it? Do I give it to her, because of that? Is it related to know that my sister is speaking to her?

What does that have to do with anything? I really feel now, my sister has her life and me, my own. I love my life now. I mean I may need to do work in my house, and sell all the junk I bought. I may need to become a confident hostess, and start walking and lose my weight. I need to make a budget and adhere to it. I want to work again.

We all know I need to be able to be stronger and not abandon myself with my son.

But I love my life. I love it. I love M. I love my son. I love my animals. I love you. And I am grateful.

They were brought up to do it Copa, and we were brought up to take the hit.

I remember I bumped into this cousin's husband at the mailbox store. I was chatting with an acquaintance and he joined us. It was a nice talk. Whether it was this conversation with him or one before, I said this to the husband when we were alone: I remember Linda's father. I remember. It was terrible.

I had never said anything like that before or since. To anybody in my father's family. What I was really saying here is how horrible was my own father. They were all drunks. They were racist, mean drunks. That my cousin and I came out of this, is absolutely unbelievable.

I felt guilty that I said that. It was like I gave up a family secret.

Is that my shame? Is it my own shame, that she knows what I come from, and what I was degraded by? Is that her resistance to me? I do not think so.

I posted yesterday about the triangle that may have existed between the three of us: Between the mother and the sister, and us. It had to have been so Copa, because we are the persons easily victimized, without defense, to sadists.

And we are the ones that will stick up for what is right. We never gave up our values. The question is how on earth we got them. In those cesspools. I am remembering my grandparents here. Maybe I am their daughter.

Even now, as adults, we somehow believe the luncheon was not excellent enough

Yes. Funny Cedar. To whit, earlier on in this post. I still seem to feel that my luncheon will not be good enough to invite my family.

Or what I am wondering now: If my concern is that my luncheon will be too good.

that is why the sisters behave so outrageously badly. That is it something in us that calls those kinds of behaviors in the otherwise decent persons of our sisters.

Except this is not true.

We have tried and tried to make it true. It requires us to contort so as to give the appearance we have stabbed ourselves in the back. And still, it does not convince the coroner.

But Copa, if we look just a little further afield...our sisters aren't very decent people to anyone, at all.

Yet, we believe them.

Yes. This is the conundrum. Even when we figure it out Cedar, we forget we have. We keep forgetting to remember that we figured out. It is like Groundhog Day.

Now comes the part where we realize we always had Courage. And Bravery. And Smarts. Now is the part where we face up to it that nothing was as we believed it to be but we are balking at it, Copa.

You know I am just remembering the most lovely interlude that happened immediately before I bumped into my cousin, and right after I had left my son.

I went to the returns desk at Costco. The youngish black man was not terribly friendly but quite handsome (I resisted this time telling him how handsome he was.) But I did say this: (His name was Tyresse.) I said your name is just beautiful. Do you love your name?

Yes he said, I adore my name.

You know something interesting, in Latin Languages the subjunctive tense can use a form with -esse at the end. The subjunctive tense does not exist in English. In latin languages it conveys hope, potential, doubt, emotion, uncertainty. It is the most beautiful of tenses. It is like Jazz. Everything that could be, might have been is conveyed by the subjunctive tense. And your name is that.

OK. I know you are rolling your eyes here. (I am slightly embarrassed to tell you. But this man was rapt. His eyes never left mine. He smiled throughout. I did too. It was such a lovely connection.

I never knew any of that, he said. Can you spell subjunctive, say it for me again please. Of course.

Then I added *are you cringing here. The best part, I almost did not remember:

Subjunctive comes from the same root as subject or subjectivity. Subjectivity gets a bad wrap, but before Capitalism subjectivity meant the dignity of the subject. It was turned into something that meant biased or emotional, because a new economic system needed its people to think about themselves differently, so that they would better fit the needs of the new economic system.

He said. Thank you. I love to learn. I never knew any of that. So I smiled and said, I would never have believed I would have the chance to think all of this and make this speech at the costco returns counter. Thank you very much. And we were a little bit in love the both of us. With life.

And you know, this was a young man--maybe 40 years old--who seems on the face of it, slightly inpatient, a little cocky and distracted. Reserved. He became transformed. I was so happy.

Is this my version of being a ringmaster with a whip, trying to tame people? I would hate to think it was that.

And it was not 10 minutes later that I met my cousin. Now if my sister or my cousin had been within 500 miles and I had known about it, there is no way I would have risked what I did.

I was mildly surprised that my son did not cringe and run when he saw me engaged in line stopping, animated conversation with the checker. But when I thought about it, I thought to myself, my son loves me. He is learning to love me as I am. He loves that I love people. I think he is grown up to be glad that I am alive and who I am.

So as I left the returns desk and walked towards the back of costco, I thought, I really would love to teach. I really do have a unique voice. I have been practicing using it here on CD and I like how I think. I do not think I could have, would have given my speech, even 6 months ago.

The sisters are still demanding the Red Slippers, Copa, when they have their own.

It's a game.

Cedar, for the sisters, we have to be the way I felt with my cousin. Ashamed. Alone. Without power. Without legitimate voice.

I must have felt that way, because I thought that she needed it, wanted it. How very sad. I feel sad now. That it is so automatic and deeply-ingrained.

That I hide it so cunningly and so well that though I overwhelm and attack and feel black hatred toward my sister and my mother, no one even suspects me and I don't know it myself.

So, Cedar, is this the crime and punishment? The wish to kill them and the awareness of that on some level. So that we kill ourselves with a blade in the back, as punishment. And our confusion about who done it, is because we do not take responsibility because there was not volition to do it. It feels necessary. We as if do it on orders, like somebody who has been unknowingly hypnotized and commits crimes at the behest, of their controller, unconsciously.

Is it as if we have been programmed, Cedar, and we are still obeying unconscious commands, that we never knew and believed. Or deserved.

That I am a dangerous, even a depraved, sister and a worse daughter; that I am a cold and blackened thing.

I forgot to what you refer here, but it is a beautiful passage. I am a cold, depraved and blackened thing. With a knife in my back. I am dead by my own hand on command. I deny my culpability because i am not responsible. I have acted upon orders that I did not know nor could I understand.

Where is the place to break this chain? If we do not know the triggers. How do we regain control, volition and self-command.

This is what we are ferreting out and clearing now, Copa. You and I are not responsible ~ not in any smallest way ~ for the way the sisters are. Or for the way the Mothers are or were.

We were victims.

But we are victims too of stabbing ourselves in the back on command. This has to be walked back.

we will see them without the aura of Mother's life and death power over us.

This is intriguing Cedar. Because this is true. I have never spoken to or seen my sister since my mother died.

Be aware that the sisters carry the Mother's aura, Copa.

My sister, no.

Why, if someone says words implying you need a different boundary system than the one you created custom made for you, do you believe the stranger's words at the cost of your own self and what you know?

Shame.

COPA

Excellent post, Cedar.

 

[Copabanana]

As I reread my discourse on subjectivity, I am mildly embarrassed.

I had a nice encounter too when I went to the Gastro-enterologist. The internist who interviewed me thinks I probably do not have an ulcer but probably it is related to my IBS, my black vomit. Anyway, I get to have a colonoscopy and endoscopy. Lucky me.

She was such a nice lady, an Indian Lady. She said she was 10 years younger than I. She thought I looked remarkably good for a white person. I told her my mother had been closer to her own color than to mine, and I was lucky to have her skin. I told her that my mother was very beautiful and she told me that she could very much believe me, looking at me. It was a love fest. Of course, I told her how wonderful she looked for her age. We were in love.

Is that manipulation, too, Cedar?

My mother was very much like this in public. Except I am worse.

I am still here coming back to my shame with my cousin, and my sense of rejection.

When I am so able to risk with strangers, and draw them to me why does it not work with my own people?

COPA

 

[InsaneCdn]

When I am so able to risk with strangers, and draw them to me why does it not work with my own people?

Just sleep-deprived mumblings here...
Why? Because when we are with strangers, there is no perceived pre-definition of roles that would preclude us being ourselves. With FOO... we subconsciously step back into "our place" in the family dance. Even when we haven't lived in that role for 40 years, it comes back. We rarely see the "cousins" (2nd and 3rd generation connections), but when we do... certain ones set the pace, and the rest of us follow. There's a "big mouth" type, and the rest of us have one-line comebacks for all the "standard" types lead-ins. The in-laws pretty much die laughing, but they can't keep up with us. Yet... put me in any other group of people, and I rarely have anything to say, much less zingers I toss out to the cousins.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This is a picture of my mother. Oh look, everyone. There I am, too.

This picture of us in relation to our mothers (and the position our sisters are operating from now) is from a musical made of the children's book Matilda. There is also a movie of Matilda. The parents are Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlmann. If the shoe fits, it may turn out to have been Cinderella's Red Slipper that Dorothy realized had been hers, all along.

This is not about validating each other. It is not in its essence about supporting each other. It is about knowing ourselves. So that we can manifest power, not for a career, not for domination, not for competition, not for resistance, but power to be who we can be, as manifestations of G-d and nature, our own.

Beautiful, Copa.

An unfolding, like the opening of the Rose.

The Little Prince.

Three volcanoes, and a Rose.

Id, Ego, Superego and...what we create of what is through love and protection and faith.

http://www.thelittleprince.com/work/the-story/

Good for them. I wish I had had the courage and sense of safety to do the same. I had the capacity but it was turned against myself. How I wish I could have been a little bit mean and a little bit controlling. And how I wish that I had appraised my power sufficient to, and my parents amenable to my manipulation in my world.

Courage and sense of safety.

Courage, I think we have. It is our own belief systems that are doing us in ~ and this was so, all along. A sense of safety...that is a concept worth exploring. That is what Dolly too needed to recover herself. Whatever it was that she needed to do to externalize the fear of what happened to her and make it a concrete thing (her horror of the closed crate) was supported, was not too large a sacrifice, was not turned into a battle of will. The Dolly that would be was loved. Her people knew who she was. Dolly had no way of knowing who she was, who and how she was meant to be.

"Just don't think, Cedar." "Don't you dare."

The words spoken with such snarling contempt.

Imagine the words, the tones, spoken over Dolly. Imagine what kindness felt like, to her. Imagine what it meant to know the door was open.

Imagine beginning to trust, and having that validated.

***

Her people held faith with her, for her. You all believed for her that she would become what she had been cheated and hurt out of being ~ her own nature! The rest was an unfolding of who Dolly always was, of who she was born to be.

And had been. Until the bad things happened.

So there were two things that went into Dolly's recovery and flowering: Who Dolly intrinsically was, and...unshakable faith in who Dolly intrinsically was. Dolly did not have to cope, as we do, with a limiting belief system about her own worth. Part of our recovering ourselves then will be to sit with the feelings, choosing painfully real over the patina of role. We will have seen inappropriate twisting and re-channeling of everything that matters. Imagine the energies we will have turned against ourselves to refuse to hurt the others. Imagine what it meant, to choose kind, instead.

To choose slave.

In a way, it is like those experiments in which electric shocks could be given.

Some become guards.

Some, prisoners. Roles were taken on and acted out on and never forgotten. Long after the experiment was past, those roles and what was taught and learned, still not forgotten.

We lived a version of that. Unlike the college student volunteers (or the brainwashed and terrified prisoner of war) there was no going home, for us. We were home.

Is that why confident self reclamation is so difficult.

Who will believe in us as you believed, for Dolly.

***

Because we have refused to pattern after the abuser, but without a way to know how to be without being the abuser, we are too cautious; too afraid of the roaring grandiosity we have been victimized by ~ too certain that it lives within us. Dolly does not distrust her essential nature. Because we have seen what we have seen, we do. We do not want to be our Mothers. (Or whatever abuser it was, for us.) Leafy, you are exploring sensitivity. There are kinds of sensitivity having nothing to do with victimization and everything to do with predation. And the answer can only be: Certain things I will not do.

Like Martin Luther: "Here I stand. I can do no other." He risked being labeled heretic for that, and he was labeled heretic.

But he believed in himself; he could do no other.

Maybe, that is what we are doing, here. maybe, that is the thing we are afraid of, and not our Mothers (or our Sisters) at all.

Here is something healing, a concept to consider as a goal. I ran across it yesterday somewhere. I have not been able to stop thinking about it: Imagine reaching that place where we laugh at the things we suffer for today.

It was something like that. And I know that is what it will be once we are healed. There will be parts of us, as there are now, where we will be surprised to remember the intensity of feeling involved when we first took our courage in both hands and determined to clear this material from our pasts.

My sister is very, very confident. In fact, she manifests the confidence of superiority. A superiority she has cultivated and has paid for with her integrity, I believe.

You could be right Copa, but I think the sisters are bluffing. They seem to me to be not confident so much as flabbergasted that the more they expect, the more people fall into the expected patterns of behavior. My sister, somehow cajoling money ~ an appreciable amount of money, too ~ from a fellow passenger on an airplane trip. There was a reason for that, and a game was required for that and a patsy had to be found and worked for that...but she got the money and the person's blessing. Here is an interesting point: She did not really need the money.

***

Like us, the sisters seem fixated on the wrong definition of "win". Like us, they too were raised to believe that "win" (or lose ~ and we did rebel against the Mother or we would be the moral equivalent of our sisters, today) had something to do with the Mother. With possession or rejection of the Mother. That whole line of thinking is where we are twisted and where the energies that should flow are knotted, instead. It has something to do with the symbol for yin and yang. We are one way. The sisters are the opposite. (At least in relation to us, the sisters are the opposite. We are the same creature in a way similar to the yin/yang symbol.)

Because its flow has been so disrupted, all energy flows...toward the Mother.

When we are healed, we will laugh at the simplicity of these things we once believed so complex.

But right now, I am not laughing.

Either.

Right now, I am not laughing either.

I love it that you were sensitive to your own feelings of shame, Copa. Man, that took courage. You were the gladiator on the bloodied sand, choosing the meaning as you stood up, bloodied and beaten and triumphant. I love it that you took the opportunity in both hands to go after her, and to risk and be real.

There is a commercial on now, in which the Mother calls the son who answers the phone though he is battling Supervillains for his life. The caption: "Moms always call at the worst times. That is what we do."

I love that. I am forever wishing not to offend, not to take more time than I should. "Moms call at the worst times. That is what we do."

***

This is where we heal. Knowing our own feelings about ourselves are chimeras, are constructs. We are blazing through it, now. We see it, now. We know what it is, now.

Soon there will be good, rich laughter where once our thoughts made us suffer.

***

Is this that ? What was the trigger? Do I feel that she needs it? Do I give it to her, because of that? Is it related to know that my sister is speaking to her?

So, what is that theory that says when the student is ready the teacher appears. And the one that says everything is interconnected, and that we only need to do our part. Not serendipity but some other name. The meeting with your aunt, the meeting with your son ~ both are sterling examples.

And you chose real, Copa.

I am deeply happy for you, and for me.

Is this that ? What was the trigger? Do I feel that she needs it? Do I give it to her, because of that? Is it related to know that my sister is speaking to her?

Copa! You met a far greater challenge than I have yet met. I did not know this person knew your sister. I mean, of course she would, but I hadn't thought it. So you faced the internalized sister and who she (with her pale reflections of the Witch Mother's power ~ with the very power with which, at the internalized Witch Mother's behest, we destroy ourselves now out of fear that it is in us too. And it is this that the sisters employ. And celebrate, with immense, chuckling joy.) decrees you must be, Copa. You know what they do, shredding our reputations behind our backs to anyone who will listen. You went real anyway, Copa.

Talk about your sacred ground.

Do you feel awful today. I always feel awful when I've made the decision to face it. To face the Wind. There is a taste of hatred in the Wind Copa, because that is what will have been sown, there. Remember my posting about my mother destroying D H reputation through accusations to our freaking neighbors having to do with physical abuse and being a jerk and you name it.

Our neighbor came to me and told us about it.

She was sick at heart, because she had listened.

We are still friends, the four of us, to this day.

But it was so awkward a time, Copa.

We had just moved there.

***

Remember my sister, backstabbing behind my back with her family and to my own face, and in D H face because he could not respond, for all those years and all those dinners and the beach condo and the lake house and all of that. And when it was over, D H was so happy to be unmuzzled. That is his term: Unmuzzled.

You stood up, Copa. You refused to be the old Dolly. You refused to fear the Dolly you are, good, so good, in the heart of you.

Copa? I love you, too.

:O)

Here is a secret. A lady I graduated with came where I work. And it was so nice to see her, to look into her eyes. But later, I felt badly. She mentioned my sister, and my mother. At the time, I glossed over the discomfort. But later, at home, I was sad that the lady must find me reprehensible because of what she will have been told about me.

By my own mother.

By my own sister.

But...who is the Liar here, Copa. And have they betrayed me...or am I betraying myself.

The joy of seeing this woman I had known as a girl was colored by the rejection that will surely happen once my sister learns there is any connection between she and I.

This is the thought pattern that happened. Automatically. These are the patterns we examine, now. These are the answers we need, and will learn, as we push ourselves up from the bloodied sand of the arena. To find that everyone in the audience is us.

I was talking to D H about this destroyed reputation business. This is how my mother and my sister work. That is why the story about the lady driver carried such emotional impact for me. That is why it was chilling to know my mother destroyed the reputation of the man who wanted to marry her to her circle of friends.

The audience in the arena is us, Copa. We are the thumbs up or thumbs down judgment makers. It isn't about not making a judgment when we have been hurt as Dolly was hurt and no longer understand who we are ~ when we have learned belly up because the other way requires a compromise of integrity impossible for us.

Martin Luther: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

And he knew there would be consequences, and he did it anyway.

And that is the difference, between ourselves and the sisters.

Now I have M. M is my family with my son. I do not need her now. Why is the hurt still there?

Speaking strictly for myself, I wonder about that rage piece. About what I refused to see and having it turn out to be that I find them ~ my own people ~ not very bright (given the nature of the win pursued with such dogged insistence), and not very desirable to know.

Which cannot possibly be true.

But it is. And I punish myself for that. And believe myself to have been punished for that. And feel badly enough about myself for knowing what I know about how I really feel about them.... And yet, the more I try to understand, the deeper into some really terrible things I seem to be getting.

But here is a secret. Too secret to tell. I will whisper it to myself, first. But at the bottom of the secret is the guilt fueling everything else.

All of it.

***

I seem not to spend alot of time relishing my Family of Origin as they are. I seemed to spend alot of energy believing in Family Dinner. When I knew all along they were people who would do what they did because that is who they are.

And I always was an outsider, there.

A case of "I would never belong to a Club that would have me as a member?" Or something worse. Some rottenness having to do with overweening contempt turned pride turned blackened thing. Maybe, something that is a complexity of illusion, as well.

The difference now is that I know this time that at the end of this time of unraveling I will be the Dolly that was meant to be.

Yay for me. Thank you Copa for introducing Dolly's story into our own.

I can hold Dolly with such deep compassion. I cannot yet do that for myself. Here again, Dolly teaches us.

Imagine that. They say the truth is that life is stranger than we know...and stranger than we can know.

***

Synchronicity. That is the word I was looking for in the story of the aunt and the beautiful black man with the interesting name. Ha! I love that these things happened by your will and simply through your curiosity. I wonder where the beautiful man will take this new knowledge, this new understanding of self.

You will make a fascinating teacher, Copa.

What I meant to say when I remember synchronicity was the role of Dolly.

Synchronicity.

She made it so simple a matter for us to see what was always there.

Let me apply the lesson of Dolly to this latest horribleness I have discovered about the blackened energies seething away beneath the surface ~ about the way I may really feel about my Family of Origin.

Dolly is intrinsically good. It is her nature. Had the bad things continued, she may have forgotten who she was really. Forgotten, and justified imaginary badnesses, one after another, as she has been taught to do to herself; as she has been taught to believe about herself and even, to supply the poison and the knife.

D H said something like that last night, when we were talking about destroyed reputations.

***

So, if the knife were to fall out of our backs, clattering onto the floor splashing blood everywhere...what would it look like. Whose bloodied fingerprints cover it; whose blood, on the wickedly curved blade. Is it arterial blood. Is the wound mortal or is the knife a construct too.

Well it must be, or I could not have made it fall out.

What does the knife look like. Where was it made and at whose direction.

If there were such a knife for Dolly...we would know it was wrong; that it was an obscenity. Contrast that with your feelings re the knife when we thought it had been constructed, for us.

That subtle distinction.

That is where we win.

She was such a nice lady, an Indian Lady. She said she was 10 years younger than I. She thought I looked remarkably good for a white person. I told her my mother had been closer to her own color than to mine, and I was lucky to have her skin. I told her that my mother was very beautiful and she told me that she could very much believe me, looking at me. It was a love fest. Of course, I told her how wonderful she looked for her age. We were in love.

Is that manipulation, too, Cedar?

This question fascinates me.

I think a thing can only be a manipulation if something is won by only one of the participants to the interaction. In this series of interactions you engaged in yesterday, there is happiness created between two people, each of whom comes away stronger, more centered in him or herself. In every case, where there was nothing before there is an outburst of positive energy, now.

Yes, a manipulation.

For the White.

For the willing wonder of the White; a thing to be cherished. A thing to bridge a racial divide and perhaps, ageism and sexism, too. And finally, a strengthening and a recognition, between women.

Oh, I think a very good day for all of us, Copa. They say (you know this of course) that the ripples of every action, good or bad, spread out. They say too, that a butterfly brushes her wings against the wind in Africa creating a typhoon in the Caribbean.

:O )

Cedar

The macaw I post about sometimes? Will tuck his head beneath his wing and laugh and laugh. Sometimes, he will.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think I know how to see the vulnerability attending real versus the perfectionism, and protection, of role. We are reparenting ourselves here, in a way. If we can understand these feelings as though we were our own best mothers, we will know how to respond. There are going to be mistakes, and that is okay. If we can stay steady state as we risk the vulnerability of coming real (like you did Copa, in choosing to converse with the relative the second time), then we will do alright. We don't have to be perfect. We can just be our same selves, our sane selves, recognizing that we have chosen vulnerable, and that it is a real risk for us. And that we have been brave, to do this.

And that anxiety is ourselves, trying to protect us from taking a risk like that again. We will be like Dolly. Okay, if the door is open.

I think that is the self talk that will help us when we feel anxiety wash through us because we have risked, and allowed ourselves to explore these new ways of unprotected-by-perfectionism ways of being present.

Cedar

So, I wanted to add that I had one of those days where I was not doing so well. I looked bad, I felt bad. So, I told myself: "Unfortunately, I look ugly." (I got that from you, Copa.) And all at once, the pressure seemed to be off. I went ahead and did what I did that day. When I got home, I found that I did not look ugly, at all.

 

[Copabanana]

The macaw I post about sometimes? Will tuck his head beneath his wing and laugh and laugh. Sometimes, he will.

I laughed here. Thank you.

it is like those experiments in which electric shocks could be given.

Some become guards.

Some, prisoners. Roles were taken on and acted out on and never forgotten. Long after the experiment was past, those roles and what was taught and learned, still not forgotten.

There were two different experiments.

The first was by Stanley Milgram, I think his name was. The second was the Stanford Prisoner experiment (by Philip Zimbardo, a Psychology professor there, where students were randomly assigned to be either guards or prisoners.

I knew the man who had run that experiment at Stanford. His name is Craig Haney. He was a graduate student in Psychology at that time. The participation in the experiment changed the course of his life. He decided afterward to study law and since that time, maybe 40 years, he has worked for prisoners' rights and prison reform.

When they had set up the experiment, they had expected some effect, but nothing like they got. How rapidly and completely each individual in each group gave up their personal will and descended into sadism or abandoned their own autonomy and self-respect. They sacrificed themselves on cue. How do you walk that back, knowing this?

They were horrified, those that watched. The experiment was a profound success, and at once a lamentable tragedy.

What seemed to injure the participants was that they came to doubt themselves. Their identities that they thought were their own. They come to see themselves as constructs and to fear who they could really be. Because if you can give up yourself so easily, lose who you are, and throw it away? Who are you?

Which is a perfect segway into this:

Martin Luther: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

And he knew there would be consequences, and he did it anyway

He risked being labeled heretic for that, and he was labeled heretic.

See. All life really is is a series of choices that define us.

The problem is that we do not necessarily know what is at stake. So there is serendipity involved. Or maybe intuition.

Because those students had no way of knowing that they might be irreparably harmed, and their lives changed by that one choice. Like your D H going to Vietnam. It was an innocent choice, to do good and be responsible. And from that came, all of the rest. His life.

I am remembering here a sad story: When I was say 21, I acquired a big black puppy in front of a grocery store. Max, I named him. He became way more than I could control. At some point I decided he was a black and tan coon hound, because he was a fantastic tracker. I would leave him at home, and walk to the University maybe 8 blocks away, and then cross the campus, another 8 blocks. I would ascend in the library elevator 3 stories. Begin to study, and an hour later, Max would show up. He had tracked me, rode the elevator up, and appear.

He had become aggressive too. I was over my head. So my step-father located a ranch family who were interested in adopting Max, and I assented, sadly. I realized this was a great chance for Max, to hunt and live on a large ranch. I drove with him and presented him to the family and said this: If you decide to not keep him, I request that you contact me so that I can take him. You see, I felt responsible for him. They agreed.

Two weeks later I called to check on him. He was gone. Where is he? Well we gave him to xxx and we think he is living in xxx. We do not know the name or the address. Or the phone number.

I was bereft. I drove through the streets of that time, hoping I could spot him, without success.

I became depressed. I felt that I had failed Max and I had been betrayed. That my best efforts to take responsible for him had been ruined beyond my control. I knew that it was not my fault but who else to blame? I had been betrayed, and I had no control what so ever. I felt as if I had abandoned my child. I became very depressed.

I called a university in a nearby city that had a clinic and requested an appointment. The intake psychologist told me there was an opportunity to be seen more quickly if I agreed to be part of a teaching activity. I would be seen by the professor. Not knowing what it could be, I said yes.

When I arrived at the university for my appointment the set up was that I would be interviewed by the psychiatry instructor for the medical school. The students, it was like a seminar, viewed the proceedings behind a glass window. I knew they were there, I could vaguely see them.

The psychiatrist began the therapy. I remember his wanting to make my grief about something in my childhood, in my life. I kept repeating, it is about my dog. I believe I let my dog down. I let myself down. (I was no more than 22 years old.) Who does your dog represent, he asked? My dog. I answered.

He kept forcing it. I kept resisting it. There was more than one session, each with the same goal, to get me to cop to whatever it is that the psychiatrist thought was the truth. I kept refusing to give up the right answer.

I kept saying: I had a responsibility to my dog, which I wanted to keep. I was lied to and there is nothing I can do to fix this. I am depressed because I feel the victim of a circumstance that is not in my making. That I cannot fix.

Well, my situation had gotten worse, because remember, all of this was being witnessed by students not too much older than I. Now, my problems were compounded because I felt shame. I felt self-hatred because I had agreed to submitting to this. I felt shame at my own sense of self-importance, and perhaps even exhibitionism, that I had agreed to this abusive set up.

So after a few sessions, I forget how many, I refused to go back. I told the procurer-psychologist that I would no longer return to that instructional setting, but that I needed to continue with a therapist in actual therapeutic conditions, not on display. I insisted that the teacher see me as a patient, to deal with the mess he had helped me make of myself because of this circus-exhibition that I had agreed to, in order to get treatment. He refused.

I would never return. For years I felt shame about my part in this. It is one reason that I mistrust and disrespect psychiatry. But still seek them out still. Why?

Maybe, that is what we are doing, here. Maybe, that is the thing we are afraid of, and not our Mothers (or our Sisters) at all.

What you refer to here Cedar, is being accused as heretic, or accusing ourselves as such.

What is a heretic? A non-believer or somebody that betrays the true G-d? I will look it up when I leave here. I remember that the colonies were settled by many who had been denounced as heretics.

So this would make sense, if the mother seeks and demands god-like powers, and she is disobeyed, even in our own minds, this would be tantamount to heresy.

There are kinds of sensitivity having nothing to do with victimization and everything to do with predation. And the answer can only be: Certain things I will not do.

Is this the heresy? In our own heads, having drawn a line in the sand?

He risked being labeled heretic for that, and he was labeled heretic.

Because we would not believe in nor accept our mothers' powers and defied them, even if only in our own minds?

Is this the crime? Defiance.

I love it that you were sensitive to your own feelings of shame, Copa. Man, that took courage. You were the gladiator on the bloodied sand, choosing the meaning as you stood up, bloodied and beaten and triumphant. I love it that you took the opportunity in both hands to go after her, and to risk and be real.

I had never thought of it this way. I ran after her to tell her who I am. I proclaimed it. (I am still slightly embarrassed, but better that than afraid.)

Remember my posting about my mother destroying D H reputation through accusations to our freaking neighbors having to do with physical abuse and being a jerk and you name it.

Our neighbor came to me and told us about it.

She was sick at heart, because she had listened.

What a good, good woman to tell you. I am sorry for her. She was a victim of your mother.

These are the answers we need, and will learn, as we push ourselves up from the bloodied sand of the arena. To find that everyone in the audience is us.

Yes.

How profound is that, Cedar? You are speaking here about your sense, your belief that your family is actually not all that interesting to you. You are feeling a bit superior here, I think, and wondering if that is your crime. You are speculating that your family dinner, in all of its elegance, might well have been to compensate the rather mundane guests who would show up. Actually boorish and boring.

not very bright (given the nature of the win pursued with such dogged insistence), and not very desirable to know.

So was this a part of the heresy, too? That we did not really embrace their creed, love of self and for the self, without limit? Not stopping at anything?

And feel badly enough about myself for knowing what I know about how I really feel about them....

So, is this the crime, Cedar, knowing your own feelings about them?

When I knew all along they were people who would do what they did because that is who they are.

And I always was an outsider, there.

"people who would do what they did because that is who they are" and who they were was all we had. Imagine what that kind of ambivalence would cost a child. Seeing and not seeing. That is why we do what we do with the sisters. See them, watch them, recognize once. And then we undue what we have seen, un-know what we know. Because a child would not have the capacity to hold that kind of understanding within her, without handling it with a defense mechanism: most likely denial.

Some rottenness having to do with overweening contempt turned pride turned blackened thing.

And that child would then attack herself for the crimes she had seen, possibly, quite possibly committed against her very self.

So they would be her crimes. Because of course she could not feel them to be her parents'. Because she would have nobody and nowhere to live. So by internalizing what she had seen and known, she would feel this to be her own crime. That she is concealing. When in fact she had been its victim.

The difference now is that I know this time that at the end of this time of unraveling I will be the Dolly that was meant to be.

Yea. Cedar and Dolly!!!

Forgotten, and justified imaginary badnesses, one after another, as she has been taught to do to herself; as she has been taught to believe about herself and even, to supply the poison and the knife.

D H said something like that last night, when we were talking about destroyed reputations.

We become perpetrators against ourselves and there is no way out. Are you still beating your wife?

D H lived that false accusation for real. How very, very hard. M lived that, too, at the hands of his wife. Who told all of his children that he had done wrong and bad things. To her and to them. Which everybody knew were not true. And for years M had believed he had lost his kids.

It is this that he cannot forgive.

His wife is ill now (let me restate here that he has not seen her for 12 years or so and does not speak to her. He has requested a divorce but she will not assent nor speak to him about it. She has an enlarged heart.

I cannot but believe in my secret heart that this is a manipulation. (Except M does know she has a heart condition. Then why does she run in marathons?

Why do his children keep calling him to tell him? He says, What can I do? And then another kid calls to ask for money to pay for the birth of her next child. He asked her? Where is your husband, the father?

Is it arterial blood. Is the wound mortal or is the knife a construct too.

Well it must be, or I could not have made it fall out.

Yes. This is profound. I do not quite understand it, but I know it to be profound.

What does the knife look like. Where was it made and at whose direction.

If there were such a knife for Dolly...we would know it was wrong; that it was an obscenity. Contrast that with your feelings re the knife when we thought it had been constructed, for us.

I felt it was my own fault.

Dolly did not have to cope, as we do, with a limiting belief system about her own worth.

Yes. And all kinds of instructions and consumer warnings and threats.

Imagine what it meant, to choose kind, instead.

To choose slave.

I cannot fathom it Cedar. Honestly, I cannot. What enormous courage. How do little tiny girls have the courage, even know that they can defy, become heretics in their own minds. At the expense of themselves but not their everlasting souls?

Dolly does not distrust her essential nature.

Yes. This is the essential nature. All that had to happen for Dolly, was that her essential nature unfold.

That is why the recent posts of New Leaf are so important. Because there are self-accusations being made about essential qualities, that may be good or may be very bad.

We have each of us already mis-labeled those qualities in ourselves. And we claim we are confused about their aspect in others. That is what has to be cleaned up.
In each of us.

You could be right Copa, but I think the sisters are bluffing.

My sister looks for real. She acts like Hillary Clinton. Unless you think Hillary Clinton is bluffing. I do not think so.

I think these people are constructed differently. They are segmented. Like those circle diagrams, the overlapping circles, which have a name I have forgotten. Their senses of themselves as in the world do not overlap. Ours do. We can drill down and we do. Their shame, conflict, whatever, do not converge. It is not a bluff. It is that segment that they are able to manifest, which is un-modulated by shame, or guilt, or anxiety. It may be a sham, but it is not a bluff.

I love it that you took the opportunity in both hands to go after her, and to risk and be real.

But I still do not understand why I did it. Was it to show up? Was it defiance of the shame and fear? Was it to show myself who I really am? I guess. If I am the only audience that there really is.

So you faced the internalized sister and who she (with her pale reflections of the Witch Mother's power ~ with the very power with which, at the internalized Witch Mother's behest, we destroy ourselves now out of fear that it is in us too. And it is this that the sisters employ

So, that is what you think I did. I made a decision to be real and to speak for myself.

These are the answers we need, and will learn, as we push ourselves up from the bloodied sand of the arena. To find that everyone in the audience is us.

Yes.

The audience in the arena is us, Copa. We are the thumbs up or thumbs down judgment makers.

Yes.

we have learned belly up because the other way requires a compromise of integrity impossible for us.

Yes. Or the necessity to run away, or to recognize that there was nobody there that really loved us or protected us. We could not do either. So we undermine our real perceptions and our real selves.

About what I refused to see and having it turn out to be that I find them ~ my own people ~ not very bright (given the nature of the win pursued with such dogged insistence), and not very desirable to know.

But you chose for them, because you could not choose for yourself. If you had, you would have felt alone in the world. You were too little to be alone in the world, Cedar, and so was I.

Too secret to tell. I will whisper it to myself, first. But at the bottom of the secret is the guilt fueling everything else.

All of it.

I hate secrets. Is it more than you have hinted at, that you knew them to be "not much?"

about the way I may really feel about my Family of Origin.

Or is it that you hated them and held them in contempt and that all of the fantasy about the family dinner was just so much perfume to cover up the stench.

Is it arterial blood. Is the wound mortal or is the knife a construct too.

Well, this is the most interesting of all.

Do we construct the idea of the vicious crime against ourselves as a kind of stop sign, a deterrent, so that we go no further.

This is your brain on drugs. Remember those commercials. With the egg being fried in the pan.

A threat. Actually not that effective. I doubt if any one person was deterred. Were we? Or is just all a grand theater, to give the appearance to ourselves of self-destruction so it looks to us that we have complied, when we have done no such thing.

Thank you, Cedar. Excellent post.

COPA

 

[InsaneCdn]

I went ahead and did what I did that day. When I got home, I found that I did not look ugly, at all.

Of course not. You just felt ugly. And feelings are not reality, they are just feelings.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I hate secrets. Is it more than you have hinted at, that you knew them to be "not much?"

It is the overweening grandiosity in thinking like that, Copa. This thing that I fought all my life. Not to be that chuckling thing without eyes.

I am so afraid of that.

That it is me.

That is what all the perfectionism is designed to cover and protect and discipline and monitor and negate. That is the secret thing, and the fearsome thing.

That is why: Slave. To refute the temptation of: Master. Not through some sense of nobility, but because Master is a pointless game, the win ugly.

All of it, ugly. But we push ourselves up from the ground, determined to stand as best we can, as many times as it takes.

Nietzsche: When you peer into the abyss, the abyss peers also into you.

So, I have to be my own best mother, now. And tend to work, and to drinking my tea as though the fulcrum of the world turned on it. And to contemplating Germany, which is who we become once we are free, and decent and intensely interested in our curiosities strictly for themselves and not for self-aggrandizement, which is the other side of contempt for self and other.

This is my biggest secret.

That these things must be true. How could they not be true. I don't know another way to interpret anything without figuring out which is the correct way to think, first. So...the task is to accept that about myself.

Or is just all a grand theater, to give the appearance to ourselves of self-destruction so it looks to us that we have complied, when we have done no such thing.

Oh, boy. I hope so.

:O)

Shakespeare, remember? All the people and life the stage. Then, I could pick whoever I wanted to be. Perfect, and not all nasty. Because here is another secret, just not as rotten as the first one. I don't feel very proud of the way I post about my Family of Origin, here.

Dolly comes to Cedar's rescue.

Dolly was never nasty. She had been through some nasty things. Had been twisted into unnatural shapes, and confronted or been confronted with, unnatural and terrible things. Still, she unfolded into Dolly.

I will hold faith then that I will do the same.

***

I remember when we first began here on FOO Chronicles. And I would always post that I was going to push through it. And I did. And that was hard, and I need to remember that. And there was a time then too when I felt this way. And it turned out to be another layer.

It's like balancing on a tightrope.

Just do it. Trust yourself, and do it.

***

Copa, that is a horrifying story, about the psychiatrist and the people behind the glass. What in the world was the matter with him, that he would offer therapy at that cost to a student who had no real choice but to accept his "help". A student who was, in any case, too young to know the forever cost to herself. He was using you Copa, to demonstrate his stupid prowess to his students.

Oh, Copa.

In public.

***

There was a time I intended to specialize in psychiatric nursing. When I saw what actually happens there, when I saw the dynamic between patient and forever self-elevating "doctor" ~ when I saw the utter lack of human compassion and the way it was justified, I chose another field.

And I agree with you wholeheartedly about Freud.

The question becomes how those theories could have seemed valid...but they were gospel for a long time. Contempt, superiority, a refusal to broach criticism or deviation from the standard line; name calling of the worst kind should the student (postulant) deviate. ("Just don't think." "Don't you dare.")

And yet, some did.

And so, all were saved.

Cedar

Here is the question relevant to our healing: If adult people not abused in their childhoods believed Freud's truths...is there something in all of us that will believe the worst possible things are the "truth" about us?

When the truth is actually that we can think anything. We can imagine anything ~ anything at all. Why is it that we are so willing to believe the wrong things, but not the beautiful things. The beautiful things about us that are more true, that have been proven again and again and again to be true.

Because both are equally true.

Which was learned in those experiments we were posting about.

 

[BusynMember]

Leafie, I have studied psychiatry like a college student and, although I didn't go to college either, the newer school of thought IS that we are NOT born a blank slate. That is older thinking, pretty much disproven (I made up a word...haha) and, if it helps, I believe your version of your early life and how you were born from the bottom of my heart. I know I was born sensitive as opposed to other babies and my mother said I cried all the time and she couldn't even hold me...I stiffened up. If you look in a hospital nursery, you see all different temperments in the infants...alert and awake and looking around, screaming, calm and quiet...we are very much our inner DNA and personality per almost all experts.

I don't know w hat lead to that post as I did not read the entire thread, but it sounds as if somebody disagrees with this, but it has been proven and all infants are born with our own personalities. They can be somewhat influenced by our environments, but twin studies show strong, strong genetics in people, especially in studies where twins are split at birth and brought up in different homes.

My brother and sister did not have my "infant personality." No two infants are alike. There is no blank blackboard that needs writing. I know the studies I've read and they are NEW studies and many of them. I also study adopted kids and how they are usually a lot like their birthparents in personality. Of course most have more advantages in life if they are adopted, but many adoptees, when they meet their birthmothers (who is usually the one who is met) find that they have even mannerisms and way of speaking that are so alike and yet they have never met before. My BFF met her birthmother at age 37 and was SHOCKED at the similarities between the two of them. On the other hand, her birthmother was not as strong as she was because she had been forced to pretty much raise herself and her birthmother had been coddled and her children tended to coddle her further AND her husband. So nurure is a part. Nature seems to be stronger in most studies I've read. The days of Freud and h is theories and penis envy (lol) are done.On the other hand, being as sensitive a child as I was, and being neurologically atypical, I feel I could have been made stronger as a young adult if I had been taught coping skills for my sensitivity. I just knew how to feel. I did not know how to direct those feelings so often I did so inappropriately. I had to learn and it was a long learning curb and I am still rather sensitive.

Ok, so I came back for a bit and saw your post, Leafie, and mean no harm to Copa, but have not read anything that backs up the blank slate theory, if that indeed was your post (I did not read it). I am going to leave again as I am pretty much done with dealing with my FOO and the horrific issues of my own mother and these folks helped me a lot. However, don't ever feel invalidated for your own thoughts, beliefs and what you KNOW about yourself. (This to Leafie).

Everyone, have a great day and look for some peace. Again, I meant no harm to anyone, but Leafie sounded like she needed validation, which is so important, and she certainly has it from me.

Hugs to everyone!!!

 

[Copabanana]

mi compute ke is ded. cops

 

[Copabanana]

 

[New Leaf]

Copa risked, Leafy. You began it, but Copa valued you, the children you work with, and herself, enough to respond honestly. She told you true things. That is a rare, and very special, quality of Copa's.
Stellar integrity.

I do appreciate that Cedar and Copa, thank you.

We each have been there too, Leafy. You are doing well, staying balanced, finding value in yourself, in the child you were, and in the person you intend to reclaim.

Again, I thank you, though I do not feel I am doing well. I am having a hard time of it. I am being swept away by a current of sadness right now. I am not balanced at all.

Picking apart words and ideas is called analysis. It is one of my favorite things to do and I do it very well. I have to brag here a little bit. To enter graduate school you had to take a test, called the Graduate Record Examination or GRE. I scored in the 99th percentile in this category of thinking. And 99th in Verbal ability, competing against others, all college graduates or nearly so. I love my mind and I have worked hard cultivating it at certain points in my life.

I admire your intelligence and wit, although it can be a bit intimidating for me, not from your end, but from my educational background. I am not in the same league. I read and reread your reply, maybe that is where the issue is? Not you, or me, or even misconstruing, but we were coming from different wavelengths?

If that is the case, then I do not think you want to post on FOO. Because the biggest potential for growth is error. Because that is where we learn. By missing the mark. Our certainty about things is our enemy. It is in risking to be wrong, where we can grow.

I think one of the hardest things for me is the risk and exposure. In that, maybe that is what I need to work on the most. Even with my artwork. I have to stop fearing how others perceive me. Please forgive me if I offend, I am still feeling very raw. I would say one of my biggest enemies is my uncertainty. I don't go about this way always, but I do have too much self doubt, and that increases exponentially when I am over-feeling.

I am grateful to you for hearing me out. And by challenging what I have written. That helps me to understand better what is my thinking, because by doing so, I must clarify my own thinking to myself.
That is the value of all of this. Where we go, where we may travel, in response to the challenges of others. Doing this alone would not work in the way that this does.
I am inviting you to continue this dialog. I would like to do so.

Thank you Copa, that is most generous and kind of you.
It is with a bit of trepidation that I write, because as I said, I am not at the level you are.
I am not challenging what you have written, it is from your understanding of things. It is logical and thought out.
I should have been more careful in my wording, it did not convey well what I was trying to say.
Please bear with me as I try to explain.
Please also keep in mind that we are from different plains of intellect.

So back to the original theme of this post:What do you believe was misconstrued? Maybe we need to start over from there and to dialog about it, so that I can correct any mis-perception and/or try to explain better, what I did mean.

I will say again, that I did not express myself well. So it wasn't even your misconstruing, it was my writing. In posting here, I am finding myself going back to how I felt as a child. It is almost like time travel. Like I am there again. It is very painful. I am writing from a very emotionally charged state.
As I am writing this, my stomach is burning and my throat is welling. I can't even tell you why. Okay, that is a lie. I am afraid. There, I said it. So deep breath.

I think your response was from logic and intellect, and my post was mostly born of emotion. In all honesty, truthfully, I am seeking validation, compassion, understanding. Is that not part of a piece to the puzzle of being here? Of feeling safe and able to share? Am I confusing the purpose with the other forums? Maybe I am in the wrong in looking for that here in FOO?
If I have broken the rules of engagement, please forgive me.
If you wish me not to post here, I will honor that.


I read through your post Copa, and see your points. I also see that I have a problem and am weak, when it comes to asserting myself in certain things.
I do not always feel this way.
It comes and goes.
I find myself feeling more vulnerable and weak when delving into my past.
I feel like sh*t.
Really.
So, when a few sentences were pulled out of my post, and the whole context ignored, I felt picked apart. Wrong. Confused. Misunderstood. Hurt. I apologize, I am a blubbering mess right now.
I felt like everything else I had written was ignored.
It hurt.
I know that was not your intention Copa, you are not a mean person.
I am not blaming you.
I am ashamed.
Maybe I need to cloister myself.

Sometimes catch those subtleties and miss something else about the context that would have told me that I don't have to react. Because none of us is "perfectly" sensitive - we are more sensitive in some areas and less in others.

Thank you Insane. I am sorry at my reaction and wrong wording.
I do try my best at school to treat each child with loving care. I am just a health aide, not a teacher.
Pretty low on the totem pole. I do help out as best I can, wherever I can and try to treat each child with loving kindness, no matter what the circumstance.
I do so love all of the kids I work with, especially those with difficulties.

It is like the little child who behaves aggressively. That she does so from the perspective I have now is the most wonderful of things. That she be mean, not so good. But we learn to not be mean.

I admire children and people who have a strong sense of self. Assertive. Confident. Self assured.
Those are personality traits I aspire to. Some days I get there, but there is always this nagging underlying feeling of unworthiness. It is a struggle to overcome.
I think the hardest part of going back into my past, is feeling all of those old feelings through and through.
I feel physically ill. I want to vomit. Headache, stomach ache.
It is a purging.
It is excruciating.

my sis and bro were capable at a very young age of being mean and manipulative and controlling.

Good for them. I wish I had had the courage and sense of safety to do the same. I had the capacity but it was turned against myself.

I was wondering about this response, Copa. It was the bane of my existence that my sibs were this way. My d cs are this way, also, and I think it sent me reeling back into those times as a child. So this response puzzles me. Could you help me understand?

I would hope that you do not want me to muzzle myself. I cannot do that.

I do not want you to muzzle yourself. Of course not. I am fascinated by your posts.

However, don't ever feel invalidated for your own thoughts, beliefs and what you KNOW about yourself. (This to Leafie).

Thank you Serenity, this was very kind of you. I am going through a low, here. I think I understand your post in my Sensitivity thread about "getting better". I need to work on that........getting better, so that I don't take everything so personally and am not so devastated, for what?
Yes, that is the hard part of being sensitive, the curse of it.

Everyone, have a great day and look for some peace. Again, I meant no harm to anyone, but Leafie sounded like she needed validation, which is so important, and she certainly has it from me.

Thank you Swot, I am grateful for this. It was and is very comforting, to feel validated and supported.
I am going through something maybe even unnamable.

It is not in regards to Copa or Insane and their response, it is all on me and being inside out and upside down.

I mean no harm to anyone either.
I am sorry for the uproar and turmoil I have caused.

I love all of you guys.
I don't really love myself right now.

leaf

 

[New Leaf]

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am still here coming back to my shame with my cousin, and my sense of rejection.

When I am so able to risk with strangers, and draw them to me why does it not work with my own people?

Maybe Copa, this is a gift. These feelings, for us. As IC said, we are thrown back into FOO patterns...but now we are adults. Now, if we have the courage to sit with the feelings, we can understand our responses and trace them back and heal the initial hurt.

Or simply, change the thought pattern going forward.

That is the key. Sitting with the feelings.

You were brave Copa, to confront the feelings and seek the cousin out the second time.

I love that you did that.

So there is the answer to the destroyed reputation question. There is no answer. The good people, the people we want in our lives, will know what is true about us. The others will need to decide, and that has nothing in the world to do with us. We need to face up to our situations relative to our families of origin, and stop buying in to their versions of reality. Wishing for family when we already know how our families work is a way we punish ourselves ~ again, having to do with how we were raised to perceive ourselves ~ at their unspoken (because they aren't speaking to us, those dirty rats) behest, and is probably the dynamic at the heart of all shunning.

A living thing, the shun.

Like a kaleidoscope, in that way.

This is where we heal. Knowing our own feelings about ourselves are chimeras, are constructs. We are blazing through it, now. We see it, now. We know what it is, now.

Soon there will be good, rich laughter where once our thoughts made us suffer.

So, I am not sure how this stage of healing proceeds, but I am aware of diametrically opposed choice in a way I have not been for some time. This morning, as I awakened, I found myself contrasting ways of thought, ways of thinking and being and feeling and believing. I lost whatever it is I was dream thinking about. One of the choices: Jealousy, the wormy little hurt of envy: The life wasted, the heart a blackened thing, the death so bitter. Or to live life from a full heart, from a heart bubbling up and overflowing. The blood thundering, the river taking us where it will, without fear. Which has to do with the Culture of Scarcity Brene Brown writes about, and with how we interpret it.

Isn't that something. How simple it seems now, I mean. And there again, I feel laughter bubbling up ~ like the deep, rich laughter of a Jamaican, so happy and gentle and wise.

I thought about the stupid dentist, and the role fear would play or not play in a tooth I am soon to have a crown made for.

?

Things like that, replete with imagery and sound.

A little girl who was in my Brownie troop, who told us about her grandmother and how the grandmother would always tell them that she loved them too much, and laugh and laugh with them, all of them happy.

And that good, rich laughter feeling I posted about whenever I began this post is beginning.

So, this must be a place along the path to wholeness, too.

Again, I thank you, though I do not feel I am doing well. I am having a hard time of it. I am being swept away by a current of sadness right now. I am not balanced at all.

You are so welcome, Leafy. It is a hard thing, to face and examine and put to rest those old feelings, unquestioned for so long and assumed to be true things when they were lies, all along.

Would it help you to post about the feelings in more depth? Whose voice is it, speaking the phrases you chose to describe yourself? What would balanced look and feel like, and whose voice is it telling you that to be unbalanced is wrong?

To be unbalanced means we have shaken things up, and will come into a new, brighter place of balance.

Remember my posting about "That'll do, pig." And about other things that were shaming. But those things were there, whirring away on those negative tapes just beneath the level of conscious acknowledgment all along. Though it is very hard to sit with the feelings of sadness or deep regret or shame or whatever it is, if we can learn to envision ourselves as those little girls that we were, and if we can learn to see and hear her with compassion, we can help her. We can provide for her now what she needed, then.

If you were to envision the little girl that you were, what is it that she needs you to hear about her sadness? What does she need from you, Leafy. Coming through this, I learned that, whatever else happened to that little girl that was me, the worst thing that happened to her was when I deserted her, too.

I had been taught to see myself through such harsh and condemning eyes Leafy, that no matter what I did, what I accomplished or lost, until I fell into love with my children, there was a lonely, guarded center at the heart of me. It was wrong that this happened to me, and it is wrong that it happened to you.

Or to anyone.

So, we are going to go in now and save those little girls (or little boys) that we were from the things they were taught were true about them.

It helped me to envision my adult self witnessing for the little girl who was me. I assured her we had lived. I assured her I was her, all grown up. She was ashamed in front of me, Leafy.

Imagine.

But I was not ashamed of her. And so, there grew up a kind of trust between us. It is a matter of guided envisionment Leafy, and symbolism.

And determination to ~ I don't know. To heal, or to be whole, or whatever it is. To be and create a center, maybe.

I had not been able to trust, before.

Someone taught the little girl who was you to feel badly about the way you feel. What would it have looked and sounded like for that little girl to have heard what she needed to hear when that happened?

Who could have helped her to cherish and respect her feelings, instead of feeling defensive about how she feels? What words could they have spoken to comfort and teach you?

***

If we can see her Leafy, if we can envision that little girl who was us, and if we can make a determined choice ~ whatever the initial feelings about her are, and they will not be good ones ~ if we determine to hear her with compassion and if we will not be shaken from our decision to love and protect her, then everything about our lives begins to change. Subtle things, at first. Just a full, unrestricted breath. Things begin to take on new color. There is a different sense of time. It seems to stretch out forever or to compress into an instant. Leafy, if you can hear her sadness with deep compassion instead of judging her by some system of value that seems to have been a cruel and lonely thing, then you will be your own safe harbor.

Once you are your own safe harbor, if the sibs are mean, that will be (rightly so) about them. Nothing to do with you ~ unless you desert yourself to believe them when the truth is that no one else can know your heart. Only you can know your heart.

No one else.

***

Somehow, one day, we realize we already are perfect because we are imperfect. When that happens, we lose our fear...maybe what I mean is we have broken through another level of fear. Another, deeper or roomier level of self opens, and it's a very cool place to be coming from. It's like we develop curiosity. Instead of believing we already know, we bumble around trying new things and falling down, alot. But somehow, we don't mind it. Everything looks so different then, and there is quiet and limitless time.

That is what was taken from us, that kind of peaceful curiosity and ~ well, I don't know. If it's bravery or joy or both, or just what it is. But everyone else functions from that place Leafy, and they always have. When we were little kids in school, when we were adolescents, most of the people around us were functioning from that secure place of curiosity and passionate exploration. They were functioning from a place where there was access to every facet of self. We should have always been able to function from that place within, too. But somehow, we came to believe terrible things about ourselves, and were not able to feel safe enough for compassion or centering in the self, or for believing we were able to withstand challenge without being destroyed by having questioned ourselves. Imagine that. Imagine what our lives might have been, had we been able to live from our own centers, instead of having learned to protect ourselves.

We can, now.

You will feel differently in another day or two, Leafy. I think you are doing good work. I am sorry it is so hurtful...but I can tell you with all my heart that it is worth it.

It is about taking away the barriers to honoring the self.

Some of the barriers have teeth. None of them fall easily. The barriers were created by us, to protect ourselves from whoever our abusers were.

I am sorry for the uproar and turmoil I have caused.

There was no uproar or turmoil, Leafy.

All is well.

Be gentle with yourself, honor your own intentions, even if it seems very hard, okay, Leafy? Your decision to heal the hurt places means everything. As long as your effort is sincere (or as long as my effort is sincere) we will grow. We will begin to feel stronger, clearer, more amenable to joy. In my way of thinking, healing the hurt places has to do with internal versus external locus of control.

Something so simple to me about that concept.

Another of us will describe her (or his) process differently and that is okay, too.

We all are doing the best we know.

As long as we are sincere in our Heroes' questing, we are going to be okay.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

mi compute ke is ded. cops

Copa, we miss you. Remember I would always post about the candle in the window for my son? So that its light would guide him home? And I would envision all the moms, all of us with those candles in our windows so that the kids, wherever they were, would feel that light?

Would somehow feel us, holding them safe from harm and lighting the way home, all the mothers missing their sons or their daughters?

For you, it is the same. Feel it? Bright and warm and living, like breath.

We are right here, Copa. Soon, the computer will be fixed or replaced, and you will be back with us. Until it is, there are the lights shining from the windows.

Wow, Copa. Lots of candles. Like magic.

Cedar