Nothing has changed....

[Albatross]

Copa you make many good points across the board. I do blame myself for not having the strength to get out of a very difficult relationship with my ex sooner. Way sooner. I often feel responsible that the unstable environment they lived in caused their now horrible behavior.
I try to figure out why they behave the way the do. Over and over in my head. It’s exhausting and I likely will never have a definitive answer.
Trying to grow and get better has a lot of set backs but I keep trying.

I think you have far more strength than you give yourself credit for, JayPee.

 

[Copabanana]

to gain the strength to turn, as Copa says, to save ourselves.

I don't think it's a question of strength. Strength we have in spades. I think turning is something we can do in a "blink of an eye." It's just to remember to turn and abracadabra we have.

And I also think "turning" gives our relationships the greater potential to turn, too. When we keep digging down the same rabbit holes, perseverating about "why" we too are responsible for the digging down into oblivion. That is on us.

When we dig, we are caving out our own spirits. We do that. Not our children. But we're also destroying the potential for their to be new ground to grow. Anything and everything. Maybe that's a perverse reason why we destroy. It's too protect.

Personally, I think "why" questions or "why me" questions are designed to hurt. To punish. To blame. What at first starts out as anger at our kids, we direct against ourselves. When we ask "why" we turn our anger (at them, at life, etc.) against ourselves. I think that's why when we stop it there is such release, and the welling up of potential and life force which we've kidnapped to use in why questions which are really clubs turned against ourselves.

You know that meme Free Melania? I want to Free Copa. I'm trying.

 

[ChickPea]

JayPee,

I'm sorry for how things went down for you. We have the same kind of block on our phone and it is maddening. I'm not sure why we have to renew the thing. It is crazy that your kiddo got through right away, too. Sounds like there was an outpouring of everything pent up for a while. It sucks and it hurts.

I don't know how much in repairs the car needs, but around here, a lot of people are driving without registration. I see cars all the time with expired tags. A couple weeks ago I was someone who hadn't renewed their tags since 1992!

Yes, my daughter has been driving without a drivers license (and common sense) for over a decade. I have no idea how she hasn't ended up in more trouble. Expired tags, at least around here, would get you pulled over and fined. Generally.

This is called intermittent reinforcement. It's the hardest of behaviors to extinguish. Because it was randomly rewarded, the recipient holds out and holds out.

Interesting. Intermittent Reinforcement. I think my husband does this.

 

[Copabanana]

It's just to remember to turn and abracadabra we have.

In a recent post New Leaf told us she'd bought LED candles which she placed around the house. They helped her to remember to turn her focus to the light.

I had never heard of LED candles! So, I bought 10, at Costco. (I tried the Walmart ones first and they broke.)

Well. I want to thank you all, very much, for this thread. I am doing this morning the very thing we are talking about here on this thread and I need to stop. I'm digging into my own soul. I wake up depressed and defeated. I think I sleep defeated. And by the time I emerge from sleep it feels I'm so far under that I am just buried by dirt, buried by my life. Which, I guess, is a variant of the dug down state. When your unconscious during sleep just buries you and you wake up underground, believing yourself to be irretrievably trapped and defeated.

So. I'm amending my earlier post. What to do when you wake up already buried, feeling buried. And all you see and feel is heavy dirt.

I am visualizing it right now. I'm closing my eyes and I'm reimagining it. And guess what? The fear is gone. The resignation and defeat are gone. Even though there is enclosure, there is space to breathe and safety. And I feel deep peace. I feel reconnected.

Honestly. I don't know what happened. How did this visualization help me feel better? How did feeling buried as defeat change to peace?

When I tried to figure it out with my intellect, the buried feeling returned. Uh oh. That didn't work.

The closing my eyes, was literally "a blink of an eye." My mind's eye for an instant was circumvented. The circuit was broken. The intellect won't help. It will only start again the digging. No more thinking!!

I am learning through my spiritual practice that there is always a safe and complete and nourishing place to go in ourselves. To which to return. I am thinking that what "turning" is, is to give ourselves the chance to return to this place. Even in despair, feeling buried, it's available. If we "blink."

So what I am left with here is the sense that the stories don't matter. Trying to make stories to answer why questions only robs us of strength, focus and possibility. This is a trick of our minds to believe that the resolution is out there, in the story. The process of trying to find a story entails only more digging down the same hole.

When I woke up already buried I felt hopeless. But when I blinked, I imagined being buried as rest, not as defeat and being trapped. What a miracle! I'm going to Home Depot now.

 

[BusynMember1]

Too much thinking is an enemy in my opinion. Meditation, quieting the chatter in our heads, praying....this distracts me. Rationalism, thinking why, taking trips in time (past or future)...none of that helped me at all. can't speak for anyone else.

Copa is so right about the why, why, why. We will never know. Waste of time. Blame...waste of time.

I love the idea of lights and am going to try candles with scent!

See... I am not too worried about Kay. I got over that because now if I worry it's about Jaden but he is in good hands. Still it is impossible not to worry at all.

God bless everyone

 

[New Leaf]

I love my candles. They have a remote that I can set as a timer to go on when it is dark.
This is a comforting visual reminder to me that there is light in the darkest of times.
We only need to seek it.
The candles and nightlights I have also help my grands who have trouble sleeping and are afraid of the dark. That is a whole nother story.
In standing my ground and guarding my heart and working on my thought process, I am not rejecting my two wayward daughters. I am setting important boundaries, not only for myself, but for them also, to learn that there are limits to what we allow ourselves to endure. They have shown me more times than naught, that they are driven by an insatiable appetite for meth and nothing else matters. For now. That makes them dangerous. Until they figure that out, I don’t plan to be much involved.
The work I need to do is to protect myself from that nagging inner voice, that I can do, or say anything to change their course. Now that Tornado is in jail, I am receiving phone calls again. I picked up on Christmas Eve thinking about her feelings. She didn’t really want to talk with me and my grands didn’t want to talk with her. She thinks she can just float back into their lives and has no regard for their feelings. When I say something she doesn’t want to hear (like no I won’t make a third party call, and no I won’t text this number, she gets aggressive.) The kids therapist says “Why pick up at all?” Boom! Simple!
I am an over thinker. It can be paralyzing. I am overly concerned about how others feel. I think when I lapse into these habits, I abandon my self.
I am intrigued by the power of positive thinking, the healing laughter brings, the fact that negative thinking, anxiety, stress and worry are damaging to our health. The books I am reading on traumatized children are pretty eye opening. The fact that having positive experiences and being around solid, good people can rewire our brains to think and respond, rather than react is encouraging. It can calm the stressors and our overactive amygdala. These kids growing up with outrageous instability has left them in hyper vigilant stress mode, their reactive brain took over preventing the thoughtful responding parts from healthy growth.
So, in researching this, I am thinking that many of us are traumatized by our heart-wrenching histories with our beloveds. Our brains have been wired to be hyper vigilant for the “next” episode. When this happens, we are sub consciously (or consciously) in heightened states that raises cortisol levels, causing inflammation which leads to a whole array of health issues and causes the brain to continue in this unhealthy state. It is a vicious cycle.
The good news is that it can be fixed, but it takes a lot of work on our part. Building our tool box. Retraining ourselves.
It feels like a parallel journey I am on with my grands. We have been traumatized due to choices from the same people. When they react to stressors, not eating properly or overeating, isolating, not sleeping or sleeping too much. Self sabotaging, not finding joy in simple things, and on and on, I see myself.
While it has been hard at times, this life adjustment taking care of my grands is helping me more than I could ever imagine. I have to awaken from my own grief and destructive self soothing. I have to become the calm in the storm, regulate my emotions in the wake of their outbursts, look beyond behaviors and understand the mechanism that drives them. I have to delve into the why’s, and how to help remedy their over reactive brains.
I think this is helpful knowledge. Concentrating, overthinking on why things happen the way they do with our wayward kids can be a destructive path that stagnates our own growth. We have no control over what they choose.
Reflecting on why we react the way we do, finding ways to change ourselves, to understand the mechanism behind our behaviors and make choices to respond differently, that’s growth. It’s what Copa is writing about.
Turning.
Turning our focus.
We become so entrenched with not only the whys, but what may be. Building those awful possibilities in our minds, is it survival? Feeling that if we keep those thought processes, it will protect us if something dire does happen?
I have a quote on a post-it on my computer from Victor Frankl
“If we see a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as what he should be, we make him him capable of becoming what he can be.” I am beginning to see that I can apply this to myself. See myself as what I should be and work towards making that reality.
From Frankls “The Will to Meaning”
“Humor and heroism refer us to the uniquely human capacity of self-detachment. By virtue of this capacity man is capable of detaching himself not only from a situation but also from himself. He is capable of choosing his attitude toward himself. By so doing he really takes a stand toward his own somatic and psychic conditions and determinants. Understandably this is a crucial issue for psychotherapy and psychiatry, education and religion. For, seen in this light, a person is free to shape his own character, and man is responsible for what he may have made out of himself. What matters is not the features of our character or the drives and instincts per se, but rather the stand we take toward them. And the capacity to take such a stand is what makes us human beings.

Taking a stand toward somatic and psychic phenomena implies rising above their level and opening a new dimension, the dimension of noetic phenomena, or the noological dimension—in contradistinction to the biological and psychological ones. It is that dimension in which the uniquely human phenomena are located.”
I just found this. I think it is what your are writing of Copa. Thank you.
Leafy

 

[Copabanana]

They have a remote that I can set as a timer to go on when it is dark.

I have these too. And there's a timer that turns them.Thank you, New Leaf.

Taking a stand toward somatic and psychic phenomena implies rising above their level and opening a new dimension, the dimension of noetic phenomena, or the noological dimension—in contradistinction to the biological and psychological ones. It is that dimension in which the uniquely human phenomena are located.”

Where did you find this New Leaf?

“Humor and heroism refer us to the uniquely human capacity of self-detachment. By virtue of this capacity man is capable of detaching himself not only from a situation but also from himself. He is capable of choosing his attitude toward himself.

And where did you find this?

“If we see a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as what he should be, we make him him capable of becoming what he can be.” I am beginning to see that I can apply this to myself. See myself as what I should be and work towards making that reality.

Thank you, New Leaf. I wish we had a new forum where we could focus upon supporting each other in just this way. What do you think? A Becoming forum.

Somehow I lost a couple of quotes that I want to respond to. But first I'm going for a walk. I will be back later.

I am talking about what you're talking about, New Leaf. It's come to me from spiritual work I've been doing. I would love to have a safe place here to set these kinds of intentions, share resources, and get support to push on. I will walk now and get back to you. Thank you, New Leaf and everybody.

 

[New Leaf]

Where did you find this New Leaf?

Both paragraphs quoted are from the ending of Frankls preface to his book, The Will to Meaning

I wish we had a new forum where we could focus upon supporting each other in just this way. What do you think? A Becoming forum.

I think that is an awesome idea. When you wrote of your experience feeling buried, I actually pictured a caterpillar encased in a cocoon. I have been feeling somewhat the same, overwhelmed and not feeling myself at all, or feeling like I’ve lost parts of myself along the journey. What it really is is that I have had to redefine myself many times over. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but that’s okay.

I am talking about what you're talking about, New Leaf. It's come to me from spiritual work I've been doing. I would love to have a safe place here to set these kinds of intentions, share resources, and get support to push on. I will walk now and get back to you. Thank you, New Leaf and everybody.

Hope you enjoy your walk, Copa. I have to start that up again. Our house is more peaceful now, so I can steal a few moments for self care.
I sure do need to get moving again!
New Leaf

 

[Copabanana]

I looked up noetic.

--Noetic is revelation: Inner wisdom, direct knowing, intuition, or implicit understanding

--Noetic sciences reveals a deeper understanding of our inner world, our shared consciousness,
the inter-connection between all things.

-- states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.

-- illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority (William James).

 

[Copabanana]

You see, New Leaf, I suffered a lot of what your grandkids did. For some reason as I get older more of it comes up. I set out to try to rewire my brain through meditation and prayer. But it's hard to sustain. Because the bad feelings undue me and this happens:

I abandon my self.

not eating properly or overeating, isolating, not sleeping or sleeping too much. Self sabotaging, not finding joy in simple things, and on and o

destructive self soothing.

I keep taking the low road: isolation, withdrawal, mind numbing, too much noise and not the high road:

positive experiences and being around solid, good people can rewire our brains to think and respond, rather than react is encouraging.

which would be a

Retraining

program!

finding ways to change ourselves, to understand the mechanism behind our behaviors and make choices to respond differently, that’s growth

This.​

 

[New Leaf]

I suffered a lot of what your grandkids did. For some reason as I get older more of it comes up. I set out to try to rewire my brain through meditation and prayer. But it's hard to sustain.

I am sorry for what you endured as a child. I do believe that our child mind exists within us and longs for healing. My mom is in the beginning stages of dementia, yet her memories of the past are vivid. As we grow older do we reel those tapes to find recompense before we are no more? Do memories plague us because there is a deep desire to overcome the pain somehow, someway?

I keep taking the low road: isolation, withdrawal, mind numbing, too much noise and not the high road:

I don’t know if isolation at times is a negative. I need alone time. I have had to force myself out of my bubble with my grands here. To breathe new life into my weary body and mind. It’s as if life has forced itself upon me and I can’t ignore the call?
I would probably be in hibernation mode if not for my grands.
On the other hand, a lot of great people throughout history have gone off the radar to find themselves and meaning.
Mind numbing, guilty, too much noise, yup, not the high road. Me too.
New Leaf

 

[Copabanana]

I don’t know if isolation at times is a negative. I need alone time.

The Rabbi I speak with calls this isolation of mine "a retreat."

On the other hand, a lot of great people throughout history have gone off the radar to find themselves and meaning.

Yes. I can be quite unkind to myself. Thank you very much New Leaf to remind me there is a kinder way to think of my needs.