Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
This is a personal growth kind of posting, with a special hello and a thank you to Recovering Enabler. Back on Feb 5th, Recovering posted to me on that page where we can go to change our profiles. I just saw it today and responded, but I received a warning that it had too many words. I think I may have typed my response in my profile space.
Ha!
Oy.
With my rotten computer skills, the fear is that I will never be able to change it back. (!) So, I don't know whether I answered you or not, Recovering. The good news is that I don't see my answer to you in my profile. In fact, the answer is no longer anywhere I can see it, at all.
Thank you very much, Recovering, for taking time to post to me like that. I was so pleased to know you had done that for me.
*****
As I posted in response to Recovering's kind questions about how we were, I realized that it might be helpful to each of us who is following the process of what happens, as we begin digging deeper to change self concepts formed at the hands of abusive parents, for me to post about it.
I have been feeling very Quasimodo-like, lately.
Sort of hiding in the bell tower, wishing I weren't...er, Quasimodo, I guess.
:O)
Because I have been so down on myself, it literally never occurred to me that learning about my process might be valuable to anyone else. So much of what is down there is so bad, so negative on every smallest level. Going back to get it, trying to sit with the feelings, recognizing and refusing the defenses evolved to counter the feelings has been a really crummy experience.
For awhile there, I got into counting the "likes" or the "winners" I got, here on the site. I finally had to stop liking anything myself, and give up entirely on whatever contest I was having with myself over the ratings on my posts. It was the strangest, most ego-centric thing. I am not proud of that. Other ego centric things were happening, too. I get it, intellectually, that without my usual defenses, there are going to be vulnerabilities, things I am ashamed of. But there was not one aspect of my life that was not suddenly under this microscope with a direct line to my mother's old messages about who and how I am.
It totally sucked.
Fear, and awareness of fear, and the strangest comments about fear ~ that's been happening.
Right. In. Public.
I look different, to myself.
I dream of looking into a mirror and seeing myself, my skin old and folded and lizardly looking. I am unrecognizable, except for my eyes, trapped in that face. I am assuming there is something here from my mother about aging. Maybe nothing she said, just an attitude toward life that I incorporated from her. I can feel her in here somewhere. I am finding my judgments about my mother crumbling. Which is good, but it leaves me with nowhere to stand.
Literally.
There is this heated, burgeoning compassion now where first there was numbness and then, hurt and disgust and rage.
Most of the things I am working with now have no words. There is no concrete thing to explore. Feelings, inadequacies, raging egocentricities that just smack me over with their (my) pettiness.
Again, Recovering, thank you so much. It was very healing, to know you had been thinking and wondering about me. Sort of irrefutable proof that the negatives were just that ~ negatives which needed to be brought into the light and healed; not real things, at all.
So, for those who find themselves walking this path of enlightenment with me...it isn't all brightness and openness and light. There is so much darkness, so much pain and old poison at the heart of us. I was going to post "when we have lived through abuse." But I think we must all have defenses, all have old hurts. It gets to be painful ~ especially when I am in Quasimodo mode, myself ~ to see the defenses others employ. And once we have seen through that same layer in our own defenses, it's like we can't unsee it in others.
I remember you posting something like that once, Recovering.
I have been struck speechless with compassion. I am defenseless myself, before that kind of pain. But at the same time, I am speaking words like, "How are you I am fine. How about that weather."
Because there literally is nothing else to do.
But, with our own thought patterns so disrupted by the negatives, by the old sadnesses and incompetencies, by the living truths in the eyes of our abusers...cheesh, it really sucks.
It is like being frozen in place. At some point, you can't just say, "Whoa. too much information." It is what is. Only this time, you know you chose it and you know sitting with it will change those basic belief systems.
It's hard to remember that though, when I am in the grip of it.
So, just lately, I am feeling more myself. I am coming out the other side of this layer. If past experience holds true for this time too, I will become familiar with this new level of ~ whatever it is. My personality, my personhood, will incorporate the changes, and I will be myself, again.
More present, if past experience holds true. More here, more of me. More real.
But it is as uncomfortable as you have ever heard that it is.
I read somewhere that a person should not seek spiritual enlightenment unless he wants it as though his hair were on fire.
I so get that, now.
I am thinking of changing my screen name to Quasimodo. Does anyone know what happens to him, in the end? Remember that bag he is always hauling around? That bag I drag through the bell tower in my Quasimodo phase is still like, half full.
Holy s***.
Cedar
Ha!
Oy.
With my rotten computer skills, the fear is that I will never be able to change it back. (!) So, I don't know whether I answered you or not, Recovering. The good news is that I don't see my answer to you in my profile. In fact, the answer is no longer anywhere I can see it, at all.
Thank you very much, Recovering, for taking time to post to me like that. I was so pleased to know you had done that for me.
*****
As I posted in response to Recovering's kind questions about how we were, I realized that it might be helpful to each of us who is following the process of what happens, as we begin digging deeper to change self concepts formed at the hands of abusive parents, for me to post about it.
I have been feeling very Quasimodo-like, lately.
Sort of hiding in the bell tower, wishing I weren't...er, Quasimodo, I guess.
:O)
Because I have been so down on myself, it literally never occurred to me that learning about my process might be valuable to anyone else. So much of what is down there is so bad, so negative on every smallest level. Going back to get it, trying to sit with the feelings, recognizing and refusing the defenses evolved to counter the feelings has been a really crummy experience.
For awhile there, I got into counting the "likes" or the "winners" I got, here on the site. I finally had to stop liking anything myself, and give up entirely on whatever contest I was having with myself over the ratings on my posts. It was the strangest, most ego-centric thing. I am not proud of that. Other ego centric things were happening, too. I get it, intellectually, that without my usual defenses, there are going to be vulnerabilities, things I am ashamed of. But there was not one aspect of my life that was not suddenly under this microscope with a direct line to my mother's old messages about who and how I am.
It totally sucked.
Fear, and awareness of fear, and the strangest comments about fear ~ that's been happening.
Right. In. Public.
I look different, to myself.
I dream of looking into a mirror and seeing myself, my skin old and folded and lizardly looking. I am unrecognizable, except for my eyes, trapped in that face. I am assuming there is something here from my mother about aging. Maybe nothing she said, just an attitude toward life that I incorporated from her. I can feel her in here somewhere. I am finding my judgments about my mother crumbling. Which is good, but it leaves me with nowhere to stand.
Literally.
There is this heated, burgeoning compassion now where first there was numbness and then, hurt and disgust and rage.
Most of the things I am working with now have no words. There is no concrete thing to explore. Feelings, inadequacies, raging egocentricities that just smack me over with their (my) pettiness.
Again, Recovering, thank you so much. It was very healing, to know you had been thinking and wondering about me. Sort of irrefutable proof that the negatives were just that ~ negatives which needed to be brought into the light and healed; not real things, at all.
So, for those who find themselves walking this path of enlightenment with me...it isn't all brightness and openness and light. There is so much darkness, so much pain and old poison at the heart of us. I was going to post "when we have lived through abuse." But I think we must all have defenses, all have old hurts. It gets to be painful ~ especially when I am in Quasimodo mode, myself ~ to see the defenses others employ. And once we have seen through that same layer in our own defenses, it's like we can't unsee it in others.
I remember you posting something like that once, Recovering.
I have been struck speechless with compassion. I am defenseless myself, before that kind of pain. But at the same time, I am speaking words like, "How are you I am fine. How about that weather."
Because there literally is nothing else to do.
But, with our own thought patterns so disrupted by the negatives, by the old sadnesses and incompetencies, by the living truths in the eyes of our abusers...cheesh, it really sucks.
It is like being frozen in place. At some point, you can't just say, "Whoa. too much information." It is what is. Only this time, you know you chose it and you know sitting with it will change those basic belief systems.
It's hard to remember that though, when I am in the grip of it.
So, just lately, I am feeling more myself. I am coming out the other side of this layer. If past experience holds true for this time too, I will become familiar with this new level of ~ whatever it is. My personality, my personhood, will incorporate the changes, and I will be myself, again.
More present, if past experience holds true. More here, more of me. More real.
But it is as uncomfortable as you have ever heard that it is.
I read somewhere that a person should not seek spiritual enlightenment unless he wants it as though his hair were on fire.
I so get that, now.
I am thinking of changing my screen name to Quasimodo. Does anyone know what happens to him, in the end? Remember that bag he is always hauling around? That bag I drag through the bell tower in my Quasimodo phase is still like, half full.
Holy s***.
Cedar