True : some reflections on being true to ourselves on the path of recovery.

When I am not true to myself I lose my way. I feel it more and more lately that empowering sense of being in tune with my own soul note and of how it feels when I step away from that more primal, intuitive in touch side of myself and fall into self abandonment or self rejection.. Many of the conditioning forces of society especially for women turn us away from the more powerful authentic embodied side of us, religion for me was particularly toxic in this regard. Today in therapy Kat and I were exploring the strong forces of repression in my family that put us three girls to death on many levels , we were talking of my father’s remoteness and unwillingness to step in to protect us from Mum, too. In this way my father dying at the age of 23 was even more painful, but Dad was a young kid in flight from his family and terrifying conditions around World War Two. In many ways both of my parents were emotional orphans, young kids on the run and trying so hard to survive and build something new.

For myself, I feel so grateful to have escaped the medication pathway and even the AA pathway saying I have defects of character. If you don’t get to fully blossom as the true you and cannot rely on healthy attachments and then other linkages get torn apart you end up doing all you can to surive and stay afloat and if the original deficits arent acknowledged and some attempt at rebuilding and repair made, healing and change is not possible. Some schisms and wounds stay with us for a long time and we replay them over and over until we develop in sight. It is now recognised that even later in life our brain can make new connections and set down new neural pathways if we can find positive affirming attachments to assist us. Some of us, many of us, however, do have to go into the wilderness alone and some of us find or manage to hold onto shards of our splintered being or hidden truth there. We can also explore what got torn severed, split off, buried and involve in recollecting. Each trauma memory maybe a necessary thread that goes on to be part of the tapestry.

Rilke expresses this beautifully in the following lines of this poem shared with me some years ago by a previous therapist Rae:

She who reconciles the ill matched threads

of her life, and weaves them gratefully

into a single cloth –

it is she who drives the loudmouths from the hall

and clears it for a different celebration

where the guest is you.

In the softness of evening

it’s you she receives.

You are the partner of her loneliness,

the unspeaking center of her monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and she stretches beyond what limits her

to hold you.

The stretching beyond what limits us requires us to move out of ‘safety’ in the face of what threatens us with misjudgement that is sadly often the obvious response of a world oblivious to the authentic roots of our trauma. This poem also speaks about the healing witness both inside and outside as well as how the true self waits for us to hold all of us, as we increasingly develop that capacity through telling and feeling the organic truth of our trauma trajectory..

A good therapist is invaluable and even as I type this I realise how many struggle without this which is where blogs or books or other tales of survivors in recovery can help us.. Just hearing another’s story, noticing the resonances, being able to say “Ahh .. that rings true for me too”, can help us, it certainly has helped me.

And on the healing pathway God also sends us angels at critical times.. I cannot tell you the number of times an angel of some kind has whispered in my ear or saved my bacon from a near miss or accident, it happened twice last week and it has happened in terms of me finding my way to the right literature, person, group or place AT JUST THE RIGHT TIME too many times now for me to doubt it.

The true self I do believe waits on us.. the most authentic part of us will not be forever foresaken without grave damage befalling us on some level. Jesus said it well in the Gnostic gospels.

If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

In this quote Jesus challenges the assumption that the Kingdom of Heaven lives in a far off place. These words also speak of it’s closeness to us if we undertake the path of individuation, and resurrection of the true self often attended my mockery and scorn from the unwise:

The Kingdom of God is within you and all around you.

I think a person who loves and respects his true self, must also respect the true self of others and naturally finds his way to the inner kingdom. He no longer exists in a state of inner division. That person will weep for the one who loses the way to it and will never be able to put on a false mask in the face of that.. This is not always easy.. To say to a brother or sister you see them suffering and falling short (even through no fault of their own) but it seems necessary to a vibrant authenticity.. And similarly we must be vigilant in taking out a sword to cut off from anyone who tries to deny us this truth the meaning behind the saying of Jesus that he came to bring a sword.. There is a time to be real and not be nice or ‘civilised’ if that means sugar coating an inner truth that our soul very much depends upon for its survival.

Promise

Brene Brown

Why do we try so hard

To fit into a world where we don’t belong

Why do we forget the individual notes

To our particular song

That can only be expressed by us?

Why do we cut ourselves down

To a one fits all size?

Telling so many lies

We forget are untrue

Convincing ourselves

That all we have endured

Makes no sense

What makes us lose trust

When inappropriate dreams

Shatter to splinters in the dust?

Why don’t we understand

All of these realisations

Just highlight the fact

That what is most needed

For self expression

Is a change in direction

A turning within

While sensing as deeply as we can

From inside

Where our unlived life

Full of authentic promise

And genuine happiness

Truly lies

sanctified

there is a largeness to this

difficult journey

that you will not read about

in a newspaper

that will remain

forever obscured

behind the mirrors

some people choose to use

as reflectors

of their own splintered insides

so if sometimes

the world breaks your heart

apart

with its misunderstanding

travel deep

to find your own reality

for you were never mean to be

reduced to a vacancy

your soul

was born to be

sanctified

On denial

As children, denial is often a necessary survival tool because the truth is often too unbearable for us to live with, and we don’t have the power to change our situation.

Nancy Van Dyken

According to Nancy Van Dyken truth may be painful and is why we learn to deny it especially from childhood on, in addition because we are taught in various ways that following the rules, not displeasing others or making them uncomfortable is more important than knowing and expressing who we truly are and how we really feel as well as what we need is more important, we learn to be untruthful and then we suffer pain as a result. But since denying pain does not lead us to growth the more we deny or numb the less we can release ourselves from the prison of impression management or people pleasing.

In addition because our feelings and wants are not intellectual but deeply body centred denying our truth means on some level escaping the body, pushing ourselves beyond natural limits, taking on too much to appear all together or in touch. One of the most important times of change for me in early recovery for addiction lay in taking time off when I had a period and honouring the way I felt, rather than just solidering on. There was a time too when my ex husband I were in the UK and my trauma started to emerge and my therapist recommended I take time off. I had never ever ever done this before and I remember clearly on that morning my ex husband came into the room and raged at me to ‘get the hell out of bed’.

We may be so often forced to deny the truth of what we need in a society that may teach us more about how to appear than how to be, more about how to keep pushing on regardless, rather than surrendering when necessary to let things fall apart in order to come together in a better more real or integrated way. We may through conditioning learn to deny what we observe and feel to be true about other people. We may believe, incorrectly that the truth is too painful to face. We think if we admit it we may die or go crazy, the truth is we will probably have to make changes.

According to Nancy Van Dyken an important first step in healing from the everyday narcissism pf denial is letting go of the habit of lying – first to yourself, then to others. The next lays in speaking your truth assertively in a loving and respectful way. It also lays in not letting others push you past your boundaries. A simple way of saying no to a request is this : “No, that wont work for me” it is not even necessary to give an explanation as to why if you do not want to.

We can also learn not to agree to requests or favours before checking in with your body and inner self about HOW WE REALLY FEEL ABOUT DOING IT. In this case, just ask for a time out. During this time centre in and find what truly feels right for you. Its also important to notice when we are being less than honest with ourselves and others and check in with our body about how it feels if we do find ourselves lying or agreeing to do something we do not want to do.

Bear in mind that speaking your truth will scare some people. People may try to make you feel that doing so makes you unworthy, unlikeable, unlovable, or undesireable but if so and if you accede to such put downs who will suffer in the end? You! Don’t give up. Co-dependency writer Melody Beattie talks of a phenomena of ‘afterburn’ which can happen as we first start to be true to ourselves and our own wishes and needs, especially if others try to guilt, or shame us or use other manipulative tactics to control us, for example someone telling you, you are selfish or destructive in some way when you are really just honouring your true feelings, values or needs.

Learning to come out of denial may not be easy for us, most especially if others have an investment in us continuing to deny truths, but it can be done. We may have to suffer a lot of discomfort along the way as old patterns change, if we have abandonment anxiety it may feel like a death of a kind if others cut us off for being true, honest or real. Never the less we can learn to be there for our scared self and find in time the courage to be honest, open and up front with our true self no longer succumbing to the prison of denial.

Be Yourself : (To Thine Own Self Be True.)

I love it when an authentic, honest writer who has made friends with his or her true self posts a post that says it like it is for them. For me there is something about words of truth that resonate deep within and for those of us brought up on a solid diet of lies, such as : be someone else, think different thoughts, don’t be so : sensitive, shy, over the top, happy, sad, its so refreshing to just be loved and accepted for being our true selves. But most truly that acceptance is an inside job.

I picked up Charles Whitfield’s workbook companion to Healing Your Inner Child yesterday and in it speaks of PTSD being a result of trauma to the true self that occurs in so called ‘normal’ families in childhood. He points out that in modern times ‘normal’ is dysfunctional as normal applies to the statistical average. He then goes on to catalogue all of the ways we can get lost and alienated in a family, or society or institutions that don’t encourage our spiritual growth : i.e. the truth growth of our spirit as we were meant to be. This loss of our True Self comes with progressive alienation from our inner or ‘divine’ child the part of us that was from a young age in touch with the miracle of life, the universe and everything or at least open and curious about it. Just think for a moment all the things you may have been ‘told’ in the course of growing up when you asked important questions. Think too of Parsifal who stumbled upon the Grail Kingdom but only watched it disappear when he failed to ask the right questions because as a child his mother told him it was impolite to do so.

This train of thought leads me to think about what Alice Miller has written about at length in several of her books concerning poisonous pedagogy and the commandment “thou shalt not be aware”. In the garden of Eden Eve dared to try and sup with the serpent and gain knowledge of the ways of life, and apparently this was a crime. For asking the question or daring to want to be curious both Adam and Eve were expelled and forced to a life of suffering. Admittedly suffering can be educative but to be denied the right to question?

Sometimes it seems easier to look to others for our truth and if we were raised without spiritual support, emotional attunement and engagement is it any wonder many of us fall into a very deep spiritual void and get lost? Parsifal was engaged upon such a quest when he stumbled across the Wounded King in the Grail Kingdom. Apparently this is some type of parable for where we now find ourselves, the earth is ailing because of our alienation from the feminine principle and demonising of natural forces and the very natural human desire to just be able be free, vitally alive and unbridled. I am not preaching wanton destruction here, just trying to say that limitations imposed upon us are so often prisons and they encourage a kind of siege or hostage mentality.

The post I just shared before this one from Benny K of The Written Addiction really resonated for me today. I remember coming out of an AA meeting one day and someone took me aside. I believe I had been sharing about my struggles with my family and probably about how I didn’t belong and they just quoted the phrase from Shakespeare “To Thine Own Self Be True.” But what happens when we learned that Self was wrong, bad or shameful in some way? What happens when we were taught the price of not agreeing was alienation? As adults it may not be so bad but as kids we are pretty vulnerable.

For me I guess I am beginning to see that recovery concerns re finding the path back to personal truth and connection with those who can truly love us for who we are. I was sharing in an AA meeting the other day that the spiritual awakening spoken of in Step 12 seems to me to be about our True Self coming alive outside of the negation of falseness, fear (especially of being alone or abandoned), repression and untruth. It appears to me then, that I had a massive amount of undoing to do along the way back home to myself when I learned over years was just not okay to be me. And it also appears to me that there will be no true peace, joy or freedom until I gain the courage to stand alone if necessary or at least find my own tribe of belonging. Not that I want to alienate anyone, but there is also a time to be real.

Happily I often find that family of common loving, attuned souls here on WordPress. It’s something that I am grateful for today. Out there in the real world I may easily become alienated but here I feel at home. And feeling alienated does not necessarily mean I did anything ‘wrong’ though very often certain others will have an investment in saying so.

Anger and fear as a motivators

I love it when new followers connect to a post you wrote and then you get to check out their blog and learn even more from reading about their own journeys.  I just read a wonderful post from a fellow blogger Pearls Of Wisdom in which she shared how she realised at a certain point in her healing that a lot of her choices were coming out of either fear or anger.  Wow!! That comment just hit me full forward throttle as I saw a richochetting of certain past choices that came from this place, in fact nearly all the choices that occurred around the time I split up with my last partner 7 years ago.

It is very hard when you don’t develop into a person with a secure and stable base or foundation of trust and faith in your life and a good grasp and understanding of your emotions and motivators.    It leaves you in many ways falling through space feeling that you desperately need to grab onto anything that will give you a sense of comfort or security and stability, problem being if you always grab onto things from the outside you don’t get to build your own strong, stable, secure foundation from within.

As I see it that is probably the work I have been engaged in most definitely in the 7 years since I came back to my home town.  I remember even in therapy it got to a point where I was trying to grab onto my therapist in order to feel supported and stabilised.  I would call at all kinds of times between sessions and then I actually lashed out at her when she was on the hop at a conference and could not help me during a huge clash with my brother.  She got really upset and set a boundary with me.  No more calls between sessions and this is when it got really hard as about 6 weeks later a lot of drama came to the head in my family and my Mum died and there was a further problem with Kat where I got resentful and I nearly ended therapy because I felt she wasn’t being ’emotionally available’ enough.  Things would have got super tough if I abdicated therapy then and we were able to work it through, because a choice made out of anger at that point would have ended up with me in a far weaker place than I now find myself and these days she allows me to call between sessions occasionally when she knows I am going through a really tough time.

Anyways it was really helpful to read what Mary wrote in her blog today as it helped me to see how I can when responding our of fear or anger without using reasoning to think things through can lead me to make really bad decisions. The capacity to contain, regulate and mediate powerful emotions is not something all of us are helped to develop in our life and if not we have a lot of scaffolding work to do in order to get to the point where we find what my therapist calls ‘our sea legs’.   Anger and fear can be helpful if we contain them and understand more deeply how they are operating in our life.  My therapist often tell me that anger is often a cry for authenticity or self care and may show us an action we need to take.  At other times, however it can decimate things that we need to come to terms with necessitating adjustments we need to make in our thinking, reacting, expectations and grasp of reality.

Doubt, suspicion, fear, mistrust and a mixed up relationship with the inner child

Well each painful step along the way in my relationship with Scott has been a lesson in trust and what I am learning is that I am not a very trusting person where others are concerned.  I have a lot of fears and doubts and can be very suspicious and mistrusting at times.  I also find it hard to feel that I am loved and valued and cherished even when I am. I am also noticing that when I get fearful I shut down my heart energy.

I have made huge leaps forward with trusting in this relationship and I see when my fear begins to raise its ugly head again.  I am just in the middle of a wonderful book which I found at the book fair a few months ago called Life Loves You, it is co written by Louise Hay and Robert Holden and it is so beautiful and heartfelt.  I am drawn to the work of Louise Hay lately, I love her idea that all love begins with self love and forgiveness and that we have major healings around guilt., also that all healing lies with our inner child.

I know how much I struggle with feelings of unjustified guilt and not feeling ‘good enough’ and I know its a collective issue too.   In the chapter on Forgiving The Past Louse and Robert speak about how we also project guilt onto others and what we forget was that once they were an innocent child, just as we were, a child that probably got hurt by life.   They talk of how when children are raised there is often too much emphasis on kids being ‘good’ in order to win approval, attention and love, instead of parents just encouraging the child’s inherent self expression and basic intrinsic goodness.

being good full time is hard work.  You have to suppress a lot of feelings.  You can’t always speak the truth.  Sometimes you have to lie and that feels bad… being good is just an act…. putting on an act is not innocent.. its a calculated attempt to win love and approval… whatever act we choose, it causes us to be estranged from our basic goodness….. without our basic goodness we are lost.

On our healing journey when we chose to love our inner child (as well as that of others) as it really is deep inside choosing to recognise his or her inherent innocence.  We no longer continue to project shame and guilt, and we can project this either outwardly or inwardly through the outer or inner critic and we no longer put on an act out of the idea that we are not good enough and must win the love of others.

I love the Oscar Wilde quote “a critic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing’, we all have intrinsic value in our inherent beingness not as a result of what we do to please others or social mores.  When she passed over to the other side during a near death experience author Anita Morjhani found that only unconditional love exists on the other side and there is no judgement of us at all, only learning from consequences and failures to be true to and love ourselves unconditionally.

I finally went to visit my sister yesterday afternoon too and I am so glad that I did.  When I think too much my mind can come up with all kinds of reasons why its too hard to be there for my sister, or I can focus on past things that block the love and healing that wants to flow to my sister.  I see I have a lot of fear around her mental illness and I do wish that she looked into alternatives besides drugs to help her mood, but her path is also hers and I only really feel true peace in my own heart when I love her unconditionally and show up to just physically be there.   Most of all I feel she just needs my presence as well as my own love as well as healthy detachment from her pain (that said some of our pain is shared in the loss of family members, for example).  I notice the change in my body when I do show up and not resist the flow.  I sleep much better.

Life is much better for me when I just let my energy flow out as it wants to but what I am seeing is that my mind creates all kinds of barricades.  If I had allowed my fearful suspicious self to convince me Scott is a scammer simply because he asked for money I could be crying now.   Instead I have decided to trust my heart and my inner child who really loves and connects with the inner child I feel within Scott.

However my fear still raises its head and at times like yesterday when I had a shame attack I project guilt and fear back onto myself as well as feelings of not being ‘good enough’, and then life becomes a kind of prison for me.   And I really am very, very tired of living in a prison, especially one that is constructed through my own defective thinking and unhealthy unearned guilt.  That said I am seeing too where I tried to ‘be good’ at times, when I just would have been better to be myself.

At least I am noticing this more now.  I am going to be taking on board the recommendations in Louise and Robert’s book so that I can begin to trust that there is a force in life that truly loves and wants the best for me.  I just need to get out of my own way.  It has demonstrated its existence so many times, so why do I need to let fear and doubt and suspicion rule my life as much as they do?

I am not proposing a Pollyanna approach to life as in modern society we do need to keep our wits about us, but with loved ones maybe the world becomes a far happier place when we look to the soul’s inherent innocence and trust the healings that come along the way when we cause ourselves and others pain by not appreciating this inherent kindness of the life force of love and healing force of the inner child that exists in all of us.

The dark encounter with the soul

I believe the soul is the most authentic part of us connected to our authentic self, and for many of us it is a journey to find the way towards it, a way which often leads through a lot of undoing of conventions and conditioning for those of us who arrive on this earth looking and feeling deeper and hearing the beating of a very different drum that we may have tried to dance to but been judged for.

And then if just happened to lose our way, the path of return may lie through the gates of hell, torture, ‘insanity’ or suicide or attempted suicide, for it seems that if the psyche can set up a protector inside of us that would rather us die than live an inauthentic life that is not true to our soul, isn’t it in some way better that we go back to the spiritual realms and try for a new incarnation?

I have also been thinking about how someone’s suicide may benefit learning and growth in the world and the lives of others.  I was listening to a brief interview with the parents of teenager Dolly Everette who committed suicide due to bullying abuse.  I posted a post earlier in the year about her calling attention to the issue.

https://wordpress.com/posts/emergingfromthedarknight.wordpress.com?s=bullying

What her parents said was they were not taking things seriously enough.  Dolly had done a drawing of a girl doing a backward bend that said this “Speak Even if Your Voice Shakes.”  At this stage the bullying had been going on for some time.

The soul has to find it’s voice, it must sound out its authentic note, but what if killing voices in culture and society and bullies act to try to destroy this voice or light?  Is it not then a case of a bright light being rejected from the world?  The soul then chose to retreat and the aftermath had lessons for many and would promote more awareness and clarity and determination to see this kind of thing ie bullying nipped in the bud or would be a very intense ‘wake up call’ for certain people!

We should be mindful that often a breakdown is really a breakthrough, it is a breaking down of a false self that hides the kernel of the true self or soul, the dark night of the soul acts on us similarly.  In it what the darkest part is, is a grieving for what was lost or never found a way to express in this world that may not be consciously known (yet!) but is trying to make itself known.  Medication can only help us so far to find the way back to authentic self hood.  Many die along the way.  And it takes enormous strength to keep going sometimes in a culture ruled by illusions and shame, illusions and shame we must pierce through on the dramatic path of soul retrieval.

The beauty of fire

The beauty that shone

Like wildfire in your eyes

Could never be permanently extinguished

Though in time a film grew over them

As it became harder to find you way

Amidst a wild universe that led you astray

But still the fire that shone in you

Was able to keep you set apart

From the mainstream that pretended it knew the way

And if you did not follow would be led astray

For there were other souls like yours

Who knew enough to keep the fire burning

Who decided to trust their deeper heart and soul yearning

Those who had the courage to open their wings and fly

Even when everything conspired to keep them bound

So trust your inner flame and never let it dull

Use it to guide you and never give up

For the fire in you comes from a beauty so deep

It should never ever be extinguished

Or put to sleep

Be there

Be there for me

Hold my hand

Let me know I have the strength to stand

Even if it means to stand alone

Give me strength

Help me believe in the power

I have to take root

Blossom and flower

Let me believe in the life force in me

And that I have the skills and knowledge inside

Things I no longer need to hide out of fear

Or the risk of disapproval

Remind me that

Although this world is often an unsafe place

One where it hurts to risk

There is a deeper price

For failing to expose my true face

Help me to find my right size and shape

And don’t let me listen to those killing voices inside

That want to cut me down to size

Or tell me I do not belong

Help me to be both vulnerable and strong

Stand beside me dear self

Hold my hand

As I risk my life to live

And take a stand

Making no other demand

Than the right to exist

As the very one I am