In touch with ourselves

Just after I post a post on my blog I often find there comes into my mind a contrary view.  It could be something to do with the way I view the world, constantly questioning views and looking to see what lies on the other side.  In my last post I spoke about consistent loving emotional presence as an antidote to the agony, trauma, pain and suffering of BPD.  But after posting it I had a thought how the deepest connection we really need at any moment is to the compassionate wise loving self inside, that can so often be obscured by the inner critic and demoniser that lives inside painting everything black.

I had a really healing day with my Mum yesterday. I took her to the shops so she could buy a card for a friend’s 90th birthday.  We just strolled around a little as its hard for Mum to walk these days and then we sat down at the cafe in our local centre and had a piece of sour cherry and almond loaf with a juice.  We spoke of so many things.  I held her hand, I cried, I felt all the pain of our past and all we had lived through conflicts and fears as well as struggles and tears but also love.   I then drove her home and did some pottering in my garden.  My sleep was not too long in coming and it was deep with a few short break awakenings which is not how it has been over the past few nights where I woke up feeling swollen with undigested feelings and food on the days I connected with no one.

When I woke I thought of how in his book Mark Wolynn speaks of connecting to ourselves by placing a hand on our heart and just saying “I am here”.  I awake every morning with startle PTSD symptoms of push pull with body sensations that would be too complex to explain here but this morning instead when I woke up I just put my hand on my heart and said to myself “I am here”  “I will never leave you.”

I felt better and got up and slowly pottered around the house and garden, did some cleaning.  I had my juice and fruit and then wrote two blogs and then had eggs on toast.  I got to thinking after I posted my last post on needing someone there 24/7i healing from emotional abandonment how the one person who can be there for us 24/7 is actually us.  We can learn to be the unconditional loving presence we need in our own lives.  We can take that burden off of others.  We can find a source of joy to connect to on any day, whether it is music or a song we like to sing, or to looking a thing of beauty or reading an inspiring post.  We can make our life happy and content from within.  But only after we have processed any past pain that stands in our way.  And for this we initially need another person’s unconditional loving presence to teach us how to do that and be there for ourselves in a loving way no longer so beseiged by an attacking destructive inner critic.

When we feel this connection from within our emptiness disappears.  The emptiness we feel in certain conditions is actually for many of us a signal of a past life in which we were not connected to emotionally and so could not feel filled up or ‘real’.  We need to heal that deep disconnection and find a way to connect emotionally from within so that emptiness is no longer a source of pain but a place in which we can explore depths of our souls best known in silence and later able to be shared with others.  The deepest connection we long for is really deep inside us.