Free to move

Do you ever feel completely paralysed and as though you cannot move?  I am not specifically speaking here of just the body being frozen or numb or unmovable but of a deeper psychic malaise that fixes you in place and is at times driven by the voices in your mind that respond to your urge or will to be and move with a negation?

It’s difficult for me to articulate in this post what I am trying to get at, but this fear of moving forward or engaging or meeting the day can be very strong with me, and then, at times, I can feel a contradictory impulse that wants me not to sit down to my computer open up my blog page and type but to put my walking shoes on my feet, get out the door and into the wide open spaces.  Ideally I need to do both, but just sitting and writing all day, I know isnt a truely balanced life for me.

I wake each morning not sure if I will be able to get up, on one level I know I can get up but on another I am aware of all these wierd sensations (from my past physical trauma experiences), like I must make sure that the full integrity of my body is there before I can make a move forward.  On these mornings I use my breath and my attention as consciously as I can and I know on different mornings my body feels differently, most especially depending on the kind of personal contact I had on the previous day, as there can be days I don’t really interact with another soul (apart from my dog Jasper) and impersonally with others at say my local cafe, library or book store.

My birthday made me aware how important loving connection is to me.  I actually received about 5 birthday calls, most of them later in the day and by 5 pm to be honest I was so emotional I was crying on the phone with one of my oldest school friends who I feel has been on a different pathway to me for some times, but never the less lately we seem to be connecting and I was able to be vulnerable and say how hard I have found it in my life to feel and trust the love from others.  I know a lot of this goes back to the way we used to relate in my family, my parents never asked me about my school work or how the day was, that I remember.  All I remember was in a far older family taking myself off a lot and trying to cope with things alone and by the age of 17 feeling like I had to hide or pretend everything was okay when I lot of the time I felt so scared and insecure and as though I was dying inside when around others.

From that place of deep insecurity and lack of basic trust it was easier to turn to substances such as alcohol as I hit my teens and of course when I got to college and drugs came onto the scene (only dope as I never did much in the way of harder drugs apart from ecstasy in the late 1980s and early 90s before getting sober) that was another way I could check out and numb out and deny to myself that a lot of the time I was scared.   I managed to front up to jobs and perform but I found little in the way of deeper human connection and intimacy in human relationships, especially in those later years where my addiction worsened and all I was doing was working and then binging every Saturday night.

Anyway I have been sober for 24 years now as a lot of my followers know.  I am open about it and I shared a bit of my story in a post yesterday and part of me (the judgemental part) was saying I should not have exposed so much of my story which is full of not very comfortable things, like terminations of pregnancy, lostness, a desperation to connect while feeling that any connection would inevitably be dangerous for me.  Yes I also know if I dont take the risk to be honest and vulnerable here, then my blog isnt really going to ever fulfil its real purpose.

I know now that in the past years I do tend to take a few more risks.  I am not as paralysed as I was in the years where on most days I could not get up and shower and make breakfast or something to eat until about 2 pm.  I also know I struggle when there is a break in my therapy schedule as there was yesterday due to my therapist being away.

Lately I have tried to make sure that I get myself out for a decent walk with Jasper every day.  I know yesterday afternoon I had to force myself to go, I had been out earlier in the day to do groceries and some other chores and I wrote a lot yesterday too as I was in a deeply liminal and emotional space after my birthday when so much of my past life pain opened up as well as grief about the loss of my one remaining parent who was never that emotionally available when I was growing up.  I’m glad I made myself walk yesterday at that time (5pm) which is often when my PTSD symptoms and reenactments in my body physiology can be acute.

I do think there is a strong connection between a state of depression in which strong memories or feelings are buried down and a lack of forward movement, activity and engagement.   I know for myself how my emotions can move as soon as I get out the door to drive, or go for a walk, or just get to the shopping center.  In an ideal world on every day I would be connecting with others and I see how in my worst times I was so, so isolated not seeing anyone even strangers for days and days and days.  I personally dont know how I survived those years and when someone turned up on the doorstep (literally) wanting to take me out I just jumped into the relationship because i was so so deeply lonely and so starved emotionally.

Its been 7 years on my own now and I am still at times ambivalent about moving forward and connecting at times.   I am sure it must relate to feelings of safety and control and the lack of basic trust in the goodness of life and relationships.  I project a lot of fear I know that now.    I can only see my fear at the moment and try as best I can to make a better relationship with it.

I am also seeing my tendency to colour things with a negative fear if and when I feel a void or absence of connection in a relationship.  I tend to think the worst and then get crabbier or angry and that then leads to a feeling there is a rupture when really there may be nothing going on with the other person at all or they just may have things going on in their life I dont know about.

At times like this I see my own inherent narcissism which comes out of an abandonment wound that I can project onto the world.  Really the person is not abandoning me, its my projection based on a past in which no one much was really present with me.  At times like these instead of externalising I need to internalise in terms of taking good care of my frightened fearful inner child, adult me needs to talk to her, listen to her fears answer with love…..encourage her and to do something fun with her and give her some of the reassurance she is hungry for, from within, rather than from without.

Because really in the world lots of people struggle too and my own pain and wounding sometimes makes me forget that.   Its not easy carrying this abandonment wound that I do but I know if I can be honest about what is really going on inside I will make progress that I wont make if I am paralysed, denying, projecting or numbing.