Much sadness : this week’s reflections

I have been feeling like I’ve had a deep dive back into a lot of past pain lately and it occurred to me yesterday that Venus is in Scorpio at the moment and I actually feel the astrological energies resonating at a deep level very often.  I have been feeling I bit like I am working my way through sediment and sludge at the moment.  This week it has been just that bit harder to get moving and be bright and happy, there are feelings of regret and loneliness and sadness and grief welling up at times.  And I am not sure how lonely I really am at the moment or if this is just past loneliness and pain that I am actually allowing myself to be strong enough to see and feel after years of feeling or being told I need to deny it.  Over past year  I have satisfied myself with my own company and better no company than bad company however when we are dealing with a painful past.  The last thing we need is more invalidation.  Who knows if we aren’t just driven into solitude anyway because of the harshness and callousness of the world and other people in it at times.

I shared a lovely post from Twinkletoes earlier in the week about defences, sadness, narcissism in a parents and emotional pain.  It really talked about the issue of the narcissist’s thick skin that they have to develop in order not to feel their own pain or anyone else’s and distance from the inner child within them and others.  I am sure there are many people who are lucky and have a happy childhood and don’t have to cope with as much loneliness as I had to.   And mine wasn’t only personal it had deeply collective familiar roots.

The deepest ever loneliness comes from not being seen or known or worse being brutalised for real feeling.  Lately I am seeing the way I have isolated and began to keep to myself ever since 2002 when my marriage ended.  It has been nearly 14 years alone as I was in another relationship for a while but that ended too when he made me realise he didn’t really like who I was or have much empathy for anyone’s suffering.  There were lots of angry outbursts and emotional cut offs when he could not deal with the level of emotion I used to express.

It’s so very different to my experiences with Scott who I am connecting even more deeply with lately.  Yes we have our rough patches, often when my fears and doubts become too large but there is always understanding shown and I am never blown off.  As my therapist points out he never retaliates when my own abandonment is triggered and make accusations or get upset.  But one of the other lessons I am also learning is how when I get upset I don’t actually stand firm but I run out of fear.   I take flight or fight (and such fighting spirit is necessary for psychological health, it only becomes negative when we fight against something that could actually help us grow beyond facing something that could help us grow beyond former comfort zones).

I was speaking to my therapist on Monday about Lowen’s book on Narcissism I have been reading lately and asking some questions.  She said we all have some degree of narcissistic or borderline traits in us.

“How would you explain the borderline aspect then?”   I asked her.

“Well, its when the person feels so empty inside that they throw a bomb at someone out there in order to get connected.”

Wow that explained my Mum to tee and how I could be when I was ignored in my relationships.  I once threw a shoe across the room when my first boyfriend took a nap when I went over to visit because he was tired from work.  I am a bit ashamed to say I have thrown other things when I was in my alcoholic phase.  And I’ve slammed a lot of doors in my time!!

Then when the going gets tough I tend to say “that’s it, I’m outa here!!”   And its the worst thing that can happen in a dispute or argument if you have attachment wounds.  My last partner used to do it to me all the time and often cut me off for up to 5 days.   I read recently that the best way to cope in this situation is actually to ask for time out, or at least let your partner know you need to take space, instead of just walking out.  For myself I know I can get easily overwhelmed by others at times and then I need to take space just so I can find myself back again and figure out what was triggered and why I or the other person are reacting this way.

This said we are not perfect, we do what we can to cope with what we face and there may be a wisdom in just getting away from the situation for a while if we feel under attack but it does not necessarily mean our boundaries are strong.  However if we are being accused, attacked or projected upon as many scapegoats are then taking distance may be the best possible thing we can do under the circumstances because narcissists are notorious for not showing empathy and erecting defences against our feelings and making us feel ‘bad’ for having them.  This used to happen all the time when I would be triangulated out of connection with my mother and second oldest sister.

These days its getting a little easier to hold my ground.  At times I can really have my feelings with my sister and she is very kind to me, she has softened a lot in recent years and is less judgemental than she used to be, something that used to hurt me very much in the past.

I just had a period of once again feeling very overcome with sadness. I was sorting through some old clothes in my room and I picked up my Mum’s cream cable knit sweater, the one she used to wear all the time and still smells of her perfume and just held it to my face and cried.  I could feel all my ancestors around me and particularly my great great grandfather Thomas and was so aware of his pain over his lost mother… she died when he was 12 years old, something I only learned a few years ago.  He then left the UK behind and travelled thousands of miles away to New Zealand and that pattern of leaving behind countries and families repeated over three more generations.   He became an alcoholic at some point and would terrify the family after coming home from his work at the brewery and it got so bad that my Great Great Grandmother ended up leaving him and at that point she had 16 children.   My maternal great grandmother was the namesake of two earlier babies Eliza and my G. G. Grandfather lost in the late 1870s to early 1880s and she eventually left New Zealand for Australia after my grandmother was born.

I just felt like sharing my grief with someone but I honestly could not think of a single person to call that I could trust, so instead I decided to just continue on with this blog.   Jasper is quietly snoring beside me after a good long walk to the oval where we were lucky enough to run into a doggie buddy and his owner and had the best chat about our respective strict emotionally barren upbringings.  I love it when my higher power orchestrates some of these meetings.  We sat on the green grass in the sun and spoke for nearly an hour.  It was really great.  So there are so many good things interspersed within the sad times.   I love the Kahlil Gibran quote that say he hopes that forever his life will be full of both tears and laughter, surely we need a good dose of each for emotional reality and balance and only an insane society would deny us either or demand we substitute one for the other when the other is called for.