There are so many days that I have been so paralysed by my car crash and Complex PTSD symptoms that I thought I could not move. It would be hard to describe to someone the storm of energees that can take place in me and I know my energy centres or chakras via my organs and muscles are always trying to process things and shift the flow of energy as I seek the right balance in living, while doing the intense work of processing stuck feelings and surrendering my past. I have experienced times where a loosening of symptoms has made me feel that I am almost entirely free, only to have another day when I feel pulled back under by a wave or there is an intense clash or pull back reaction to the highly wounded and traumatised/paralysed self.
Like most poeple with Complex PTSD I struggle with reaching out and making commitments and with the longings I feel for responses from family members who withhold. Today I had the thought that I should not be putting the pressure or expectation on these family ties as much. I seem to be calling my sister all the time again, hoping to connect. We are connecting more than we have at any other time these days now she is functioning again and taking steps to move forward but today I had the fearful thought that what if her bi polar brings her back into the dark again and her increased energy just signals movement towards another collapse? I
do not believe this will happen as her energy seems more balanced than it was in the past. She is really engaging with her grandchildren and getting on with things, not allowing her anxiety and fear to paralyse her, as much as it did in the past. But today I just though of how bound up I feel when she wasn’t well and when she tried to take her life. It really was a very rocky time with her for over 8 years after I moved back here and yesterday I made the decision to stay in the place I am living rather than move to a smaller townhouse. I was being put under pressure by a family friend about the decision yesterday and I found myself getting angry. I often struggle to have my boundaries respected and feel I am being tardy or unreasonable if I cannot comply. I felt spoken down to by her, yesterday and said as much but she tried to deny it and then I got very emotional and had to cut the call short. Luckily I had therapy in an hour after we clashed as it took me into a dark suicidal place and makes me realise others treat us actually DOES REALLY AFFECT US IN DEPRESSION OR WHEN WE ARE TRAUMATISED OR STRUGGLE WITH ANXIETY and difficulties with boundaries.
The truth is at times this house feels like my place of confinement, a part of my soul longs to fly free with no possessions and nothing to ground me to earth but I know this is the spiritual side of me and I find it has wings through my soul work and poetry. For now I need a base and I struggle when things are not perfectly maintained, we discussed it in therapy as an OCD family thing that Mum struggled with too. I remember whenever she bought a bunch of lillies she would pick the stamens off that dropped their material all over her furniture so it would not stain. The minute I see a stain or imperfection I feel inadequate, forgetting that flaws often just mark the evidence of living and using things. We cannot live without breaking some eggs. Kat, my therapist thinks its a matter of staying here and allowing my creativity to blossom. I have already spent 9 years here building my sanctuary….I am surrounded by my soul things and not just material possessions, for as Tian Dayton says, I see everything around me carrying soul or spirit energy, all of matter is actually infused with this soul stuff though it is the natural artisan organic forms that most appeal to my soul rather than the artificial or plastic ones.
I believe we get educated out of seeing this soul in things. We learn to dislike our bodies and want them to adhere to artificial ideals. Its what hurt me most in childhood as I think back, this addiction to perfection my Mum had, constantly trying to shape me into another form. Telling me to keep my legs together, not speak so loud or be ‘so dramatic’, ‘correcting my buck teeth that weren’t really that bad when I look at photos and my way of speaking and breathing. .. all ‘wrong’ Both me and my sister have been clipped in and my sister told she was ‘on a high’ when she actually was feeling happy and had high energy. She would meet Mum’s blockages all the time and I saw Mum cut her down before she tried to take her life in 2013.
I actually am beginning to feel for the men who tried to marry into this family. Learning that my sister in law lost a stillborn baby many years ago filled my heart with more compassion for why she is, at times so aloof and cold to us. We don’t have an engaged relationship with my only niece due to her seeking emotional distance, just like her father. Mum was always the volatile one and Dad the peacekeeper, who tried not to make too many waves and just went along with things but I also know he drove the upward mobility trajectory that saw our family crash and burn from 1979 to 1985.
That said I could not have my sadness in my marriage and it had to end for me to go on this individuation journey. Today I just prayed to the ancestors to let me go free from this hold of pain and suffering and isolation and disconnection. I felt my heart wanting to engage and realised how sadness grabbed such a huge hold over me and its natural my husband felt sad about that and stifled when we chose to come back to be closer to my family. He saw how dysfunctional it was and decided it was all too hard and I was left alone in what felt like the most barren of wildernesses. Separating from that and knowing I am not truly lost any more has taken so many years of inner work. I felt cast back into the lost place by that family friend again yesterday but sitting in Kat’s office I heard my wise self saying my true self really isn’t lost any more. Slowly I am finding my way home while knowing how to bear the full brunt of what family karma and unconscious choices reaped. The journey is far from over and so I face into this approaching Full Moon ready for more recognition and more realisations into the nature of how my life is currently evolving.
Jasper and I got out early and had a lovely walk connecting with two young boys for a chat, as well as an older man and his dog. Its due to reach 40 degrees today so we needed to be out earlier. I need to remember that things are all working out. My connection with Chahir is going really well and is full of softness and love. I really am so blessed to be no longer so paralysed as I was. And lucky to be alive and able to live with all of the memories, honouring some of my most favourite words from the AA Big Book “we will neither regret the past, nor need to shut the door on it.”
Emerging From The Dark Night 