Where my mind goes

Lately I am recognising the power of my mind for both good and ill… There is a place my mind can go to in longing and it can take me into a darker heavy state of mind, of lack and not good enought..lately I am drawing on the serenity prayer as a hope I had was dashed to pieces over the weekend and my reaction was one of sadness, disappointment and later on, anger. This is because it triggered deep longings and pains from the past.. At times like this, the kindest thing I can do for myself is to hold myself and my pain or distress and find ways to lovingly soothe it, accepting what ever is going on in that moment and not making it worse with my thinking and reactions.

In his writings on the inner child, anger and sadness, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says that we all have, deep inside of us a child of about 5 years of age.. Often this child may have been ignored or over looked, his or her needs may have not be held in mind or respected and such a thing leaves many of us with a deep legacy of hurt that can later on be triggered.. Tough as these old feelings are we can learn to be with them, we can be kind to ourselves in the midst of them. We can also chose to take the adult mature pathway of containment.. We can seek for some kind of positive action in the midst of them too, and do our best to stop the downward spiral that only leads to paralysis or negation of life.

While writing this I got triggered by text… I am still feeling my heart beating so frenetically in my chest, just being unjustly accused of something, just being made to feel that I have no power over certain things, people or authorities often makes me feel so alone and helpless, may in fact be one of my hugest triggers. I know only too well how painful it was to have no control as a child over the adults around me.. I know what it was like to have no one to turn to because my parents were so often NOT THERE and when they were there they were very very rarely, if ever present or conscious to me emotionally…..for me it was a lot like being trapped behind glass in childhood, and now my body cries desperately so many times with all of the pent up longings that met no resolution and I forget that I am an adult, that I do have some power and that I can move even away from things my mind knows are negative but argues with me over.

Perhaps why social distancing triggers me becuase of that emotional distance or behind glass feeling, or the sense who I am and what i feel and need cannot be seen or touched, the difference being that sometimes people look into my eyes and I do feel then they see me..

Indeed there is something spiritual and soulful about eye to eye contact. I have read some articles and watched some powerful videos about the eyes of the narcissist which speak of how they can freeze you with a look, or almost petrify you and turn you to stone.. absent of feeling, warmth and recognition such eyes can cause you such pain.. I know as I have seen this my ex partner and in my sister in law many times. But the hook will always be our own sense of low self value or worthlessness.

For myself over the past years of human interaction I have grown in my knowing of the effects of my childhood, I have come to understand how it was I got smashed up at 17 and how that frozen child state resulted in me revisiting it when my marriage ended 15 years ago.. At the end I was taken back into the darkness in that house by the coast.. I named my blog emerging from the dark night due to the fact I felt that in 2004 I fully entered the dark night of the soul, spoken of in Dante’s poem thus : “in the middle of my life, I found myself inside a deep dark wood”.

Exploring that darkness has taken time.. exploring the hunger I had to be seen, known, held and loved has taken time, understanding the ways in which I block that hunger at times and try to pretend it never existed has taken time. Exploring the ways I haven’t been an adult in my life and relationships is taking time too as well as recognising that the wound, laying further back cannot always be healed in the present but requires something more.. a seeing of how current circumstances act just as messengers or triggers…

Today at this point all I am seeing in stark relief is the vulnerability I covered over so often with so many defences.. and maybe this is breeding more compassion inside of me.. At the moment at times I only see my narcissistic wounding and then things can look dark.. maybe it is just where my mind is today.. triggered by that situation over which I had no control instead of reaching for the life I do have.. today it just feels a little lost to me.