Finding your stand point with an ingrained ‘collapse’ defense

Finding a solid stand point within myself and a set boundary has been god damn tough. I seem to get this lesson over and over and each time a part of me can undermine it.. Today I had to stand up to something I didn’t like and felt like a violation a couple of times, the day before the same person tried to turn something back on me they did and I caught it.. This kind of thing is something your body JUST KNOWS and I remember reading and sharing a while ago in a book on developmental trauma that as babies and infants we just organically know what feels good and what is invasive and in my own life my physical, mental and emotional boundaries were so often over run.

Even this morning I woke with this memory of how Dad would never stop the car in time on a trip when I needed the bathroom.. I would be left trying to hold it in, that came to be a kind of metaphor and may be the reason why, lately as I have gone around and around on the spiral of old dysfunctional patterns I often wake feeling I am in freeze but cant move and then partially wet myself. Its not an easy thing to write but it make sense to me and I have been having heavy dreams of being overpowered because two weeks ago I was, someone tied me up to do something and then I had to pay a huge amount of money, then even more money was asked, my body was reacting mainly being pissed off I said yes to the favor.

Anyway we live and learn.. What else can we do.. We cannot go back and correct past mistakes only make new choices in the now.. But at least I am wising up to this person, in my last romantic relationship I allowed him to devalue me so many times and stuck around to suck up more.. That is just not something I want for my life any more.

As children with parents who would not accept our protest we often had to appease, freeze or collapse.. We could not stand up to them without being punished and as John Bradshaw notes a little child cannot decide to pack her bags and go find a more loving family.. So we learn how to survive but in later years those patterns may have to repeat and repeat before we can change them and a friend told me on Wednesday she recently listened to an astrological take on the past eclipse that said during this one that would be the major lesson, facing hurtful patterns we must die to in order to reborn (Full Moon eclipse in Scorpio). Mars and Pluto both rule this sign and have to do with how we take action for self protection, promotion and care (Mars) and how we transform old patterns (Pluto).. It occurred to me a moment ago on the way home from voting I never had a strong will at all, having so often been overpowered as kid. I never to say ‘no’, ‘enough’ or ‘stop’ without getting into trouble and I had to bury the anger and pain. That is just something I can no longer allow myself to do.