The past three days have been really tough . I had a really good therapy session on Monday and felt so positive and strong and then on Tuesday I was in fragments.. I am working so hard to hold my boundaries with someone at the moment and it is not easy for me but I must confess, doing so makes me feel more grounded.. I have to be strong as I constantly second guess myself. On Wednesday I could not get moving until about 1 pm, so much anger came up on Tuesday (Mars day) around my father and the way he derailed me. The truth as I see it now was I learned that I had no power and no voice at all, especially when it came to significant choices and these feelings of acute powerlessness and vulnerability as well as pain over the past isolation are with me today. I was crying a lot a moment ago as I feel so ineffective in so many ways and I hide these feelings from myself at times. In fact I was just reading an old post I wrote on Borderline Personality Disorder a moment ago..
I wrote it before starting with my current therapist. And she does not feel a warranted this diagnosis but at times I would rage when I was drunk and even now if anger comes out its very forceful. That said we need that anger to know where our limits lie and to set boundaries it’s just today I am not sure if the boundaries I set are always needed and necessary.. And that is where the (sometimes) constant second guessing comes in. Do I, in fact, have the right to set this boundary and to deny this person in need, my help?
The idea that we are vulnerable around our wounds or narcissistic injuries is an important one to take on board. We need to be mindful of our wounds and limitations, the places we may feel weak or insufficient in some way, this is the only way we can be grounded and grow, we must also own our good points and remember that, even despite our trauma, in some place we are actually whole. Gabor Mate reminds us that health has to do with wholeness. It is hard for us to be feeling well in body and mind if huge parts of us are cut off from our own inner knowing and if we lack a sense of agency around managing our emotions and feelings.. It is my experience that many of us ‘in recovery’ struggle with this issue of self regulation and self expression, as well as with issues of self assertion. The work of re-parenting ourselves coming out of the abuse or neglect of the past is a very important one. In my experience developing a sense of emotional literacy really does take time and those of us who struggle here really do need committed help.
Loving acceptance of the entire range of the child’s feelings should be what every parent shows.. They should be able to ‘hold’ us in anger and not do the damage of punishing us or sending us away into time out with those feelings.. This happened to me and I took myself into my own long extended ‘time out’ after my marriage ended in 2004. It was possibly all I knew how to do with that background.. I am still not ot of the wilderness. At that stage it felt like I went into the darkest wilderness but as I see it now I was actually swimming around (and sometimes drowning then) in the family unconscious (Neptune.) This last eclipse in Scorpio in the sign of deep shared mixed up feelings has been important in this regard. When the Moon opposed it in Taurus about 10 days ago I got a deeper insight into my own value. I noticed when the Moon then squared the Sun from Leo I got a lot of insight into my own as well as my sister’s emotional problems and Sue has Pluto in Leo and I have Uranus there, both our parents had Neptune in Leo. That is the generation who had a lot of struggle to live and lack of inner child protection and agency.
It is so interesting to me how much of our past our body holds. Marion Woodman makes the point about how much fear and terror can be contained in our cells and coming from a house where control and perfection were so important we may struggle for a sense of control. There is a very strong OCD element in many of my family members. This is a point Gabor Mate explores in this latest book in the section around emotions and eating disorders. That those raised in these kinds of house holds tend to try to control their bodies and struggle with deep feelings of lack of acceptance because they were never given that kind of unconditional positive self regard from a parent or may have watched another parent struggle in some way or been raised in environments where a lot of chaos was happening at the same time.. For me lately I am really grieving that lack of safety and the security of knowing I was loved as I was, lacking this I never had a strong foundation in the world, but I feel very deficient to be carrying this on at times, I am aware I feel a lot of shame around my defects.
I just had a huge crying spell about how when Dad forbade me going back to studies I lost touch with so many of the lovely friends I studied with and one in particular who went on to become head of our old school. I am so very sad I never got to finish my teaching or recognize I would have loved to have completed it, to have known the way was not permanently cut off, as it most definately felt before I got sober in 1993. I know that is many years ago but really all of this is only coming to a head coming out of these last eclipses and most especially as the New Moon is starting to trigger my Chiron in Pisces wound.
I keep trying to keep an acceptance over the pain today and over all of the regrets which just seem massive at present. I think of the AA saying : to ‘accept life on life’s terms”, also the importance of keeping an awareness of the fact that only the emotionally or spiritually wounded hurt others in this way.. I could not stay mad at my Dad, what purpose would that serve and I am 60 and this is part of my healing journey, to be TRULY AWARE OF WHAT HAPPENED AND HOW IT HURT, Before this I lacked even a cognisent language around all of this wounding, inner pain and hurt. And then even after I write these words another part of me keeps attacking me for being ‘stuck in the past’. A moment ago the inner critic was nearly shredding me again and yesterday I was actually yelling back at it. Which brings to mind a post a wrote a while back on Schizoid Defences.
Ah to be in life. To actually be living it fully instead of just thinking about the past life, over and over and over even then as that thought rises up I am reminding myself not to blame myself again. At the moment maybe I am having another one of those deep dives where the water feels like it is rising way over the top of my head while the weight of the depression tries to drown me again. At these times I need to remind myself that all is impermanent, bad times, experiences and things do not last and neither do unwelcome feelings. Good times do not last either and so it is to live with grace we need to accept the flow and not get too struck in resistance. Today I am also reminding myself that what can be opened to and accepted in love will allow it a safer passage way through me. My default setting as a strongly fixed sign person is to bite down hard upon it all and often resent my experiences, especially the painful ones. Then I also want to shame and blame others, which in the end solves nothing either.
What seems more important at present is to open my heart to all of this and accept it with grace. But when the pain and self recrimination is intense, so often that seems almost impossible to do, at least until a sense of perspective returns. The truth is that I just do not feel that strong right now, my wounds are very close to the surface and so is my anger. Stopping some of my addictions like coffee is allowing me to feel the grief too and also allowing me to ground more and as tired as I feel I must remember doing this inner feeling work does make one feel tired.. While we are healing in this way we need a lot of rest and a lot of soothing time in nature.
Is seems important to encourage myself today and to feel proud of the ability to rage and grieve which means I am no longer splitting off my ‘bad’ inner child any more. This work is not encouraged by society and that is an even more important reason to do it. Maybe it is an achievement to be more aware of the constant toll of years of personal and family frustration that I have borne, especially since returning home to help my family. Because often, sadly, over those 10 years I had several medical interventions that I now wish I had not allowed since they were not at heart addressing the fact of what my body was carrying and trying to express unconsciously.
Emerging From The Dark Night 