the two posts i made yesterday, one looking at control, and the other on the unresolved post traumatic stress of growing up in our chaotic and dysfunctional incestuous family system really opened the aperture of my mind's eye full blast.
previously, i had been so intent on working to project the image of recovery perfection, that all my endeavors on recovery road focused on that end: maintaining the appearance that i was OK. the strides i made were more in terms of intellectual understanding of my pathology. that was not necessarily a bad thing, though. it was just the necessary path i had to take to get to the heart of the matter.
but now, with the recent work i have done exploring the roots of my own roadblocks to intimacy, and in tandem, taking into consideration the influences of unresolved early traumatic experiences, i now descend into the feeling level of recovery.
what a fantastic thing, to actually feel the effects of the fallout; to be the subject, and not just the passive observer commenting on the path----no, to actually be back in those moments, reliving the truth of the feelings, which were too strong and painful to accept at the time of the first exposure to the traumatic events.
what a freeing thing, to be able to see the angry furrowed brow of a stranger, and recognize the angry furrowed brow of a stressed out parent. to feel an imagined rejection as invalidation, and be catapulted into a depressive state with no explanation. now i know that every situation that arises to cause me stress and anxiety, is simply an echo of a former unresolved situation connected via emotional response and lineage to an earlier similar experience that was fraught with fear, and lacking the comforting reassurance of safety.
to feel that feeling of terror striking the heart as it rises to meet in the moment of now, but knowing that this time, i have options. that i can provide the reassurance i need to know that i am not trapped as i was then, with nowhere to run, forced to stay in place, powerless to defend myself. i no longer have to dissociate from the pain, merely because there is no apparent recourse.
these 'anchors' are everywhere in the psychic tapestry of my early life. and now i know their genesis, i can go back with this new flashlight, and discover them in all their little compartments and secret hidey holes. i can arrest them one by one, and remove the secret power they have held to tether me to them.
with this new knowledge in hand, i can eliminate all of the invisible automatic "NO's" that arise to inhibit me from reaching outside the bars of my own prison, when new person or situations are encountered, stirring old patterns of reactivity.
i don't have to flee or freeze any longer. i now have the power to stand ground, to confront and to fight if need be; to act in my own defense....... omg! what a responsibility! i have such little practice with that. what are the risks? will i be rejected, or respected? will i be destroyed, or will i prevail.
i must fight for the freedom, for release from the tethers of these emotional and psychological anchors.
i must, and i will be free of them; then, the true ron can emerge.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
PTS Uncovered
the previous post on control provoked a day long reflection on the unresolved stress lingering from my pre-conscious years with my family of origin. reflecting on that also led to a sequence of thought links leading me to reflect on the unresolved stress that still lingers from the experience of my brother's death.
it was quite enough to have been brought into the situation that i was born into at the time. our house was always super stressed out, and i can only imagine that that was the case from day one. indubitably, things only got worse as my mother's chores increased yearly, as she was pregnant 12 times in the first 13 years of her marriage.
so she had my older brother [my perp], then immediately got pregnant again, and carried that child to term, but lost it along the way. stress. of course she still had her first born....nothing could change that. then next thing you know, another year later, i was born. sorry mom, you wanted a girl, but you got me. you already had a boy. and he was your golden child. i wonder how you handled your disappointment. how did you keep from subtly transmitting it thru your touch to my skin when you bathed me, fed me, dressed me?
never mind, 1 year and 10 days later, you gave birth to my sister....finally, the girl you had been waiting for. well, i guess you didn't get very much time to spend doting on her until my next brother was born a year and two months later. but at least, you had that year........
where did the time go? 10 years later, your family was complete. even though you lost 3 more. i still can't help but wonder.....what did you do with all the stress you were under during that 13 year time span. making and having babies, clothing feeding, cooking, cleaning. why don't i remember any fun? could it be because there was none? could it be because our life was so regimented, that the only way to stay sane was to control our behavior by ruling with violence? was that the only way you knew to keep us 'in line'.
of course, dad was no help. he had his own stress to deal with, working 2 and 3 jobs throughout the child rearing days. then shortly after the youngest was born, and the doctor told you that if you had any more children, you would die? yet you felt extremely guilty about having to have your tubes tied, good catholic woman that you were.
how would all these mouths be fed? of course, the family income had to be supplemented and so you went to work fulltime, leaving us to fend for ourselves. and you put 'the captain' in charge of us, the oldest brother, your golden child, who would, away from the watchful eye of any adult monitoring the situation, go on to sexually abuse no less than 4 of his younger siblings, the youngest being 3 years old.
what a mad existence. then on your days 'off' from work, you would make us all catch up on the chores that did not get done during the week, and you would have us all scrubbing walls, doing laundry, cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. and only after the work was all done, would we be allowed to go outdoors and 'play' for a couple of hours, until the dinner hour.
i thought mom about how when i was 16, and i started working part time at the college cafeteria. you got a job there when dad worked there on the maintenance staff. after he left there and got a job working for the port authority, you and the supervisor got close. i remember discovering his love letters to you underneath your clothes once when i was tidying up your dresser drawers. i know how neat you liked everything to be, and so i would always be trying to please you by ridding up whenever i could. i was devastated when i found those cards. i confronted the supervisor, and he could not deny it, but he did say it was totally 'pure'.
fast forward to bill's death. i'll never forget the night we found out he had died in his apartment from a cerebral hemorrhage, and how you collapsed. we all needed someone to comfort us, but you were inconsolable, and so our needs got no attention.
then there was my pain. i'll never forget the smell of that apartment. the reeking odor of death, from bill who laid up in there for two days before the smell alerted his landlady that something was amiss. when me and a few of the sibs went with dad to claim bill's belongings, it was an experience that i will never forget. but i never thought about the impact of that experience until today. my last memory of him, my perp and first lover, was of him rejecting the relationship that i held in such high regard for almost 8 years.
it just dawns on me now, that was the beginning of the end of my life. the night after his death, i am sure i never slept the same again. i am sure, i lost my heart and soul when he died, i died.
i tried to reach out and share my pain. i told about what he had done. something i could never do as long as he was alive. and when i disclosed it, i sealed my own fate. because on top of the trauma of losing a first born son, now shame would become the hallmark of our family history. and i would be blamed for bringing the terrible secret to light.
where do the accumulated unresolved feelings of a life time go? they don't go anywhere. they just get buried, piling up like a huge composte heap, silently doing their toxic damage, poisoning the soul from the inside out. all the years of unresolved fear, rejection, anger, abandonment, deceit, guilt and shame. what have they wrought?
pain and suffering. ah, the legacy of poverty and abuse. *sigh*
it was quite enough to have been brought into the situation that i was born into at the time. our house was always super stressed out, and i can only imagine that that was the case from day one. indubitably, things only got worse as my mother's chores increased yearly, as she was pregnant 12 times in the first 13 years of her marriage.
so she had my older brother [my perp], then immediately got pregnant again, and carried that child to term, but lost it along the way. stress. of course she still had her first born....nothing could change that. then next thing you know, another year later, i was born. sorry mom, you wanted a girl, but you got me. you already had a boy. and he was your golden child. i wonder how you handled your disappointment. how did you keep from subtly transmitting it thru your touch to my skin when you bathed me, fed me, dressed me?
never mind, 1 year and 10 days later, you gave birth to my sister....finally, the girl you had been waiting for. well, i guess you didn't get very much time to spend doting on her until my next brother was born a year and two months later. but at least, you had that year........
where did the time go? 10 years later, your family was complete. even though you lost 3 more. i still can't help but wonder.....what did you do with all the stress you were under during that 13 year time span. making and having babies, clothing feeding, cooking, cleaning. why don't i remember any fun? could it be because there was none? could it be because our life was so regimented, that the only way to stay sane was to control our behavior by ruling with violence? was that the only way you knew to keep us 'in line'.
of course, dad was no help. he had his own stress to deal with, working 2 and 3 jobs throughout the child rearing days. then shortly after the youngest was born, and the doctor told you that if you had any more children, you would die? yet you felt extremely guilty about having to have your tubes tied, good catholic woman that you were.
how would all these mouths be fed? of course, the family income had to be supplemented and so you went to work fulltime, leaving us to fend for ourselves. and you put 'the captain' in charge of us, the oldest brother, your golden child, who would, away from the watchful eye of any adult monitoring the situation, go on to sexually abuse no less than 4 of his younger siblings, the youngest being 3 years old.
what a mad existence. then on your days 'off' from work, you would make us all catch up on the chores that did not get done during the week, and you would have us all scrubbing walls, doing laundry, cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning. and only after the work was all done, would we be allowed to go outdoors and 'play' for a couple of hours, until the dinner hour.
i thought mom about how when i was 16, and i started working part time at the college cafeteria. you got a job there when dad worked there on the maintenance staff. after he left there and got a job working for the port authority, you and the supervisor got close. i remember discovering his love letters to you underneath your clothes once when i was tidying up your dresser drawers. i know how neat you liked everything to be, and so i would always be trying to please you by ridding up whenever i could. i was devastated when i found those cards. i confronted the supervisor, and he could not deny it, but he did say it was totally 'pure'.
fast forward to bill's death. i'll never forget the night we found out he had died in his apartment from a cerebral hemorrhage, and how you collapsed. we all needed someone to comfort us, but you were inconsolable, and so our needs got no attention.
then there was my pain. i'll never forget the smell of that apartment. the reeking odor of death, from bill who laid up in there for two days before the smell alerted his landlady that something was amiss. when me and a few of the sibs went with dad to claim bill's belongings, it was an experience that i will never forget. but i never thought about the impact of that experience until today. my last memory of him, my perp and first lover, was of him rejecting the relationship that i held in such high regard for almost 8 years.
it just dawns on me now, that was the beginning of the end of my life. the night after his death, i am sure i never slept the same again. i am sure, i lost my heart and soul when he died, i died.
i tried to reach out and share my pain. i told about what he had done. something i could never do as long as he was alive. and when i disclosed it, i sealed my own fate. because on top of the trauma of losing a first born son, now shame would become the hallmark of our family history. and i would be blamed for bringing the terrible secret to light.
where do the accumulated unresolved feelings of a life time go? they don't go anywhere. they just get buried, piling up like a huge composte heap, silently doing their toxic damage, poisoning the soul from the inside out. all the years of unresolved fear, rejection, anger, abandonment, deceit, guilt and shame. what have they wrought?
pain and suffering. ah, the legacy of poverty and abuse. *sigh*
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The "C" Word
kay suggested i write about the 'c' word.... you know...... control.
i've been scratching my head and drumming my fingers all week about this, and finding it difficult to begin to talk about it. hmmmm...... where to begin .... where to begin ... where to begin.....
maybe with a definition? 1. To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over.
that conjures up a feeling reaction similar to being grabbed violently by the arm and either being forced to perform a behavior, or being restrained from some action. force and restraint; rigidity and no room for compromise or flexibility.
from one perspective, the element of control contains a capacity for contrasting characterizations. one, resulting in force and rigidity, and the other aspect, more cooperative and conjoining.
actually i prefer the gentler implications of the word: conduct: 1. To guide the course of; manage or direct.
however in this context, it appears control, in one sense, is about a dominant force exercising power over a weaker, more submissive object/subject. so there's the inroad for my discussion on 'control'. how did control impact my life, with me being the weaker force having power exerted upon me by a stronger force? how and why did i develop coping strategies in reaction to the experience of being encroached upon as a victim of someone's control pressure, the exertion of their will over me as a dominating force? did i fight, freeze or flee?
looking back into the origins of my life, where patterns of response and reactivity would have had their genesis, i can clearly see how the mode of response would have been 'freeze', for me. the first perceived encroaching force would have been that of my parental figures who would enforce their wishes upon me, and who would use force as a regulating mechanism in order to get me to adjust to their behavioral expectations.
prior to language, sensory impressions registered as an overload of sight, hearing, touch: big, looming, punishing, angry, threatening forms, emitting their scary powerful energy at me, tense facial expressions, violent physical contact, loud words with clicking consonants spit out, their volatile energy resonating against the target of my soul. barking out do's and don't's; orders and warnings of consequence: do, or die. nothing tender in contrast to balance or neutralize the impact of the fierce,fearsome temperamental energy thrust upon me.
no options, but to conform. no way out. nowhere to run to escape the raging storm of 'influence'. a helpless dependent infant creature, powerless to do anything but to conform to the demands of the powerful force overseeing my life. what would such an infant creature do? how would such an infanct creature defend itself against such affront? it could not escape [no legs yet]. where would it go even if there was an option for egress? no, there was no way out. all the infant creature could do, was abandon its own need set, and replace it with conformity to that of powerful overlords. it would become scared silent, and rendered impotent to express its own life force. eventually, it would have worn the yoke of suppression for so long, that it would forget it ever had a choice to begin with.
its power had never been recognized, nurtured, and honored; never encouraged; but rather, was stripped; replaced and supplanted with the will of the 'governers' of the system in which it had been born and bred: a system of rewards and consequences.
even before language develops as a means of communication, the creature learns not to touch that hot oven, or bear the consequences. if it is docile enough, it learns very quickly, that to insist on having its needs met is suicide. so, out of fear of being punished and/or deserted, in order to protect itself, and advance its own survival, it yields and ultimately surrenders to the power of force, which establishes, shapes, enforces and reinforces and conforms its patterns of relating to power systems that demand adherence, or risk rejection, abandonment and obliteration. it is rendered devoid of its own power.
then....the child turns two. all that in perhaps less than 700 days of reinforced treatment. thus describes the situation of a life born and groomed in the factory of such a controlling governance.
and so, the stage is set for repeating lifelong patterns of self abandonment, retreat from aggression, avoidance, and isolation. curiosity is strangled; creativity crushed. the creature becomes an automaton taking it cues for survival from powers that would control and curtail its highest expectations and deepest aspiration: to be and to become a person, fully human and alive.
my head hurts now ..... to be continued...
i've been scratching my head and drumming my fingers all week about this, and finding it difficult to begin to talk about it. hmmmm...... where to begin .... where to begin ... where to begin.....
maybe with a definition? 1. To exercise authoritative or dominating influence over.
that conjures up a feeling reaction similar to being grabbed violently by the arm and either being forced to perform a behavior, or being restrained from some action. force and restraint; rigidity and no room for compromise or flexibility.
from one perspective, the element of control contains a capacity for contrasting characterizations. one, resulting in force and rigidity, and the other aspect, more cooperative and conjoining.
actually i prefer the gentler implications of the word: conduct: 1. To guide the course of; manage or direct.
however in this context, it appears control, in one sense, is about a dominant force exercising power over a weaker, more submissive object/subject. so there's the inroad for my discussion on 'control'. how did control impact my life, with me being the weaker force having power exerted upon me by a stronger force? how and why did i develop coping strategies in reaction to the experience of being encroached upon as a victim of someone's control pressure, the exertion of their will over me as a dominating force? did i fight, freeze or flee?
looking back into the origins of my life, where patterns of response and reactivity would have had their genesis, i can clearly see how the mode of response would have been 'freeze', for me. the first perceived encroaching force would have been that of my parental figures who would enforce their wishes upon me, and who would use force as a regulating mechanism in order to get me to adjust to their behavioral expectations.
prior to language, sensory impressions registered as an overload of sight, hearing, touch: big, looming, punishing, angry, threatening forms, emitting their scary powerful energy at me, tense facial expressions, violent physical contact, loud words with clicking consonants spit out, their volatile energy resonating against the target of my soul. barking out do's and don't's; orders and warnings of consequence: do, or die. nothing tender in contrast to balance or neutralize the impact of the fierce,fearsome temperamental energy thrust upon me.
no options, but to conform. no way out. nowhere to run to escape the raging storm of 'influence'. a helpless dependent infant creature, powerless to do anything but to conform to the demands of the powerful force overseeing my life. what would such an infant creature do? how would such an infanct creature defend itself against such affront? it could not escape [no legs yet]. where would it go even if there was an option for egress? no, there was no way out. all the infant creature could do, was abandon its own need set, and replace it with conformity to that of powerful overlords. it would become scared silent, and rendered impotent to express its own life force. eventually, it would have worn the yoke of suppression for so long, that it would forget it ever had a choice to begin with.
its power had never been recognized, nurtured, and honored; never encouraged; but rather, was stripped; replaced and supplanted with the will of the 'governers' of the system in which it had been born and bred: a system of rewards and consequences.
even before language develops as a means of communication, the creature learns not to touch that hot oven, or bear the consequences. if it is docile enough, it learns very quickly, that to insist on having its needs met is suicide. so, out of fear of being punished and/or deserted, in order to protect itself, and advance its own survival, it yields and ultimately surrenders to the power of force, which establishes, shapes, enforces and reinforces and conforms its patterns of relating to power systems that demand adherence, or risk rejection, abandonment and obliteration. it is rendered devoid of its own power.
then....the child turns two. all that in perhaps less than 700 days of reinforced treatment. thus describes the situation of a life born and groomed in the factory of such a controlling governance.
and so, the stage is set for repeating lifelong patterns of self abandonment, retreat from aggression, avoidance, and isolation. curiosity is strangled; creativity crushed. the creature becomes an automaton taking it cues for survival from powers that would control and curtail its highest expectations and deepest aspiration: to be and to become a person, fully human and alive.
my head hurts now ..... to be continued...
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