she wanted to talk...

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The phone rang and she wanted to talk. She let on as if it was only a casual conversation. It was only later my lawyer informed me otherwise. I had no clue where the conversation was going. In a receptive and considerate tone she began asking some pointed questions, namely would I reconsider starting over?

 

*sigh*

 

I did not take long for me to give her my answer. In knee-jerk fashion I made it clear I would not.  My encounters with my ex-spouse always required the closest scrutiny of my motivations. As much as I analyzed and re-analyzed, I found it impossible to come to one hundred percent certainty about her words and behaviours. As Austen says,

 

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."

 

However, in spite of human limitations, I picked up my pen that day as a means of exploring the residue swirling in my head. These were the sort of questions I began to ask myself:

 

How is it possible for someone to bear grudges, then suddenly appear like all was forgotten?

How do you approach someone who is combative one moment, then charming the next?

When your trust has been eroded by, how can you be sure what is true and what is pretext?

 

I’ve also experienced bouts of heartsickness. It was a side effect of having any kind of contact with her. No matter how detrimental the messages I received, the move toward divorce was never easy. While separation seemed like a therapeutic option, divorce felt like death. The person who once played center stage became dead to me. My mind began to play tricks like memories of  deceased persons often do, idealizing her person…

 

waves of anger and indignation

 “Most people tend to notice other people’s energy and actions before they notice their own. They become preoccupied with what others are doing or not doing, projecting their ideas about why they are that way. They carry on with criticism or comparisons, while their deeper feelings go unattended.” - Doc Childr and Deborah Rozman

In the beginning phase of my separation I rode on a wave of anger and indignation that provided fuel for a time. I looked forward to the day when I could break with the past and just move on. However, ending a relationship looks easier from a distance. The final showdown doesn’t ring victory. Your head fills with contradictory feelings that you can’t imagine.

Doc Childr and Deborah Rozman explain how we spend much of our emotional energy carelessly and have never been taught emotional self-care. We don’t even know where to begin or how to start. How true this has been in my life. My way of dealing with prolonged emotionally draining situations has been to sit the valley of indecision, hoping the problem will work itself out (while making the problem only worse and more ingrained). I want to stay in limbo, not wanting to finish what I started.

My therapist once said I needed to mourn my relationship even though it was destructive. I didn’t understand what relevance there could be mourning a bad marriage -- why would I do that? The therapist explained there is another kind of loss that has to do with mourning for what could have been, but never unfolded.

I wanted to share a comment I received in response to my previous post about heightened sensitivity. At first I thought I could post it as it was written and let it speak for itself, but I realized I needed to take another approach so as not to confuse my readers.

As an introduction, the author shared that she (like me) didn't have the natural discernment or "sifter" to see through people as she would like to and had to learn about PDs by visiting forums and reading about them (as well as studying psychology and all kinds of aspects of human behavior). I think that in general HSPs take longer to clue into their world and tend to take many things about life for granted. That is, we HSPs are not born street wise and have to be tutored or self-tutored along the way.

She shared how as a latch-key kid raised she had to survive by her own wits while her parents worked; how her mother was as a hard-driving fashion executive and how her grandmother used to say that the author was 'too sensitive.' She was never told about core human values nor instructed to defend herself more assertively. She wrote,

"As my father agreed last week, I basically raised myself. So I do know a bit about what you speak; my sensitivity reared its head when my brother abused me, when neighborhood kids abused me and I didn't know what to do about it so I absorbed it instead.

I realized that I'd never STUDIED PEOPLE. And that this is a critical, critical life lesson that kids need to be taught very young. But it's not too late -- survivors ... are a testament to that.

The piece I never picked up on was that other people's motives and motivations aren't necessarily like mine, aren't necessarily genuine and consistent with what they say/how they try to act -- and the whole notion that people wear masks, disordered or not.

And so learning about postures/body language, facial expressions, voice tones -- in essence, the stuff the intelligence and law enforcement communities use daily, (as well as politicians, actors, corporate management et al.), is wildly useful as it opens a door into a new world: The layers below/beyond the presentation.

Because of this adventure the way I now view, listen to, understand and interact with people has changed forever, hopefully for the better ... with the usual trips and stumbles along the way ....

Perhaps directing your study toward these kinds of topics might be useful for you?"

What she wrote about immediately resonated because I too was a latch-key kid and raised myself along the way. Italian immigrant families didn't have the inside story about the complexity of raising their children in a foreign country. They had enough of a hard time just surviving day to day on a personal level.

The author also shared with me her struggle to own her own opinions or thoughts while she was growing up. I also related to this, because I never thought my opinions or thoughts mattered to others. I seemed invisible to others. Here is how she tells the rest of the story,

"The other main lesson I've learned is that, somewhere/somehow along the way I was either never taught about my own instinct, or perhaps never given permission to live by it, or was perhaps trained to respond to outside permissions always over my own instinct, so through the years I became disconnected from it/didn't see it/no longer relied on it but came to rely instead of any kind of outside input I could gather. In essence I replaced my own instinct void with Other People's Opinions. Which shifts power from the Self to Those Outside the Self and can make one quite stagnant if one is afraid to move in any direction without that approval. (When someone doesn't have a supportive mate in a R (relationship), and that mate becomes abusive and maliciously manipulative, this tendency kicks in hard and if one's voluntarily assumed position in the R is socioeconomically dependent, that makes it more difficult for the one becoming recessive to keep the peace and comfortable safety going until it's no longer possible to do so.)

Recapturing one's own instinct, testing its rightness and relying on the fact that, though it's not right for others it's right for you and that is the #1 primary thing that matters, is a really important step toward strengthening the True Self. Even if we have to swim upstream, pull away from the herd or actively defy those who've influenced us to get free enough to do it.

Through time I've taken inventory and found that, when I've not trusted my instinct, things have gone more awry than if I'd done so.

Doing this at first can be so tentative it's like dipping our toe in the water, then going in ankle-deep, then knee-deep, then waist-high, then gradually swimming around.

There's nothing wrong with gentleness, with refinement. Especially if we were raised in a certain culture or geography and find ourselves having to operate in a substantially different culture that's perhaps more rough-hewn.

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent," societal shaming and all. If our backbone is stronger than society's will to break it, we continue to stand tall and walk among those who don't necessarily support or defend us, but we no longer care if they do because we support and defend ourselves."

-- NewWings4MeNow

Meek and lowly in heart...

¨Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take your yoke upon me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your soul. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.¨

-- Matthew 11: 28ff

¨Here we may find rest for our souls, and here only. Nor need we fear his yoke. His commandments are holy, just, and good. It requires self-denial, and exposes to difficulties, but this is abundantly repaid, even in this world, by inward peace and joy. It is a yoke that is lined with love. So powerful are the assistances he gives us, so suitable the encouragements, and so strong the consolations to be found in the way of duty, that we may truly say, it is a yoke of pleasantness.¨

-- Matthew Henry

I was sharing with DD this week a spiritual truth I have observed. Since we live in a fallen world most of what goes on externally tends to pull us down by creating a vortex of weariness, anxiety or discomfort -- that most unpleasant sensation that occurs when we perceive some threat to our physical or emotional stability. This conversation came up because DD has been having ongoing conflicts with her class mates who try to take advantage of her gentle and giving nature and punish her by excluding her from the main group of girls. Fortunately, she has one friend who has been loyal, but this friend will be moving to Mexico next month and DD is dreading the idea.

It's not just the external stimuli that disturbs us but how we often interpret what goes on, often doing a poor job at it . We allow distressful thoughts to enter and wage war inside of us. As the saying goes, ¨Whatever we give attention to, tends to grow¨ whether positively or negatively. When distress grows, we lose peace, and seek in futile ways to numb the pain. Anxious thoughts take many shapes and forms, sometimes attacking our relationship with God or the people we love. At other times we feel under the oppressive cloud of guilt or low self-esteem. It can AFFECT us the ENTIRE day, or the whole week... so we find it hard to focus or connect with the present. Our anxiety level can go through the roof, so that we get that unhinged desperate feeling like everything is out of control.

I'm sharing this because this potentially hard reality can ironically help us to appreciate the good that comes our way... to be attentive and anticipating such visitations from love. We come to value God’s offer to live peacefully and to enjoy kindred-spirit friends that bring warmth and comfort to life ... who are supportive, gentle and kind. I come to realize these beautiful souls are in short supply and I pray to God, the Father that we might continue being for each other a support that contrasts to the uncertainties outside... for it is only in His Kingdom and with his children to whom we can voice our fears and experiences to find reassurance and validation.

-- Reflector

Internally Self Defined...

Oddly enough my passion for writing came about as a result of my need to find recovery from an emotionally bankrupt childhood. I began a journey unearthing emotional / spiritual issues, seeking to understand how the effects of my childhood interfered and frustrated the present. I began to piece together not only how Dad’s aloofness and acts of rage affected me as a boy, but also how it affected my Mom so that she could not give my sister and I the substantial attention we needed. She was so submerged under dreadful marital problems and this affected her health in the form of migraines, ulcers and great bouts of depression. In short, she did what any human being would do under the circumstances -- she involuntarily detached herself from us because of the traumas.

How did this lack of attention affect me in the present? In terms of emotional investment, I grew up with my love tank on empty. Phillip McGraw writes the following that has helped me tremendously to understand the dynamics that I now need to work on.¨Studies of newborn babies show that unless we receive love, our survival is in jeopardy for the first days of our lives. As we grow up, if we are not convinced that we have it, we will go through life trying to find it.

There is a certain way in which we need to be touched, held and regarded behaviorally and emotionally. If we feel deprived, even from an early age, and before we have the vocabulary to describe it, we will be driven in our lives to find it. That drive can be so powerful as to dominate our thinking and motivations and therefore our choices through life. Some of your most critical choices in life may have resulted from your need for, your search for a love that, whether real or imagined, you felt was elusive. … The more your internally defined self-esteem is lacking, the more you are vulnerable to external influence. In short, if you aren’t ¨squared away¨ with yourself, they can ¨get to you¨ from the outside. The world will pick on self-doubt like it is an open wound. As a result, you can find yourself making decisions driven by a need to build how you feel about yourself, but from all the wrong resources. Simply put, if you don’t love, believe in, and accept yourself, you will try to find someone else to do it for you. Seeking that validation so desperately from someone other than yourself can have a huge effect on the choices you make.¨

This is why we need to cultivate our own garden not waiting for someone else to bring us flowers. Only when we feel complete can we truly share with freedom. We cannot be that empty wine bottle that gets filled by a vineyard not our own. We won't find love outside because it's already inside us. That is why I journal and write poetry. I find that's where God, creativity and I meet! Love is not only something we already possess, but something no one can take away. As someone once wrote, ¨Dreams live or die inside our heart!¨

--TR