Not chasing shadows

Tags

Anxiety, full circle, Healing, not-hobbling, perception, PTSD, shadows

As usual I’m trying to write fifty gazillion things and none of them are coming out quite right. It seems my book reading habits (multiple books at the same time with some never quite getting finished) are affecting my writing and so it’s all been a bit of a mushy seven-horse race with no clear winner.

Something like that anyway. I am almost finished writing this piece wherein I get a little whiney about the state of the health care industry but y’all should be glad you’re getting this one instead.

Yesterday was a little different. Maybe it’s because for the first time in about eight weeks I’ve started walking like a normal person again. None of this favouring of one leg or hobbling more ferociously than a grumpy old hobbit (assuming that is, that hobbits hobble, yes?). No strain on my lower back or extra painful left knee as a result of the not-hobbling. Not-hobbling is good. Nay, not-hobbling is great! There should be endless poems to extol the virtues of not-hobbling because being all balanced weight-bearing with the walking is honestly nothing short of a miracle when you’re used to the hobbling walk instead of the not-hobbling. Capiche?

I’ve even been able to start using stairs instead of the lift at work. Fancy, I know! And, a ten minute walk is no longer something to dread. Walking normally? It’s like a hundred kinds of good and yesterday afternoon as I strolled at a leisurely pace towards my massage session I was all looney grins of joy. And not because of Melbourne’s return to the more typical August weather of grey, rainy and dreary, either!

But there’s something else I noticed last night. Or rather, I’ve finally fessed up to myself about it. And here it is.

For the last six months I’ve been working in one of Melbourne’s inner-eastern suburbs. It’s a part of town that if it wasn’t for my job, I wouldn’t have much reason to be here. Not that there’s anything wrong with this part of town but it just isn’t part of my usual territory, you know?

I’m not sure how long I’d been walking up and down the main street – for lunches, to go to the health food store etc – when I first noticed that certain visuals looked familiar…

Because it’s interesting how differently we perceive our environments, isn’t it? When you’re going out to a gig or a club etc, mostly its night time and your main focus is getting to where you’re going. Peripherals are just that. They’re unimportant, except for perhaps the ATM across the street or where to find a cab on the way home. So that’s what stuck out – looking across the road to the ATM and then over and up and then it dawned on me.

Nearly every day, I’ve been walking past the place where the reason for this blog’s existence began. Which is where the start of the story begins.

How about that, eh? I’ve inadvertently (if that is at all possible) circled right back to the beginning, but in the mundane light of day where every shop sign and doorway looks the same. Until you look again and notice those mostly invisible markers of significance.

Once I was sure, yep that WAS the place, I was relieved to notice that I didn’t really care anymore. Still, for no particular reason I’ve avoided processing any of this consciously.

I suppose I thought it didn’t matter. I’d already done a re-visit of this place – for me, conquering physical locations associated with my PTSD has been important (taking the fear out of time and space). And I’d even come face-to-face with my abuser (well sorta) and come out of that okay.

So it was done. It was done, right? Right?

Well, mostly. Tonight, post-massage and feeling decidedly more relaxed (physically) than I have for the last couple of months… I sat there at the tram stop nibbling on some dinner, only meters from the hole-in-the-wall door that leads up to the club where it all began.

And I allowed myself this thought: In that place and on that night, my life irrevocably changed in every way imaginable.

Standing up to throw some trash in a bin, I faced that damn door and felt a little woozy as though I was gonna puke. Only I didn’t.

And yeah, it was over. Sure, I’m still dealing with some of the repercussions with my health and anxiety etc.

But these days, that club holds no more power over me than my abuser does. In fact, I hate even writing the words “my abuser” now, because it’s just not relevant any more but it’s a handy shortcut all the same.

The event that caused my life to explode is done, and there’s nothing more to say.

~Svasti

P.S. Except let the healing continue. Because, if someone had ever suggested to me the many and varied ways in which trauma needs to be healed, I never would’ve believed them. It’s kind of like trying to peel layers of fairy floss… sticky and lacking any clear borders…

Generating lurvvve – part 2

Tags

chronic lack of love, Healing, Inspiration, Love, neediness, perception

[Read part 1 first]

Just to clarify, part 1 was NOT an ode to being selfish and self-involved taking care of numero uno and screw everyone else kind of attitude. Quite the opposite really.

First things first though, that old maxim is true – how can you possibly offer real love and care to others if you’re always looking outside yourself for love and acceptance? You can’t. That’s just how it is.

You have to find your own happiness first, whatever that looks like.

But what if you’re not sure how to get there? That’s where the concept of starting with just doing things you really love, and letting the experience of doing those things take you over for a while… that can help A LOT.

Of course, for some this is much harder than for others.

What if you’re not even sure of what you like, let alone what you love or enjoy? What if you’ve suppressed all of that under a mound of unhappiness and hurt and sadness and depression? What if it’s hard to even imagine liking something a lot?

Have you ever been in that place? I know I have.

So you just start small. Perhaps there’s… I dunno… a tree you like in a local park. Or the birds outside your window sing prettily. Or a computer game you enjoy. Or a TV show you like. Or taking photos of street art (one of my secret pleasures). Or ice-cream. Or… well, it could be anything. And perhaps just for a nanosecond, that gives you a fleeting thought. Like: Hey, that’s nice.

Nice. That can be enough to get you started.

Might take a few attempts before you can get from that fleeting moment to something that lasts a little longer.

Might not seem like you’re getting anywhere. But you have to stick with it, you know?

Then eventually, one day you might just be able to say you really like something. Anything. And that should be celebrated. It’s an achievement, especially for those coming from a deeply wounded place.

Keep going. Don’t stop yet. Before you know it, you might even allow yourself to enjoy something fully. Then, you might extend yourself and find yet another thing that makes you happy.

Then you might notice that doing things that make you happy has an impact on how you see yourself and everyone else around you, too.

Like = Enjoyment = Happiness.

And eventually, Happiness = Love.

A teaching I’ve been given (many times now) is this:

There’s nothing that we feel or experience that is external. No matter how subjective reality appears. All of our experiences, things we think of as caused by other people or experiences, are really just our own reactions, feelings and thoughts…

I know, that can be a lot to take in and accept.

An example of this is enjoying the finest meal you can think of. The ingredients are fresh and perfectly prepared, the aromas are mouth watering and everything is faultlessly seasoned and spiced. It’s not like you’re just eating food – it’s more like music or poetry with every bite you take. Ever eaten food that’s positively orgasmic? Yeah, like that…

In the middle of this incredible meal, you get a call that a loved one has been in a horrific car crash and they’ve passed away. Not only are you in shock, and busy trying to work out what you need to do, if you to keep eating your meal, you’d find those amazing flavours have vanished. For all you know, it could be a hamburger from the corner shop.

This is because the taste, the enjoyment, everything that you were getting out of that experience actually comes from within. It is your perception of the food that makes it the best thing you’ve ever eaten, and again it’s your perception when it loses its appeal.

And I guess what I’m trying to get to, is suggesting that there’s a lot of people in the world out there living with a chronic lack of love.

Which is partly due to our perception of life, our reaction to other people and our life experiences. The end result is however, that we feel unloved. Neglected. Rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how that impacts us.

There are well documented studies proving that plants grow better when given love. So do people. And while many have grown up with adequate love and affection, there’s many more who didn’t.

They may not have been assaulted or abused or neglected, or maybe they were! Either way they sure as heck didn’t grow up feeling loved.

What I’m saying is that our experience growing up might’ve been that we didn’t get what we needed from our interactions with the world and other people, in order to feel confident, loved, cherished.

And that’s enough to start feeling the need to shut down. And when we shut down, we stop taking care of ourselves, including activities that allow us to generate our own sense of love.

Make sense? Yeah, it does for me too.

[To be continued…]

~Svasti

Wayward tales

Tags

channelling, Depression, higher consciousness, perception, PTSD, self-beliefs, Something Important, worthlessness

It’s a little mystical, the way my fingers seem to know what to write before I’ve formed a cognisant idea about the things that appear before me on-screen.

Seems I’ve got a lot to say right now, but none of it is what I planned on saying.

And y’know, it’s almost like my keyboard is hijacking the schedule here, perhaps in collusion with my heart. No, it’s deeper than that. My higher consciousness (whatever that is) has hacked the system or something!

There’s a takeover going on here, over my words and my stories. I’m feeling a touch fragile as a result.

But because its stuff that usually comes out poetically or abstractly, I’m having a hard time putting it together rationally.

Like… This morning.

On the tram going to work, I realised Something Important:

I’m still holding onto this idea that my life isn’t meaningful or worth anything unless I’m loved and/or doing something useful with myself.

So, right now according to this logic my life is worth nothing. It’s pointless. I’m not anyone’s significant other. I have a crappy job. I have no money. I have no children. I don’t have any concrete plans to set the world on fire and be useful.

But today I decided to challenge this thinking!

So, if some/all of these things were happening in my life – that would suddenly mean I was worthwhile?

Yes!

But though currently I’m essentially the same person, just not actually engaging in any of the things that I think will make me happy and fulfilled… because I’m not doing those things, I’m not worthwhile?

That’s right!

Hmmmm…

Asking myself questions like this, I can see just how ludicrous such self-beliefs really are.

So… I’m not worth anything unless I’m being useful. And I can’t be useful because I’m not worth anything?

You got it!

Ah, a glimpse at the craziness we humans operate in, as we beat ourselves up time and again. This is a peek into my very own personalised version of it.

It’s fascinating.

But circumstances change. The things we think make us happy change, too. Geez am I glad I don’t have the same definition of happiness I had as a teenager any more!

And this means our likes and dislikes are a moving target, and so then it can’t mean anything about us if we haven’t attained those things we like/want. Right?

I try to remember my thought processes pre-assault, depression and PTSD. That was a life I knew, a way of being happy. Its stuff I can no longer relate to in the same way.

I try to recall how I coped with life, what I wanted and how I felt about myself in general. It’s not easy to dig into those memories, because much of it is obscured by the assault.

I do remember events that happened as much as is possible with my fallible human mind.

But my perception of myself was altered so much that it’s hard to see anything as I used to. The memories of how I felt about myself pre-assault are hazy at best.

There’s a solid disconnect there. Different life, different time.

I’m pretty sure I used to be relatively confident. Even though I’ve never been happy with my looks I was always still confident in who I was. Or maybe that’s a lie and it just looks that way in comparison to how I feel now. No… I’m pretty sure that I had some things I was confident about and others where I felt vulnerable and shy.

But I used to have a lot more energy and ability to commit myself to things. I was stronger and fitter. It wasn’t a struggle through every single day. I didn’t have to push myself to cook nutritious meals. I had boyfriends, I went out and socialised much more than I do now.

And that was then.

Okay, as I’m typing this, here’s the breaking story from wherever the hell this stuff is coming from right now…

Being assaulted that night, just that one single night, made me feel completely worthless. Or rather, those feelings about myself existed already somewhere in my psyche, but it wasn’t actively how I saw myself. That night, I thought I was going to die.

And so somehow I made what happened to me mean that I might as well be dead. Or at the very least, as small as a piece of fluff caught on a hedge. Where does the fluff go eventually? Who knows? But that small. That’s how I felt, and in some ways, its how I still feel.

Maybe because if I was that small or entirely worthless, then maybe no one would ever touch me like that again. Or betray me. Or lie to me. Or pretend to be one person, only to reveal Dr Hyde later on.

What I’m just beginning to understand is, this was the story I allowed myself to believe.

A deep sense of worthlessness overwhelmed me and it seems that while I’ve been trying to recover, I’ve never actually addressed this belief about myself directly.

And I’ve never really seen it like that before, until now.

~ Svasti