Thursday, October 31, 2024
In my last session with Shelly, I worked some on the lingering damage from my relationship with my dad. Mostly, I work on the damage from my mom. I did not have terrible parents. They were caring, and we were well taken care of physically. My mom was clearly damaged goods. No one missed that. My dad's problems were more subtle. My issues around my dad come up every once in a while. Therapists think I ignore them. When I do work on them, I come right back to Mom. Whatever damage I suffered, it always comes back to 1/5 dad and 4/5 mom. She had some serious screws loose. I feel I have to explain she suffered a torturous medical procedure to save her life in her first six months. That she came out with any sanity is a tribute to her life force.
I suffer from terror, as did Mike. It probably bonded over that. The causes were somewhat different, but just a little. We both had hysterical mothers. I think his was actually worse than mine. Mine was capable of love. I don't know that his was. Her children were there to boost her ego. My mom's injuries were younger. I had one therapist describe her as pre-narcissistic.
Aside from all the psychological boundary violations inflicted by someone who considers it a put-down if you don't agree with them on everything, and I do mean everything, she was always in a state of urgency. Like most people with PSTD, she was good in a crisis; that's the state she lived in.
I've had therapists say I adopted her viewpoint on the world. That never sounded right. I didn't agree with her point of view, and that's what saved me. She hated my outgoing, trusting nature. I always assumed the best.
In most cases, I was rewarded for my trust. Last week, I thought it wasn't her point of view I adopted; it was her energy. I was bathed in it along with the amniotic fluid. I am constantly vibrating at a point of outright terror, the terror she must have felt as an infant. It's knitted into every cell of my body. I am trying to deal with it now.
At least I'm trying to deal with it directly. I'm trying to feel the indiscriminate terror instead of attributing it to some life circumstance. When I silence my racing mind and deal with feeling, my body feels like it's vibrating. When I lie in bed, it feels a little like an earthquake. We have plenty of them here, hundreds a day. Most are small and so subtle as to be unnoticeable- unless you're paying close attention. Then, you may catch one. It's much like the feeling when all thirteen pounds of Elsa shifts on the bed. I wouldn't feel it if I was not focused on my body. Or maybe I should say I wouldn't register in my awareness.
I suspect we all have this feeling when a conflict arises with another person. We're reassured and quickly calm if we feel confident in their commitment to us. If it's someone irrelevant to us, we can dismiss it.
We all experience different people as irrelevant. If we tense up and feel fear or if we put the other person down, dismissing them as worthless, we've reacted. If we've reacted, we consider them relevant. The response to an irrelevant person is immediate calming, reacting as we would with someone we trust deeply. Any conscious response or behavior means we're triggered. We are triggered because the person has value or because they commented about a trait in ourselves we feel makes us worthless. They've triggered shame. Again, we know they have if our minds go into overdrive with self-protective messages. "He's just some drunken homeless bum." "She's that nasty lady who lives down the street." "I didn't do anything that bad. I don't know why they were angry at me." The underlying feeling is fear. The cure: sit and observe the sensations on your body with equanimity.
Brilliant Buddha developed the idea of sitting with a feeling of equanimity. That means staying calm and not judging our actions, their actions, or our feelings as either positive or negative. Just observe the sensations on the body with mild interest. Does it itch? Is it warm or cool? Does it feel tight or loose? Preferably, observe only a small patch of skin at a time. Wait till the sensation changes and move on to the adjacent patch. Do not invest in liking or not liking the sensation. Stick to describing it. That's tough.
I can feel the vibration in some areas of my body with complete neutrality. It isn't connected to an emotion. It's a little like observing the pressure on my back as I rest against the back of the chair. The sensation is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Whatever it is, it doesn't intrude on my consciousness. It occupies no mental space. Resolving old issues requires a neutral mental state. I've done it enough to know it works, even on physical pain with a purely physical cause. It's easier to apply this process to physical pain than psychological. It is a truly remarkable process. Only it's difficult to attain, especially when dealing with strong emotions.
Since I feel some vibration in areas of my body that don't feel like distress or terror, I'm starting to think that's the natural state of our bodies. That would make sense. Our bodies are chemical and electrical factories, humming away. There is always something going on. Stand close enough to a high-power electric wire; you can hear it buzz. All sound produces vibrations. If that sound is inside our bodies, we should feel the vibration. Also, blood is constantly moving through our bodies. Swoosh! Swoosh! Is that what I'm feeling? I can't tell the difference between those spots where the vibration feels neutral or like fear, but I can feel how I react to the two sensations. The best I can say is that the fear vibrations feel at a higher pitch. It's torture.
Buddha says it's not pain that bothers us but something our minds bring to the pain, such as craving or aversion. He says we feel less pain if we can neutralize craving and aversion. Maybe it would be better to say we can avoid agony and only feel pain.
I left for Ulu Wini shortly after doing some major weeding. While I was heading down the road, I thought, "Wait! It's Halloween! No one is going to be interested in tutoring." I called Shauntel to check. She wasn't going to work today because of a backache. She thinks it's from activities she's done with the kids. I think it's from the changes in her posture and gait due to the brace on her ankle forcing her to limp. She couldn't take it off. There was no point in warning her. Maybe I'll tell her when I see her again. She needs to get that brace off and get physical therapy. She thought the kids would just be coloring today. When I got there, none of the tables had been set up. the program had been canceled for the day. i
Didn't even get out of the car. I turned around and went home.
I called Provision Solar for an explanation for the additional ten notifications from the building permit department on my solar panels. There was a glitch in their computer system, and they were sending out multiple copies of the same permit. By multiple copies, I mean something in the order of fifteen and counting. I spoke to Jamie today to make an appointment to install the new system. I texted Yvette, Josh, and Brian that we would be without solar energy for at least a week starting on November 6, to use electricity during the off-peak hours as much as possible, and to not run air conditioners or fans when not at home. It takes at least a week for the permit department to complete their inspection of the system. Once that's finished, the solar system can be turned back on.
Mama K texted me to say she found a friend living in Kona who would be traveling to Hilo on Saturday. She sent me her name and number. I called Jennifer. She said she would be by around 3 after she picked her son up from school. She was heading further north to Waikoloa to do face painting for a Halloween event. She could pick up the package on her way north. I told her I would leave the package by my front door with a large piece of red cardstock with her name on it. it should be safe there.