The Shamanic View of Mental Health — Waking Times

I thought this alternative view to mental health is worth sharing. I found some interesting views in here, food for thought and links to people whose work can possibly explain some of the things I have been dealing with. Hope you enjoy.

I am happy that I quit. The reasons I drank are still popping up and asking for attention, but I guess that comes with the territory of being sober; the need to deal. It has been difficult but Bach-remedies, looking for a psychiatrist in my living area has helped me to come, well, at least above zero. What has changed is that I found hope. 🙂 I am not lost, I have issues to solve. That is a big difference. 🙂 While on that path, somebody (Jonathan Davis) was so nice to put this on the interwebs.

Link: The Shamanic View of Mental Health — Waking Times

The Shamanic View of Mental Health — Waking Times

Jonathan Davis, Uplift
Waking Times

In November 2014 the peak psychology body in the UK, the British Psychological Association, released their new flagship report Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia. It was a watershed moment in the mainstream treatment of mental illness, containing statements such as this:

Hearing voices or feeling paranoid are common experiences which can often be a reaction to trauma, abuse or deprivation. Calling them symptoms of mental illness, psychosis or schizophrenia is only one way of thinking about them, with advantages and disadvantages. ~The British Psychological Association: Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia

With mental health problems reaching epidemic proportions in the UK and throughout the western world, this document reads as no less than an admission that the current model of mental health treatment has failed; and a cry for help to anyone with an approach that may be useful. There are indeed a great many cultures who have had, and still carry, a deeper understanding of mental illness. While these perspectives don’t fit within the boundaries of rationalist reductionism, this has little relevance to their efficacy.

From American Indian shamanism* to esoteric judaism, this concept has dominated for millennia. As it has now become clear, western civilisation is unique in history in it’s failure to recognise each human being as a subtle energy system in constant relationship to a vast sea of energies in the surrounding cosmos.
– Dr Edward Mann, Sociologist

What Is The Shamanic View Of Mental Health?

Broadly speaking any form of awareness around mental health that includes spiritual, mystic and/or mythic considerations could be included in a shamanic view of mental health. This ranges from ancient indigenous shamanic practices to yogic methods involving kundalini awakening, through to Jungian and transpersonal psychology (which draw heavily from ancient cultures). Jung, for example, characterised schizophrenia and psychosis as a natural healing process.

When conscious life is characterised by one-sidedness and false attitudes, primordial healing images are activated – one might say instinctively – and come to light in the dreams of individuals and the visions of artists… Schizophrenia is a condition in which the dream takes the place of reality. – Carl Jung

Another foundation stone of this perspective is the phrase made famous by Joseph Campbell: ‘The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight’ (an idea borrowed from Jungian psychiatrist RD Laing).  There has been a long history throughout human culture of people having mystical experiences, and then becoming ‘weller than well’ as Dr John Weir Perry put it.  The key here is that in these instances the person completed a process that western medicine would have labelled as sickness and then medicated. They instead passed through it and went on to lead lives without relapse into ‘psychosis’, instead living a more fulfilled existence than if they had never gone though their temporary break with consensus reality. Throughout history there have been examples of people who have gone on to use their visionary insights, newly found drive and focus to create great social reform for the benefit of all.

Psychospiritual Crisis / Spiritual Emergence

Proponents of transpersonal psychotherapy, like one of its founders Prof. Stanislav Grof suggest that ‘spiritual emergence’ experiences are often misdiagnosed as psychosis and medicated unnecessarily. Grof sites 11 different types of spiritual emergencies, including the classic initiatory experience of the shaman, unitive experiences of oceanic oneness, kundalini awakening, the crisis of psychic opening, and the messianic experience common within what John Weir Perry called the ‘renewal process’.

Interpreted from this point of view, a schizophrenic breakdown is an inward and backward journey to recover something missed or lost, and to restore, thereby, a vital balance. So let the voyager go. He has tipped over and is sinking, perhaps drowning; yet, as in the old legend of Gilgamesh and his long, deep dive to the bottom of the cosmic sea to pluck the watercress of immortality, there is the one green value of his life down there. Don’t cut him off from it: help him through. – Joseph Campbell, Schizophrenia: The Inward Journey

John Weir Perry, who put these ideas into practice in a medication free facility called Diabasis, suggests these experiences are a dramatic re-ordering of the person’s psyche from a distorted state to an more ordered one.  To me this is like cleaning a messy house, sometimes it needs to get messier in order to sort everything out. Perry also said that ‘it is justifiable to regard the term “sickness” as pertaining not to the acute turmoil but to the prepsychotic personality…  the renewal process occuring in the acute episode may be considered nature’s way of setting things right.’ This is echoed by Jiddu Krishnamurti‘s statement that ‘it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.’

The Problems Of Pathology, Symptom Suppression, Stigma and Trauma

Pathology: A fundamental difference between the approach of calling these experiences mental illness, psychosis or schizophrenia and ‘other ways of thinking about them’, is the very act of pathologising them. The labelling of something as a sickness, when working in the realms of the psychospiritual can have a dramatically negative effect on what happens next. Like a person experiencing an overwhelming psychedelic experience, a person in this kind of state is highly influenced by their surroundings including what they are told, for good or for ill. A suggestion that the experience is a sickness can become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Having been encouraged to see the voice, not as an experience, but as a symptom – my fear and resistance towards it intensified. Now essentially this represented taking an aggressive stance towards my own mind – a kind of psychic civil war, and in turn this caused the number of voices to increase and grow progressively hostile and menacing. – Eleanor Longden

Symptom Suppression: The next big challenge is symptom suppression. Critics of the current model of care (who now seem to include the British Psychological Association) argue that psychiatric medication merely suppresses symptoms.

Many people find that ‘antipsychotic’ medication helps to make the experiences less frequent, intense or distressing. However, there is no evidence that it corrects an underlying biological abnormality. Recent evidence also suggests that it carries significant risks, particularly if taken long term. – The British Psychological Association: Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia

Those of the shamanic or transpersonal persuasion go further in suggesting that medication tends to ultimately prevent the person from completing a natural experience such as the ‘process of renewal’ John Weir Perry describes. Instead this process keeps trying to complete itself and symptoms keep reappearing, and then drugs suppress it again in an endless cycle.  It’s unsurprising that the phrase ‘you have a mental illness, and you will have it for the rest of your life’ is so often heard by people experiencing psychosis.

Stigma:

They [shamanic cultures] have a cultural context. The physiological crisis, although it’s difficult, it’s believed to be… they put it in a positive light.  It’s something the person’s going to come out of and be stronger in the end, and have more abilities in the end.  The other thing that’s a big advantage is – it’s not stigmatized. – Phil Borges, maker of upcoming film CrazyWise

Trauma: Thankfully, even in the western model there is a strong surge of recognition occurring around the fact that trauma and neglect in childhood (and in adulthood) can lead to serious mental health crisis.

We had a lot of trouble with western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide and we had to ask some of them to leave. They came and their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgement of the depression as something invasive and external that could actually be cast out again.Instead they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave. – A Rwandan talking to writer, Andrew Solomon

The Bridge Between Two Worlds – Sickness or Acute Sensitivity?

Dr Joseph Polimeni states that ‘In most traditional societies those persons who were overcome by hallucinations in young adulthood were more often than not destined to become shamans’. If someone presented with symptoms we would call psychosis, the people of their tribe or village would send them for training with someone who had learned a level of mastery over the sensitivity that once overwhelmed them. Phil Borges states that ‘they have a mentor; they have somebody who has been through this process that can take and hold their hand and say listen, I know what this is all about and this is how you manage it’. In cultures around the world, before western civilisation the idea of schizophrenia as a disease was, quite simply, non-existent.  The assumption was that a person experiencing the challenges known in modern times as psychosis was in fact experiencing things that were actually real, but only able to perceived by those who were gifted.

They have a community that buys into what they’ve gone through, and not only that, they have an outlet for their talents – and many of these people have specific talents that the normal person doesn’t have. – Phil Borges, maker of upcoming film CrazyWise

To me it is clear that we live in a culture that immediately labels these moments of crisis as sickness, and our culture has almost no level of acceptance for the people that go through it.  When face to face with a person experiencing involuntary states of non-ordinary consciousness, most of us – to put it bluntly – just want them away from us.  It’s almost as if we fear that ‘crazy’ is contagious and we want it quarantined.  It’s unfortunate that this approach may be compounding the problem, however another way forward is re-awakening.  When I look at a person in such a crisis, I see a future potential mentor for others.  The more we can assist people in passing through their dark night of the soul, the more guides we will have with lived experience to help others come through in the future. In an upcoming article I’ll be writing about how shamanic training can assist people going through ‘spiritual emergency’.

For peer support and further information of this kind you can join The Shamanic View Of Mental Illness on Facebook.

About the Author

Jonathan Davis is an Australian writer focusing on shamanism and alternate modes of healing.

This article (The Shamanic View of Mental Health) was originally posted at Uplift Connect, and is reposted here with permission.

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The land of no self-hate – Episode 11

Last weeks have been dark and then some insight popped up. Right now I would word that as: ‘The darkness is liveable, it is the running away which causes the pain.” I eh, hahahaha…. hmmm…. see some connections with life and excessive drinking here….

Writing this and finding out that I took a 48 year D-tour to find out that ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” or in Dutch:

Een mens lijdt dikwijls ‘t meest,
door ‘t lijden dat hij vreest.
Doch dat nooit op komt dagen.
Zo heeft hij meer te dragen,
dan God te dragen geeft.

Which roughly translates into: Often people suffer from fear of situations which will never occur anyway. That is how people suffer more than God/The Universe has given them to bear.

Currently I am trying to sustain this insight which means practising being in the now and accepting what is. I am practising this with my mind but it seems my system is wired to be continuously stressed out. Guess that did not surprise you. It does surprise me however. The more I find out about myself the more I understand why I once thought drinking was a good ‘solution’. This continuous state of stress is pretty nasty. I can truly not remember the last time I was relaxed for say, half a day. It must have been some holiday in the ’90.

Today is my 3 year, 11 month sober monthyversary. I have discovered much in this time. I chose this my blog name because I realised I used alcohol to not feel. So in order to get sober I thought I might as well dive into my feelings. Hahahaa….. sigh. Gheghegheghe…. sigh…. Don’t wish too hard, it might come true 😉

I can tell you now: people (i?) have many layers. And layers can be approached from different angles at different times while I am in different ‘states’ of being. What I am trying to learn now is no different from ‘being in the moment’, from ‘breathe, relax and drink water’ from practising ‘what are your hopes, your fears and your expectations’, from ‘taking Life at Life’s terms’. 🙂 Nothing different from ‘feeling my way back into life’. Not different from ‘trying to not judge’. And you know, sometimes all of these insights come together at one point and then it all falls apart again for me to rebuild and leave out what does not work. I guess for some it might seem I am going in cirlces. I guess for some parts I am but I am not ready to find any help and also I feel that I really really need to find out what I am like, inside, without interference. Well, in other words again: not ready for help.

So, many layers, different moments, situations, attitudes all to be explored and currently active is my attempt to accept the darkest darkness which I know up to now. Not running for it. Not fighting it. Not blaming myself for it – just having a look at it without judgement. Experiencing how I want to run away from what is happening inside, how I grab my new phone to start playing a game, how I read a book to forget what is bothering me, how I eat, watch Netflix – so much running. Constantly informing myself ‘this is me’, ‘this is me too’, ‘this is ok’, ‘it is ok to feel this’, ‘no need to run, you have lived through this before’, ‘this is me too’.

I have set my phone timer every 15 minutes to remind me to check if I am still on track. Time and time again I am amazed at how much energy goes into fear and worrying. Having said that…. I have several letters laying about here which need to be opened. I suspect invoices.

Other subject; the hug-buddy dropped by yesterday, informing me that he has lied about 2 things. He still works his second job and does not play sports when in the evening hours.  He lied deliberately because he saw me lifting an eyebrow when he mentioned the 2nd job. Next to his way too tiring 45 to sometimes 50 hours a week job he has added another 2-3 hours a day of food delivery to his watch. I know this is pretty normal in the USA where a lot of people with a 40 hour job in services can not even make a living wages. But it is not normal in The Netherlands. I know how tired he is daily and his health is failing but he keeps on adding responsibilities to his life which wear him out. Also, the tax system in the Netherlands is progressive, so with way more work he is only going to gain a little more but he is not aware of that. I informed him of that earlier. And together that was enough to make him lie. He said he had quit the job. I was happy about that and thought nothing more of it. When, in the evening we connect online and I enquire after his day he lies and says he has been sporting with his roomies.

Why? We are not even in a relation where I have the power to demand anything of him. Also, he seemingly does not have the idea he can speak to me, even about the small stuff. What about the big stuff? What if he had, say a VD? Or, well, why lie all together? I just wonder what somebody’s interior is made off if they feel they can not speak to me about this. He speaks about every big and tiny shame he has about sex, it is sort of unload of shame whenever we meet. Me being witness to his pain helps him process stuff and it helps me process mine. So why oh why lie about something so, so tiny?

The hug-buddy has financial issues because he has financial obligations to his estranged wife, his kid and the family in his homeland. It is very strange to, with my Dutch / Western culture, run into this family blackmail system they are all involved in. And the hug-budy gives way, and gives way, and gives way to all the blackmail in his family because ‘first born and only son’ – all these things which have totally lost their meaning in our society and are therefore difficult for me to understand. Worse: they make me angry because I see it as a prison they all create for each other. But that is not my business and when he enquires after this I speak from that place in space where I know it is not my business and where I am aware of the cultural differences and my lack of family ties on top of that.

I was thinking I dealt with that ok-ish but now I am confused. The ‘shame one another into the group’ culture seems to have gotten into his spine. I guess it is naive to think some years of appreciating the (relative) freedom of the West would magically change his make-up. This recent issue makes it look like dodging issues which ‘women’ present is his favorite way of not dealing with stuff and not being present to the woman in front of him. While trying to speak with him about why he lied he kept on interrupting me, did not listen, kept on inserting the words ‘women are like that’ in  and in the ‘conversation’ and in the end did not find anything I said of any importance and left.

I seem to be not a person, I am ‘one of the women’ and because of that whatever I say is not really important. My final conclusion is that he lied because he thought I would make a scene and chuck him out (wot?!) if he did not quit his extra job. Looking at it from a very dark point I would say he just wanted to keep his proverbial foot in the proverbial door.

Oh F! I’m angry. And as a logical decision I shut my emotional doors and threw him out of the tiny corner in my heart. I am getting way too well exercised in chucking people out of my heart. And then again… why be around people who are not willing to communicate and see me as a person worth speaking with. Not speaking to, speaking with.

And haha, the day before this happened I signed up at a dating site for outings in the city.  It is not a datingsite per se, it is more for outings, however some people do mention how they are tall, skinny and blond so I guess they are looking to date-date. I would like to visit some exhibitions, theater, musea and movies with others, male or female. While writing here I am making an appointment with another guy just because I am angry. Geez how childish is that. 5 Minutes later the other guy wants to meet along the highway – with airco. Nope. Not happening ‘along the highway’ = motel. I proposed a forest. And hahah, I can’t even say: “My way or the high way!” Ghegheghe….

Need to get out of this mode. This is not how I want to deal with people or myself. The my way or the high way joke says it all. I do not want to meet another person who diminishes me to boobs and ass only.

I just chatted with the hug-buddy on how I felt about what he did. He replied with patting himself on the shoulder for not lying anymore but telling me. Hmmm… that is not what I had hoped for. What about ‘Sorry’? Sorry has not shown up in this conversation yet. Why chat? Because I am so angry that I can not even be near him and he contacted me. Sigh.

My phone alarm goes off very 15 minutes telling me ‘this is me too’.  Every 15 minutes I am acutely aware of my emotions and hahaha, they are quite powerful. I do not think it is a good idea to be thrown around by emotions which is why I have to get to know them. Light and dark. Fuckerthefuckerthefuckfuckfuck.

Haaaa… that’s better.

Ok! I am HAPPY THAT I QUIT!!! I guess this is it. This is me. This is how I walk this earth. I do not have to run from everything because frankly; running has become too tiring. Running internally for what I do not want to accept actually makes me fearful and depressed. I am here where I prefer the real shit instead of the running way, self invented school sick depression shit. And no, I do not say that I think this is true for other depressed people. At this moment, from where I stand now and how I look upon the things unfolding this is true for me. It is actually pretty relaxing to realise ‘this is me’. It is not ‘that I am’ – which is a term from the spiritual teachings world but I am currently looking at the system of e-motions – the things which set me in motion. I have some unpacking, cleaning up and settling down to do. 🙂

Coming to the end of this post I realise this acceptance is part of learning to love myself, of self acceptance so I changed the blog header to the self-love series. Being witness to what is inside of me, being witness to my emotional body.

Obviously I am not sure if I want to be / react in the reactive way I am but I am learning. Progress, perfection can wait. The egg timer is a good idea, again.

Wishing you a nice, happy sober day/evening. 🙂

xx, Feeling

Coping well with a crate of empty beer bottles, some shame, some darkness and some understanding of the internal Universe.

Yesterday a friend and I returned a crate of empty beer bottles which had been on my balcony for over 4 years. As I live on the 4th floor without an elevator I used to drink from cans but… at some point, 4 years ago I was trying to quit and then favo beer came on sale in the bottles. I promised myself that it would not be so bad if I just moderated. Well, I guess you know how that works out…  Some 4 years and 2 days later….  I FINALLY got to bringing it back. 🙂 It has 4 euro deposit money so obviously I wanted to cash that.

All this time of not drinking I had been hesitant to bring the bottles back. At first the rattling of bottles in a crate ignited thoughts of drinking. Later it brought back specific memories of what I call our ‘drunken nest’  at home. My dad, brother, friends and I would drink bottled beer on a summer evening at a campfire. I won’t go romanticising this because the truth was that I was already addicted then and the family dysfunctional partially because of the use of alcohol. Looking back now I realise that both my parents had ‘the gene’ even though they never got into it to the max. My father did for a few years when he studied but that finished off his study and he had to move back to his teetotaler parents so that sorted that.

That is the thing with drinking while having a family: it is not only the person who drinks who is affected, it is everybody. When drinking my mother was not available, not for normal conversation, not for connecting, everything was ‘dealt’ with quickly and in an irritated manner. She made clear that we came between her and her drink, or as she would phrase it: “the only moment of the day I have to myself”.  A lot of the issues I could have used help with as a teenager, like sexual assault where not spoken off because she was already irritated when I mentioned something simple as school stuff. That is what she taught us; alcohol is more important than you are. And in my twisted and already addicted mind that read: drinking = solving problems.

When my dad drank he would become even more convinced of himself and start orating for 3 hours on end on dark subjects nobody was interested in like doomsday and the end of times. Hmm, orating for 3 hours… how does that sound familiar? If anybody protested, specifically when my mother protested, he would lash out like trying to win the first price for bullying.  After that we would all smooth it over with more booze. Flush the tension away.

Mike from the blog ‘dharmaholic‘ spoke about having a family and drinking a few days ago in an interesting post and the shame based family:

For your information, here are some of the things Bradshaw (edit: writer of the book ‘Healing The Shame That Binds You’ about shame, shame based families and addiction) speaks about parent modeling and why shame-based parents have little ability in these matters.

‘Modeling includes how to be a man or a woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional, and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate;how to cope and survive life’s unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; and how to love oneself and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these”.

That was how my parents failed to be present to my brother and I, to themselves, to eachother and to family and the few friends they had; because of their drinking and their fights with themselves and the fights between them. 😦

The tv-series Patrick Melrose (addicty trying to get clean and trying to deal with his past of abuse) is on in The Netherlands. Obviously my parents were not quite as far away from me as his and the abuse did not come from within the family – but what is very familiar is that undertone of dread. continuous insecurity, fearing I, my integrity, would be attacked, abused. In early childhood I could ‘get over things’ and ‘forget about them’ but the older I grew and the more incidents added on the more I would freeze. And from early puberty onwards I was continuously in a fight/flight/freeze….. and drink mode.

Ok, well, back to the crate on the balcony. I had cleaned the balcony but the crate was staring at me. Earlier I thought keeping it was a good idea to remind me of my stupidity and all the wrongs I had done. I mentioned this to  friend who came by and she said: if you do not dare to do it alone, let’s go take it to the store together. We did. 🙂 While walking I spoke about the sound being a trigger. She mentioned that it triggered her to drink cola because it reminded her of bottles of cola. 🙂 That is about focusing on not continuously fighting the old, but replacing our behaviour with new behaviour. In this case that would be drinking cola which I will not – but the sound could be from apple juice or water bottles too. Good changes. 🙂

Also: now I am able to detect what was going on and how this crate calls up memories, guilt and self-hate. In the last 4 years I have also developed some form of self-worth to realise that the hurt coming with the memories and my own judgement is not so much ‘what I deserve’ but more ‘what I learned to do to myself’. I realise guilt is a suitable emotion when applied in moderation in the correct situation. However feeling guilty, always, about everything, about being alive is not a sustainable way of living – so to say. 😉

For me shame is a big issue and finding back my voice, my right to live and right to protect myself, my right to be safe is difficult. So many damaged my physical and emotional  integrity to rid themselves of their own feelings of shame through aggressive sexual acts against me. Sexual abuse was the key ingredient of my parents marriage with daily doses of forced sex. That layer of vile acts seeped through the family and poisoned everbodies’ mind, heart, soul and energy system.

So yeah, shame is something to work on for me. And I am guessing at some point in my life it would be nice to be free of reproaching my parents for letting me down. Hell, not reproaching parents for having kids and thinking they can keep them safe while my mother actually knew their marriage would be a destructive one, would be nice. And yes, I know this is twisted thinking but that is a part within which is fucked up badly. I decided that I would never have kids because I would not want to do to anybody what my parents did to me / did not do for me. Everybody kept on and keeps on saying ‘but they were trying their best’. But if unleashing ones own shame on kids is the best… I don’t want to walk down that road. And knowing I was addicted to alcohol: what did I have to offer? Continuation of damaged genes and sick coping mechanisms?

Back to the crate: 3 Years and 10 months sober I do not have to ‘keep up appearances’ and then buckle under the weight of shame and self-hate only to drink again. I am now able to voice my worries to a friend who comforts me and helps me out in a practical way: walk with me to the store, be present to my discomfort. And I am able to accept that just as it is without feeling inferior. I can thank her for that without feeling stupid and not suitable to live.

Those are a lot of changes. 🙂 I am not in AA but seeing how my developments go I can see how they touch upon the 12 steps. 🙂 And indeed, how resentment is an important part of me and it hinders me. But I can not step past the deliberate hurt they caused me, for putting me in harm’s way on purpose, for not listening when I expressed abuse. For sending me back into social situations in which I had been abused. For not believing me when telling them my brother was egging the abusers on. For not believing me my brother pulled a knife at me. For disbelieving everything I said from that point onwards because ‘he would not do such stuff’. Well. He did. And they did. And while I was losing myself and almost soiled myself my mother was looking sincere but not fully. I never understood until I learned about micro-expressions; that explained the glimpses of joy combined with power and sex. Vile. She was smiling at me and experiencing lust when sending me back into the crowd with luring, lusting and grabbing guys willing to go to any length to get some action – there was no protecting me. Because drinking. Because my misery made her feel less alone? I do not know. She had been perverted and now it was my turn. That is what families are about: handing down experiences. Unfortunately that counts for the darker ones too. 😦 Patrick Melrose is very explicit about not wanting to live in this system himself and at the same time behaves exactly the same way his father did. 😦

That’s the thing isn’t it: we all think we will be there for kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family,  colleagues, neighbours when they want to express something awful and need help. But the reality is: as long as we do not look at our own pain and darkness, kids, friends, nephews, nieces, family, collegues, neighbours turn into people who are uncomfortable to be around with after they have been hurt. Typically kids who have been abused or bullied will not ‘just cry’ so others can feel sorry for them and comfort them. They have been touched by the shame of the abuser and therefore do not feel the right to cry anymore. They whine, become silent, they can become aggressive or withdraw and stumble over their own feet exactly when others ‘need’ them to be inspirational and show off. And if they can not perform beautifully on Sundays at grandma’s, at school or at football, at least don’t be a whining embarrassment. I cried, I begged, I moaned, I sabotaged and I got dismissed by my parents for whining so they send me back into the lion’s pit. I learned I had no value.

“You are an embarrassment, I am ashamed of you.” actually means: “Your behaviour touches something in me I can not carry, and I dislike you for reminding me of the shame, guilt, self-loathing I have inside.” That is how transfer works. I have shame, you remind me of it, I need to lash out so I can feel better, you feel worse and now you carry my shame.

The other way around: I am thinking, when experiencing discomfort like shame and unworthiness in dealing with somebody, especially kids, it is extremely important to be aware of what is going on and what is carried over, what does not want to be seen, what has no right to exist. Alcohol and other drugs prevents parents, teachers, therapists from doing that because addiction is a shame fueled misunderstanding of life.

In the last months I ended up in a dark depression and allowed myself to go into my underdog mode. Rock bottom will be the solid bottom on which I rebuild my life – I hope ;-). I will sink and sink till I let go of the attachment to destructive patterns. Knowing that I let go. I cut out everybody who did not exactly believe me as I experienced my life and speak about it. No matter how much I moan I expect people to listen and if they don’t they can get out of my life. I had to do that to make space for me to believe me, to take myself seriously, to take back room in myself to experience. Moaning only happens when people do not take their own pain seriously. Moaning is a structure of squeezing a non-existent pimple right next to a giant white head. I was going to not dismiss myself too, upfront. Not going to set boundaries to experiencing the damage which has been done. Not going to slightly change my story or leave stuff out to make people accept it.

My dreams looked and felt like this vid, that person. “The monsters are running wild inside of me. I am faded. So lost. I am faded.”

 

It was informative. The utter darkness of not wanting to live, not being able to be social, not taking care of me; it was dark. Days filled with planning on how to take my life. How will I make sure the right people take care of the cat and will keep her. How will I make sure they do not suspect that I’m not going on a holiday. Dark. Some days in I realised I was wanting myself out of my body constantly. Do you recognise that?

Also, I had changed the security settings to my blog and I had to type in the name to this blog every time I wanted to read something. I realised that I was not feeling my way back into life. I was pushing myself away from experiencing what was going on but making a ‘kill the ego’ solution to it by wanting to die. As I was laying in my bed anyway I dove into what was.

I can tell you, the running for the darkness and going into suicide thinking is dark. What is behind that within me is dark too but there is a difference. Behind it is destruction. It is natural. It is Thanatos. The Universe has 2 main powers: one is life and the other is death. You can call it light and darkness, yin and yang, whatever. One is expanding, the other is subtracting. The one can not live without the other. The substracting balances the growth. It is that which brings order to the chaos so the growth can follow a sustainable path, not grow wild, not overgrow itself. It sets boundaries to that without boundaries, which is infinite, which is unlimited. I dread endings. Every ending has an atmosphere of my brother dying. I dread boundaries and limits. I ‘chose’ an addiction which I thought helped me to avoid all of that – only to find that the alcohol in the end limited me. Which is correct. That is how Life is.

The darkness  is where I do not want to be, I relate this back to the suffering in the womb when my brother died. And funny; I realised that me backing away from this energy to quit building, to make sensible choices instead of wanting it all, makes it impossible for me to fulfill any project or actually achieve something in life because I dread the ending of it. The energy connected to ‘being done’ is for me connected with terror and death. So I back away.

And obviously, in backing away I do not accept life on life’s terms and get unbalanced. 😦 Just Universal laws. The darkness, it is real. It is part of Life. It is natural. I feel I have gotten an extra leg to walk on, like parts in my body have re-integrated with experiencing this darkness within. The suicidal thinking is another darkness, one with ‘opinions’ and ‘wants and needs’, an ego created darkness. The darkness of Life, as I experienced it then is just what it is: destruction. Not personal. Not focussed on the ego. Overwhelming and powerful but true and clear. Quite a relieve actually.

The last month has been about falling apart, looking at all the pieces and the glue which kept them together. Most of the glue is/was not so much a life force but it consists of freeze. Frozen emotions, frozen processes, blocked paths through life. Funny how that what I fear ‘the darkness’ actually ends up building my system itself and preventing the opposite ‘Life’ to happen. Which is… exactly how I think it works. I wanted to find freedom in alcohol while I found enslavement. I wanted financial freedom while I found that depletes my funds :-). I wanted to live without boundaries while I found that means that indeed I reach nothing. I want to explain stuff and bury people in words.

Living Life on life’s terms. 🙂 I have made a big step and while I thought I stepped into the darkness I stepped into freedom. Not kaboom Light, but well, relieve, understanding of the workings of me. Experiencing internal freedom, you know; when you understand stuff and feel your DNA change. 🙂

One of the characteristics of people with a vanishing twin is that they can not finish stuff. Their energy is in the start of a project and then…. pfffff…. they seem to lose interest, fall into pits nobody else would fall in, digress (like now ;-)) find another subject which is way more interesting. I have that. It looks like something which could be just ‘solved’ with improving my moral. But that is not how it works. Like addiction is not a moral disease, my running for the darkness which I connect to endings is not a moral failing either – it is a structural design mistake of my energetic system, or a solution my system made up to deal with the trauma. It would however be very nice to sort of get a grip on my life. 😉 Fix it. Quick! 😀 Getting there.

Some days I can eat well which means 2 home-made meals a day. Sleep well, which by now means going to bed before 02:00 (waaaaay to late for me). Read some, currently the Artemis Fowl series again. I clean the house before visits from friends and the hug-budy which means at least weekly cleaning. He is a cosy, sexy comfort but even after 7 months I do not want to engage into a full sex act. It is actually quite interesting to do all the other things which normally fade out of a relation. When was the last time you spend 4 hours hugging, talking, tickling, massaging and well, some more sexually oriented frolicking?

I am starting to notice differences between us which I am not sure we can or I want to bridge. Also I am not sure if being friends with benefits is a good thing for my dysfunctional heart. Sometimes it only teaches my heart to be more dysfunctional; loving is ok, receiving is impossible. Addict trait; don’t touch me. My heart is shut.

Workwise I am still lost on what and where. The social security people have put me at the bottom of the pile. I guess this is because I start crying every time they ask a question…. sigh, how will I ever be ‘normal’ again? I just don’t know what I want. I want a simple job in a safe environment. But the simple jobs don’t seem to come with safe environments until I find some stability within myself. Having stepped in the darkness behind my own ‘made-up’ darkness is a good thing. However, I do not know how many layers this onion has. And if I need to peel them all to be able to function again at my level of education. Or maybe, maybe, the level at which I am supposed to function is not equal to my emotional intelligence or stress control and maybe I never will. I am going to ask the social security if they can help find out what I want and can do, where my strengths and weaknesses are. Writing short posts is not one of them ;-).

Post 526 in this blog. 🙂 I am happy that I quit. I realise that my happiness is something of an ‘obligatory’ thing. I do not experience a lot of happiness lately, more ‘relieve’ from the darkness. That does not count in my daily practise for ‘being happy that I quit’ but there is no other experience currently. I do resent drinking. My SIL was eating an oven dish with mushrooms in a wine-cheese sauce. I had forgotten about the wine and took a small bite. MG. Tastes like cheese vomit. Brrrr…. People with alcohol breath smell like they swallowed cleaning agent. So no, not in the danger zone but it worries me that I do not ‘repair’ more quickly. And then again: I have gotten a big dose of the darkness and this comes back layer after layer. These last weeks have changed a lot. I hope when the next bout of depression comes a long I am brave enough to really feel into it again. 🙂

Wishing you a good sober night/day.

xx, Feeling

The land of no self-hate – Episode 10

How many years did you count between the first thought: ‘Maybe I should not be drinking so much?’ and actually quitting?

Apart from thinking this on a daily base… it took me more than 20 years for it to sort of get it to the forefront of my brain and another 10 years to actually quit. I literally knew that I would get addicted to alcohol at the first glass I took. I also downplayed it by thinking ‘Ooh, since I know that, I will be able to control it.” Yup. Not.

Weeks ago I looked at negative self talk and self-hate while reading a book called ‘There is nothing wrong with you’ from Cheri Huber. That had quite some impact and caused some mind shifts but the execution of replacing self-hate with self-love is not there yet. Not that I expected that – it is difficult to change behaviour. And this behaviour has been going on longer than my drinking career so I’m guessing it is more difficult to change.

For me, negative thinking has a lot in common with addiction: repetitive destructive behaviour. Also: it keeps me away from what really is. Even though that reality generally is nicer than the negativity. Keeping a watch on negative thinking was really helpful and insightful for a while. Also: I felt really happy and it is A-MA-ZING how much energy I had during the day. I was surprised by my openness, the good intention and love, joy and activity which came floating to the surface. I felt the same energy I felt when I was a child in my safe years. Then something happened, everything backfired and I totally lost myself only to go back to negativity and self-hate with even more energy. Sound familiar?

I had the same with trying to quit drinking. I would play with the thoughts to quit and then try it for a week. Something would happen and I would go back to drinking and most of the time I would catch up with the amount of ‘lost’ glasses during the week.

2 Weeks back the cat got really ill. At some point I was so down that I hoped she would quietly slip away into eternity so I could do the same. Very often it is only the cat which keeps me here. Could be a mind trick. Hope I never have to find out. I do feel that every time I return to these dark thoughts they get edged in me, where they even out the road to destruction. In trying to feel into / look at these thoughts I found I have a difficulty with connecting to people. I can love but I can not be loved. I can not let people in. This becomes more and more apparent now I experience how lonely my existence is in these dark moments. I have friends, very good friends. Friends who carefully listen to all this which you might find difficult to read because dark or because repetitive and boring. But in those dark moment that does not matter because this ‘hole in the soul’ is so much darker and bigger than anybody can fill.

I’m not sure what caused this ‘hole’. Do I miss my vanished twin brother? Yes, very much so. A partner in my life? Not specifically. Do I miss, I don’t know fundamental idea of goodness of the world, faith? Yes. Or maybe I miss myself? Yes, very much. What I do to myself is cruel, soul crushing. If anybody would do that to anybody else I would go berserk. And still, somewhere in my life I started to believe, or maybe I even made it up myself, that hating me is the best thing I can do. And I never changed. It is so engrained that it takes more than 3,5 years of sobriety to even get an inkling of it. And then, when trying to quit I this behaviour it calls me back and punishes me for leaving with even more and more darkness. And even though I guess this is learned behaviour be it picked up by an eager student, I still do it all to myself. Cunning, baffling and powerful.

So… I have tuned down the watch on self-hate to let the dust settle a bit and see how I can work on this from another entrance. I need to get my negativity act and food addiction together because they both keep me from being clear and from being honest to myself and other people. As long as I keep on eating away my own shadow, keep on disliking myself for perceived weaknesses, I will keep on transferring this dislike and anger to others. Not good.

So, looking at shadows is good. Ramadan is past so I am eating chocolate and refined sugar again, within 1 day I was back at my usual intake. I eat it and at the same time really dislike it and feel bad. Sound familiar? 🙂 And every day, even now I think: tomorrow I will do it differently. Cunning, baffling and powerful.

Somehow quitting addictive stuff and behaviour jogs memories of events past. Part of quitting the chocolate and refined sugar were (mini) trauma’s I have encountered while living abroad without my parents at age 15/16. In real life and in the sober blogosphere I have met so many people whose life has been damaged and put to a halt because of severe (sexual) trauma and consequently addiction. My traumas are not so severe in comparison with most but I can not seem to get away from them. Whenever I do get really clear, other events keep on popping up. I watched part of the Trauma and healing online conference but I sank so deep that I could not follow-up.

Abuse trigger warning for the next few Italic paragraphs till the fat print.

No chocolate – no sugar brought back this memory from sitting in a tiny park like spot in the country side, next to an enormous white water river, reading a book, my lower legs dangling down the quay/ledge which had been put in place to keep the river from eating in on the environment. A guy comes up, he must be in his twenties, I was 16 or so. Even though I do not trust him we chat because I can not get away safely. I make sure to steer away from anything which might indicate interest in him or look like advances. I try to bore him with excessively speaking about the book I am reading. (Ha! Nothing changed there :-D) At some point he starts requesting I go with him to his house to have sex. I sort of joke around the issue knowing that downright offending or refusing him makes things worse. He comes back with; “Why would you talk to me if you do not want sex?” Followed up by: “We have sex now otherwise I push you off the ledge.”

I would not be able to stop him from where I sit and falling down would have meant sure death. Even at age 16 I make jokes like: “Is that how you pick up all your girls? Not sure it is such a succesful line….” trying to take the sting out of it while trying not to show how my hands trembled and I am so scared I feel I can not even stand-up. He was serious. Not so much in wanting to kill me but he was very thick headed, possibly officially retarded (sorry, not inclined to look for nicer words here). His intent and anger where very real and also he did not seem to have the faintest idea that falling into a deep white water river with rocks all over can not be easily survived – specifically with the 6 meter waterfall further down and a following 12 meter waterfall within a 100 meter. He just did not care. He wanted what he wanted and I refused that so I had to be hurt.

Also: even though the place was max 10 meters away from the road and bus-stop, at that moment there was nobody around. Passing by cars had made it seem a safe spot but when they do not actually stop there is no safety to be found. And even now I have the idea that I have to explain the surroundings to you to make sure that you do not think me silly. I had to come up with silly jokes and conversation for 5 minutes for some car to pop up at the car park 30 meters further before I had the guts to stand up and go home. My knees buckled and I almost shit my pants. I walked home, checking at every turn in the road to see that he did not follow me.

At that time I had stopped speaking about things like this to people because anybody would start with “What did you wear?” and “Why did you even go there?” and “He would not speak to you if you did not give him the idea that you were available.”

I can see now how every bit of anger I held against guys like this was redirected inwards by being blamed for their behaviour.

This is how the female spirit is killed in this world. This is how our freedom and sovereignty is taken

What would a woman who loves herself do? She would love herself. How will I get there? Not sure. Going to bed would be a good thing. 🙂 It always is. And tomorrow slowly start examining and taking loving actions.

I am happy that I quit be it in a dark way. Even though my days have been rather nasty for a long time, I know it was worst when I drank. The guilt and the shame, my god. Unbearable. I literally could not look people in the eye. And that physical feeling of being bloated and stuffed. The high blood pressure. Ooh! Yeah, no sugar, no chocolate made my blood pressure drop quite some points. Eating it makes it rise; I feel my blood pumping in my ears when I lay down on my pillow. So: not good. I also appreciated getting more veggies in because of having better eating habits. Veggies are good.

Sorry for another way too long post. Hope you are doing well.

Wishing you a nice sober week.

xx, Feeling

 

 

Reminder: online summit ‘Recovery 2.0’

Hi there,

Soon you will not know what to watch anymore! Summit overwhelm! Well, if you got to this page because you searched for ‘addiction’ or you notice you or somebody in your surroundings has a tendency to self-destruct in no matter what way… check out Recovery 2.0  

Also: if you happen to be depressed or experiencing other mental illnesses, quiting alcohol can greatly improve your life. The booze industry usually does not tell you that so I doing that here. 🙂

Hope you enjoy!

I for one am happy that I stopped drinking.

xx, Feeling

Reminder: healing trauma summit

Hi,

Just want to remind you the healing trauma summit has started.

More info and a link here.

I am grateful that I quit drinking. Life is pretty dark lately but I found since I’m in a bad place I might as well do difficult things so I do not have to do those when I’m feeling good. So… on day 22 or 23 without chocolate. And on day 4 without refined sugar or man made substitutes of that like aspartame. I exclude soft drinks and cookies and the likes but not stuff where sugar is not the ‘main ingredient’ like a sauce. I am making good choices there though. Obviously I started transferring my chocolate addiction to sweets after I quit chocolate. It was tough, not so much to control the urges, that is ok, If motivation does not come from myself it comes from doing Ramadan-light (no there is no such thing, just a made-up word) and thinking: if the hug-buddy can do full Ramadan (no drink, food, sex during daytime which runs from 4:30 I believe to 21:45 something) – I can do no chocolate at all. 🙂

The tough part is that I had a few, as I call it psychotic experiences; e.g. while biking through town I saw people’s faces and bodies change to skeletons and also the colour of everything changed in flashes. It are ‘flashes’, at most half a second but pretty disturbing. I realised that if I were to lose myself into it I will go nuts. So breathe, relax and drink water. What worried me is that I actually felt so down at some days that I wanted to lose myself in the flashes, take them seriously and freak out. Breathe, relax and drink water. I think to know that this is ‘just’ another way of my system to look for a way out of this reality. I am pretty convinced the reality of what I see in those flashes is a reality, just not  the one I think is a healthy place for me to be. I’m thinking realities are like a drawing on a computer: when done well a drawing exists of layers covering each other; first a some basic shapes, then a grid to fill it in, then a colour layer, a structure layer, a shade layer and then some details.  As humans we only a one or two layers, cat’s e.g. see the world totally different because they have other eyes. Sometimes, in my case under severe stress, something in the brain wires wrong and it pushes on the wrong layer tab. Very uncomfortable. Breathe, relax and drink water. It is funny how all my life I have had knowledge of that ‘tab’ but I have stayed clear off it like I stay clear of the door to lala-land. Ok. Question: does anybody else have flashes of crazy?

Guess I am coming closer to what is ‘ailing’ me and something inside wants to protect me from meeting that. Fixed it the only way I could by overeating sweets. 😦 But hey, tally ho! Onwards I go. 🙂 Maybe I should be feeding (talking to) my demons by now. Might be more constructive than fighting flashes of psychotic experiences with watermelon and dates.

So substituting big time. Obviously. I can not do the cold turkey no sugar anymore. I can not do anything cold turkey anymore. I can do baby steps 🙂 So I do baby steps: no chocolate, and when the cravings for that have settled and the no chocolate headache is gone (9 days!!!) I continued to wonder about the next step. Next step done. I only eat natural sugars now and you can imagine that I stocked up on fruit and dates. 🙂

Here a recipe for a lovely desert, most likely this is for 2 persons, but I ate it on my own. Still losing weight though. Well, truth be said it feels like a TREMENDOUSLY BIG meal. 🙂 Quantities of eating is the next thing that is on my list. But baby steps, baby steps. One of the baby steps I am doing right now is getting back to eating home cooked meals twice a day. I’ve thrown away all the ‘thou shallst do this and that’ – only 2 home cooked meals and I am noticing they are getting more healthy during this process anyway. Baby steps Well, apart from this one. Although one could argue that it contains fruit and chia seeds.

BIG MEAL PRESENTED AS DESERT

Cut 2 dates into tiny slivers and put into a small bowl, cover with boiling water and what is that word: squash with a spoon until you have some ‘dilution’. Then add 4-5 tablespoons of coconut milk to an equal amount of chia seeds. The original recipe I had at the Vietnamese restaurant had vanilla in the chai but that comes with refined sugar so I left that out. Leave to swell over 5 minutes at least, add water in tiny tiny bits if you feel the seeds could still expand. The seeds must swell up like crazy and coat themselves in a gel like substance.

Heat up a frying pan and add a little coconut oil or butter to lightly cover the surface. Cut 2 bananas in halves and cut those in halves length wise so there is a flat surface to them. Put those in the pan, flat side under and fry (bake?) on low heat, cover with a lid.

In another small frying pan put a teaspoon of coconut oil, heat, add a handful 20-25 brown almonds and toss about cheffy so the almonds are coated. Now put back on a low heat till they ‘pop’ and spread a beautiful aroma. In between cut tiny slivers of fresh ginger to taste and add to the nuts. You can use powdered ginger but realise these powdered herbs always need to be heated for 5 minutes through and through so in this pan without moist they would burn.

This would be the time to check on your banana’s, the flat side should be brown, if not, take the lid off, crank up the heat and keep an eye on it. They go from pale to dark quickly due to high sugar content. Then use a spatula or 2 forks to turn them around bake till you are ok with the colour.

In between cut some peel of an ecological. (!!!) citrus fruit (without the white) in tiny slivers and add to the nuts, stir around a few times and add the 1 cup of cooked and cold rice. Mix and heat up, it is ok for the rice to become a little brownish here and there. Place nicely on a plate and enjoy.

If this is not enough one could tart it up with coating the bananas in coconut flower before baking. Then add some more oil to the pan. Maybe slow-fry pieces of pineapple the same way. Or lightly toast coconut flakes or almond flakes and decorate the fried bananas. Or possibly add ice cream but then again: that mainly contains refined sugar. Possibly tiny slivers of mint might be good. Well, hope you enjoy. 🙂

Currently still unemployed, not looking for a job, receiving sick leave money from the government, based on my ‘profile’ I have been put at the bottom of the list for treatment. Not sure what that means, but it does mean that I am not getting any treatment obviously. Not sure what that means. Also: I am not up to anything anyhow.

I am grateful in a sort of depressed way about quitting alcohol and sugar. I have no ‘will power’ left to put into these next steps to healing so I need to do the way I can: through knowledge and baby steps. The goal is to unaddict, ‘get my body back’ and also to not have the mind fog anymore. To get back on that road of becoming clear which I set off onto when I quit drinking. If not for me, then to minimise the damage I do to others in not being clear and having and addictive personality.

Wishing you a nice sober day.

xx, Feeling

Clinging to the non-clinging (?!)

This morning I wrote the previous post ‘Dying is not the problem – sort-of= ish‘ And when re-reading it I found what I had noticed earlier that I write about ‘upholding the status of not clinging’ which, in grown up terms would probably refer to non attachment but in my specific issue here it was not ‘just’ attachment, it was clinging. So I call it clinging.

“Now the practise for me is to maintain and uphold the status of ‘not clinging’ insight in daily life. Ghegheghe….. guess that will take some practise since we live in a world where clinging, wanting, striving is very much stimulated as a tool to ‘make you happy’. “

Did anyone notice the strangeness of upholding ‘not clinging’. Contradictio in adjecto much? To really arrive back again (?) at the place where I had this beautiful, freeing insight I guess I should exactly NOT be clinging to the non-clinging. 😀 New Task. Can be done I guess, it is like letting the train of an urge to drink pass by without attaching. And then for every train, no matter what is on it. Hihihihihi…. easy peasy ?????!!!

” Then what would I do in Life?? If I do not cling, if I do not have opinions? What is left of me?” Shouted the caddis I am. A caddis is a larvae of some insect, it lives under water and gathers all kinds of pieces of ‘rubbish’ which get built into a armour to protect its delicate skin, its life. I feel I do that with fears, with experiences, with well, whatever; building an outer armours to fend new experiences off. To not be touched, not be hurt again. My system reacts as if touching, in the sense of being touched equals pain for me. Seems to be an addicty trait. But disconnecting and carrying rubbish around also hurts. 🙂

Things are shifting, things have shifted in the last 3,5 years. Very slowly the armour gets lighter. Sometimes it gets heavier but that also means clearer. The systems that uphold the armour and the systems which are uphelt by the armer get clearer and lose their energetic intensity. Or, when getting more intense, they also get clearer.

I am still reading ‘There is nothing wrong with you’ from Cheri Huber but now 2-4 pages a day. I’m at the part where I need to understand (WTF) I need to do with my life if I do not criticise myself and put me down.

Live without attachment to the outcome. Or so they say. Currently not exactly sure that is what Cheri says. I’m not there yet. I need to practise the feel of that more in order to continue reading. Possibly I need to re-read stuff. How do other people do that? I have friends who read several books a month. I can’t. Too intense. My cells don’t shift so quickly.

A lot of books are written on the subject of not attaching. I have read a few. I am guessing this is one of those experiences I need to feel through in combination with some exploration by the mind. I am thinking today I found a good experience to remember and hopefully to re-experience. My heart however is still shifted into a cramp and I keep on burping.

It is time to go to bed. In addition to writing the above I need to add here that since a few weeks I am taking added Iodine and some Schuessler salts. The salts are specifically for letting go. Some of them help me lose water weight too. Which…..  I am not sure (I am VERY SURE) if I am fooling myself because I eat a bag of chips and some very salty cheese in really hot weather without drinking a lot and then go ‘Whoops, I need to shed waterweight because my feet are swelling up’. Abuse, just comes easy to me. It could be a song. But I am learning. Right now my heart (!!!) softly tells me: you do not have to write that. No need, let go.

I feel my heart is coming alive again. Today I walked up 4 long stairs and I was a little out of breath and my heart was pumping. My first reaction was fear but then I remembered the pride I used to feel as a child in the strength of my body and everything changed. The air I was taking in was not a desperate gasp but life bringing oxygen. The pumping of my heart not a desperate attempt to stay alive but the strong beating of a heart which joins with the body to do work.

Did I tell you the hug-buddy missed me and invited himself back over. Hmmm, it is like an addiction; stop for a while without really pulling out the root of the desire…. the attachment deepens when you re-connect again. And yes, I know, when it comes to man-women things that comparison could be perceived a little awkward…. But I guess that is the revengeful bitch in me speaking. Pulling out roots. Ghegheghe… did not do that.  That sounds weird too. Gonna leave it in here thought because I resorted to a little aggressive behaviour and this comparison is part of that. Same shit as talking about pulling out roots. Not good. Ramadan coming up next Tuesday, no hugging with the hug-buddy so he says. That is good -> talk time.

I am grateful I do not drink anymore. A few posts ago I wondered about my sobriety. I have reset my wish for sobriety and clarity, newly expressed it to myself and that feels way better. I guess I was taking it for granted like ‘3,5 years no problem, what’s gonna happen to me now’. But that is not sobriety. I need intent to become clear. Move beyond only the not drinking. Not drinking is only a ‘tool’. Or more like an area of destructive behaviour I should not move into when I want to become clear. I guess today the experience of being able to, for a certain amount of time, be conscious of letting go of attachment to my dying brother has helped me with that. Being clear is good.

Thank you for reading. I wish you a good sober day or evening or weekend! Enjoy!

xx, Feeling

The land of no self-hate – Episode 9

Today I continued reading the book and re-read the part which upset me earlier. I found that I was ‘on track’ with feeling into the matter and ‘becoming one with the message’ when the book said something about ‘I could not make a decision if I wanted A or B.’ and that is where I stepped of the track. Not sure how other people experience book reading but I like to, as I said, become one with the message; breathe in the meaning, the feeling of the text. And then when there is something that blocks inside I can feel it in my body, it is like the cloud of energy which is normally a stream, then suddenly does not want to pass through my stomach, or into my right leg. Or my throat gets all tense. That’s when I know something is up and I have to slow down and pay attention. How DO other people do that?

This one I missed because ‘I was in the right’; not being able to make a decision is stupid. Yup, sorry to the world. It is so again, funny in a not funny way, how we (i) think that having opinions on something is important, of essential to living, while actually it keeps me away from exploring and perceiving what actually is out there.

It is like quitting drinking. I was all anxious about ‘will I miss it?’ and ‘I am going to fail sooooooo badly’ that I could not continue. Then I realised that when I think I will fail, I will automatically diminish all the options in which I do not. I will not believe those. My energy will be focussed on fearing that I will fail so I will be watching out extra for signs that prove I will fail. And while doing so I am already one foot into the trap of alcohol because I am not focussing on being happy that I quit, I am focussing on that failing. And as you know with driving a car through a narrow street: don’t look at the parked cars or you will steer into them, look at the road and the open space. Or:

I am not one of those positivity persons (ooh, gosh, you noticed?!) but yes, it can be wise to pay attention to what you fear, expect and hope. Those 3 are fundamental and sometimes detrimental in how things play out.

Ooh, the hug-buddy has decided he misses me so badly and he physically deteriorates so quickly that he needs to be hugged. By me that is. My inner floozy said yes. To tea. Not sure about the hugging and not at all sure about the sexy hugging. This is new territory for me and I find that I am not dealing well. I feel this is a new addiction. Maybe I should get a book…. 😀

Ooh, on that topic: yesterday I deleted a sentence in my writing which I did not want to have true. Yup. Sorry :-(. I was upset and my reaction was to think that I should read something about a specific topic, something on addiction of the society by A. Schaef. Most interesting. I had a title in mind and went looking for it on Amazon, and then on Dutch shops. But I deleted the literal sentence ‘I need to buy a book’ from my post. Low and behold: here comes Wendy and she comments: “I need to buy a book.”. The truth is out there and it will smack you in the face, shit on your porch or be way nicer and drop by with the Wendy express service. 🙂 <3. I deleted the sentence because lately I literally go buy books when I am upset. Splitting up with the hug-buddy cost me 53 Euro on books. I do have the money but it is not a good idea to spend that kind of money if I do not know where next months’ money will be coming from. I did not want to have that true. I deleted the sentence and told myself that it ‘would confuse you to have so many subjects in one post’. Same shit, different day. THANK GOD it is books and not booze.

Ok, where did I trail off? Aah, yeah, opinions blocking experiences. So I found that I ridiculed the indecisiveness of the woman in the book and that put me on the trail of hate and self-hate. I am not able to be indecisive. In my mind indecisiveness is for sissies who will not survive this life. “Make up your mind! I haven’t got all day! If you don’t make up your mind right now you are not getting anything at all! And no! No whining! Ok! You don’t want anything?! Then we go. Nope, you did not decide from which I conclude that you do not want anything.” WHOAH! And the connection to survival is amazing too ‘they will not survive this life’. Well, we all leave here in a coffin. Guessing this is strongly related to the biblical story of the 6 stupid maiden and the 6 wise maiden. Guess it is called differently, and maybe they were 12 and 12. 🙂 Our noses were rubbed in this story, combined with ‘guilty ignorance’. “There is no such thing as ‘I did not know!’ YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!” And that people, is how you make kids who struggle with perfection.

All this darkness stored in one body. I don’t want that anymore. Everything I do not uncover, bring into the light, will live in the darkness in me and it will fester and I will spread it unconsciously. That is how projecting, transference works. 😦

I picked up the ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ book again and got to read another 1,5 page untill I got stuck in me again. Not sure what that was about. I was fed up with getting stuck so I Netflixed it all away.

I am grateful that I have given myself the opportunity to see life from a not drinking standpoint. Lately I am confronted with so much of my addictive behaviour like chocolating, Netflixing and self-hating behaviour that I do not feel ‘sober’. I have a problem with calling myself sober. Feels like I am lying. This one is difficult to bear because the addict within pops up saying: “Well, if you do not call yourself sober, you might as well drink.” I have a persistent, astute, sharp-eyed addict within who is too smart for my own good. But then again, if he were any less cunning and in my face, I would have underestimated him. Hmm… funny, creating my own matching demon and then wrestling it.  Wonder what a psychiatrist would say about that. 😀

I am however grateful that I quit drinking. And also that the Dutch government gives me the possibility on being at home on sick-leave. I have not heard from them. That is ok for me because I am not ready to get out there again. I have the feeling I need to undo myself of some more onionrings or I will walk into the same shit again.

I wish you a nice sober experience of life.

xx, Feeling

The land of no self-hate – episode 8

Self-hate is back in its fullest form and I had a bad, bad day. Thought it should go into the journal of my trip to/through the land of no-self hate. I am starting to realise how self-hate / judgement / continuously commenting and having opinions is another form of addiction. It is funny to change perspectives which are so engrained in my life. It even feels like they are in engrained in my body.

It also wears me out, this shifting from one point and taking an effort without taking an effort to not judge, not self-hate, not comment, getting to this point of tranquility. And then falling deep down into the darkness again over something. The opposites get so big. Which is good. I mean: is this not how anybody comes into sobriety too? Drinking and then trying not to drink, not drinking for one day and feeling good and then drinking again  and thinking ‘should not have done that….’ etc. etc. untill the good side of sobriety outweighs the ‘good’ side of drinking.

Well, today was what formerly would have been a bad drinking day and I had no clue what so ever what would help me get out. So I self-hated some more because “By now you should know how to do this! You have read 80% of the book. When are you going to learn if not now?! You say you want to read the book again if you do not get it?! How many books do you have to read to actually ‘get it?! God knows you have enough unread books laying about….. I trip over them every day…”

And you know what the not so funny funny thing is? I have been doing this ALL MY LIFE! I did not want to notice. Denial? Check! It is amazing how many layers and layers of self-destructive adaptations to Life I have put into place to, to…. to I do not know what.

I stay with the idea that everything we do, we do because we think it is the best option feasible at that moment. My mind is making over-hours do discard that and self-hate me for “the sorry excuse of my life being the best option feasable” 😦 With a me like I have, I don’t need enemies. And I guess that is exactly what this whole process of self-hate is for: to make myself an underdog so I will not be attacked. Best option feasable at that moment. “Well, parents are dead-ish, other options could possibly evolve so get on with it then…”

In the book ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ (“Then you have not met me yet…” says the internal voice.)  from Cheri Huber, I have come to the page where she asks students of her group how they went home after a day of learning about self-hate. And funny in a not funny way, the left from heaven to walk into hell. Just as I did. And the more I read, the more I got caught up so that was not the answer today. I could not stay with myself.

This then, also reminded me of moments before I quit drinking; it was almost impossible to be me, it hurt so bad, the despair, the self-destruction, the darkness. And alone in that because; “Who would like you if they knew who you really are?” And also: “Those professional addiction people are only nice because it is their job. Behind your back the think you are worthless.”

I finally did find a video of Jeff Foster. It is about aspects of (self)hate and how feeling displaced in this world is actually stirred on by a real intense wish to live (in a good world). To throw away the mask. To undo myself from the fakeness I have layered upon me.

My energy for doing things has returned in the past week. Again with taking Iodine pills. I keep on forgetting how important supplementing these seems to be for me. And magically it looks like I’m losing some weight too. I think to know by now that I am not depressed. I have seen some depressed people on video and that is not me (anymore). But there is also another thing going on and that is me realising that I put on a lot of different masks. The one who does not always want to be the problem is very prevalent now. I find it difficult to differentiate between real happy and made up happy currently Specifically because I switch from not self-hating and being happy to self-hating like crazy and denying myself to feel that and pretending to be happy for the outside world. Which I then find out later.

When I fall back into the darkness on a day like today I am flabbergasted on they why and how and I have no clue. Would not like to find me like this on a working day. That scares me too.

Maybe today’s darkness was me missing the hug-buddy. Maybe it was the portal day on the Mayan calender which makes people feel down. Or maybe… I am in transition. I have not had a period since the Mirena IUD was taken out a few months ago so… maybe that is here, or has been, or….? Who knows? Maybe I can get my hormone levels checked. That would be an idea.

I have been here before I think to remember but what I experience is something like: a personality is made up of bricks of pieces, experiences, feelings, however you want to see that and it has a glue with a certain personality taste so the bricks of the experience are all facing the way that causes me to react a certain way. Like the above drawing: if my personality is set up to always see the squares, the glue which puts all the experiences in place is now falling apart at some moments and then I see the round thingies. Also I see both the thingies and sometimes I see the ‘whole’ picture. But mostly I am rather tired of all the shifting that is going on.

Ok, cat says it is (way past) bed time. Which it is. She comes to get me from behind my desk and then walks to the bedroom. 🙂 Hint hint.

Last night I had a nightmare I got killed by different people I know in 5 different ways and I kept on getting up and saying “No, that does not kill me, you have to do better than that” in a pretty defiant way. I was however crazy scared shitless. But then the cat woke me up, she does that when I’m having a bad dream. ❤ ❤ ❤

Thank you for staying with my musings which, even in my perception, can be very uncomfortable. I have been reading older posts from me a few weeks now and they even make me uncomfortable. Or maybe that is because they stir things in me which other people possibly do not have. Not sure.

I am grateful that I have quit drinking alcohol. Addiction is a destructive way of ‘living’. Summer has come to The Netherlands and the way people treat themselves is not nice.

A friend of mine came to visit last week. She is from a non Western background and her husband has gotten addicted to alcohol over the last 5 years. We spoke, I finally advised her to go to her GP and get into contact with an addiction care-taker. She would not want to do so without informing her husband so this is where we left it. I hope all goes well. At least the wheels are set in motion. I really dislike seeing how he treats her. I really hope they find good help.

Wishing you a nice, sober day/evening,

xx, Feeling

Sober first – breaking up

The hug-buddy and I just ‘broke up’ – over Facebook chat of all possible ways to do so. Not sure if you can ‘break-up’ when there is a no-relation pact and not sure what just happened. I feel I got sucked into a drama which is not my play. I guess it is not my drama then but we are not hug-buddies anymore either. It feels like he is used to women coming after him and demanding stuff. I feel like he wants me to fall in love so he can walk away and I can come running after him. But that is not the way I play. Not sure if that is because I have been trying to be an adult for a few years now or because I am the queen bee? It is a sad drama.

That is a funny comparison because the queen in the beehive leaves and then the guy bees go after her. They mate. And oooh, then they get killed. 😀 Ok, not funny. Guess the theory on being adult does not hold. 😉

I should be going to bed. Tomorrow is Kingsday in the Netherlands: birthday of the king. It is a holiday and the whole of Amsterdam will get flooded with drunken tourists. There is also a marvellous flea market going on throughout the city. This starts at between 03:00 and 07:00 and people sell their rubbish / 2nd hand goods. Good. 🙂 At round about 12:00 ish the first drunk people fall over and that is normally a sign for me to go home. This time friends and I have planned to meet at the other side of the city from where I live. It is only a bike ride of 30 minutes, in the morning. Later tomorrow it will take more than an hour, possibly 1,5. Or I need to take all the back roads but exactly the roads I would normally use will be flooded. And I don’t like masses. I get very stressed out. I specifically dislike drunken masses and I have difficulty with the vibe of addiction which will be all over town from noon onwards.

I don’t feel all too stable. Not sure if going is a good idea. On the other hand, maybe I could use some company and not feel stupid for not going out. I have a new pair of jeans. so… 🙂

I do not know. I will take care of myself and go to bed now.

I am grateful that I do not drink anymore. Kingsday and New Years eve traditionally were my biggest drinking events. I feel, when in this mode, I should take extra care of me and going across town through a drunken mob is not my idea of self-care. On the other hand, fun is good too. And not going out is a way of me keeping me small. I do not fear I will drink, it is ‘just’ (?) that I turn unstable with strong emotions. This evening I went shopping for dinner and there were people raiding the stores for the last bottles and cans of beer, calling mates and asking in a stressed voice “What do I take home?! Brand X is sold out!” It takes me about 2 hours of solid Netflixing to get that out of my system. Not sure why I transfer addiction to soothe myself. Well, put it that way and I am sure. 🙂

I will not worry now, go to bed and see what tomorrow brings. 🙂

Wishing you a good sober night/day!

xx, Feeling