Backwards to Find Myself.

In Peter Levine’s book, “Waking the Tiger” he speaks of understanding abuse, as you had to be there, that in order to truly understand the full impact, you had to be there.

We use that in humorous situations, that sometimes the humor is lost in translation, same goes for abuse.

What is so insidious about the abuse is that the abuse mountain of emotions that are too big for a young child to handle is now you.

And the little child of you is lost behind all the swirling rolling twisting contorting emotions, a river of terror, it is like standing behind a waterfall, unable to get out in front of those falling currents of emotions.

It is like swimming in a stream up a waterfall for we are brought back to being a young child feeling what we failed to feel, we are being brought back to the scene of the crime to simply feel.

Simply feel what was so horrendous that we left our self behind.

You had to be there, means we have to walk through our abuse to be there, to own it and live it and know its impact, and then and only then can we be reunited with the child self we left behind.

It is amazing how you can live a life and not be there, not be conscious of not being there, to be missing and not even know it.

The crime of abuse is that we grow up without a self, we leave behind in a secure place our wonderful beautiful self, and go forth without that.

We don’t want to soil and put garbage on our self, we want to retain our perfection and we believe we can by simply not acknowledging abuse. Yet we don’t live beautiful and wonderful, we live as abuse.

And somehow we feel that we made ourselves dirty, soiled and feeling like garbage. Yet it is not our self we feel, we feel the contents of abuse.

To make the separation between what is abuse and what is the child is to see abuse as the painful waterfall that came down on the child.

The waterfall of abuse is not the child. It is what happened to the child.

It is my experience that once you understand that the abuse is not you, but something that happened to you, that you are not responsible for the waterfall of abuse, you can then retrieve the child back.

Seeing the innocent child waiting behind the waterfall allows you to let go of the shame and the blame and the guilt. It allows you to see clearly the separation between the abuse and the child.

The child didn’t create the waterfall of abuse, but instead intuitively retreated to get out of the pain.

In my case, no adult ever came along to rescue the child.

I walked backwards to find myself.

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Runaway and Be Safe Muscle!

“Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine is a book that was suggested to me by a friend as one to read to better understand how the body responds to trauma.

In the very beginning I found a very interesting concept.

Peter writes, “Waking the Tiger: A First Glimmer.”

“Trauma was a complete mystery to me when I first began working with it. My first major breakthrough in understanding came quite unexpectedly in 1969 when I was asked to see a woman, Nancy, who was suffering from intense panic attacks. The attacks were so severe that she was unable to leave her house alone. She was referred to me by a psychiatrist who knew of my interest in body/mind approaches to healing (a fledgling and obscure field at the time). He thought that some kind of relaxation training might be helpful.

Relaxation was not the answer. In our first session as I naively, and with the best intentions, attempted to help her relax, she went into a full-blown anxiety attack. She appeared paralyzed and unable to breathe. Her heart was pounding wildly, and then seemed to almost stop. I became quite frightened. Had I paved the yellow brick road to hell? We entered together into her nightmarish attack.

Surrendering to my own intense fear, yet somehow managing to remain present, I had a fleeting vision of a tiger jumping toward us. Swept along with the experience, I exclaimed loudly, “You are being attacked by a large tiger. See the tiger as it comes to you. Run toward that tree; climb it and escape!” To my surprise, her legs started trembling in running movements. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that brought in a passing police officer (fortunately my office partner somehow managed to explain the situation). She began to tremble, shake and sob in full-bodied convulsions.

Nancy continued to shake for almost an hour. She recalled a terrifying memory from her childhood. When she was three years old she had been strapped to a table for a tonsillectomy. The anesthesia was ether. Unable to move, feeling suffocated (common reactions to ether), she had terrifying hallucinations. This early experience had a deep impact on her. Like the traumatized children at Chowchilla, Nancy was threatened, overwhelmed, and as a result, had become physiologically stuck in the immobility response. In other words, her body had literally resigned itself to a state where the act of escaping could not exist. Along with this resignation came the pervasive loss of her real and vital self as well as the loss of a secure and spontaneous personality. Twenty years after the traumatizing event, the subtle and hidden affects emerged. Nancy was in a crowded room taking the Graduate Records Examination when she went into a severe panic attack. Later, she developed agoraphobia (fear of leaving her house alone). The experience was so extreme and seemingly irrational that she knew she must seek help.

After the breakthrough that came in our initial visit, Nancy left my office feeling, in her words, “like she had herself again.” Although we continued working together for a few more sessions, where she gently trembled and shook, the anxiety attack she experienced that day was her last. She stopped taking medication to control her attacks and subsequently entered graduate school where she completed her doctorate without relapse.

At the time I met Nancy, I was studying animal predator-prey behaviors. I was intrigued by the similarity between Nancy’s paralysis when her panic attack began and what happened to the impala described in the last chapter. Most prey animals us immobility when attacked by a larger predator from which they can’t escape. I am quite certain that these studies strongly influenced the fortuitous vision of the imaginary tiger. For several years after that I worked to understand the significance of Nancy’s anxiety attack and her response to the image of the tiger. There were many detours and wrong turns along the way.

I now know that it was not the dramatic emotional catharsis and reliving of her childhood tonsillectomy that was catalytic in her recovery, but the discharge of energy she experienced when she flowed out of her passive, frozen immobility response into an active, successful escape. The image of the tiger awoke her instinctual, responsive self. The other profound insight that I gleaned from Nancy’s experience was that the resources that enable a person to succeed in the face of a threat can be used for healing. This is true not just at the time of the experience but even years after the experience.

I learned that it was unnecessary to dredge up old memories and relive their emotional pain to heal trauma. In fact, severe emotional pain can be re-traumatizing. What we need to do to be freed from our symptoms and fears is to arouse our deep physiological resources and consciously utilize them. If we remain ignorant of our power to change the course of instinctual responses in a proactive rather than reactive way, we will continue being imprisoned and in pain.

Nancy became a heroine twenty years after her ordeal. The running movements made by her legs when she responded to the make-believe tiger allowed her to do the same thing. This response helped rid her nervous system of the excess energy that had been mobilized to deal with the threat she experienced during her tonsillectomy. She was able, long after the original trauma, to awaken her capacity for heroism and actively escape.”

Peter Levine

In my experience, I shook like an earthquake was inside of me in the moments after learning that my father abused my niece. I trembled and rattled and felt totally out of control shaking.

I remember feeling that my body knew this truth all along, and now I was joining with acceptance, free to express this truth.

What I find so affirming is that it isn’t so much having to re-live the trauma, but regaining the escape muscles.

It wasn’t too long after the initial hearing of who my father really was, that I was able to articulate how I would deal with this.

How I responded was the key to my ‘healing’.

I somehow had found a way to escape.

Escaping is where the power is returned to you, where you are able to be a heroine in your own life.

I knew my inner power was very much alive and strong in the face of such tragedy, and it did feel like I too had myself again.

Like I found the part of me that had disappeared.

Little did I know I had found the missing escape muscle, which had left me immobilized in fear.

It is the feeling like you can’t escape, frozen in fear and terror, unable to bring to bear a muscle that allows you to run away.

My runaway muscle came alive that day, my runaway and be safe muscle was returned to me!

The trembling was my runaway be safe muscle coming alive! The waking of the tiger is waking of that muscle.

No longer immobilized by fear, with a paralyzed runaway and escape muscle, I now feel complete. It is when you live without this part, there is everything to fear, for you all you can do is be frozen immobile in the face of fear, unable to protect yourself, a helpless, hopeless victim when fear arises.

My last five years have been strengthening and flexing this runaway and be safe muscle!

(I had experience this, but didn’t have the language to explain it.)

Posted at 06:17 AM in Books, Examples of an Imperfect woman | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Steering Our Own Canoes!

One definition of codependency; Adult children of alcoholics; people in relationships with emotionally or mentally disturbed; people in relationships with chronically ill peoples; parents of children with behavior problems; people in relationships with irresponsible people; professionals – nurses, social workers and others in ‘helping’ occupations. Even recovering alcoholics noticed they were codependent and perhaps had been long before becoming chemically dependent.

Melody Beatte goes on to write.

“One fairly common denominator was having a relationship personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people. But a second more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships. These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change – however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families too.

Melody’s personal definition is; A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.

Melody Beatte

As I sit here 5 ½ years later, I realize that I rocked the family canoe by getting out, I tipped the balance and was seen as crazier than the folks who began steering that canoe long before I was born.

I heard on the radio today, that a family boat is heading down a certain river before a child is born, and our legacy is to pick up an oar and row.

We are taught how to row and in what direction by our parents. And we don’t start rowing at 18, but at about 1 year old or younger.

We are taught how to row and where.

It is my opinion that two mentally and emotionally disturbed people were rowing my family’s canoe, and that the only way to save my self was to get out of the boat, and not to just stop rowing.

I was no longer trusting in the elders who steered our family canoe, nor was I going to ride along with the rest, just because we were born in the same boat.

While I couldn’t change the course of the family boat, I could change mine, but in order to do so, I had to jump out.

It is seen as rejection of all who stayed in the boat.

It isn’t seen as healthy or wise, but rather that I have set boundaries to keep them out.

And I guess I have.

I don’t want people in my canoe trying to steer me in a direction I don’t want to go in.

It has been a long and arduous journey to find the strength and confidence to row myself, to strike out on my own, learning how to row in a direction that is much more healthy than what I was taught.

While the rest may see me as rejecting them, I am only embracing me.

Embracing my independence, my freedom of choice, my boundaries, and learning what is healthy for me and what causes me pain, what I need to live in peace, love and joy. Learning how to stay in my canoe and in my business, allowing and honoring each person to ride the river of life as they chose.

I heartily and cheerfully encourage the rest to jump ship, letting the family’s legacy canoe to finally become empty of dysfunctional codependent folks. It can happen when one by one each of us begin steering our own canoes!

Posted at 08:55 PM in Books, Examples of an Imperfect woman | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Right For You.

I read a wonderfully inspiring book at the Beach House, “Unraveled” by Maria Housden.

She writes about a conversation she had with her dad about the choices she made that went against conventional thinking, but that spoke to her soul.

“I heard the screen door behind me open. Turning, I saw my father, holding two glasses of lemonade, coming toward me.

“Do you mind if I join you, honey?” he asked.

“Not at all, I’d love it,” I said.

Perching at the edge of the stoop, he handed me one of the glasses. I took sip, savoring the tangy sweetness in my mouth before swallowing. My father cleared his throat. I looked at him, realizing now that he had an ulterior motive in joining me. I remained silent wondering what he was going to say.

“Marie, I need to tell you something.” He said finally. My heart leaped into my throat. Suddenly I was ten years old, anticipating a scolding. My father addressed me by my first name only when it was really serious or important.

“I want to talk with you about your life and the decisions you’ve made and are making.” He cleared his throat again and took a sip of lemonade. My heart was now thudding in my chest. I willed myself to stay focused on my father’s words. “What I have to say,” he continued, “isn’t just about you and your children. It’s also about my mother.”

His mother! Although he had always found it painful to speak of her, I knew that my father had always loved his mother deeply. For years had kept a large, framed photograph of her on top of the table in his office. I could see her image now, in my mind, a dark-haired woman with pale skin, full lips, and deep feeling eyes, wearing formal-looking, light-colored suit with a wide-brimmed hat. I knew from what I had overheard as a child that she was quiet, soft-spoken woman who had been loved by everyone who knew her, and the wife of a doctor, my father’s father, an intense, emotionally abusive, alcoholic man. The source of my father’s profound sorrow was that she had died in the hospital of cancer when my father was sixteen, before my father and his brothers were even told she was sick.

My father was speaking, “Honey, I want you to know that, in terms of the decisions you’ve made in your life this past year, even the difficult one you’re considering now, I think your doing the right thing. It hasn’t been easy, I know, to have the kind of courage you’ve had. But those of us who love you, and especially Will, Margaret, and Madelaine, it is wonderful to see you putting yourself out there. God gives each of us talents to express. Whose right is it to limit the expression of those gifts? I feel lucky to have you as a daughter, and I will always be committed to instilling in you your right to excel.”

I wanted to cry, my heart swelling with gratitude and relief, but my father was not done.

“This has always been a man’s world,” he continued. “And no one knew that more than my mother. But she didn’t have the strength to do what you’re doing. She put up with a lot of unhappiness and abuse, and it killed her.” He hesitated. I waited. “What I have to say next might sound strange to most people, but I am sure you will understand. I still feel my mother. Her presence has always been a part of my life. And what I feel in relation to her now is that the decisions you’re making as a woman are not only helping you and your children. Your decisions are also healing her.”

I was stunned. I had never heard my father speak like this. As he words sank into my bones, I felt my need to be perfect in his eyes melting. I knew then that I had to be willing to endure the disapproval of others in order to be everything I was capable of being. My father had reminded me that not only was I responsible to my own life and the lives of my children, but I was responsible to every woman who had come before me and to those who would come after, who needed to be reminded, as I once had, that they are deserving and capable of more.

Maria Housden

I loved this book for it showed not only the courage it takes to go against society, friends and family to do what feels right to you, but also the delights in doing what you feel is right.

Right for you.

Posted at 07:25 AM in Books, Examples of an Imperfect woman | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

What I Mirrored.

Continuing on from “Codependent No More” by Melody Beatte, she writes.

“Gradually, I began to climb out of my black abyss. Along the way, I developed a passionate interest in the subject of codependency. As a counselor (although I no longer worked full-time in that field, I still considered myself one) and as a writer, my curiosity was provoked. As a “flaming, careening codependent” (a phrase borrowed from an Al-Anon member) who needed help, I also had a personal stake in the subject. What happens to people like me? How does this happen? Why? Most important, what do codependents need to do to feel better? And stay that way?

I talked to counselors, therapists, and codependents. I read the few available books on the subject and related topics. I reread the basic – the therapy books that have stood the test of time- looking for ideas that applied. I went to Al-Anon meetings, a self-help group based on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous but geared toward the person who has been affected by another person’s drinking.

Eventually, I found what I was seeking. I began to see, understand and change. My life started working again. Soon, I was conducting another group for codependents at another Minneapolis treatment center. But this time, I had a vague notion of what I was doing.

I still found codependents hostile, controlling, manipulative, indirect, and all the things that I had found them before. I still saw all the peculiar twists of personality I previously saw. But, I saw deeper.

I saw people who were hostile; that had felt so much hurt that hostility was their only defense against being crushed again. They were that angry because anyone who had tolerated what they had would be that angry.

They were controlling because everything around and inside them was out of control. Always, the dam of their lives and the lives threatened to burst and spew harmful consequence on everyone. And nobody but them seemed to notice or care.

I saw people who manipulated because manipulation appeared to be the only way to get anything done. I worked with people who were indirect because the systems they lived in seemed incapable of tolerating honesty.

I worked with people who thought they were going crazy because they had believed so many lies they didn’t know what reality was.

I saw people who had gotten so absorbed in other people’s problems they didn’t have time to identify or solve their own. These were people who had cared so deeply, and often destructively about other people that they had forgotten how to care about themselves. The codependents felt responsible for so much because the people around them felt responsible for so little; they were just picking up the slack.

I saw hurting, confused people who needed comfort, understanding, and information. I saw victims of alcoholism who didn’t drink but were nonetheless victimized by alcohol. I saw victims struggling desperately to gain some kind of power over their perpetrators. They learned from me, and I learned from them.

Soon, I began to subscribe to some new beliefs about codependents. Codependents aren’t crazier or sicker than alcoholics. But they hurt as much or more. They haven’t cornered the market on agony, but have gone through their pain without the anesthetizing effects of alcohol or other drugs, or the other high states achieved by people with compulsive disorders. And the pain that comes from loving someone who’s in trouble can be profound.

“The chemically dependent partner numbs the feelings and the non-abuser is doubled over in pain – relieved only by anger and occasional fantasies,” wrote Janet Geringer Woititz in an article from the book Co-Dependency, An Emerging Issue.

Codependents are that way sober because they went through what they did sober.

No wonder codependents are so crazy. Who wouldn’t be, after living with the people they’ve lived with?

It’s been difficult for codependents to get the information and practical help they need and deserve. It’s tough enough to convince alcoholics (or other disturbed people) to seek help. It’s more difficult to convince codependents – those who by comparison look, but don’t feel, normal – that they have problems.

Codependents suffered in the backdrop of the sick person. If they recovered, they did that in the background too. Until recently, many counselors (like me) didn’t know what to do to help them. Some times the codependents were blamed; sometimes they were ignored; sometimes they were expected to magically shape up ( an archaic attitude that has not worked with alcoholics and doesn’t help codependents either.) Rarely were codependents treated as individuals who needed help to get better. Rarely were they given a personalized recovery program for their problems and their pain. Yet, by its nature, alcoholism and other compulsive disorders turn everyone affected by the illness into victims- people who need help even if they are not drinking, using other drugs, gambling, overeating, or overdoing a compulsion.”

Melody Beatte

What I love is that she sees how the codependents were formed…and in my experience it matches to what I know to be true for me.

I love how she says we suffered sober…for indeed we did…My perpetrator wasn’t an alcoholic, but a sexual predator, yet the outcome is still the same.

My mother’s codependency of my father is what I mirrored.

Posted at 03:17 PM in Books, Examples of an Imperfect woman | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Who I Used To Be

I picked up the book, “Co-Dependent No More,” which was one of the first ‘self help’ books I read in the early days upon learning about my sexual abuse.

Here is what I read in the first few pages….

“Codependents were a necessary nuisance. They were hostile, controlling, manipulative, indirect, guilt producing, difficult to communicate with, generally disagreeable, sometimes downright hateful, and a hindrance to my compulsion to get high. They hollered at me, hid my pills, made nasty faces at me, poured my alcohol down the sink, tried to keep me from getting more drug, wanted to know why I was doing this to them, and asked what was wrong with me. But they were always there, ready to rescue me from the self-created disasters. The codependents in my life didn’t understand me, and the misunderstanding was mutual. I didn’t understand me, and I didn’t understand them…

My employer at the Minnesota treatment center told me to organize support groups for wives of addicts in the program.

I wasn’t prepared for this task. I still found codependents hostile, controlling, manipulative, indirect, guilt producing, difficult to communicate with and more.

In my group, I saw people who felt responsible for the entire world, but they refused to take responsibility for leading and living their own lives.

I saw people who constantly gave to others but didn’t know how to receive. I saw people give until they were angry, exhausted, and emptied of everything. I saw some give until they gave up. I even saw one woman give and suffer so much that she died of “old age” and natural causes at age 33. She was the mother of five children and the wife of an alcoholic who had been sent to prison for the third time.

I worked with women who were experts at taking care of everyone around them, yet these women doubted their ability to take care of themselves.

I saw mere shells of people, racing mindlessly from one activity to another. I say people-pleasers, martyrs, stoics, tyrants, withering vines, clinging vines, and borrowing from H. Sackler’s line in his play, “The Great White Hope, ” pinched up faces giving off the miseries.”

Most codependents were obsessed with other people. With great precision and detail, they could recite long lists of the addicts deeds and misdeeds: what he or she thought, felt, did, and said; and what he or she didn’t think, feel, do or say. The codependent knew what the alcoholic or addict should or shouldn’t do. And they wondered extensively why he or she did or didn’t do it.

Yet these codependents who had such great insight into others couldn’t see themselves. They didn’t know what they were feeling. They weren’t sure what they thought. And they didn’t know what , if anything, they could do to solve their problems – if, indeed, they had any problems other than the alcoholic.

It was a formidable group, these codependents. They were aching, complaining, and trying to control everyone and everything but themselves. And, except for a few quiet pioneers in family therapy, many counselors (including me) didn’t know how to help them. The chemical dependency field was flourishing, but help focused on the addict. Literature and training on family therapy was scarce. What did codependents need? What did they want? Weren’t they just an extension of the alcoholic, a visitor to the treatment center? Why couldn’t they cooperate, instead of always making problems? The alcoholic had an excuse for being crazy – he was drunk. These significant others had no excuse. They were this way sober.

Soon, I subscribed to two popular beliefs. These crazy codependents (significant others) are sicker than the alcoholics. And no wonder the alcoholic drinks; who wouldn’t with a crazy spouse like that?

By then, I had been sober for a while. I was beginning to understand myself, but I didn’t understand codependency. I tried, but couldn’t – until years later, when I became so caught up in the chaos of a few alcoholics that I stopped living my own life. I stopped thinking. I stopped feeling positive emotions, and I was left with rage, bitterness, hatred, fear, depression, helplessness, despair and guilt. At times, I wanted to stop living. I had no energy. I spent most of my time worrying about people and trying to figure out how to control them. I couldn’t say no (to anything but fun activities) if my life depended upon it, which it did. My relationships with friends and family members were in shambles. I felt terribly victimized. I lost myself and didn’t know how it had happened. I didn’t know what had happened. I thought I was going crazy. And, I thought, shaking a finger at the people around me, it’s their fault.

Sadly, aside from myself, nobody knew how badly I felt. My problems were my secret. Unlike alcoholics and other troubled people in my life, I wasn’t going around making big messes and expecting someone else to clean up after me. In fact, next to the alcoholics, I looked good. I was so responsible, so dependable. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure I had a problem. I knew I felt miserable, but I didn’t understand why my life wasn’t working.

After floundering in despair for a while, I began to understand. Like many people who judge others harshly, I realized I had just taken a very long and painful walk in shoes of those I had judged. I now understood those crazy codependents. I had become one.”

Melody Beattie

Now, I understand completely how she knows codependency so well…she has seen it from both sides. She has used codependents and has been used as a codependent.

What is also so striking in both sides is that while you are in that mode, you don’t know it, and blame the other person, but never look at your self!

You are never the problem, you can’t see yourself, but you can so clearly see the other. Amazing to see this in her first few pages.

So, not only does the alcoholic or drug addict, have to be able to admit they have a problem, so does the codependent, both have to face their actions, and see themselves in reality.

Simply see themselves and stop looking at others, blaming others, wanting to control others, but just turn all focus on self.

That stops the codependent and makes you independent.

Just re-reading all the colorful terms used to describe a codependent makes me shudder, it is reading who I used to be.

Posted at 09:13 PM in Books, Examples of an Imperfect woman | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)