Connection
The Merriam definition of the word connection: a relation of personal intimacy, is useful in this respect. If we break intimacy into the four syllables in-to-me-see, we recognise the challenges presented here. Not having felt safe in our childhood environment sets us up for not allowing others see us as we truly are. Vulnerability still appears to be too great a risk. This was certainly my experience. Instead, we protect ourselves with thick layers of armour. These not only impinge upon our connection with others; they prevent us from having a healthy connection with ourselves…
Killing The Hope
We all know people who return again and again to an abusive relationship. For onlookers, this behaviour is difficult to fathom while we remain ignorant of the underlying emotional and psychological bedrock and the invisible dynamics at play. It is the trauma bond that keeps a victim in the relationship with a narcissist, or any abuser. Although it can manifest most powerfully within adult primary relationships, it can also be found in friendships and in familial relationships. It can be particularly acute with a narcissistic parent because of the deep nature of the parent-child bond…
Comfort
When, during morning meditation, childhood feelings percolate, my adult self and Inner Child aspect confer. Together, we look at and feel the emotional states that bubble up from memory. The adult me simply remains present, extending the embrace of kinship to the child experiencing fear, pain, grief, or joy, — whatever transpires. This process, — referred to as `re-parenting´, — allows the lifetime reservoir of pent-up, unattended feelings to drain at its own pace, a pace which allows their attendance in a healthy, healing manner…
Alexithymia
An aside worthy of mention here was his intervention to help delineate between feelings and beliefs. When at one point I said `I feel neglected´, he feigned astonishment and asked me to show him where I felt this in my body. I couldn’t, of course, because `neglect´ is not a feeling. The term alexithymia (from the Greek a = lack, lexis = word, thymos = emotion) was first coined by the Greek/US psychiatrist Peter E. Sifneos in 1972 after noticing that some patients showed extreme difficulties in talking about their emotions…
Fruits of Devastation
We shame ourselves when we deny any aspect of our essence. In this dynamic, I had simply emulated those caregivers who, for reasons probably only they could describe (if they were still alive), could not endure aspects of my essential nature, and in order to be rid of their discomfort, thereupon shamed me. Left with the choice of believing that these caregivers, on whom I was totally dependent, were mistaken, or the possibility that I was somehow at fault, I chose the latter. This is where the process of shaming of self begins. The Judge is born…
Healing Community
Abandoning out true selves is akin to building our house in our neighbour’s garden. We build those homes, and we decorate them with the love, care, and respect that make us feel safe at the end of the day. We invest in other people, places, and things, evaluating our self-worth based on how much those homes welcome us. But what many don’t realize is that when we build our homes on a foundation comprising other people, places, and things, we give them the power to make us homeless…
Disorganized Attachment
When we had finally eaten in the breakfast room, with Daddy presiding, it was off to school with a high probability of arriving late, for which, of course, I was regularly scolded, and sometimes punished. It was only after this milestone that I could begin to relax into the new day. It is difficult to convey the quality of domestic chaos which kept me in a constant state of tension, anxiety, and hyper vigilance…
Rewilding the Spirit
Instead, with recovery over time, we come to the realization that nobody, no relationship, no success, no shining toy, is coming to rescue us and heal what’s broken on the inside. In this new-found clarity it dawns on us that we already have our very own garden which contains everything we have been seeking and all we need. That garden has always been waiting for us. An inside job beckons…
Carcinogens
Further, more detailed data on these rising figures published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that from 2010 to 2019 in the United States, breast cancer accounted for the highest number of cases in the under-fifty population, while rates of gastrointestinal cancers were rising the fastest. This dramatic increase in gastrointestinal cancers alone demonstrates the implications and risks associated with our modern culture…
Resurrection
The necessity of `dying to the old´ is the crux of the challenge. For, no matter how we have matured, an old script etched on our psyche keeps admonishing us to avoid the dangers and pain of death at all costs. Better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know, the Saboteurs declare. They also incite blame and resentment, which perpetuate the old. Forgiveness is the product of Sage, an indispensable component of relinquishing the old, to make way for the new: Father, forgive them for they know not what they do…