Tag: affects

• Wish For Your Self.

  What a great year of learning, again.  

  Lessons seemed to continually line up to serve to me… more of me; more freedom, more letting go, surrendering and allowing, more ways to be expressive, a deeper understanding, followed by affirmations of what doing the opposite would look like.

  I think I thought, that when I said I was going forth with love, peace and joy, like magic, that was what would follow.  Wrong.  

  Instead I was served up all of my relationships were no love, peace or joy existed, and asked to redo myself there.

  I was given opportunity after opportunity, sometimes many at a time, all clamoring for my attention…insatiable energies of need and control, that had kept me from peace or feelings of love or experiencing joy.

  What I believe lots of folks believe, is that they stay in the same place, but instead of feeling anxious, controlled, resentful, rage, anger, tight restraint…they will just work harder to feel different.

  To stay with same relationships, BUT feel differently about them.

  Feel more loving…will bring up love.  And to become peaceful where rebellious feelings explode…to dial down or to a different frequency.

  That isn't what real love, peace and joy is.

  That is denying what is there and forcing feelings.  Which is to have false feelings of love, peace and joy.

  Many believe you can simply just 'think' differently about an individual etc and like magic, feelings will change.   That your feelings are the problem within the relationship…not that the relationship itself is where the troubles lie.

  Seeing life differently is where the key lies.

  I am reading, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller.  This is one of the first authors who addresses the child, instead of the parent…she sees abuse from the child's perspective and how the body feels and then how the child is made to 'feel different' in order to honor and love thy parents.

  She writes, "The parenting approach know as "Poisonous Pedogogy" breeds overly well adjusted individuals who can only trust the mask they have been Forced to wear because as children they lived in constant fear of punishment. "I am bringing you up in the way that is best for you" is the supreme principle behind this approach. "If I beat you or use words to torment and humiliate you, it is for all for your own good."

  "In this famous novel Fateless, the Hungarian writer and Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz describes his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  He was fifteen years old at the time, and he tells us in great detail how he attempted to interpet the many grotesque and appalling things he encountered on his arrival there as something positive and favorable for him.  Otherwise he would not have survived his own mortal fear."

  "Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive. These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes. Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors. Later as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice. Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.  This step bring immense relief for the body.  It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child. Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected."

  "I call the violent kind of "upbringing" abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humilations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built around them."

  "The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled.  It is insatiable, it can never be entirely satisfied. The more power these people have, the more they are spurred on to actions of compulsory repetition, restore the initial feelings of impotence they were trying to escape; Hitler is his bunker, Stalin in his paranoid fears, Mao in the final rejection by his people, Napoleon in exile, Milosevic in prison, Saddam Hussein in his mortifying fall from power. What impelled these men to abuse the power they had achieved to such a pitch that it ultimately plunged them into impotence and powerlessness?  I believe it was their bodies.  Their bodies sustained the knowledge of the impotence they felt in childhood; they stored such knowledge in their cells, and they set out to force their "owners" to face up to that knowledge. But the reality of their childhood instilled such fear in the hearts of these dictators that they preferred to wipe out whole peoples, to exterminate millions of human beings, rather than confront the truth – their truth."  Alice Miller

  I am reading this book for the second time, and it once again has a much broader meaning to me, than the first time around.  I am now able to see more potently the actual ways a child has to disregard its own body in order to survive, to look for 'positive' so not to drown in its own mortal fears…and how quickly an outsider can spot the crimes, while those within are unable to see.

  I have experienced the view of being an outsider and the quick slamming of the door behind me as I stood on the sidewalk, for the 'family unit' couldn't withstand the truth…mine and theirs.

  Their impotency against truth is what causes such insane behavior. Their lack of self power and worth has them snubbing outside…like that is where their truth lives…within us.

  You can berate me and kick me out of your life, but your truth, just as in the Dictators of the past did…but you are kicking us so as to NOT feel and own your own truth.

  I know that I have been kicked aside.  And it has nothing to do with me, but it has much more to do with the individual's fear of their own truths.  By keeping me out of their worlds, they like the 15 year old Hungarian Boy, keep their concentration camp a place of positive living…of love, peace and joy.

  I am so grateful that I was able to have the courage to see my own truth…

  What I didn't know, is that the most violent among us are those who are in mortal fear of seeing their childhoods in Reality's Light.

  That their violent behavior is to keep themselves from feeling the truth about their parents.

  So, as you go forth on this New Year's day, be careful what you seek for your self in 2012.

  If you seek, like I did, a life filled with love, peace and joy; you will first have to find all the places you have it wrong.  It has been 7 years of learning what isn't…in order for me to then set forth again.

  My wish for you is your own wish for your self.

   

   

   

   

   

   

  January 1, 2012

  2012, abuse, affects, Alice, body, child, feelings, lies, Miller, never, New, perceptions, The, wishes, year

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• Body, Mind and Soul

  It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. ~Buddha

  What I find so interesting about eating, is we don’t eat what the body needs, we put items into it that do not work with the body, but actually against it.

  My backward eating habits reflect my old thoughts and beliefs and now I have to find new eating habits that match my new mindset.

  It is interesting that I use sweet treats as something that makes me feel good, yet the outcome has very little goodness IF any. I feel tired, dragged out, lethargic and my body is oversized from the useless calories I consume.

  There is a separation between how my tongue tastes the food and how it affects my body, like the two parts of me that don’t intersect.

  My head says its good and my mouth likes the taste, but once I swallow all hell breaks loose, my sweet treats wreak havoc once beyond my taste buds.

  The sweets are really saboteurs in disguise and I have programmed myself to discount the affects while enjoying the snack.

  The separation is critical in not linking the culprit and the feelings together, it is keeping the mind and body separated.

  Isn’t it incredible that the mind and body are not aware of each other, and instead of working together; they are fighting with each other, a civil war inside?

  Bikram speaks of bringing the mind back to the body for 20 seconds during each yoga pose. What yoga is teaching me is to pay attention to my body.

  When I eat I am not paying attention to my body, it is like my head is eating alone…until I swallow and then after my head has had its fun, my body then pays the price.

  It is so odd that we can ‘believe’ we are enjoying food that literally isn’t good for us. How is it possible to enjoy something that will cause us harm?

  What will it take to flip this around?

  I can’t seem to care while eating and enjoying the flavors that the affects after are not enjoyable.

  It seems like I am more addicted to the feelings afterward, that my natural state is to be sedative and unfeeling instead of feeling alive and alert and in touch with my feelings.

  We don’t even seem to have the feelings of being full or near full or tasting and appreciating the scents, the taste, the texture, let alone the incredible journey some food has taken to get from plant to table or even seed to plant.

  This is a new frontier for me to become more aware of what I eat, how I eat, when I eat and how I feel during and after eating and how it all impacts my body.

  It is time to stop eating as a head alone and eat with my body, mind and soul.

  April 15, 2011

  affects, afterwards, bad, body, changes, diet, eating, food, habits, lazy, lethargic, life, sugar, sweets, taste, thinking, thoughts

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• Taking the same steps.

  I backed away from people who hurt me, I retreated from untruths, receded from supporting religions, I moved from co-dependency, I pulled myself back from all the places that seemed to support dysfunction and it seems I landed in a corner with my back pressed against the walls of truth, and I now am standing alone.

  Perhaps this is how we enter into Heaven, we come alone with our suitcases fully packed with our lessons, our truths spilling out, our journey’s pivotal moments all stacked up like final exams waiting to be scored.

  Did I pass? Can I fail? How will I know?

  Sometimes it seems that in separating my truth from fiction, I have backed myself right out of my life.

  It is like I am at the end of my fictional life and a toddler in my new life.

  Simultaneously dying and being born, grieving while celebrating, saying good-bye and saying hello, a stranger and a new friend all living as me.

  It is like doing your own autopsy searching for the cause of death and witnessing your birth while being born, all at once.

  My greatest challenge is to find a new place to stand without the exhaust fumes of lingering fears clouding up my new self.

  To live fearlessly after knowing great fear, and not pack too much of the past into the present, be aware but not wary.

  Just as horses where blinders to shield them from scary things, I wear blinders that seem to shield me from good things. I wear them backwards.

  These blinders of immense fear stop me from seeing other alternatives.

  A wise woman kindly suggested removing the blinders, and letting in a view from the side.

  To see if perhaps there is a way to release the high emotions and find common ground where we are looking in the same direction but with two different sets of eyes.

  Self absorbed and selfish, is wearing blinders. Even if the blinders are made out of fear, they are blinders nonetheless.

  As a horse who has traveled so long relying on just one set of eyes, I am fearful in allowing others to see…with me or maybe for me.

  And to take my eyes off my road seems careless.

  Yet this one eyed view in a relationship, renders the other blind.

  Fearlessly I will have to take my eyes off my journey and look into his.

  And then perhaps when our eyes join together we will see a perfect view.

  Like getting the perfect pair of glasses that correct the distortion in our eyesight.

  I recall reading somewhere, that if two people are exactly alike as a couple, then one of them isn’t necessary. What I need isn’t someone who sees like me, but rather someone who sees what I don’t see.

  It doesn’t mean I give up my view, but I include his, and perhaps then we can find a place where we can walk together seeing differently but taking the same steps.

  March 18, 2011

  absorbed, abuse, affects, baggage, blinders, couples, fears, fiction, lessons, lies, new walking, past, post, re-birth, relationships, self, selfish, trauma, truth

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• A pocket of Unreality.

  What I think I have been doing in an odd way is by only looking at the criminal, I spared my ‘dad’.

  By focusing so much on the criminal aspects, I negated joining them with my father. I left the father part pushed far away, in a spot where crimes can’t touch him.

  I didn’t want my criminal to intertwine with my dad.

  I didn’t want the combo, the molesting dad.
  I wanted the criminal called Ray.

  This is a reverse of what I did as a child.

  The time has come to join the two together and make them one, a criminal dad.

  Then I become the daughter that he hurt.

  Not just a random girl, and he not a random man.

  The two parts merge as one; the disassociation now associates with both sides of the same mirror, no more trickery.

  I didn’t know that I had slipped the dad in a special spot, and only focused on the criminal, that I had still kept them separated inside.
  In my heart of hearts, in the fiber of my being I had separated them and never spoke of dad crime, just Ray crime.

  This is incredible to me that I had flipped and exchanged into my mental hiding spot, a dad.

  I hadn’t brought them together inside of me for reconciliation.

  Which is why in order to write a letter they will become one.

  A criminal dad.

  Even resorting to his given name or using the word father, removing the familiar comfortable name while addressing his crimes kept the dad safe inside.

  I would not have known that I was hanging on to a dad inside, that I immediately changed his name when the crime came in, yet there is no way to quickly alter the mind’s beliefs and thoughts attached to him.

  Now the time has come to drop the divider and let them hook up together.

  A little girl sits with a criminal dad; there is no separation or pretend space he can sit in, nor I.

  The restraining letter should have been addressed to my mom accomplice.

  What I failed to realize is I was separating them inside by addressing them by their given names, so that I wasn’t saying my mom did this or my dad did that…I was making my familiar into strangers for the crimes.

  This is unreal to me that I protected the child in me by not joining the two together, reversed from my childhood days, but nonetheless kept them separated.

  Perhaps a letter addressed to Mom and Dad is what is needed, to speak my peace now standing in a spot where there is no veil between the roles of mom and dad and criminal and accomplice.

  I never knew that you could do reverse disassociation, switching the good for bad or the bad for good, that the mechanism worked both ways.

  A pocket of unreality. Where real could hide and not be seen by me.

  December 3, 2010

  affects, against, behaviors, children, crimes, criminal, dads, denial, disassociation, Dysfunctional, mental

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• Change will Happen!

  If you are not trying to change, you do not have any choices to make, you just keep repeating what you have been doing, there will be no inner struggle, no wondering or thinking, no stressing about how you will handle each new moment that arrives, where you will again be asked to make a choice, differently.

  If you don’t make a new choice you remain unchanged, and if you do make a new choice you will be changed, but grow further and further from your old familiar ways.

  Not changing is easy; it is mindless and falls effortlessly within your life, like smoke seeping into each minute.

  Change is like breathing new air into each choice we are asked to make daily, the small and the large, the complicated and the simple, each little decision has to be dealt with as a if you were a new arrival on earth, yet with the magnetic draw of a long held pattern.

  To jump the track of an old pattern isn’t as easy as one suspects and you will not know until you are actually the one doing the heavy lifting.

  Heavy lifting is doing the opposite of what you are used to, the complete and total opposite is required in order to change.
  You can’t change your life by doing nothing different, by not affecting your world and each relationship in it, the only way to change is to allow waves of new you flow into everything in your life.

  Since you are the common denominator in your world and with all whom you spend time with, if you change, all will feel the ripple affect.

  If there is no ripple, you haven’t changed.

  In the book, “Tattoos on the Heart” by Gregory Boyle, he is speaking to a gang member who is asking “How many homies have you buried…you know, killed because of gangbanging?
  “Seventy-five, son,” (this was some years ago. If he asked today, it would be more than twice that number.)

  “Damn, G, seventy-five?” He shakes his head in disbelief, his voice a bare hush now. “I mean, damn…when’s it gonna end?”

  I reach down to Omar and go to shake his hand. We connect and I pull him to his feet. I hold his hand with both of mine and zero in on his eyes.

  “Mijo, it will end,” I say, “the minute…you decide.”

  The moistening of his eyes surprises me. He grabs my hands in his.

  “Well,” he says, “then, I decide.”

  “Omar,” I tell him, “it has always been as simple as that.”

  “How many things have to happen to you,” Robert Frost writes, “before something occurs to you?”

  Change awaits us. What is decisive is our deciding.
  Gregory Boyle

  When you decide, change will happen!

  November 4, 2010

  acknowledging, addictions, affects, breaking, change, changing, choices, deciding, gregory boyle, habits, life, patterns, stuck, tattoos on the heart, unstuck

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• A broken Heart.

  Remnants of a long conversation linger in my head, dragging out more ideas and different slants on fear, truth and death.

   

  I wonder what some would fear most, facing their truths or facing their deaths.

   

  If you truths were real vanilla and uneventful, of course death would loom large and scary, but what if your past was scarier?

   

  What if you were being asked to look upon a past filled with trauma, then how would your death look?

   

  Death seems like an escape hatch a welcome slide into oblivion, compared to having to feel, deal and heal a wound of abnormal proportions.

   

  Today I was exploring the depths of psychosomatic symptoms in the body and this is what I read.

   

  “Yet even when a patient accepts their symptom is being caused by an emotion—an exceptionally difficult barrier to surmount—the trauma that caused the symptom in the first place is often shown to be so ugly that both patient and doctor can readily understand why the patient’s mind converted it into a physical symptom in the first place:  even the mind itself believed the emotional trauma to be easier to handle that way. 

  Physical symptoms often get better with a pill.  Emotional traumas often take years to heal—if even then.  The technology we have to heal the scars caused by some traumas—as advanced and helpful as psychology can be—still lags behind the technology we have to treat ailments with purely physical causes.

  But we shouldn’t be discouraged.  We may all experience psychosomatic symptoms to some degree, but when our symptoms are shown to be so and we accept it, that acceptance becomes the most important step toward resolving them.  After all, how can we find a contact lens we lost by looking near a lamppost when we lost it in the shadows?  The real work begins, of course, once we start looking in the right place.  Dealing with somatization only requires us to bring to the table one quality:  courage.” (Alex Lickerman)

   

  Isn’t it amazing that the mind can convert trauma into a physical symptom?

  How interesting to read and understand more how emotional trauma affects the body.

  And I love how courage is what we need to bring to the table. 

  Courage. 

  Courage to face our truths, our past and our hurts, and especially if the truth hurts the images we held of our family.

  Courage, wow, I think they forgot a broken heart.

  
  

   

  June 26, 2010

  abuse, acceptance, affects, body, childhood, courage, emotional, healing, psychosomatic, scars, trauma

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• Planting health.

  It has been roughly a year since I consciously looked at how what I ate affected me, from what I carved and then how my body felt after I indulged.

   

  This year I am going to see how I behave affects how I feel after, by doing a 60-day yoga challenge.

   

  I want to see what happens if I do the action first and then sit in the land of feeling how it affects me.

   

  Last year I allowed myself to eat as much sweets as I wanted, but the rule was I had to be conscious of the feeling after.  It took about 30 days for me to fully grasp that it wasn’t what I ate, but how I felt after that mattered.  I wanted to be numb, sleepy and shut down, to escape feeling alive. 

   

  It made me aware of the feeling I was looking for, not that the food itself was the addiction.  I then made choices based upon how I wanted to feel. 

   

  To feel awake and alive, I had to eat foods that were whole, to feel numb and a non-participant it was the dead foods.

   

  So I will try for sixty days to be present with this body, to consciously feel what doing yoga each day will do, how it will affect my body, mind and soul, my life.

   

  To see what it feels like to pay attention to the physical body, to be present with it in its present condition.

   

  My knees, hips, elbows and shoulders are stiff and painful.  I am not as fluid and flexible as I was when I did lots of yoga.  The strength in my legs, back and arms are weak and fatigue quickly or cramp.

   

  The size of myself isn’t really an issue for me, I have gotten used to me this size, and so it will be interesting to see if the size gets smaller.

   

  I am eager to set up a space for my conscious bodywork, to breathe, and bring my mind back to my body, for an hour and a half each day.

   

  Thanks to the Oprah Magazine’s January issue for their article on the 60-day Bikram Yoga Challenge. 

   

  How will I feel after 60 days?

   

  What changes will happen inside and outside, emotionally and physically?

   

  I feel empowered to get ahead of the body, to give the body what it needs, instead of waiting for the pain signals. 

   

  To live ahead, like sowing good karma, and planting health. 

  December 29, 2009

  affects, conscious body work, feelings

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