I M Perfect lady

Tag: insanity

  • We abuse our self.

    I am working on putting a Picture Book together with my Story Line quilts…and writing a brief synopsis about each quilt as it represents a portion of my journey.

    I have a visual graph of my inner transformation as I undid abuse and changed my perceptions back to the truth.

    Change is a very slippery word and it often times gets misconstrued, for we are expecting a dramatic life altering physical change, when all that is required is a 360 degree perceptional change.

    It is to change HOW you see things, not the things.

    To remove yourself from one belief and settle your self into another.

    Moving your awareness.  Rearranging your thoughts to match reality instead of using thoughts to cover up what is real.

    What most may fail to recognize, are the changes we fail to make when abuse calls upon us.  Many will focus on the physical act, but few will focus on our perceptions.

    In an abusive home, where abuse isn't addressed…what this means is that, perceptions don't change to now match the new reality.  It isn't that the act isn't dealt with, but rather the perceptions don't change to mirror what just happened.

    It is this that totally screws with the minds of a child.

    Here is the deal.

    My father CHANGED when he acted out sexually to me.  At this point, my viewpoint of him should have changed too.  When I didn't change this inside of my head.  My head no longer matched reality.

    With a head that is askew, I then built my life.

    To undo the abuse, what we are really saying is that we need to straighten out our perceptions.  We have to now make the changes we failed to make way back then.

    It sounds so simple, but I had created a whole life, based on the wrong perceptions.

    I now had to change a father into a pedophile, a mother into his accomplice, and it left me with a new family portrait.

    Change one picture, and the rest start to shift.

    My father changed when he abused me and I didn't act like anything had changed. 

    However, my reality had changed, I just wasn't allowed to let my perceptions of him change.

    Instead of recording the actual event, it recorded things that surrounded it.

    I don't have many memories of my childhood, but I do have wierd ones.

    However, most importantly, my body recorded it accurately.  IT feared my father.

    It didn't want to get close to him.

    No matter what my mind concocted, my body held the correct perceptions.

    I had to change my mind to match what my body felt.

    Undoing abuse means you have to change your mind.

    It doesn't mean forcing your body to feel comfortable or at ease with someone who has hurt you.  It means to follow your body's lead.

    When you change the perceptions in your head to match reality, you will begin to act differently. 

    You will act in kind to reality.

    I no longer felt I had to force myself to be in relationships with family who I no longer trusted or felt safe with…or whose perceptions didn't match reality.

    The greatest tragedy of abuse is that we don't change our perceptions of the person who hurt us.  We want a mother and father so badly, we will think anything to maintain this in our heads.  And as little helpless children, we needed to believe that we were safe.  We wouldn't have survived knowing there was no one there to save us, that we were living in the home of a pedophile and his wife.

    How awful this is to an abused child.  Your wounds go unattended, in order to keep up the perceptions in your home.  If they see your abuse, they will see the monster who lives there too.

    In order to keep the illusion going, you adjust your perceptions.

    Most have no clue what this does to a human being.  It makes you insane.

    Insanity is seeing a reality that doesn't exist.

    Seeing a father where a pedophile stands.

    I became sane, when I saw reality…my perceptions finally matched my body.

    Abused children who are abused by a family member, are usually neglected in order to keep the abusive family member. Rarely is the child treated and the family member removed.

    They would rather keep an abusive father than live without one.

    The child then learns, to overlook abuse and keep the relationship.

    What we fail to appreciate is that we are holding onto abuse and there is no relationship outside of that.  Our new relationships are abuse.

    It is abusive to ourselves to change our truth and perceptions to go against reality.

    We keep a 'loving' father and we abuse our self.

  • Outside of the Mind.

    I went on a tour of The House on The Rocks in Wisconsin.

     

    At a distance it looks like a needle jutting outwards towards a rock formation, and the view from the garden seem architecturally intriguing, the surrounding landscape held trees of various sizes and types all growing on a hilly terrain… right in the middle of nature.

    We spent time in the gardens, taking pictures of the flowers and the fishes that swam in the lily ponds.  If this was the outside, we couldn’t imagine what the inside would be!

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    Our first entry was narrow and tight with low ceilings, dark and airless, carpeting lined the walls and floors and small windows let in a bit of light.

    As we exited into a transitional hallway, where we were able to walk out on the needle we had seen in the distance, we did then see we were above the trees or in the trees and nature surrounded us.  Once again we could see the sunshine and trees.

    And then the tour led us back inside, into dark mazelike rooms and hallways, were we couldn’t turn back and couldn’t get out.  We had no choice but go forward following the signs, “Tour continues”.

    The walls and interiors were lined with a collection of odd things, mismatched and yet similar in feeling.  From masks, to old dolls…their eye staring wildly…stuck behind the glass with lights shining upon them, the rest of the room dark. 

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     And placed in even darker corners imitation tiffany lamps.  It was said he kept the house dark to show off their colorful light. Interesting he honored them more than the brilliant nature right outside.

    The windows coverings were a dark blue, so we never glimpsed the light of outside. 

    And then came the windowless rooms, and in this darkened maze we walked, trying to neutralize the overwhelming heaviness of insanity…a carousel played its circus music, which added to the crazy energy, spinning around and around. 

    We went downward into a huge room that held a wale its innards exposed an octopus draped over it; one huge eye bore down on us.  Even in this huge cavernous room you felt stuck.  A narrow sidewalk kept us walking single file forward.

    Lining the walls was a collection of old toys, like forgotten memories neglected and hidden from children or remnants and artifacts of children.

    In the darkness and cave like atmosphere all things took on a sinister glow…perhaps each cried out from their prison. 

    I have seen old things reverently kept in museums, and these treasures were locked away in the darken bowels of this man’s creation, taking on his energy by how he displayed them.

    Our next stop the ‘house’ café, where fumes of cooking overwhelmed our already churning insides.  Amazingly there were folks dining, we walked by their tables, anxious to be set free.

    As we exited the dining room we met two young workers and asked how much longer the tour was. To which they replied 25 more minutes.  I asked if they could lead us back to the Zen gardens, and one replied he could, and we followed.

    My brother said that the inside of this structure was like taking a physical tour into his abused mind…

    In the years he and I have talked together, we have been trying to get him free from that confused maze like mind.

    He has a picture of himself prior to the abuse, and in it stands a little boy with a red sweater. So we always speak of his inner voice, his creative voice, his Spirit as the little boy in the red sweater.

    It was so incredible that it was a young lad in a red tee shirt that led us out and back to the Zen Garden…just like in my brother’s life.

    I was able to see and feel the energies of a mind gone insane, and see how there appears to be no way out and nowhere to sit down and be at peace, no way to find Light and freedom inside the mind.

    The tour was worth so much more than they charged, for it showed us a walking tour on how it feels to be lost in the abused mind and to see it sitting in reality surrounded by nature.

    It is encapsulated in the midst of splendid reality, shut out to itself, like a huge pocket in the land of sunlight, air and splendor, it is secluded and dark, narrow and airless…it again is like the mind…without the access to the right side.

    And the juxtaposition, Zen Garden – Dark airless rooms, maze like hallways, dead-end corridors…even the fake tiffany lamps could be seen as a false sense of hope or false prophets…just steps away are flowers, waterfalls, lily ponds and peace.

    A young woman we shared our experience with said it sounded like the religion she just exited.  On the outside it has a Zen Garden like look, but once you get in you are lost and in the darkness.

    What was so amazing and telling to me, were the reactions of others, some were doing jigs to the carousel music not feeling the energies there, for it they matched their own levels.  Others were like us anxious and feeling suffocating and needing to get out.

    It was a great gift to see the overall picture of the abused mind, a mind caught up in the crazy making of a dark religion lying in the middle of a Zen Garden.

    For it is literally true, that nature is our own natural state unless your sense of self gets caught up in the left side of your mind…

    We were able to see the insides of the man who created The House on The Rocks.  How scary to build this monstrosity in the midst of nature’s grandness, totally blocking it out.

    Just seeing the close proximity of the wide-open expanse of nature, the brightness, the airy breezes, the smells and sounds of nature, just outside of the darkened maze was profound.

    How like the human experience of either being in reality or lost in the confused mind.  Reality is always here; we just have to find our pathway. 

    The road that leads us back to being our self, to self expression, self awareness, to being the self we were meant to be, our unique expression of who we are…is found outside of the mind.

    “In order to experience the Ultimate Reality you have to be out of your mind.”  Neale Donald Walsh

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    Nature's brilliance!!!

     

  • Kept this Pattern Going.

    Being a mother in the middle and having a generation before me and a generation below me puts me in a great place to witness the intricacies of how relationships are formed and how the legacy is passed on.

    Being aware of the legacy you are in while you are in it is near impossible…it takes stepping out to get a clear view.

    I leaped out of my childhood legacy when my mother’s moral tower displayed her husband of 49 years as a pedophile, it was then I knew the generation before me, and sadly I could also see the generation beneath me and how one man had touched two generations while my mother loved him.

    I saw him in his truth, her in her truth, and then me in mine.

    I saw the river that flowed beneath all of us and the only way to escape that river is to see what you are swimming in.

    Within me lay all the layers of teaching and years of treatment and formation, in horror I saw her in me…

    Within a few days I was able to see the structure of our family and how it all was flimsily held together and how each insane idea supported another insane concept, the maze was intricately held together by unquestioning authority.

    To see the shocking truth of a pedophile father and the undying “love” of his wife towards him, shatters the scaffolding that I had built called me.

    I saw my own insanity.

    I then saw how insanely I had treated my children based upon the morals and values of a woman who ‘loved and supported’ a pedophile.

    Stuck in the middle with an insane woman above me, mistreated children below me and me aware, I then had to unhitch myself from her teachings and long held beliefs while continuing to raise children but change everything.

    In the middle, I knew I couldn’t change my mother, but I had a chance at redoing me and then I had the hope that if I could, my children would then repattern themselves after the new me.

    What a tight spot to be in, yet with great freedom.

    I knew intuitively that they felt my every move.

    Where in the past I had blindly trampled upon their lives, I now knew that I could inflict pain or raise their soul.

    It has been my intentions, while not always successful, to see the children.

    To be very conscious of how my choices in life impacted theirs.

    For we are all strung on the same string, the string called family legacy.

    You simply can’t escape the line of your parents, but you can change the dance steps, the outcome, and the way you live your life.

    It takes great strength and courage to see the insanity of an abusive family and to see the traces poking out in you, to own your insane madness and to feel the rage of injustice, and the unknowingness of being a child and following along, with love, trust and faith.

    I found myself pretty much empty of good value, and had to start from scratch building my own tower of morals and values, and I started with the foundation of truth.

    I began building a whole new structure using the pieces of insanity, for its denial is what has kept this pattern going.

  • The Voices are Silent

    I finished the Quiet Room by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. What an inspiring story of girl with a broken mind; a schizophrenia mind.

    She had voices in her head that were finally silenced with the proper medication, treatment and her tenacity to continue working on herself.

    She explains, “I still hear the Voices from time to time. I try to take my own advice. I distract myself, lecture myself, and focus on the outside world. I have taught myself to use a little mantra when they reappear: “These Voices are not real. Don’t be frightened. Don’t get upset. They are not real. Don’t let them overcome you. Try and think of what happened just before you heard them. Is there some emotion you can isolate that will help explain why they are here now? They are not real. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

    “When I hear the Voices, I shake myself back to reality by using all my senses. If I am riding the train to Manhattan for example, I concentrate on the taste of Diet Coke and the smell of the perfume I am wearing. I look out the window at the changing view, and listen carefully to the sound of the conductor collecting tickets. I feel my own ticket flipping back and forth between my fingers.”
    Lori Schiller

    Even though I am not schizophrenic, I can relate to using reality to keep me on the path to wellness, how my voices were alive and walking in reality, voices of the dysfunctional family I left behind.

    Medication was able to reduce the voices mostly and when they returned, she formulated ways to not believe them.

    My experiences of walking out a dysfunctional family had the Voices on the outside in reality that were beckoning me backwards, and there wasn’t medication that would silence them, instead I had to be silent.

    My Voices were sisters, brothers and mother, my father’s voice never appeared.

    Voices and laughter, seemingly vanilla requests urging me to stop being so mental, so frightened, so weird, so odd, so standoffish, so separated, so cold, so heartless, so mean, so unkind…just like her voices in Lori’s head, mine too rose against me.

    The only medication I have to silence their voices is my truth; it seems to keep them far away.

    It is odd that my Voices are real and in living color and they too can threaten my newfound wellness, and perhaps tear little holes in my confidences, eroding newfound peace, as they bounce around like hysterical laughter, wanting me to join in the false hilarity.

    There is a small part of me that longs for the old group, yet a much larger part of me overcomes that, knowing what I would be joining.

    It is almost like I was raised in a Mental Hospital, and that I escaped into normal, and the old patients are beckoning me back.

    And the patients in the Mental Hospital were told that they were living normal, and see me as going into a land of total insanity.

    There are even times that I like Lori, have to concentrate on the smells, sights and sounds around me to keep me with reality, to know that I am okay, I am not the one with mental issues or dysfunctional patterns controlling my life, that I have done the due diligence to get me here.

    Here the voices are silent.

  • Upset the Arrangement.

    There is a land called, “It would be Nice” and it is full of wonderful well-intentioned dreamers, folks who are stolen from reality in a fraction of a second.

     

    One second you are here, and before you even see yourself leave you are there, and once you are there; you can only know it by how you feel.

     

    In the land of it would be nice, you feel unhappy, unsatisfied, discontent no longer wanting to be where you are, but someplace else doing something else, with someone else. 

     

    While sounding like a nice place, it leaves you uneasy.

     

    No one warned me of this phrase and how it doesn’t allow you to feel what is going on right here and right now, for as soon as you say the words, “it would be nice,” you change locations and your feelings follow.

     

    As Byron Katie stated in one of her books, you can be sitting on a couch and feel like it is heaven, until you think, “It would be nice to have a pillow”, and then you are uncomfortable with just the couch.

     

    From Heaven to Hell without moving anywhere except in your mind.

     

    The three words Byron Katie says cause the most suffering are, would, should and could.

     

    What I didn’t know is that these words are the expressways out of reality, an escape route to a place far from where you are standing.

     

    You mind leaves reality, and takes your feelings with, and all that is left is the physical body, but it can’t feel or know it is in the here and now, for the mind and awareness are gone.

     

    Have you ever driven a car and can’t recall passing things, like ‘mindless driving’.  Your driving but your mind is elsewhere, that is leaving reality.

     

    Once you are aware of how much you are not aware, it is scary to know how little in a day you are actually present and fully connected to what is.

     

    Often times it is when you are doing ‘mindless’ tasks, or when you are where you don’t want to be, you visualize yourself to be elsewhere. 

     

    Most often you are unhappy with how life is operating at this moment and want to affect change, and do…but all you really change is leaving the scene in your mind.

     

    Leaving what is for what should be.

     

    Not wanting what is there or wanting more than what is there and even less, forever trying to arrange life to suit your mind.

     

    I can visualize three islands, Would be, Should be, and Could be, the islands of life’s discontent!

     

    It takes practice and sheer determination to not try and rearrange life as it appears, to just sit softly in acceptance being bent by life, instead of trying to bend life into what you feel would be better.

     

    It’s to go from being a duck on a river trying to direct the flow, to being a duck floating in total submission.

     

    Floating in total submission doesn’t take away from the duck or the river; it shows them in perfect harmony.

     

    It seems insane that the mind wants to make corrections to what is happening right now, but it does, and perhaps that is the meaning of insanity.

     

    Insanity is the mind trying to control the Universe.

     

    I had to look up the word Insane.

    It means, pertaining to, or characteristic of a person who is mentally deranged.

     

    So, I had to look up the word deranged.

     

    Transitive verb deranged-·ranged′, deranging-·rang′·ing. to upset the arrangement.

     

    To upset the arrangement.

     

    Does that mean to Upset arrangement of reality?

    To be upset with life?

    To want to arrange things better, different, more to your liking, to be forever at war with reality?

     

    If it is true then we all are insane in various degrees, with mild or extreme tendencies, and perhaps the tougher reality is to swallow, the more extreme the Upset.

     

    So when people get upset, due to the fact they don’t like arrangement of life, they are mentally derranged or insane.

     

    The opposite of insanity is total acceptance to what is.

     

    Is that right?  That if you are not mentally with reality you are arranging it differently in your mind, you upset the arrangement to suit your needs, then you are insane.

     

    If this is the case, then I truly was insane and mentally deranged for most of my life, and still fall into this position from time to time.

     

    Insanity is to upset the arrangement.

     

     

  • Wrong Places.

    "Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you" Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

     

     

    What I want to know is what will satisfy me as far as my mother goes?

     

    Funny, I thought I would be satisfied if she were to show all who she is, now today, and who she was all those years ago.  For her to show her insanity.

     

    She can’t be more visible, yet unseen! 

     

    What I failed to appreciate is that what I call insanity some see as sane! 

     

    Her actions are typical for her, so they see that their world hasn’t changed, they see their normal mom. 

     

    They find comfort in her unchanging ways.

     

    What leaves me breathless is that no one seems to care that she is staying in the same house with my father, the pedophile.  That this choice of hers isn’t insane.

     

    Their fabulous mother is simply stopping off in Dallas for a spell.  A normal event in their lives.

     

    How can your really overlook, look pass and around the fact that her husband wounded so many little girls?

     

    How is she not seen as insane or incredibly blind and disconnected for being able to be in the same space as him? 

     

    Two birds of the same feathers…

     

    My inability to shed a glimmer of light to show how off base her actions are leave me voiceless.

     

    How in the hell can I utter one word that will outshine her very own actions?

     

    Sadly being satisfied that your mother is insane doesn’t feel good, knowing that she is okay with the man who raped you leaves you reeling in thoughts and feelings.

     

    I wonder if us kids of incest are forever seeking to be satisfied in a way that is impossible to have?

     

    Is our own sanity jepordized by the fact that we still want something from our insane parents?

     

    Isn’t insanity trying to fix a problem at the same level at which it was created? (Einstien)

     

    If my satisfaction will only come when my insane parents make sane moves, I will be forever waiting.

     

    Accepting their insanity has been the hardest thing to do.

     

    Or is accepting that no loves lives there…

     

    Perhaps we are always on the look out for that little drop of love, just one little tiny dot.

     

    And all we see is more and more reasons how they don’t.

     

    How sad we subconsciously are waiting in hope.

     

    “Looking for love in all the wrong places….”

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