Busy and Competent as a Defense

Accepting the present: body, mind and mothering.

I think I found my new therapist.  Got to sit and work more relationally than frankly I ever have.  I love sensorimotor work but once you have the somatic resources you still need to learn to relate and practice it over and over again in the presence of a safe other.

That said, what I was reminded of today was how "doing" and "being good at stuff" is a ruse for me, anyway.  It is an attempt to win other's affections but the people who matter most it impacts negatively: my family.  See staying busy, not settling in to the truth of my being, means I am not fully IN relationship to myself and therefore those around me.  Also, being good at therapy, being good at mothering, being good at being a party host can, itself, being a striving for perfection that leaves my authentic self in the dust.  I am so busy trying to achieve that the motion is forward only as opposed to inward and embodied. 

What is busy and competent in defense of?  In my case, being deeply in relationship to myself and others.  Why?  Feeling frightened about being in connection stems from something different for everyone.  The word defense according to dictionary.com has the following synonyms: security, preservation, safeguard, support, advocacy, justification.   Somewhere along the way many of us had to learn to brace for impact and we do that bracing in our bodies.  The defense was in service of security and self preservation but as time goes by the defense becomes the injury because we lose connection with our truth and voila - anxiety and depression accompanied by despair, obsessive thinking, isolating, inner criticism, judgement of others, bad boundaries, rigid boundaries, lack of empathy for self and other, fear of conflict, fear of intimacy and the list goes on. 

Moreover, our culture supports this busy and competent vortex of personal burnout.  Usually, as we are burning out, we are also buying a bunch of shit to make us feel better.  So, selling us on the idea to continue to strive for greater and better...and in the hamster wheel we go.   I have been accused of navel gazing - of too much identification with suffering.  As an accusation, that didn't go over well because what I heard was "quit complaining and get over it already" which is a massive trigger.  But as an invitation I can be curious and explore open hearted.  I seem to feel identified with my painful story rather than my lived experience in the moment.

We tend to do two things with our pain: push it away or hold on to it - perseverating, repeating and stuck.  A bunch of my non therapist friends of are the push it away camp and sometimes therapy can support this hold on to it idea by the way it solidifies over and over and over the "wounded" narrative or the very competent "let's push through this and change it" to be "better humans".  Both methods create a rigidity in the body where we get stiff and stuck in other parts of our lives too.   What we know about stiffness in the body is it leads to injury. There is no body bend, relational bend and softness in our internal organs so we become relationally sick and physically sick.

Gabrielle Roth said "The way out is in" but I would add that "the way out is through acceptance of what is in".  If we can learn to accept our human experience; fear, grief, intimacy, patterns, joy, receiving etc with an observing curiosity and mindful acceptance our thoughts soften and our actual bodies soften and ironically we become more flexible, bendable and literally healthy.  As my supervisor said, when we are in this mindful accepting state it frees up a lot of energy to think about other possibilities and create our lives as opposed to spend our energy focused on navel gazing.  But it also doesn't mean avoiding our pain.  It is a learned skill of meeting ourself over and over and over again.  Man have we lost this fine art in this culture.

I am aware, that as a mother, I can buy into the hundreds of models of "perfect parenting" striving for uber clean, uber attached, uber non tv or whatever "doing it right" kind of thing I would but if I just accepted my experience and move from that acceptance, I would just have more fun.  Here is to acceptance.

Suffering, Coping, Receiving, Relationship, Gratitude

I have been struck by loads of different meaningful quotes, ideas, compassionate offerings from those I am so deeply moved by in my life.  So I suspect this entry will be a bit stream of conscious as integrating them

I think the one which continues to stick is this notion that we can do more than "cope".  We really do and can learn to take in and receive goodness or be fulfilled.  Seems new agey right?  But we don't and mothers are the worst at this.

Inherently, we travel at a velocity which is not natural to us.  To quote Arrian Angeles "Nothing in nature moves rapidly unless its in danger".  The velocity of my own thinking is astounding at times.  Nothing about its speed is in alignment with who I am.  I am moving quickly.  What am I in danger from?  I bring past dangers into the present.  Past fears, past patterns...

So why don't we slow down?  Why must we do so much and when we do slow down what would be there?  In the mother's group I was telling you about, there were some mothers who completely balked at the idea of sitting in silence for two minutes at the end of our time together.  I have learned that while I operate faster than normal, I truly treasure going slow or better said, I treasure being able to do both (fast and slow).  I believe, we/I don't slow down because sometimes receiving is too hard - dare I say painful.

Arrian says that we can tend to those moments when we stopped singing, dancing, being enchanted by story and especially our story and enjoy the comfort of silence and contemplation as moments when we have lost a bit of our soul.  Made me feel good because despite all of the crap I have been feeling, I can still do them all.  Perhaps being enchanted by my own story I have lost but singing, check, dancing, check, silence check check. 

What would it mean to authentically receive and take in?  First it means that parts of us that haven't received get reawakened and we are confronted with grief that lives there in those hollows of our body.  Second, it means that we cling to what we take in and are open to more grief when it isn't available.  People can't always be there when we need to receive, mother's milk is not limitless, and the sun is not always shining.   The Buddha says suffering is a guarantee.  So part of receiving fully is also a willingness to feel loss, to grieve skillfully, with a great deal of self compassion and acceptance.  It is just a part of life to not always have those things immediately available but we can still remain grateful for the present moment of sorry and our willingness to hold ourselves in our sorrow.   We need to risk this sorrow because it is the connection to eachother that enlivens us.  We are wired to herd, wired to connect, we are wired to receive. 

So, I am aware, that I can receive fully, give fully and do more than cope in my life if I am willing to hold myself with compassion and accept that sorrow is organic  - its no big deal.  What that also means is I will continue to sit in self compassion for I am still in a grieving process right now - the grief of the baby -  and not freak out.  Creating suffering about my suffering is just not useful.  Others are not bad but nor am I.  And that I can move slowly in this process. I can be grateful for my courage to feel grief without identifying with it and still sing and dance in the midst of it.  If I stay in my body the grief itself even feels very alive.  I am alive in this grief.  If I try to run, it chases me anyway through obsessive awful self critical thoughts.  Guess I would rather hold the grief with love and compassion than deal with that crap.  YUK!

I am grateful for being right where I am.  I am on a mission to fully live out my truth.  And I couldn't be luckier to have the right partner, kids, and friendships to receive when I need, give to when needed and grieve when let down.  Sign me up.  I am in!

Starting Chapter 4

I have had some interesting interviews with new therapist the last few days.  I was stunned by how their humanity impacted how I showed up.  So I got curious about how in relationship, I tend to move from the outside in, rather than the inside out.  I tend to also take on other people's anger, sadness as if I don't have a choice and act on it. 

We talked about group dynamics and my continued tendency to pick up a group's pathology and carry it around inside of me and how that lets other people off the hook in terms of taking responsibility for their own behavior.   And I tend to get sucked into this notion that I am destined to live with a sabotaging internal dialogue.  We talked about what I am doing to take care of me and why I seem to be unwilling to do that.   I am aware of not fully grieving the past and leaving it there, in the past.  That inability to grieve prevents one from fully taking responsibility.

I am responsible.  No one else.

I am responsible for doing the things I know will help me thrive; self care, meditation, nourishing diet, slow transitions,careful goodbyes, good boundaries with other people, stating my needs clearly, hearing no clearly, seeing people for who they are and what they can offer, seeing myself for who I am and what I can offer, reaching deeply for the people who can meet me deeply and "leave the others be", and practice those things I have learned from my years of training in developing a sustaining and nourishing inner dialogue.  It is a commitment to self care I have been unwilling to make because my unconscious continues to rule and she keeps thinking someone is going to swoop in and make up for the past.  That belief will go away if, and only if, I grieve and leave the past back there.  So, underworld traversing, grieving doing, self care starting. 

Little Poem by Portia Nelson called Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost...I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it. 
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it is a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down another street.

Our Inner Dialogue: Saboteur or Ally

My mind has taken over my whole body.  I am one big obsessional thought after obsessional thought.  I don't even want to write about what those obsessions are.  Because of the extreme nature of the imbalance inside of me ,thoughts taking over, I have become aware of the extreme nature of the imbalance outside of me.  I am aware of how heady and out of contact with their own beingness many people are more regularly than I.  I guess I found something to be grateful for as I noticed.  A start on the road to recovery.

In my case, this fusion of my self hood with what I am thinking is a highway to the danger zone.  My mind, and what I say to myself in my head, when it isn't balanced what I feel in my body and in my experience or isn't channeled by focused attention on some task is that of the internal critic.  I have talked about it a lot recently because this critic, this angry child, this one that wants to make sure I don't feel any of the pain beneath, this swallowed voice of my mother - is an unrelenting saboteur designed to squash me into immobility.  Today, as I was walking down the street I said to myself, "man this voice is so pervasive these last weeks I can barely stand upright under the pressure of all the mean things it tells me."  And then I thought, "yeah but I am still walking so as long as I am walking I can at least feel my feet." 

So today, when I remembered, I just noticed my walking feet moving across the earth.  It was all I could do to redirect my attention.  And I found some joy as I felt my feet touch down, lift off.  Suddenly I felt my body again, the breeze on my skin, the smells of the city, the sounds of the rustling trees. I am reminded of Gabrielle Roth saying the "only way out is in" or the only way to get out of pain is to get back inside your body because pain is about thought, often. 

I was wondering about my sons.  I have been grumpy the last two mornings. I really have been annoyed with the eating routine lately because they are so wild at the table they get up and wander and I am a "sit at the table and eat" kind of mom.  You can finish at any time you like, but so long as you are eating, that needs to happen on your bottom at the table.  But, I lost my cool and really said it in a grumpy way. My oldest, when I speak in this way, tells me he doesn't like me or he will say "I don't like it when you talk to me that way."  I always feel badly but glad that he feels comfortable expressing himself. 

In my own state of angst, I was noticing my son more.  Less worry about screwing him up, more interest in just looking and saying "Who are you over there?"  That felt nice too, like my feet on the earth. So much worry really interrupts my own fascination and curiosity of just who my kids are. What a bummer. 
Ah Ha!  I had an epiphany - one that maybe could have saved me loads on parenting books; I could just parent my kids with the internal dialogue I am leaving them with.  What do I want them to be saying to them self that is being taught through the way I set boundaries, what boundaries I set, how I repair, how I am available, what I prioritize, how I see them vs. my worry etc.   It is a good exercises for me right now as it forces me to challenge my own inner critic. 

Here is what I hope their inner dialogue tells them;
I am sorry you feel that way.  I am here with you.
Whoa that person is angry and we don't have to avoid this conflict because I know I am still good and those angry feelings of theirs will change.
My human fallibility has zero impact on my love ability - I am lovable just for being me.
I deserve to have needs and I am entitled to express them.
I can be in relationship with people who are different.
I MATTER!

I am sure the list goes on.  Seems like a nice way to parent.  What do I want my sons to tell themselves inside.  I wish someone had been parenting me with this goal in the front of their mind.   And yet, here I am, one foot on the earth at a time.

Good night.