Trying to Be Whole Again

[JustKeepTrying]

I posted in the book review section about a book I just reread - Whole Again by Jackson MacKenzie.  He also authored Psychopath Free.  This post is not a book review but a question and comment on what I experienced reading it.  Any insight is appreciated.

He proposes, with evidence supporting it, that there is a core wound when you experience emotional abuse and a protective self wraps itself around the wound there fore preventing you from living an authentic life.  This is paraphrased and simplified so forgive me if I did not explain it well.

He doesn't say you should treat the core wound as an inner child or befriend it or anything.  He says you should un name it - that the wound is a product of you inability to deal with the emotion of the time.  So you feel the emotion and just un name it and forgive yourself.

I don't know.  I have read the book twice and really resonates with me.  But I'm struggling with the how.  Struggling with the fear and prospect of doing the work. 

I'm in Coda.  In therapy.  EMDR (which was helpful).  Read book after book.  Program after program  This book felt like he was writing about me.  Like someone looked at my life and my situation and described it to its minute detail.  It was frightening.

But now what?  And how?  And frankly, oh my god, I don't want to go there but I think I have to in order to get to the other side of this ugly mess.

[Jolie40]

Didn't know myself at all when I went to college & between 2 interests I picked the wrong major for me.
If I could go back, I'd pick the other major.

It wasn't until I married & got out of FOO house that I was able to start discovering myself.
We both worked, did volunteer work together, and vacationed/traveled.
I took all kinds of classes: flower arranging, drawing, watercolor classes, scrapbooking, miniatures, etc
I was discovering myself for the first time.

Also, watched Oprah & some of her shows revealed to me how toxic my parents were. I ended up reading books on toxic parents & all kinds of self-improvement books.

We didn't become parents until older & by that time, I had discovered myself & improved myself quite a bit.
I felt ready to be a parent & give love to a child. If I had become a parent when first married, I wouldn't have been ready.

Also, I did forgive my parents at some point in time which did free me a lot.
They didn't know I forgave them. I heard a Pastor say to forgive your parents. The forgiving helps us, not them.

[notrightinthehead]

JKT, what is the ugly mess that you feel.  You need to confront? Is it something you have not yet looked at?

I also read both of his books and concluded that he is on to something. It might have been around that time that I realized I didn't know what loving myself meant. So I found instructions on how to love oneself and some of them are still hanging on my wall. I occasionally read them again. But I also felt that he seemed a very likable person who had good ideas and was flogging them until I got bored with them.
I don't know if you have to go back to the trauma, for me personally, I have done that enough times. I know what was but I want to live now. And now I am safe. Now I have a chance to experiment and find out what I really want and who I really like.
If I remember correctly, his thing was mindfulness. That works for me. And hypnosis. I have done a lot of self love hypnosis.
Ultimately however,  I can only find out if I am healing in connection with others. And recently I had two good experiences. I was able to tell someone who I met through a common interest what I wanted from the connection and what my goal is. This was not so easy as she is extremely talkative and I tend to be too polite to interrupt and am a good listener. I also had a request from my ex and it only threw me off balance for half a day. That's excellent. Baby steps, I know.
I don't want to remain stuck in the victim role. I don't want to be bitter and self pitying and chewing the same thing over and over. I had a nightmare of a childhood and a terrible marriage and I made a lot of lousy choices. But here I am now, surviving. Still able to have fun, help other people, connect, do something worthwhile. I do not want to bore myself by complaining about the same thing over and over. I had so much therapy about my mother and her abuse, eventually I just felt I was done with it.  My life with her ended when I was 18 and moved out. Yet, I was still talking about her in my therapy sessions when I was 50. By then I had messed up my life quite well through my own choices. I accept that was my past and I cannot do anything about that,  but in order to stop repeating the mistakes I implement changes now. And for me that means getting to know myself as well as I possibly can. Being kind to myself. Making healthy choices. And being brave.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Your healing path and mine are very similar, JKT, CoDA, EMDR, etc..   I started mine a long time ago when they had us do a lot of inner child work and reparenting yourself. 

They used to talk about the precious, authentic child and the adapted child.  The adapted child was the role you took on to deal with the dysfunction and abuse.  Much of mine was becoming the family caretaker who has no needs.  It starts feeling like that's who you really are, that that's natural for you, when it was really a way to cope with an untenable situation.  This sounds a lot like what your author is referring to as a protective self coming from a core wound.

I don't really understand what is meant by un naming.  I like all the explorations Jolie did and shared here and the gentle, fun, healthy stuff Not Right mentioned.  For me, the adaptive child is watching out for other people's reactions and basing a lot of decisions on that - fear based really. 

What I think of as the authentic child is the part that comes out when "she" feels safe enough to not think about how others might react to her, spontaneous, with a purity of feeling which might be sad, mad, joyful, whatever, but is direct and un-self-conscious.  I guess what I do to bring her out is to make safe times and places for her and check in with her and ask what she's feeling, what she'd like, etc.  I'm there with her when she cries, understanding when she's mad, sharing the fun when she's joyful.  I do much better when I take time for these things.  She's my heart, really.  What's better than connecting with your heart?

I don't know if any of this is helpful, or if we're talking about the same things.  My experience with this kind of recovery work has been really pleasant (unlike a lot of the other stuff).  Maybe you can have fun with some of it. Little kids love to play and explore when they're free to be themselves.   

[JustKeepTrying]

What got me in the first place with this journey was his description of a painful heart.  I assumed, and I think rightly, that it was my anxiety that was causing this hard constant ache in my chest around my heart.  It's been with me for a long time and like the author, I have had the medical analysis done.  With my cancer background I was worried the tumor came back in my heart (tumor was in my heart more than fifteen ago/open heart surgery and recovered fully) - but everything was fine.  So why this constant hardness and pain?

The point he makes in the book is that the stories we tell ourselves matter but you have to stop telling stories around the abuse.  That the stories we tell keep us victims.  I no longer want that - I want the light and joy and beauty I found in the world as a young adult.  I want to feel love again.  I want to feel light again.  I know that I am not the person I am today and I feel this desperation to reconnect with that person I lost when I first met my ex.  He describes as a fracture of self and that is exactly what I feel.  Like I was split and this pain in my chest is a result of the split.

The more I go through the process of dating; trying to reconnect with my DDs; and just being social now we are all venturing out into the world post-pandemic; I feel like I am flailing.  Like I don't know who I am - I'm not xOCPDh's wife anymore trying to keep the peace in a chaotic house.  I'm not the young ingenue entering the world and going through college.  I'm like this shattered vase and I am trying desperately to glue it all together.  But there are pieces missing.  And I'm looking everywhere for them.

One thing he talks about is the daily practice of mindfulness and meditation.  And how that will bring up pain and you have to go through the pain to feel the light again.  You need to look at it and not name it or befriend it or even let it go but just allow it to be; sit with it and just be.  And god that is so hard.  It's like hitting rock bottom every time.  And I'm just so tired.  Tired of carrying all this shit around everyday.  So if there is a way I can move this, feel this, release this, I am going to try.  But it sucks.  Feeling it all really sucks.

[SonofThunder]

...He doesn't say you should treat the core wound as an inner child or befriend it or anything.  He says you should un name it - that the wound is a product of you inability to deal with the emotion of the time.  So you feel the emotion and just un name it and forgive yourself.

.... But I'm struggling with the how.  Struggling with the fear and prospect of doing the work. 

.. don't want to go there but I think I have to in order to get to the other side of this ugly mess.

Hi JKT,

May i be reading a slight disconnect in what you wrote about the author's instruction, and what you wrote regarding your struggles? 

The author apparently doesn't advise even uncovering and facing the self-wrapped, protective wound.  He advised, per your writing, to "un-name it". 

Un-naming, is imo similar to the skill of becoming 'indifferent'.  In indifference, i do not allow the attempts of others to take up space on my sensitive radar.  They may rear-up large in continued attempts, but i purposefully dont pay attention.

Imo, un-naming is also similar to a river and boat analogy i used in another thread, where I simply allow the boats of PD's to not dock in my harbor.  I have built my harbor in such a way that only I can safely navigate into my dock. I dont try and control the PD from being on the river, but simply from entering my safe harbor.  If the PD boat had a name, then my mental "un-naming" would be an even further method of my mental 'indifference' toward all boats on the river in general.  That way, even if the PD boat can't tie up at my dock any longer, their boat goes un-identified as it floats on by my harbor. 

I didnt alter their boat or their boat name and I didnt untie my self-wrap protection i built around my harbor.  Im not denying the self-wrap altered harbor exists, nor am I denying that there's a PD boat going up and down the river.  Im simply accepting that the past wounds occurred, that I properly self-protected, and that im proactively being indifferent to the past and also to the future attempts of the PD. 

Sure, i have a careful, secret way i now get to my dock, but thats my stronghold.  Therefore full circle, is the author instructing to do "work" or "go there" in order to get to the "other side".   The way I read your writing, the author says that the self-wrap "work" is already done, because you already recognized and went there and did the wrap work.  So is it time to simply acknowledge that you have been wounded in the past, but that you already self-protected that named wound by wrapping?

If yes, the only "going" is away-from the named and wrapped wound and being indifferent to its named existence, not attempting to remove it.  That wound would simply be another distant floating boat on the river of JKT's life, too-far out to read a name if you cared.  The only named boat you pay close attention to, is the healthy boat that is safely parked on your dock and is named after you; the one which will carry you safely on in your present and future journeys. 

SoT

[JustKeepTrying]

Gosh, I don't think I am describing this well which is what I am struggling with overall.  And he talks about that as well.  As a survivor of PD abuse, I have been in the investigating phase, then labeling and storytelling, and this kind of weird victim but not a victim a survivor kind of thing.  It's a kind of numbing as well - like the emotions are there but in his words - have been surrounded by a protective self (PS) and this PS is doing all kind of things to keep me from looking at the wound.  I find myself when I start to the do the work being distracted with other things - like "Oh, I need to do the dishes" when I reality there is only a cup and saucer.  But it prevents me from looking at this hard stuff.

I don't want to live hard anymore.  I want my softness back.  My hope and love and energy and light.  I want to step forward and be a whole individual with all my pieces intact.  I'm not likely to welcome a PD boat into my harbor again.  My dating and rejecting several PDs has built my self confidence up - plus I am listening more to my body when I am approached by someone - what warning signs does it give off.  I want my harbor to be filled with sunlight and warmth and love.  I want all the parts and pieces to be fully present.

But to do that I think I need to learn to feel the pain, see it but not name it, and un-identify it.  He talks about using the Tara Brach's RAIN meditation.  I have only done this a few times and it is brutal.  But according to the author and supporting research, it is a good way to find the way back to ourselves.  I went through EMDR and processed the most brutal of the abuse - the rape and physical abuse from my brother, ex boyfriend and exhusband.  But as we all know by now on this journey, they're other little traumas - like school bullies or parental indifference.  These are what still remain and EMDR isn't going to get there.  Talk therapy is only somewhat helpful and it was a T that turned me on to this. 

I have the book radical acceptance.  and I am working my way through it.  It's just - god, feeling all that pain even if the goal is for it to disappear - is intimidating, scary and just downright horrible.  I understand the tools and mental images you are describing and yes, I do use those when I'm approached by someone I suspect is a narc - but this is more about my wanting to live a more authentic, less fearful life.  Even if it is only to be hug my grandchildren with a more open and soft heart.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

JKT, I'm sorry this is so hard for you right now.  You have been through so much.  If what you want is to get past the fear and numbness so you can give your grandchild a soft-hearted hug, I'd bet anything you're already well on your way there.  It sounds like you have some excellent resources.

Thank you for sharing so openly.  I, too, am using mindfulness awareness meditation to try to heal from sexual, physical and emotional abuse.  It helps to hear from others on this journey.    May you soon find the tenderness and peace you seek.   

Free

[JustKeepTrying]

Free - 

[SonofThunder]

JKT,

Im sorry i may have misunderstood your writing.  I do understand mindfulness and am currently practicing with the help of a book and audio in guided mindfulness, as I want to condition myself to recognize from an outside view, accept those feelings I have in mind and body and trying to let them float on.  Its difficult, but I know that conditioning myself with this practice will help me, but that it will surely take much time, which im ok with a slow and steady improvement, while I also get on with living. 

Im so sorry you suffered the abuses of these males you mention and it angers me that my gender can be so brutal in this way.  I purposefully dont call them 'men', because they are not gentle-men, nor masculine, as masculinity is imo a gentle, yet strongly protective manner, in love, in certain ways when needed. 

Best wishes for you as you work on wholeness.

SoT

[JustKeepTrying]

SOT - No worries friend.  I knew I was not describing it well.  It feels like writing about mist - you just can't get hold of it.  But I like your approach to mindfulness and I am working on incorporating into my life daily.  Just dealing with all those emotions and realizing there is no short cut - no pill - no quick fix.  And that sucks.

Best wishes to you friend on your journey.

BTW, I am leaving soon for three weeks along the gulf of mexico for the holidays.  A little trip to remind me why I want to travel in the first place.  I am almost fully healed and down to one very cool carved cane thanks to your encouragement.

JKT

[frogjumpsout]

I dunno, my two cents, having only read part of the book, is that I don't want to "un-name" my pain. I lived with it un-named for most of my life. It controlled some bad choices without my knowing it. I would like to name it, understand its dimensions, and use that understanding to help myself move forward.

[Boat Babe]

What got me in the first place with this journey was his description of a painful heart.  I assumed, and I think rightly, that it was my anxiety that was causing this hard constant ache in my chest around my heart.  It's been with me for a long time and like the author, I have had the medical analysis done.  With my cancer background I was worried the tumor came back in my heart (tumor was in my heart more than fifteen ago/open heart surgery and recovered fully) - but everything was fine.  So why this constant hardness and pain?

The point he makes in the book is that the stories we tell ourselves matter but you have to stop telling stories around the abuse.  That the stories we tell keep us victims.  I no longer want that - I want the light and joy and beauty I found in the world as a young adult.  I want to feel love again.  I want to feel light again.  I know that I am not the person I am today and I feel this desperation to reconnect with that person I lost when I first met my ex.  He describes as a fracture of self and that is exactly what I feel.  Like I was split and this pain in my chest is a result of the split.

The more I go through the process of dating; trying to reconnect with my DDs; and just being social now we are all venturing out into the world post-pandemic; I feel like I am flailing.  Like I don't know who I am - I'm not xOCPDh's wife anymore trying to keep the peace in a chaotic house.  I'm not the young ingenue entering the world and going through college.  I'm like this shattered vase and I am trying desperately to glue it all together.  But there are pieces missing.  And I'm looking everywhere for them.

One thing he talks about is the daily practice of mindfulness and meditation.  And how that will bring up pain and you have to go through the pain to feel the light again.  You need to look at it and not name it or befriend it or even let it go but just allow it to be; sit with it and just be.  And god that is so hard.  It's like hitting rock bottom every time.  And I'm just so tired.  Tired of carrying all this shit around everyday.  So if there is a way I can move this, feel this, release this, I am going to try.  But it sucks.  Feeling it all really sucks.

Dear, dear Justkeeptrying, my heart goes out to you. I really feel the need to send you some compassion and understanding reading  this. Can I share that when I was in therapy there was a sort of "no go" area in my psyche that I was aware of (it had a visual component, like a big pearly egg!) and I kept approaching it in therapy but never going close enough to see inside. I knew it was painful and scary.  I also avoided it but it was always there, opalescent and opaque. One day I was working with a painful memory of my father being violent to my mother while I was upstairs in bed. I must have been four/five/six at most. Suddenly I knew what was inside the egg. Or rather who was inside the egg. There was a little girl, alone in bed and terrified by the shouts and terrified for her mummy. Oh the relief. Oh the tears. My therapist gently guided me to visualising comforting my younger self, doing all the things a compassionate adult would do for a child in that situation. It was an absolute turning point and, most importantly, nothing to be afraid of. Finding my wounded inner child was a gift, for her and me. All my vivid, painful, fearful emotional memories have a tiny/growing/teen child behind them who needs a hug and the kind words they needed then being spoken now. For me, this has been really comforting and healing work.

Sending hugs.

[SonofThunder]

SOT - No worries friend.  I knew I was not describing it well.  It feels like writing about mist - you just can't get hold of it.  But I like your approach to mindfulness and I am working on incorporating into my life daily.  Just dealing with all those emotions and realizing there is no short cut - no pill - no quick fix.  And that sucks.

Best wishes to you friend on your journey.

BTW, I am leaving soon for three weeks along the gulf of mexico for the holidays.  A little trip to remind me why I want to travel in the first place.  I am almost fully healed and down to one very cool carved cane thanks to your encouragement.

JKT

Wow JKT, that trip sounds amazing!  Enjoy your journey.  Such a huge congrats on your healing progress and so excited you are now able to walk with just a cane!  A cool, carved, badass cane at that!!

One of these years i will do a similar drive and your upcoming trip mention gave me a surge of hope!  I want to stay at some of the state park campgrounds along the panhandle and some other Gulf region stops. 

Thanks for your kindness, friend.  Cheers to you and for you!

SoT