On Integrating Feeling and Thought When Someone Does you Wrong

It seems to me that the balance point on this healing path is in the holding of what happened, what the abuser did, how you've been wronged, grieving, feeling, weeping on the sofa with tissues and yet not staying there in the land of Narc Victim-hood--not allowing your new sepulcher to seal you in as victim, forever.

This lesson seems to return again and again on my journey. Allow but don't over-indulge. Give space to feelings but don't allow feelings to banish thought. As I've crawled out of the web, through the fog, I've had some difficult situations, where the dark emotions and the feeling wronged bit seemed so intense as if in boa-constrictor mode, I wondered if they'd ever let up. The temptation has been to perpetually indulge in my own victim-hood. To be swept away into the current of self pity, woe-is-me and all sorts of rivers that lead me to plant myself and grow roots in Victim Land. And as important as it is for healing to visit Victim land, one has to be careful not to buy a house there.

And so, the work of integration means marrying the poles in myself. Truly feeling. Truly experiencing and acknowledging what I've been through. And yet also allowing myself to emerge from the cocoon as butterfly when the time is right. In looking back on the past 5 years, my perpetual work seems to be finding the voices whom can lend new perspectives on my landscapes of experience. Reframing destructive situations not to let someone off the hook or minimize their destructive actions, but rather for my own healing, so that I can move beyond the land of victim hood and back toward my own becoming and purpose, so that I can do at last what I came here for. It's been especially difficult to reframe said situations when I have felt wronged by others. The following words are helping me to continue to let go and get traction in this dark healing work.

For Someone Who Did You Wrong

Though its way is to strike
in a dumb rhythm,
stroke upon stroke,
as though the heart
were an anvil,
the hurt you sent
had a mind of its own.

Something in you knew
exactly how to shape it,
to hit the target,
slipping into the heart
through some wound-window
left open since childhood.

While it struck outside,
it burrowed inside,
made tunnels through
every ground of confidence.
For days, it would lie still
until a thought would start it.

Meanwhile, you forgot,
went on with things
and never even knew
how that perfect
shape of hurt
still continued to work.

Now a new kindness
seems to have entered time
and I can see how that hurt
has schooled my heart
in a compassion I would
otherwise have never learned.

Somehow now
I have begun to glimpse
the unexpected fruit
your dark gift had planted
and I thank you
for your unknown work.

-John O'Donohue   

lost in the Dark

"There is perhaps a moment in every life that something dark comes along. If we are not careful to recognize its life-damaging potential before it grips us, it can hold us for the rest of our lives. We can become addicted to that wound and use it forever as an identity card. We can turn that wound into sorrow and forsaken-ness, a prison of crippled identity." (John O'Donohue)

There is a tension presented here. On the one hand one has to fully feel and truly experience what happens when the darkness comes along, in order to heal. On the other hand we can linger in the dark without striking a match, without searching for a way out, without doing what we can to gain traction and heal.

And this is my daily battle. I struggle to do anything, everything to help myself out and heal and yet I know I must do the work. I've just never quite gotten the right tension with how much you do and how much you allow to happen and trust the path. In times past, when I've been in rhythm in life, my path seemed to find me of its own accord. I merely allowed it to happen.

But in this healing, I feel as though I'm spinning my wheels, going nowhere. I've made decisions in the face of the advising and my own gut speaking regarding said big choices. And somehow, even still, traction in healing and moving out of the dark seems to evade me.

I made the difficult choice to move away from my ex and my kids. And the colleague I had come to rely on as something akin to family and friend betrayed me a few weeks shy of my moving. In the face of my trusted advisers recommending I move all the same, I followed through with the trajectory. I left everything and everyone I've known for nigh on ten years. I hit the control, alt, delete button and started over.

And once again I stare at the bleak landscape of my life.

I know this nothingness is opportunity to reinvent myself, reinvent my life. The blank slate. I keep telling myself to conjure creativity and imagination. I keep kindling hope that some day things will be better. I keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of my own impulse to just quit. Not, today, anyway. Tomorrow. You can always quit tomorrow. But I worry my identity has become crippled by the narcissist's wounding. I worry somehow I have lost my own story. I don't want him to be my story. I want to sing a song to the soul that can survive all even when it feels lost, wandering in the endless darkness and hope it finds its way.

But, instead, I just continue to feel lost.

Gaslighting

True story. Late one night recently, a couple of glasses of red wine already imbibed, I saw on that all powerful FB feed that a band I've enjoyed since college is coming to town. Small venue situation, tickets in the realm of reasonable, conditions seemed almost perfect. Even my musical friend who enjoys these sorts of venues agreed to go with me. So I clicked on the link to make an in app ticket purchase, and the deal was done row G seats 32 and 33. Or so I thought. I texted musical friend and went to bed.

About a week later I realized I'd never seen the email confirmation. Hmmm. Why not? And this is the point where the gaslighting, the it's-everything-that's-ever-been-wrong-but-it's-all-she's-ever-known crept in. You see, when your memory is always questioned, second guessed, deemed unreliable at best, for the better part of 20 years, over time you develop a mistrust of your own memory. Because you were manipulated into mistrusting your own self. So that you could more easily be controlled.

Did I really order those tickets? Did I only think I ordered those tickets? Where was the email confirmation? I did have a couple of glasses of wine that night... These are all things my ex would have suggested or hinted at...

My own mind conditioned as it has been by the Narc ex in the abuse for all those years started doing what he would do.

But she cuts herself on you every night.

As in, You know that never happened? You know your memory is unreliable. You didn't really order those tickets. You only imagined it. You wanted to go so badly that you emotionally got attached to the idea of going and you thought you ordered those tickets. But we know, you're not quite right in the head. It's understandable, really, you're under a lot of stress these days.

And on and on my brain stewed and swirled. And then the anxiety crept in and started growing into a mountain. My body tensed up, the adrenaline raced through my arms, the thoughts took flight, the overwhelm, the cyclic edge and the feeling of being lost in the drowning ocean of cPTSD swirled....

But, I've been doing a lot of work in healing. And eventually something snapped. And I went, wait. Do you see what you're doing? You're fucking gaslighting yourself!!! You're perpetuating his shit again! You're scared and anxious and losing your head, not because you're going crazy but rather because the PTSD got triggered and this experience took you back to the Matrix. There is another explanation for this rather than faulty memory. Take a deep breath. Figure it out. 

It was only then that it occurred to me to check my bank statement. And I've never been happier to see money charged to my account! Hallelujah! That charge felt like a bona-fida certificate from the school of Narc Abuse Recovery. I grinned. I'm not crazy!!! I did order those tickets! And then it occurred to me that the email tied to my FB is a rather old email address that I never check. And the confirmation was probably emailed to that address--the app having been a FB app. I accessed the email and found further confirmation that I need to keep restoring self trust!

And this felt like progress. This felt like I can do this thing called recovery. And I don't have to be perfect at it. There will be hiccups. There will be bumps in the road where I wander off the path and get a little lost. But the further I walk down the healing path, the more certain I am that I will find my way in recovery and continue in realizing that He's just a blade too dull to raise.

And in some sort of twisted irony, the band in question, Over the Rhine, has one of the most apt lyrical descriptions in song format of narcissistic abuse and the struggle to recover and get oneself out of it....

She

What she would like to do
Is get you out of her head
She's tried every trick
She's so sick of thinking about it

What's so special about you
You're an ache she's learned to crave
You're a blade too dull to raise

But she cuts herself
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife

What she would love to do
Is get you out of her bed
She's played it over and over and over
In her head

But she cuts herself
On you every night
She's just dying
To lay down the knife

She clings to what's familiar
She thinks a change would kill her

What she ought to do
Is put a gun to your head
For all the things you said and did

But what she will not do
Is let you go before you're gone
It's everything that's ever been wrong
But it's all she's ever known

So she cuts herself on you every night
She's just dying to lay down her life.
What she would like to do

Is get you out of her head....

-Over the Rhine

Realness that You Don't Recognize

Sometimes the realness surprises you at the most inopportune, uncomfortable times when you'd rather not look your own shit in the face..

The times when you're ready to parade the story out and believe your own bullshit about how things really are.

I've dealt with this shit. I'm over it. I totally know what I'm doing....

And then that real friend shows up and is right there in the middle of the storm. Perhaps being scooped into the ice cream cone, himself. Taking the brunt of the ice cream shit show. Feeling the all powerful anger and whatnot and don't fuck with me edge....

And he just shows up. Takes the words and responds to them even if they don't fully make sense. As if to say it's ok....

Often, he doesn't actually use any words. Just shows up with the joke and the half hearted smirk that makes you catch a glimpse of your own bullshit.

Totally over my ex, you say. 

You don't even really get how much he actually sees through the bullshit smokescreen that you happen to believe about the story you tell yourself everyday until he is there dealing with the windmills and cardboard head gear like Sancho Panzes.

Church of Stone

What is it about a place that can affect us so?

This year's Christmas, I was dreading being away from my kids as the ex has them this year. So I decided to go back to church. Truth is I haven't been in a while and I knew it would take a fair amount of effort getting there.

In spite of my last minute scrambling, the details somehow managed to work themselves out almost perfectly. I have no doubt that my visiting this sacred church was meant to be.

I set out alone, late morning, down a typically well traveled path, but this time, my fellow walkers were quite sparse. At times I went for several miles without seeing a single other human. I watched a massive storm close in on me, then stalk me on the path for a bit which made me feel like some sort of character out of Pilgrim's Progress.

But, I felt unshaken. I felt 7000 feet deep in me, that I was supposed to be here in this church of Stone baptized by the hushed drizzle. Somehow, this time the stillness had my back in this ritual of awe.

At one point, while crossing a spiny section, forty to fifty mile per hour winds gusted me. My mind's thoughts joined forces with the wind to try to deter me from continuing. However, my thoughts were distracted by my eyes noticing the largest Raven I've ever encountered on the path a few feet in front of me. Intensely staring at me, he spanned his massive wings then almost smirking, playfully jumped into the wind's updraft.

He let some of his calm hang in the air and it quieted my mind and strengthened my heart.

The silence seeped into my soul with the rain as I walked, the cherished gift the Canyon imparts to all who set foot inside her hallowed walls. The untethering of contexts from everything and everyone but my own soul, lent the gift of perspective taking.

The immensity of the soulful emptiness of the Canyon filled me til it seemed the only thing. But, how can such a place most characterized by Her empty space so fill you? I suppose that is the question of the Sacred feminine, after all. I suppose that is also the non-piece to most get in touch with in the recovery from the narcissist--he who often denigrates the emptiness--what to do with the hole of seemingly endless emptiness dug after the taking away of goodness and hope and joy by the narcissist--by the very One thinking you rid emptiness by taking all the material goods you can possibly acquire from others and fill in that crack in the dirt, cause maybe then you won't feel that emptiness?

And this is the catechism of this church of Stone--the experience--the attention to this emptiness, the going there to the absent space, the breathing in the vacuum of apparent nothingness is, in fact, how you fetch soul to the emptiness. Emptiness beckons soul flow, like this Canyon calls water to herself and then the sea.

After a Destructive Encounter

Now that you have entered with an open heart
into a complex and fragile situation,
Hoping with patience and respect
To tread softly over sore ground in order
That somewhere beneath the raw estrangement
Some fresh spring of healing might be coaxed
To release the grace for a new journey
Beyond repetition and judgment,
And have achieved nothing of that,
But emerged helpless, and with added hurt...

Withdraw for a while into your own tranquility,
Loosen from your heart the new fester.
Free yourself of the wounded gaze
That is not yet able to see you.
Recognize your responsibility for the past.
Don't allow your sense of yourself to wilt.
Draw deep from your own dignity.
Temper your expectation to the other's limits,
And take your time carefully,
Learning that there is a time for everything
And for healing too,
But that now is not that time... yet.

--John O'Dononhue (Irish poet, philosopher)