Ping Pong

Watch this clip:

See that little white ball? See what it's doing there?

That's me.

I am bouncing back and forth, letting myself get smacked from one side to the other, seemingly 173 times per minute.

I feel one set of feelings, I draw one set of conclusions, then WHACK! I'm feeling a different set of feelings and drawing a different set of conclusions. Then WHACK! I'm back to the other side. And WHACK! And WHACK! And WHACK! 

I think I'm whacked. In fact I think I'm wiggity-wiggity-whack.

If a table tennis ball had nerve endings and the capacity to grow weary of its plight, I think I could relate a bit to how it would feel.

For the record, it isn't especially pleasant.

Assessment

I listen or read people talking about the joys and wonder of totally opening themselves to their partners in intimate relationships, and I think that I can no more relate to that experience than I could if most of the human population had wings and the ability to fly and I did not. No amount of description, imagining, or wishing could give me any meaningful comprehension of that experience.

I listen or read people talking about the headaches and hassles that they inevitably face in intimate relationships, and I think that I just want no goddamn part of that at all. 

I think of all the pain and suffering I've caused with the debacle I've made of all of my previous attempts at relationships, and I think that avoiding future such attempts nearly qualifies as a public service.

I think of all the pain and suffering I've caused *myself* with the debacle I've made of all my previous attempts at relationships, and I think I would sooner gouge out my eyes with a dull, rusty spoon than to go through that again.

All of that seems to add up to the conclusion that I have no business whatsoever even thinking about being anything other than single anytime soon. And at 43, my supply of "soons" is drying (or dried) up. So it seems advisable for me to come to terms with the likelihood that IF I survive the vicissitudes of life long enough to become old and infirm--which won't actually be all that far away--I will do so on my own. And though it sometimes becomes all too easy to forget this, it really is far better that way.

That really is how it seems to me much of the time: that whatever part of the human psyche that enables people to truly love and be loved is a part that I simply do not have. That it is analogous to most of the rest of humanity's having wings and the ability to fly, and it's fucking awesome. I, however, either was born without wings or had them ripped off before I can remember. So not only can I not share in the fucking awesome experience of flight, but also--because I lack the necessary parts of me that would make it possible--I simply have no frame of reference even to imagine what that experience might be like.

So I should stop looking up, and stop wishing I could fly. I'd be better off getting used to the view from the ground.

Hi, Remember Me?

I've been really quiet on this blog for a while. 

In the main things are still going very well, so that's good.  

I am endeavoring to keep up a (mostly) daily post on the production blog for Extremities, which is over at http://spotlightextremities.wordpress.com/.

Keep up with me there, for the time being! Thanks!

The Test

The version of me that is post burned up messages, that is post wounded little boy stuck in the well, and that comforts that inner little boy myself rather than giving in to his tantrums is undergoing my first major test today. I knew this day would come, of course. I never expected those wounds would magically disappear the second I reached them to start healing them. And a path to healing that didn't allow and couldn't withstand tests would be no true path to healing at all. 

I'm holding my own. I started to end that sentence with "so far," but that would just be a linguistic trick to let myself off the hook if I were to cave later. As I have no intention of caving later, I will simply say that I am holding my own. 

Getting through a real child's real tantrums was a walk in the park compared to this. Still, the results with a real child were absolutely worth the effort and unpleasantness, and I trust that the results with a child as a psychological metaphor will be worth it too. More so, I dare say. And I am, at last, done with being a grown man too often ruled by the tantrums of a hurt and frightened little boy. 

So as upset as he may be, I've got him. And he's okay. I'm okay. 

A Pre-Solstice Shift for the Better

I don't know whether you've noticed, but my blog posts of late have frequently tended to be a little . . . well, a little on the morose side.

This shocks my regular readers, I know. I'm sure the morose tone hasn't been noticeable in my posts at all. But it's true. No, really.

To be fair, that hasn't meant that I've been morose all the time and only blogged about it sometimes. It's more that sometimes when I have felt depressed and had something to work through, I have made blogging about it part of my process. I have laid this journaling process open to the world, in part because I hope that my work might be helpful to others who might relate to whatever I'm working through at that moment. 

Depression and I have gone a few rounds over the course of my life, and over the past while I think it's fair to say that it has had the upper hand more than I would want it to. Hence a high percentage of recent blog posts that have been morose in tone. 

I've addressed this recent bout of depression in several ways, in addition to blogging about it. The methods have been helpful, but they haven't seemed to solidly give me the upper hand over the long term.

Over this past weekend I went back to a method that has been quite reliable in the past: bodily experiential activity. Instead of simply ruminating on the roots of my negative self-judgments and how I might deal with them, I got up, got into my physical/emotional feelings, and did something with those negative self-judgments.

Specifically, I burned them. I printed each of those negative messages that I got--or perceived that I got--as a little kid, and that I've still carried into adulthood, onto its own slip of paper. I read each one aloud three times as I brought up and amplified the feelings associated with it. Then I imagined pulling that message--and all of its associated negative self-judgments--out of me and putting it into the paper. Next I burned the paper until it was completely reduced to ash. When the paper burned itself out I moved on to the next one and repeated the process until they were all burned to ash.

I wasn't destroying my Dad (nor the part of him that lives in me) nor anyone else I got those messages from. I wasn't destroying that wounded little boy part of myself. I destroyed the messages, intentionally or unintentionally sent and accurately or inaccurately perceived by me, that wounded that little boy in the first place. That's an important distinction.

When it was over, I filled the spaces left by those ripped-out messages with the "energy" of the Jungian archetypes of the mature masculine psyche--King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover--and with loving thoughts and feelings toward myself. In so doing, I finally felt a connection with that little boy who'd been down in the well (see my earlier post)--who once all those messages were gone seemed clean and happy and not at all feral (he didn't kick or bite me once)--and I let him know that I can and will take care of him.

I collected the ashes into a small wooden box. I have a specific plan for what to do with that box, but I wasn't able to do that on Sunday. So now it sits in my house, like a lead box containing plutonium. I don't want to do anything with it until I'm ready to dispose of it, and I certainly don't want to open it. That shit is toxic. I intend to handle the second phase soon by disposing of the box in the specific way I want to.

To the outside observer unfamiliar with such activities, such exercises can seem a bit strange. So what? I have known them to work well for me, and I have seen them work well for other people. It seems the human psyche can be highly responsive to such things. And while my PsyD had no input into the process beforehand, he thought it was a great process and he was pleased with the results.

Now I don't pretend this one exercise will be a "magic bullet" and that I will never feel depressed again or that these messages will never regenerate in me. But here's the thing: first, when they do regenerate they won't be building on forty years' worth of accumulation anymore. Second, I now know I am capable of pulling out and letting go of those messages. I'd held on to those messages for so long that I wasn't sure whether or how I could pull them out and let them go. Now I know. 

So it may not be a "magic bullet," but I am optimistic that it could be a real game-changer.  And so far this week, I have been feeling decidedly non-morose, to say the least. So I thought I'd blog about that for a change. 

Love to all. Including me. 

Frustration

Another poem that isn't, by Doug Powers

How do you love

One who will not be loved?

How do you reach

One who will not be reached?

When every hand

Extended toward this One

Grasps only air

Or is slapped away hard,

When all your tools

And methods break and bend

Impotently

Against the One’s thick shell,

And the succor

You offer to the One

Looks to the One

Like an enemy’s blade,

How is even

Love to “conquer all” here

When it can’t get

Past the One’s defenses?

What loving warmth

Can melt cold barriers

And ancient walls

And reach the One within?

What healing light

Can penetrate the dark

Of fossilized

Cocoons where the One hides?

How do you forge

A connection with One

Who refuses

To accept connection?

“They” would tell you

Not to waste time with One

Who won’t love you

Or receive love in turn.

In most cases

I’d say “they’re” right; it’s not

Worth the effort

To bang your head on walls.

But what the hell

Are you supposed to do

When this stubborn

One you can’t reach is YOU?

The Boy in the Well

The view from down here

Not long ago I was reflecting on those very old wounds I still carry around the  judgments I made when I was little that I was incompletely accepted--and indeed was reviled, rejected, and abandoned--for being who I was.

According to Young Doug's perceptions of the messages he got from various sources, I was "weird" and "too dramatic" and "a brain" and "not manly enough" and "unfashionably dressed" and "bad at sports"  and a host of other things that--at least to my perception at the time--made classmates, family members, etc. unsure of how to deal with me and unwilling to try. Was I being overly sensitive? Quite possibly, but that's no longer relevant. The point is that these are the messages that Young Doug took in.

Some of the things that made me "odd" I tried to suppress, and others I tried to embrace. Neither method really prevented those messages from hurting.

Anyway, as I reflected on all those old messages, I likened how it felt to consider myself so unaccepted, rejected, and abandoned in that way to being dropped down a well. It was dark and dank and cold and very, very alone. And it sucked out loud.

So these were hurts that happened when I was a kid, and I'm a grown man now. Indeed I have been for quite a while. Why are these things still getting in my way? It hit me that the metaphor of the well is exactly the reason. 

When Young Doug got dropped down that well, he had the core of me--the part that wants and gives and receives full, open-hearted, unconditional love with him. And it's been down there with him ever since.

At first all he could focus on was the pain and fear and shame and loneliness of being stuck down there in the "dungeon" of that well. Over time, though, he realized that the stone walls of the well were also a fortress. As long as my heart was down there with him, it was relatively safe from further hurt. It was also kept isolated from any type of healing, but that didn't matter to Young Doug. All he knew was that what first seemed like a dungeon was also a fortress that protected him from further hurt. 

He got used to the dark and the dank, and to the hurts he already had. He actually grew attached to the "safety" he felt down there. He didn't notice or care that the old wounds were festering.

So now, Adult Doug could really use that heart, but my access to it is limited because it's down at the bottom of that well with Young Doug. What Young Doug sees as a dungeon turned fortress, Adult Doug sees as a prison for our heart. As you can see from the picture above, sometimes that loving heart can peek out--and sometimes hurt can get in. But it's difficult to get either to happen through that distant, narrow opening.

The other problem is that after so many years stuck (Adult Doug's perspective)/safe (Young Doug's perspective) down there, Young Doug has turned into a feral child. Anyone or anything who peers over the edge of the well appears as a dark and menacing figure. Any attempt to reach him--even to offer him comfort and healing, even by me--is met with vicious backlash. He's grown so acclimated to the well and so wild that he will do almost anything to "protect" his "safe" position down there.

But it does NOT work for me to have him down there, clutching so tightly to our heart in which all those old wounds are still festering. This was recently brought home to me yet again in rather spectacular fashion.

In order to live as I want, it is important to get him, and our heart, up from that well and to heal and integrate them both. It's the only way I see that I'll be able to give and receive the kind of love I want. It's the only way I see that I can stop having Young Doug sneak up out of the hole on his little commando missions, slip past my awareness, and lash out at anyone who gets too close. 

As long as he is down there, neither of us gets what we really want--even if he's forgotten that he wants it, and thinks he wants just to be left alone down there.

His dungeon/fortress/prison is strong, and he thoroughly protects himself even from me. He's very good at keeping everyone, including me, out (maybe especially me, since I'm the only one who can really bring him up out of there and he knows that--making me the greatest "threat" of all to the "safety" of his "fortress"). Nevertheless, there is nothing for it: I must find a way to get down there, bring him up out of that well and into the light, heal those festering hurts to our heart, and show him that he can trust that he doesn't have to lash out at me or at anyone who might actually love me--people he sees as a threat to his "security" down there. 

I'm not yet sure exactly how I'll reach him. What I suspect is that I'll be more successful in reaching him by coming at him with love than by trying to wrestle him to the ground. What I know is that there is no longer any workable option.  I must reach him, free him, and heal him. Damn it, I need my heart back, and I need it healed of all those festering, infantile wounds. I need an adult, workable, functioning, open heart. Not having that, especially at my age and with the trail of wreckage that lies behind me, is really, really getting in my way. And it's hurting other people. And neither of those is acceptable anymore.

So into the well I go. I'm probably going to get bitten and kicked and shoved and blocked. Even so, I have to persevere. Young Doug, my heart, and I are going up through that far off, tiny, bright hole up into the wide, bright world of the surface. The three of us--Young Doug, Adult Doug, and my heart--who start at the bottom of the well will be one when we reach the surface. There is no other acceptable result.