Alan Gordon June 9 Drop-In Chat with Alan Gordon, LCSW

[BruceMC]

Yes, Alan, just recognizing all these imaginary enemies I've been doing battle with for years and years as projections (substitutes?) for my conflicted parents' personalities as I experienced them as a little kid comes as quite a revelation. Would have been a lot simpler if I'd figured it out when I was about 20 though!

 

[yb44]

With 11 days having elapsed since the seminar, we've all had a chance for Alan's ideas to sink in a little bit. I'm curious, what ideas have stuck with you the most? Have you tried any of the techniques that he mentioned, such as feeling feelings in the body or feeling anger toward the inner bully? How did the ideas work for you? Have you modified them at all when applying them to your own life?

I have spent a great deal of time thinking about this and witnessing what comes up. I can recall too many traumatic moments in my life and tend to play them like a film in my head. If I were to tell anyone about these experiences I would surely have the same flat effect to my voice as 'Annie' did, as if I were telling a story about someone else.

One of these experiences was my very first memory. It may be distorted as I was quite young, still sleeping in a crib. It involved not wanting to take a nap, jumping in my crib, falling over the bar onto a hard floor and landing splat on my chin. I had to be taken to the ER.

Why can't I let this memory go? I sat in my car before a work meeting the other day and tried to feel the feelings that I may have felt as that toddler. My mother was very annoyed with me it seemed. There were no soothing words. I believe she complained about having to drop everything to take me to the hospital. I recall seeing the back of head when i was in the back seat of the car and hearing her go on about it all. What I believe I embodied: I am a nuisance. I get in the way. I ruin people's plans. I shouldn't exist. Everyone will be happier without me.

The other significant moment was when I was in the waiting room. A little boy came up to me and asked me my name. I replied angrily, "NOTHING!!!!" The little boy ran to his mother and said, "Mommy, that girl's name is Nothing!?" And I truly felt like I was a nothing, again that I shouldn't exist. I tried to get into that feeling. It is terrifying that I was so young and already felt that I didn't deserve to live, that I would be better off as nothing, non-existent. I think I must have spent my whole life seeking evidence to support this view. These are life limiting beliefs. Perhaps this is a clue as to why I can't let this memory go.

I now understand why I struggled with journalling when I first found the wiki. I know why I had pain and muscle weakness whenever I tried to write. It wasn't so much about writing the words, it was about feeling those feelings as I wrote the words. I would like to go through the structured educational programme now. I think it's time judging from the aches, pain and stiffness I have had over the last couple of weeks, despite ignoring them and getting on with whatever I wanted to do.

I also wondered today about all the potential bullies I have inside my head. My mother is the ringleader. She and my father were my original oppressors. But there have been so many others since then.

 

[veronica73]

That's really sad, yb44 For myself, I have found that feeling the feelings has been one of the major things that's helping me recover from TMS. (((hugs)))

 

[BruceMC]

It's probably no coincidence yb44 that your story about an early childhood traumatic experience jogged my memory and made me add a new one to my list, one I didn't remember before. Well, I was about 6 years old and laying flat on my bed in my room when my mother came in and tried to get me to go out with her and my father, maybe it was for dinner in downtown San Francisco, can't remember. However, I didn't want to go with my "oppressors" and clung hard to the rail on the back of the bed as my mother pulled me by my feet. I let go suddenly and my mother pulled me all the way down the bed so that the back of my head bounced on the floor. I remember it was sore all evening and I had a nice little knot at the point of impact for a while afterwards. Never went to ER, but it sure did hurt! Perhaps, this was my first attempt to resist my mother's attempts to control me? I know I didn't want to go out while they had a fight in front of me and would rather have stayed at home alone in my room. I know at the time I was starting to resent my parents' constant fighting because then they didn't pay any attention to me as an individual, but rather as an extension of their ongoing conflict. Probably my first attempt likewise to retreat into the private world of my own imagination where I could exist as a separate individual with my own wants and needs apart from their continuous conflict.

Sure sounds like part of the origin of my internal bully, don't you think? Your hitting you chin sounds like it was an equally important moment in your development as a separate individual who was worthy and insisted on having rights of its own. It must be a real shocker for parents when they discover that their child, who was at first simply an extension of their personalities (and bodies), starts talking back and insisting on their own identity.

I don't play that old traumatic episode back in my head like you. But your experience sure shook my brain and made me remember another important episode in my childhood that I would have ordinarily not paid much attention to. Another one I've remembered due to my TMS work here on the Wiki is the time I had a lazy-eye operation when I was 6 years old, came to alone in the hospital, and ripped the eye patch off and had to wear a straight-jacket all night alone in a locked crib. I find it fascinating how much impact such early experiences have on your subsequent emotional development, yet how often they stay buried in your memory and remain inaccessible until something makes you turn inward and look backward deep inside yourself.

Probably best that you can recall this chin banging episode so clearly. Easier to work with it now. Good luck!