Changes
If I have left this journal entry open, I have named you cairdes, which means friend in Gaelic. There will be a lot of Irish Gaelic in my future, and it's been a while since I studied any language. Why Gaelic? It's part of the people from which I came. I am almost 100% Irish ancestry.
As soon as I work this all out, I have been thinking more and more of changing my legal name, to be more in keeping with who I am becoming.
The chaos in my head is working itself out, and continues to row more in one direction than all over the place. The Wellbutrin makes the journey tolerable. There have been days when the urge to make the final run away from everything has been really bad. But that's not so much anymore. What's sustained me: my faith, my promises, my family, my friends, my work, all separate and together.
What I have learned over the past few months:
I am not quite a dual personality, not in any sense of a multiple personality disorder although the functions of the two parts of the personality operate interestingly enough like the dissociative disorder it is now named. There are two parts, and for convenience sake I have named them. I have found it useful to address each part separately. One I have named Monkey and the other because she is older and closer to a truer sense of self, Caitriona. These have meaning later on.
I may have some sort of reactive attachment disorder, which is a fancy name for saying I didn't connect up with my parents on an emotional level nor could they connect up with me when I was a child. Attachment disorder in an adult can manifest itself as idealizing of others, compulsive caregiving, strong desire for partner to reciprocate in a relationship, overinvestment of emotions in a relationship,desire for extensive contact and declarations of affections, perceives relationships as imbalanced, dependence on relationship, relationship is primary method by which to experience a sense of security, sensitive to rejection, extreme emotions, jealous, views self as unlovable, tendency towards depression / suicidal ideation. It first manifests as a child as anger (I had tantrums /rages until the age of 14), lack of impulse control, self destructive behavior, oppositional behavior, cannot tolerate limits, irresponsible, bossy, hyperactivity, there's a whole list of things might have fit me as a child. Certainly I did not think I was such a bad child. I had the impression everyone else did. My father threatened he would need to "send me away" because of my behaviors, and I think this was the most single, devastating thing a parent can ever say to a child. At least, I still remember it almost forty years later.
The detachment could either be explained by my periods of severe illness when I was two (one of my earliest memories was being chased around by someone with alcohol laden towels in a crib, presumably to take down my fever due to pneumonia) Either that or the consistent domestic issues between my mother and father. I probably was the only eight year old to want my parents to get a divorce. And then there WAS the divorce and my mothers verbal / physical abuse which no one would ever admit to. I wonder if there is a connection between depressed parents and reactive attachment disorder.
This is the origin of the "box". Some of you know about the box, and a simple way of putting it is I can put feelings out there but can't feel anything in. The part locked in the box is Monkey, who as far as I can tell is about seven years old, strangely enough about the age my father was threatening to ship me off. Funny, I had a therapy session about twelve years ago where the first thing the therapist did was to tell me this was about my father. I never had another one because of the rage I felt at her telling me this. Hell no, I thought, this has nothing to do with my father, no way.
I may have been premature on this issue. I'm finding It has a lot to do with my father, why I seek out emotional contact with men who are emotionally unavailable (at least to me), why I think my feelings are subordinate to theirs, why I second guess just about every feeling I have, why I interpret reactions from others in a negative way first. It works with other people as well, but is hardest in cases of intimacy. The child part known as Monkey who is locked in the box was always afraid of abandonment, and the part who would most act out much as a child who cannot communicate, who does not know how to communicate and the fears finally became too overwhelming when Caitriona came into the picture.
Change can be awesome, but it can terribly frightening when you've lived your whole life one way and need to move on. Wicca has been good for me because I no longer have strict boundaries imposed on me by my Roman Catholic faith, and removing boundaries for Monkey was hard. She needs boundaries to operate. She doesn't like sudden change. Truth be told she doesn't like change at all because then she would have to acknowledge the way she operates doesn't work for her, or for anybody else who knows her. It's like trying to have meaningful relationship with a seven year old. Good luck with that. But there are times when Caitriona has had to step in. It's hard for her to gets a word in when there is so much emotion going all over the place. That continual fear of loss would be enough to rattle anyone. Caitriona is the one who makes adult functioning possible - job responsibilities, parenting, being a partner - and who functions as Monkey's older sister. The positive experiences I have had have created her, someone who is maybe outside the box but has no way of getting Monkey out of the box until she grows up. Things used to be much worse for me. In the last few years I am much more confident socially and more able to get along with people, which is by the way the goal of attachment therapy, to provide those positive attachment experiences.
So now understanding some of the dynamics (and I still need to work the rest of it out) I am saddened by the loss of time it took to understand all this. What has been happening is the understanding of there was no good or evil parents like there was no good or evil child. My realization that the younger part of me has been thinking of herself as "bad" and stopped denying that part of me felt bad (avoidance has been my life to date) was not as tough as I thought. Of course I cried, because no child wants to think of themselves as bad. I wasn't, really. So the extension is that people are not always all good or all evil, and not always out to get me. It's amazing how much effort I think people put in to think something is wrong with what I have done or said, always needing to overanalyze conversations to see if I've screwed up.
So I am tired of all this energy wasted in overanalyzing and testing and whatever comes from the fear. I have decided not to have as much fear. I have thought for a long time my feelings were subordinate to others, and I am tired of feeling that too. We're kind of working on a merge now. Monkey's figured out things might not be so bad out of the box, and Catriona's going to be her usual understanding self until she grows up a bit. Monkey has her good qualities, the passion, the energy, and the love, and the things which keep me young, the sense of humor, the willingness to experiment and even to be silly about it. Things have already started changing. I no longer have expectations of needing people to give me love; this will happen or it will not. I will honor my feelings, though. I'm not going to sit there and analyze whether my feelings are "appropriate". I have them, and that is enough. I can say I am confident in my boundaries, thanks to the adult part of me. The young one's going to have some learning to do on the whole boundary thing. And so, if I say I love you, it is what is in me to say and there is no requirement for anyone to do anything about it. I am going to be trying to put love out there without delusions (thank you, Buddhist temple) and try to be less worried about being abandoned and receiving love when giving it in the first place. And not having expectations of being rejected all the time in various relationships is in a word, awesome. Think of all the time it will free to be the person I think I am meant to be, a whole lot more spiritual and less afraid. I need to trust myself more, and eventually it will come.
So if you really have sat and read all this and come to some understanding of what is moving in my life and why eventually I might change my name, this is it and I can say to all of you is "Is tu mo ghra" and mean it. You'll be hearing it a lot more often, and I don't think I will be apologizing for it.
Oh, and I am thinking about the name "Rowan Young". Rowan is to honor my craft; Young is to honor my family which after all are the most important parts of my life.
As soon as I work this all out, I have been thinking more and more of changing my legal name, to be more in keeping with who I am becoming.
The chaos in my head is working itself out, and continues to row more in one direction than all over the place. The Wellbutrin makes the journey tolerable. There have been days when the urge to make the final run away from everything has been really bad. But that's not so much anymore. What's sustained me: my faith, my promises, my family, my friends, my work, all separate and together.
What I have learned over the past few months:
I am not quite a dual personality, not in any sense of a multiple personality disorder although the functions of the two parts of the personality operate interestingly enough like the dissociative disorder it is now named. There are two parts, and for convenience sake I have named them. I have found it useful to address each part separately. One I have named Monkey and the other because she is older and closer to a truer sense of self, Caitriona. These have meaning later on.
I may have some sort of reactive attachment disorder, which is a fancy name for saying I didn't connect up with my parents on an emotional level nor could they connect up with me when I was a child. Attachment disorder in an adult can manifest itself as idealizing of others, compulsive caregiving, strong desire for partner to reciprocate in a relationship, overinvestment of emotions in a relationship,desire for extensive contact and declarations of affections, perceives relationships as imbalanced, dependence on relationship, relationship is primary method by which to experience a sense of security, sensitive to rejection, extreme emotions, jealous, views self as unlovable, tendency towards depression / suicidal ideation. It first manifests as a child as anger (I had tantrums /rages until the age of 14), lack of impulse control, self destructive behavior, oppositional behavior, cannot tolerate limits, irresponsible, bossy, hyperactivity, there's a whole list of things might have fit me as a child. Certainly I did not think I was such a bad child. I had the impression everyone else did. My father threatened he would need to "send me away" because of my behaviors, and I think this was the most single, devastating thing a parent can ever say to a child. At least, I still remember it almost forty years later.
The detachment could either be explained by my periods of severe illness when I was two (one of my earliest memories was being chased around by someone with alcohol laden towels in a crib, presumably to take down my fever due to pneumonia) Either that or the consistent domestic issues between my mother and father. I probably was the only eight year old to want my parents to get a divorce. And then there WAS the divorce and my mothers verbal / physical abuse which no one would ever admit to. I wonder if there is a connection between depressed parents and reactive attachment disorder.
This is the origin of the "box". Some of you know about the box, and a simple way of putting it is I can put feelings out there but can't feel anything in. The part locked in the box is Monkey, who as far as I can tell is about seven years old, strangely enough about the age my father was threatening to ship me off. Funny, I had a therapy session about twelve years ago where the first thing the therapist did was to tell me this was about my father. I never had another one because of the rage I felt at her telling me this. Hell no, I thought, this has nothing to do with my father, no way.
I may have been premature on this issue. I'm finding It has a lot to do with my father, why I seek out emotional contact with men who are emotionally unavailable (at least to me), why I think my feelings are subordinate to theirs, why I second guess just about every feeling I have, why I interpret reactions from others in a negative way first. It works with other people as well, but is hardest in cases of intimacy. The child part known as Monkey who is locked in the box was always afraid of abandonment, and the part who would most act out much as a child who cannot communicate, who does not know how to communicate and the fears finally became too overwhelming when Caitriona came into the picture.
Change can be awesome, but it can terribly frightening when you've lived your whole life one way and need to move on. Wicca has been good for me because I no longer have strict boundaries imposed on me by my Roman Catholic faith, and removing boundaries for Monkey was hard. She needs boundaries to operate. She doesn't like sudden change. Truth be told she doesn't like change at all because then she would have to acknowledge the way she operates doesn't work for her, or for anybody else who knows her. It's like trying to have meaningful relationship with a seven year old. Good luck with that. But there are times when Caitriona has had to step in. It's hard for her to gets a word in when there is so much emotion going all over the place. That continual fear of loss would be enough to rattle anyone. Caitriona is the one who makes adult functioning possible - job responsibilities, parenting, being a partner - and who functions as Monkey's older sister. The positive experiences I have had have created her, someone who is maybe outside the box but has no way of getting Monkey out of the box until she grows up. Things used to be much worse for me. In the last few years I am much more confident socially and more able to get along with people, which is by the way the goal of attachment therapy, to provide those positive attachment experiences.
So now understanding some of the dynamics (and I still need to work the rest of it out) I am saddened by the loss of time it took to understand all this. What has been happening is the understanding of there was no good or evil parents like there was no good or evil child. My realization that the younger part of me has been thinking of herself as "bad" and stopped denying that part of me felt bad (avoidance has been my life to date) was not as tough as I thought. Of course I cried, because no child wants to think of themselves as bad. I wasn't, really. So the extension is that people are not always all good or all evil, and not always out to get me. It's amazing how much effort I think people put in to think something is wrong with what I have done or said, always needing to overanalyze conversations to see if I've screwed up.
So I am tired of all this energy wasted in overanalyzing and testing and whatever comes from the fear. I have decided not to have as much fear. I have thought for a long time my feelings were subordinate to others, and I am tired of feeling that too. We're kind of working on a merge now. Monkey's figured out things might not be so bad out of the box, and Catriona's going to be her usual understanding self until she grows up a bit. Monkey has her good qualities, the passion, the energy, and the love, and the things which keep me young, the sense of humor, the willingness to experiment and even to be silly about it. Things have already started changing. I no longer have expectations of needing people to give me love; this will happen or it will not. I will honor my feelings, though. I'm not going to sit there and analyze whether my feelings are "appropriate". I have them, and that is enough. I can say I am confident in my boundaries, thanks to the adult part of me. The young one's going to have some learning to do on the whole boundary thing. And so, if I say I love you, it is what is in me to say and there is no requirement for anyone to do anything about it. I am going to be trying to put love out there without delusions (thank you, Buddhist temple) and try to be less worried about being abandoned and receiving love when giving it in the first place. And not having expectations of being rejected all the time in various relationships is in a word, awesome. Think of all the time it will free to be the person I think I am meant to be, a whole lot more spiritual and less afraid. I need to trust myself more, and eventually it will come.
So if you really have sat and read all this and come to some understanding of what is moving in my life and why eventually I might change my name, this is it and I can say to all of you is "Is tu mo ghra" and mean it. You'll be hearing it a lot more often, and I don't think I will be apologizing for it.
Oh, and I am thinking about the name "Rowan Young". Rowan is to honor my craft; Young is to honor my family which after all are the most important parts of my life.