Subscriptions...[1:3?]
Was [trusted] (Historical note: StarFire == Wolfs_Daugher)
lwood warns her students faithfully that we'll get a First Class Tour of Our Issues when we get into Trancework.
I already knew that. That's more than half of why I dove in with such fervor, actually - cheaper than therapy, and the therapist is guaranteed to be at least as smart as the patient. A Healer ought to be healthier than the people they're trying to help, in any case.*
Well, it's been pretty interesting so far, so despite how much I dislike being high maintenance and mood swingy, I've been reasonably happy with the results. Well, Hrafnar before last we did a Tyrsblot, and, not being willing to make a promise I didn't even know how to keep (to be a better, more responsible grownup), I promised the next biggest bugaboo on my list: To attempt to conquer my Fear of The Dark before the dark of the year.
That is, before the Autumnal Equinox. Which, in terms of my calendar, meant before Faire started.
So Monday after the Seidhjallr meeting, I gathered my troops (Nithogg, Starfire6910, Lionessmoon, and LWood) and headed into my worst nightmare, and I fully admit to being utterly unprepared for what I got. You see, the only subscription I ever had was to MZB's Fantasy Magazine. I'm ok as long as my issues resemble the subscription. I went in braced for battle.
Instead, I got emptiness, loneliness, apathy, and true horror of my horrors... Boredom.
I realized what I wanted to do to try and conquer this fear rather suddenly in the middle of a working to help somebody else with their trouble of being lost in a blinding white mist - She'd described herself as knowing she was RIGHT on the edge of a great chasm, and that falling in would result in being carried away or torn apart by the rushing flood below.
This sounded so much like my own trouble with blinding Darkness, and standing at the edge of a huge pit where falling in would have resulted in my being eaten by the Dark. Somehow it came up that perhaps biting the bullet and deliberately diving into that rushing flood would be the only controlled way of losing control, and I immediately had the equivalent image of going back into my nightmare and jumping into the bowels of the Dark to see what happens when I come out the other side.
Well, I'm not quite brave or stupid enough to do this without a backup plan, and when I was young She-Ra and Rainbow Bright were who got me out of the Dark. Ok, I can easily replace She-Ra with Freya in my current idiom, which leaves Rainbow Bright...
...Who brings light to me in the darkness now? Ostara.
So I brought appropriate tokens for LionessMoon and StarFire to hold for me, being Freya/She-Ra and Ostara/Rainbow Bright respectively. Then I pondered who knows their way through the Darkness and who was around during the same time I was having these nightmares... Ghede. So I brought those beads as well, for Nithogg to hold. He was on the most difficult double, to be both the guide through the dark, representing it's advocates (the only remotely masculine, which is to say not distinctly feminine, roles in the nightmare), and lastly my Father, who was always there to banish fear and comfort me when I sleep-walked, hallucinated, or had night terrors as a child before my parents were divorced.
So my rescuers and guide in place, there was one task left to fulfill, and I didn't even realize what it was until LWood was there in front of me and we were ready to go. She had volunteered to help, but I knew that she was not appropriate to come in with me. Still, not wishing to leave her out, and knowing it was a sucky job, put quite possibly a very necessary one, I asked her to please sit outside the circle as a warder and gopher, in case some specific thing I had forgotten became very necessary in the middle of things, to bring me out of trouble. I was expecting a need for food or some such.
But when we were about to start, I realized what I actually needed her to do for me outside the circle. I needed to regress myself as far back as I possibly could to even reliably FIND the nightmare I needed to explore - I'd even brought a stuffed bunny meant to replace the "velveteen rabbit" I had as a child to help me find those parts of myself. But finding my inner 4 year old requires letting go of my outer grownup, and that means I need somebody trustworthy and steadfast needed to hold my grownup bits for me while I work, so that I can let them go. That was LWood.
This is getting long, so the actual work itself will go in a separate post, I guess...
--Ember--
*[Fair Warning/Disclaimer: Some things really should involve a trained therapist. I happen to know I'm not all that broken, and can afford to futz around in unprofessional territory, but that's because I don't really desperately need meds to sort out my brain chemistry so far.]
lwood warns her students faithfully that we'll get a First Class Tour of Our Issues when we get into Trancework.
I already knew that. That's more than half of why I dove in with such fervor, actually - cheaper than therapy, and the therapist is guaranteed to be at least as smart as the patient. A Healer ought to be healthier than the people they're trying to help, in any case.*
Well, it's been pretty interesting so far, so despite how much I dislike being high maintenance and mood swingy, I've been reasonably happy with the results. Well, Hrafnar before last we did a Tyrsblot, and, not being willing to make a promise I didn't even know how to keep (to be a better, more responsible grownup), I promised the next biggest bugaboo on my list: To attempt to conquer my Fear of The Dark before the dark of the year.
That is, before the Autumnal Equinox. Which, in terms of my calendar, meant before Faire started.
So Monday after the Seidhjallr meeting, I gathered my troops (Nithogg, Starfire6910, Lionessmoon, and LWood) and headed into my worst nightmare, and I fully admit to being utterly unprepared for what I got. You see, the only subscription I ever had was to MZB's Fantasy Magazine. I'm ok as long as my issues resemble the subscription. I went in braced for battle.
Instead, I got emptiness, loneliness, apathy, and true horror of my horrors... Boredom.
I realized what I wanted to do to try and conquer this fear rather suddenly in the middle of a working to help somebody else with their trouble of being lost in a blinding white mist - She'd described herself as knowing she was RIGHT on the edge of a great chasm, and that falling in would result in being carried away or torn apart by the rushing flood below.
This sounded so much like my own trouble with blinding Darkness, and standing at the edge of a huge pit where falling in would have resulted in my being eaten by the Dark. Somehow it came up that perhaps biting the bullet and deliberately diving into that rushing flood would be the only controlled way of losing control, and I immediately had the equivalent image of going back into my nightmare and jumping into the bowels of the Dark to see what happens when I come out the other side.
Well, I'm not quite brave or stupid enough to do this without a backup plan, and when I was young She-Ra and Rainbow Bright were who got me out of the Dark. Ok, I can easily replace She-Ra with Freya in my current idiom, which leaves Rainbow Bright...
...Who brings light to me in the darkness now? Ostara.
So I brought appropriate tokens for LionessMoon and StarFire to hold for me, being Freya/She-Ra and Ostara/Rainbow Bright respectively. Then I pondered who knows their way through the Darkness and who was around during the same time I was having these nightmares... Ghede. So I brought those beads as well, for Nithogg to hold. He was on the most difficult double, to be both the guide through the dark, representing it's advocates (the only remotely masculine, which is to say not distinctly feminine, roles in the nightmare), and lastly my Father, who was always there to banish fear and comfort me when I sleep-walked, hallucinated, or had night terrors as a child before my parents were divorced.
So my rescuers and guide in place, there was one task left to fulfill, and I didn't even realize what it was until LWood was there in front of me and we were ready to go. She had volunteered to help, but I knew that she was not appropriate to come in with me. Still, not wishing to leave her out, and knowing it was a sucky job, put quite possibly a very necessary one, I asked her to please sit outside the circle as a warder and gopher, in case some specific thing I had forgotten became very necessary in the middle of things, to bring me out of trouble. I was expecting a need for food or some such.
But when we were about to start, I realized what I actually needed her to do for me outside the circle. I needed to regress myself as far back as I possibly could to even reliably FIND the nightmare I needed to explore - I'd even brought a stuffed bunny meant to replace the "velveteen rabbit" I had as a child to help me find those parts of myself. But finding my inner 4 year old requires letting go of my outer grownup, and that means I need somebody trustworthy and steadfast needed to hold my grownup bits for me while I work, so that I can let them go. That was LWood.
This is getting long, so the actual work itself will go in a separate post, I guess...
--Ember--
*[Fair Warning/Disclaimer: Some things really should involve a trained therapist. I happen to know I'm not all that broken, and can afford to futz around in unprofessional territory, but that's because I don't really desperately need meds to sort out my brain chemistry so far.]