"A life lived in fear is a life half-lived."
Matthew asked at lunch about the night terrors.
The breakup was only part of the trigger; the bigger factor was understanding what it was behind the failure of the relationship, at least on my end of the equation (my speculations on Matthew's role and responsibilities of the demise of the marriage are between Matthew and myself should he ask, or me and my therapist). Specifically, the breakup was the catastrophic catalyst for looking at the impact fear played in that failure, as well as being a defining influence in the bigger picture(s) of my life.
A good friend recently wrote in a comment to another post of mine, "My processing started out of my deepest pain, deepest grief, greatest loss. Nothing smaller would have been capable of shoving my ego aside and forcing me to remake myself." The nightmares are, I think, one way in which the conscious ego gets shoved aside, or perhaps "stripped down" is a better analogy. My brain is busy exploring a mindboggling array of permutations of fear for no other reason than because I don't understand the ongoing impact of these ancient experiences, but clearly they're still following me around and tripping me up. There's only so much conscious processing I can do before the Intellectual Brain steps in and shunts the processing power off in other directions because Being Afraid simply Must Not Be Tolerated. Fear as an experience is something we consciously bury or mask in order to remain plausibly functional - I've been so afraid for so long of being vulnerable, of rocking the boat, of being dependent, of pushing away, of being happy/not-happy, of being disappointed in my investments (or disappointed BY my relational investments specifically) - that I've become nigh-unto-a-god at masquerading fear as anything but. I intellectualize it and rationalize it as anything else, including rage, but all of my reactions when you know what to look for point to being desperately afraid as the actual core state.
Something Gloria and I have been working on that I haven't committed to in writing (here) much is the idea that in succumbing to fear, I lose my voice and the sense that I am being heard. In my head it seems like I'm being drowned out by other people's choices and values, which isn't to say that doesn't happen somewhat, but what happens is more likely to be that as my fear of intimacy rises, my sense of Self shrinks (imagine a small child shrinking into a corner or under the blankets to get away from the Big Bad Scary in the room, and you'll know what it feels like), and as I get further into de-Selfing in any situation, the smaller and less effective my voice gets until I just stop talking about the things which are most closely tied with the fear.
My fear is still the elephant in the room, I'm still reacting to it in ways that have impact on those around me who can't see the elephant but know *something* is in here with me, and in time we *ALL* grow twisted and pained around that thing that touches me and moves me but that I cannot acknowledge. My reactivity becomes a thing other people have to choose to deal with or ignore, to capitulate to or try to manage (and don't ask me how infuriating it is to feel like I'm being punished for other people's decisions to capitulate; that's an exploration for a day when I'm not already peeling the scabs off to show you the gaping, oozing wound underneath).
There is a phrase I learned some time ago, I forget now the context, about "getting out of my own way". Given how much of my life has been spent either living in a state of gradient fears or trying to shore up defences against them, it's no wonder that my ability to confront the shit that has pushed me out of another relationship only gets so far during my conscious hours. Letting the subconscious run the processing is not the most effective way to handle anything - if there are take-away lessons I should be retaining from my dreams, it would be helpful if I could actually remember the dreams on waking, no? - but I haven't yet learned how to manage the conscious connection to the fears when awake. Which is not to say I don't feel afraid when I'm awake, but it's not the same as the unmitigated terror that wakes me up 1-4 times a night most nights lately. I keep hoping that being able to write about these fears would help the issue of finding a voice for them, but Gloria suspects this is the wrong way to go about letting the primal nature of fear work itself out; primal states and cognitive thought processes (including language and grammatical structures inherent in the act of writing things down) are inherently at odds with each other. Trying to open a more primal connection that allows for that primitive non-verbal state can happen in very specific contexts, but not nearly often enough to keep up with the deluge of experience my brain is trying to sift and shift.
Ergo, the night terrors, the only other reasonable recourse left to an overloaded brain. I am never more vulnerable than when I sleep; I am never more out of my own way than when I sleep. Night after night I am being stripped of my vaunted cognitive superpowers and subjected to abject terrors I cannot control and cannot stop except by waking, and even then, the emotional peril follows me into my waking state and means I have to work far enough through it to calm down before going back to sleep is even an option. In sleep, the construct of my ego is paper-thin and destroyed nightly, sometimes multiple times a night. If I can learn how to survive the fear - no, that's not quite right; if I can learn to be with the fear instead of trying to vanquish or eradicate it OR let it over-run my life from the inside - then I stand a chance of being able to find a similar balance in my waking world between the Needs of Ego (including the whole "special little snowflake" suite of issues) and the desires for the intimate connection I want in a primary relationship.
But the getting out of my own way is crucial; the need to strip off, and keep stripping off, the more "socially-acceptable" veneers over my fears so that I can just let fear be fear and face it as such, is probably the paramount lesson in this entire phase of what S called, "remaking myself". It's hard, though; in another set of writings (on- and off-line) I'm contemplating the notion that in our own way, some of us raised in the right kinds of circumstances become addicted, after a fashion, to the fear state to the point of not knowing how to live without it. As I've moved away from my own historical DramaQueenedness into a different realm of fear-based intimate instabilities (the reactivity is far lower, and there is more conscious awareness of the impact of one's reactivity and the ownership over one's own choices and actions), I've come to understand how much work it is to both learn the process, and enact the process, of letting go of whatever it is on which our fears are based. And clearly, I'm still not getting it right for all the work that's gotten me this far.
But there it is; having implicit reached the choice of facing my fears head-on rather than lose anyone or anything else I love because of them, I have apparently implicitly agreed to be emotionally traumatized night after fucking night while one part of my psyche shoves another part out of the way and goes diving after a lifetime's worth of emotional trauma and forcing me to confront at least the emotional equivalent of the trauma if not specifically-reenacted dream excerpts (which may be a small blessing in disguise). I have no clue how to remake myself on the basis of this exercise, nor do I have any insight whatsoever into how long it's going to take to get out the other side, assuming there is one. I've got no way of enforcing any kind of exit criteria (a bitter irony: being trapped in a painful change state by something I cannot control and without any conscious input into the exit criteria from that state; Matthew might appreciate the irony even if no-one else does, though the saving grace of his moving out is that I'm not waking up both of us with this stuff now). There is nothing for me to do but accept that this is how things need to be for a while, and accept the fact that it doesn't matter whether I'm consciously good with it or not. The work I couldn't do in a more conscious and timely fashion will now be done in a sloppy and inconvenient manner contingent upon the whim and will of something other than my constructed ego.
Yeah, okay Universe; I get it. Karmic payback's a bitch. If I can find a way to give a more effective voice to these primal fears, will you let me sleep at night for a change? I don't care how long it takes to get to that point, I just want to know it's at least an option, or I'm not gonna make it.
The breakup was only part of the trigger; the bigger factor was understanding what it was behind the failure of the relationship, at least on my end of the equation (my speculations on Matthew's role and responsibilities of the demise of the marriage are between Matthew and myself should he ask, or me and my therapist). Specifically, the breakup was the catastrophic catalyst for looking at the impact fear played in that failure, as well as being a defining influence in the bigger picture(s) of my life.
A good friend recently wrote in a comment to another post of mine, "My processing started out of my deepest pain, deepest grief, greatest loss. Nothing smaller would have been capable of shoving my ego aside and forcing me to remake myself." The nightmares are, I think, one way in which the conscious ego gets shoved aside, or perhaps "stripped down" is a better analogy. My brain is busy exploring a mindboggling array of permutations of fear for no other reason than because I don't understand the ongoing impact of these ancient experiences, but clearly they're still following me around and tripping me up. There's only so much conscious processing I can do before the Intellectual Brain steps in and shunts the processing power off in other directions because Being Afraid simply Must Not Be Tolerated. Fear as an experience is something we consciously bury or mask in order to remain plausibly functional - I've been so afraid for so long of being vulnerable, of rocking the boat, of being dependent, of pushing away, of being happy/not-happy, of being disappointed in my investments (or disappointed BY my relational investments specifically) - that I've become nigh-unto-a-god at masquerading fear as anything but. I intellectualize it and rationalize it as anything else, including rage, but all of my reactions when you know what to look for point to being desperately afraid as the actual core state.
Something Gloria and I have been working on that I haven't committed to in writing (here) much is the idea that in succumbing to fear, I lose my voice and the sense that I am being heard. In my head it seems like I'm being drowned out by other people's choices and values, which isn't to say that doesn't happen somewhat, but what happens is more likely to be that as my fear of intimacy rises, my sense of Self shrinks (imagine a small child shrinking into a corner or under the blankets to get away from the Big Bad Scary in the room, and you'll know what it feels like), and as I get further into de-Selfing in any situation, the smaller and less effective my voice gets until I just stop talking about the things which are most closely tied with the fear.
My fear is still the elephant in the room, I'm still reacting to it in ways that have impact on those around me who can't see the elephant but know *something* is in here with me, and in time we *ALL* grow twisted and pained around that thing that touches me and moves me but that I cannot acknowledge. My reactivity becomes a thing other people have to choose to deal with or ignore, to capitulate to or try to manage (and don't ask me how infuriating it is to feel like I'm being punished for other people's decisions to capitulate; that's an exploration for a day when I'm not already peeling the scabs off to show you the gaping, oozing wound underneath).
There is a phrase I learned some time ago, I forget now the context, about "getting out of my own way". Given how much of my life has been spent either living in a state of gradient fears or trying to shore up defences against them, it's no wonder that my ability to confront the shit that has pushed me out of another relationship only gets so far during my conscious hours. Letting the subconscious run the processing is not the most effective way to handle anything - if there are take-away lessons I should be retaining from my dreams, it would be helpful if I could actually remember the dreams on waking, no? - but I haven't yet learned how to manage the conscious connection to the fears when awake. Which is not to say I don't feel afraid when I'm awake, but it's not the same as the unmitigated terror that wakes me up 1-4 times a night most nights lately. I keep hoping that being able to write about these fears would help the issue of finding a voice for them, but Gloria suspects this is the wrong way to go about letting the primal nature of fear work itself out; primal states and cognitive thought processes (including language and grammatical structures inherent in the act of writing things down) are inherently at odds with each other. Trying to open a more primal connection that allows for that primitive non-verbal state can happen in very specific contexts, but not nearly often enough to keep up with the deluge of experience my brain is trying to sift and shift.
Ergo, the night terrors, the only other reasonable recourse left to an overloaded brain. I am never more vulnerable than when I sleep; I am never more out of my own way than when I sleep. Night after night I am being stripped of my vaunted cognitive superpowers and subjected to abject terrors I cannot control and cannot stop except by waking, and even then, the emotional peril follows me into my waking state and means I have to work far enough through it to calm down before going back to sleep is even an option. In sleep, the construct of my ego is paper-thin and destroyed nightly, sometimes multiple times a night. If I can learn how to survive the fear - no, that's not quite right; if I can learn to be with the fear instead of trying to vanquish or eradicate it OR let it over-run my life from the inside - then I stand a chance of being able to find a similar balance in my waking world between the Needs of Ego (including the whole "special little snowflake" suite of issues) and the desires for the intimate connection I want in a primary relationship.
But the getting out of my own way is crucial; the need to strip off, and keep stripping off, the more "socially-acceptable" veneers over my fears so that I can just let fear be fear and face it as such, is probably the paramount lesson in this entire phase of what S called, "remaking myself". It's hard, though; in another set of writings (on- and off-line) I'm contemplating the notion that in our own way, some of us raised in the right kinds of circumstances become addicted, after a fashion, to the fear state to the point of not knowing how to live without it. As I've moved away from my own historical DramaQueenedness into a different realm of fear-based intimate instabilities (the reactivity is far lower, and there is more conscious awareness of the impact of one's reactivity and the ownership over one's own choices and actions), I've come to understand how much work it is to both learn the process, and enact the process, of letting go of whatever it is on which our fears are based. And clearly, I'm still not getting it right for all the work that's gotten me this far.
But there it is; having implicit reached the choice of facing my fears head-on rather than lose anyone or anything else I love because of them, I have apparently implicitly agreed to be emotionally traumatized night after fucking night while one part of my psyche shoves another part out of the way and goes diving after a lifetime's worth of emotional trauma and forcing me to confront at least the emotional equivalent of the trauma if not specifically-reenacted dream excerpts (which may be a small blessing in disguise). I have no clue how to remake myself on the basis of this exercise, nor do I have any insight whatsoever into how long it's going to take to get out the other side, assuming there is one. I've got no way of enforcing any kind of exit criteria (a bitter irony: being trapped in a painful change state by something I cannot control and without any conscious input into the exit criteria from that state; Matthew might appreciate the irony even if no-one else does, though the saving grace of his moving out is that I'm not waking up both of us with this stuff now). There is nothing for me to do but accept that this is how things need to be for a while, and accept the fact that it doesn't matter whether I'm consciously good with it or not. The work I couldn't do in a more conscious and timely fashion will now be done in a sloppy and inconvenient manner contingent upon the whim and will of something other than my constructed ego.
Yeah, okay Universe; I get it. Karmic payback's a bitch. If I can find a way to give a more effective voice to these primal fears, will you let me sleep at night for a change? I don't care how long it takes to get to that point, I just want to know it's at least an option, or I'm not gonna make it.