When I was growing up they let the lunatics run the asylum and both of my parents looked very good doing it. They themselves reflections of their own upbringing, environment and time in history. Value was placed on how things looked. Emotional connection was nowhere on the radar, nor was it really a sign of the times either. I was the only flaw in the photo. Borrowing one of my mothers favorite sayings, “It’s not how you feel it’s how you look.” My mother. I love and forgive both my parents who are now dead. They definitely fucked up as most people do and they were wonderful in their own rights as well. Some people seem to fuck up worse than others. I consider myself the some worse than others type. The long sad tale that was the story of my life started to change the day I found my 23 year old son Michael dead on the couch.
Through the 20+ years I was in AA I knew people whose childhoods were horrendous and mine in no way compared to theirs. My heart has always gone out to them. This is not about childhood, it’s about the impact mine had on me in regards to how I felt about myself, what I came to believe about myself and how those beliefs harmed me and my children. I believed I was broken, fractured and defective, I’d been told that I had been since birth according to my mother. I know today that what we are never breaks, never grows old and never dies; that seems to ring a bell from somewhere. It is Trust in this Truth that reconciles the opposites that we are and ends our duality.
Regardless of being in recovery and having a therapist for over 20 years, I was broken and harmed my children; the most beloved beings to me in the universe and now my son is dead. Hopefully my story will resonate along with other stories influencing the Zeitgeist of our age in hopes that others might understand that if you are blind to the Light you yourself are, you cannot reflect it back to your children. Things that are blocked from the Light become shadows, broken parents raising broken children, broken squared as I like to call it. The blind spot in the compulsion of addiction is that I hated myself and I didn’t know it. The ego maniac with an inferiority complex. Self hatred, not inferiority. Dr. Jonice Webb writes on childhood emotional neglect in her book Running on Empty. She speaks to these blind spots and why we don’t remember. https://drjonicewebb.com/cen-tips/ She writes about becoming disconnected from how we feel. Like blind people who cannot conceive of darkness or light; when you have never experienced emotional attunement or what unconditional love feels like you don’t recognize it. Nor do you miss something you have never had. I was trying to drink myself whole with poison. Trying to fix and kill myself at the same time. Interesting concept considering that the broken woman that I was had to die in order to start becoming the gifted woman that I am. A human being who knows that she is in some way a manifestation of the Energy of Life, a reflection of Light as we all are.
Being the scapegoated child of a narcissistic mother, I believed everything she said for 56 years, that I was defective and broken and the problem in our family. My mother switched the designated patient from her to me, fairly textbook I understand. Too sensitive, smart, serious, over excitable. Empathy beyond my years. I remember asking my mother as a small child, if we came across someone with a physical disability “Why would that happen to some people it seems so unfair? She would reply, ” What is wrong with you and why must you look at such depressing shit.” So much for asynchronous development or value for a child that has empathy and sensitivity that belies her years. The odd man out in my own family. Brings images of Legally Blond having Sylvia Platte as a daughter.
I was to find the “broken defect” that I was after my Spiritual Experience on 7-7-18 in Kazimeriez Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. The gifted. What a kick in the ass when I found his theory and not only saw myself described in detail, but most of the people that I had known through my years in AA as well. Could there be evolutionary purpose he postulates for the sensitive creative non conformist driven by anxiety? That your 19th nervous breakdown indeed has purpose. Post Traumatic Growth. Global disintegration the method, annihilation then reformation at a higher level. This guy is my hero, and he was RIGHT!!! Dabrwowski doesn’t seem to have quite the range of audience as Jung but he deserves the utmost acknowledgement for believing in Humanity and his dedication to his work through his own suffering. Were it not for him I would not have found myself and I am personally grateful.
Moving from one end of the spectrum to the other. From broken to whole, from sickness to health, from medicated to healed, synchronizing with that which defies synchronization, Nature. Let go of control and Trust. Trust Life. Trust that you are a part of an Energy which defies human understanding and your thinking is more detrimental than not in this process. Trust the Energy that you are and accept yourself and life moment by moment. I believe the overly sensitive feel more because there IS MORE. “An Energy which underlies all existence according to Physicist David Bohm.”https://www.infinitepotential.com/blog/
It is the Energy of Life that essentially is us and everything else in our universe. Trusting in this energy and self acceptance moment by moment, knowing that you are a part of everything and in essence everything is a part of you.(Thank you Alan Watts.) Completely not understandable to me except for one point. The Energy of Life is NOT a human construct. Everything here including us is quarks and electrons. We will not figure it out because it is not ours to figure out, it is only to be trusted. The only way to do that is to relinquish control and self acceptance moment by moment. Finding and learning to trust the Light that you are. Giving up your own wants to be the Light that you were born to be; this is what synchronizes you with Nature. The only known in the equation is that this is the Energy of Life and Unconditional Love. The Energy that I defer to that each one of us are and are a part of. By knowing who and what you are. A human being that through evolution is able to reflect upon his own experiences and in doing so finds that that he himself is indeed a Manifestation of the Energy of Life. Reza Aslan in his excellent book “God” comes up with a similar summation. This Energy is not a human construct and is able to synchronize things humanity cannot. Such as broken, dual people. It is in the acknowledgement of what you are; in some way the manifestation of the Energy of life. Enfold and manifest implicate and explicate order, these are the principles of physics. Trusting in this energy, THE ENERGY THAT YOU ARE, has the ability to heal the self harm called alcoholism and addiction that most believe incurable today. It has for me. Dr Stephen Ross at NYU hopes to use LSD to bring about a spiritual experience to cure alcoholism as they tried to do back in the 50’s with Bill Wilson, Huxley, Cohen and Heard.
Betty Eisner, PhD, was a research assistant for Dr. Sidney Cohen at the Los Angeles VA Medical Center during the 1950s, where Bill Wilson had two sessions with LSD.
In Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past, she writes about her career as a psychotherapist, utilizing LSD and other substances,
She makes these observations about Bill’s experience of LSD Therapy:
“I do think that there were two important parts, though – W.s experience of himself as unloved, and the perception that it was not through himself but because of his parents that this occurred… And we talked about trust, and the difficulty that W. doesn’t trust anybody: he can’t let them close because he doesn’t trust himself – “Betty Eisner: Betty the LSD researcher and AA co-founder Bill Wilson.
His “doors of perception” cleared, colors glowed more intensely, the voice of Dr. Cohen reverberated with new resonance, all motion flowed with languorous beauty, and above all, he comprehended “the essential All-Rightness” of the universe… the reconciliation of opposites.
I was to understand these things 75 years later as a healing message.
We are beginning to understand what children need today.
“The parent’s treatment of the child becomes the metaphorical mirror into which children learn to see and understand themselves. The manner in which a child was raised creates a mirror of sorts through which a child views and interprets his or her self-worth.
When parents unconditionally love their child, the child interprets their parents’ love and commitment for them as a direct reflection of who they are. Consequently, they “see” themselves as a worthy, valuable and lovable person.” https://psychcentral.com/blog/unearthing-ridding-yourself-of-toxic-shame/
Remember, you have to have something to be able to give it away.
