What is wrong with me? The final solution

I haven't written here since my birthday and thought I would see if I have anything to say. First I am great probably the best I have ever been. My life as you know has been a search to figure out how to do better and most of all to feel better.

I give recent credit for healing to my therapist and to EMDR. I have handled life by bracing my self for something awful or swimming through treacherous waters, I have felt like an alien visiting here watching other people just move through life not thinking too much and not worrying too much.

I took a trip to see my family earlier this month and is actually felt good. Everyone older and wiser including me. On the way I listen to a book "What happened to you?". It summed up where I have been and where I am now.

The author is a trauma specialist and said something that spoke to me. She said instead of saying "whats wrong with me?" say "what happened to me?".  I have said the first for as long as I remember even now if I feel sad or just not interested in life I say "whats wrong with you?"

My work with EMDR has brought forward some significant events to the surface. Things that I have known about intellectually for a long time. What happened to me early in my life and the guilt I have for even thinking about it after so many years.  

I have written about those here hoping I could just let them go by putting them on the page. I have let those painful experiences go so many times but not really. The book talks about trauma in the body mostly early trauma and how it stays with children forever. 

The EMDR has helped me experience these painful times as an adult. Going back to the moment in mind as an adult and walking through my feelings until they dissipate. When I have my next session I can hardly remember what was addressed before. 

There isn't anything wrong with me I just had some things happen to me that made me think I was a problem and a real burden to everyone around me. I was regularly punished for being who I was and asking too many questions all in the name of love.

 I lost my family after my mother died and I found the best way to be loved is to earn it by doing things people wanted done and doing them perfectly. I learned to anticipate their every need.  As an adult when I had a crisis and couldn't fulfill my previous roll I was left.

I thought this was my fault that I was flawed in some way and didn't deserve love. I am free from that thought now and have moved through the events that created this belief. I have forgiven the child that I have been trying to solve the problem of me. 

This blog saved me and gave me a place to tell my story with honesty and freedom. I want to let you know to never give up on finding a way to feel better. Finding a way to knowing there is nothing wrong with you.  Finding peace with the past and loving yourself when it feels impossible. 

Art - Finding freedom within

I have been feeling pretty great since I started back doing some art. When this happens I always want to analyze it and ask why now and why art? About six months ago I contemplated packing up all my supplies and getting rid of them. I told myself "you will never feel inspired to do that again". 

This wasn't really in a bad way but I thought maybe I was holding on to a part of me that wasn't there anymore.  Maybe I was ready to move on. I have bought tons of supplies over literally decades and done nothing with them. A moment of inspiration where I imagined myself sitting down and painting or drawing. I could never bring myself to find the joy I knew growing up where creating was all I wanted to do.

When I was child even before my mother got sick I was exiled to our basement and I created non stop. In high school I turned to art as an outlet for the pain I felt being used by my family as a their personal live in servant. Art was freedom and the other students mostly outcast and mostly high were not judgmental and I was just another person struggling through life.

The art world in general can also be competitive and we were all divided into two categories by the teacher talented and not so talented. I am my own worst critic and I could see that I belonged in the second group.  I took this to heart but it was confirmed when two of us were asked to paint the backdrop for our school play. We spent days on it a bright beautiful and colorful sunset only to find that when the curtain was raised someone talented had painted a sad gray sky with boats. 

I dropped out of art after that. Our art teacher should of told us but she was in her 20's and probably couldn't face us. My thoughts about myself had been confirmed I wasn't good enough to be an artist. 

It always amazes me how we internalize the things that happen when our brain is still forming and how adults have no idea how their actions and words can change lives for better or for worse. 

I feel free these days like I have never before.  I have accepted that I am that girl in the basement creating non-stop. I have tried to be many other things to fit into this world but nothing really stuck.  I have to create and I do that with my work and I can visit the outside world while I am doing it. It has taken me forever to accept who I am and enjoy everyday.

We can see that the world we have created in our head is mostly fiction and can be re-written to reflect the life we want for ourselves now. We can forgive others for their careless words or thoughtless actions that changed us.  We can forgive ourselves for internalizing these things and believing them for the decades that followed. It is our own voice that decides to give those words meaning. 

I woke up at 7 this morning made myself an espresso and have drawn one portrait and completed one pen and ink drawing. I am no longer holding myself back and carrying around the voices of my childhood in my head. I am happy to be the girl in the basement creating.  

Art and the creative process is healing and I believe a form of meditation. I can let go and just let it all out. 

  

Daily forgiveness and lies we tell ourselves

 I am still doing my daily out loud forgiveness. Saying the names of the three people I still feel resentment towards sometimes. It doesn't seem like lip service anymore and it really doesn't seem like anything at all. The solution is always inside my own head but it has taken this long to get to the point where I know I have the solution.

The brain is the collector of all the things we have ever experienced the words that have been said to us and the things we have seen. Repetition is the root of all the negativity we have experienced  Starting with when we are young and a  seed of negativity planted by someone we thought knew everything or someone that loved us or maybe someone that was trying to help.

For me it started when I had problems in school.  The first week of school ending up in the hall of Mrs. Outz's class a women my mother went to college with. This was stressful and was the beginning of a long life of just not fitting in really. I quickly got the impression that there was something wrong with me and it was very upsetting to my my mother.  

She addressed this as a discipline problem and up the number of whippings I received then put me on a sugar free diet.  In the second grade I had my eyes tested and I am legally blind without my glasses.  This did help my grades a lot but not really my behavior.  There was some discussion of medication but my parents didn't like the idea and although they weren't hippies but they did think diet was important hence the no sugar regimen. 

I even spent a few months in special ed with Bobby who lived on my street. I thought it was strange that they gave me this time off from class to play with Bobby who obviously had some serious problems. The truth is no one could explain why what we were doing in class was so important.  It seemed so dull to me I could think of a million different things I could be doing with my time. 

When my mom got cancer in the third grade the focus shifted to her and I had to figure things out for myself.  I had to make myself invisible as much as possible and entertainment myself. This led to many hours in our basement alone coming up with projects constantly creating things. I had some friends mostly younger kids who didn't mind having a leader to follow.  I made things fun and no one got into trouble. It was a good time in my life but it did shape the person I became.

I have always believed that I am a problem and even to this day I try to not bother people if I don't have to. I am self sufficient in every way possible which makes me come across and not needing anyone. I am sure my exes would agree with that. They wanted someone who didn't need anything from them and could be autonomous. I remember the few times I needed emotional support they ran away.

This how I have become me. The difference now is that I don't think I am a problem. The child in me learned that a long time ago.  I have made it a habit to not ask for help because in the past I haven't gotten it from the people that said they loved me. The difference now is that I know it is not my fault. Humans are messed up and we live alone in our heads with only our own feedback. We hurt the child in others as well as the child inside without even realizing it.

I am constantly listening to what I am telling myself and when it is negative I ask myself "why do you believe this?" It is always the patterns we have laid down in our brains that we have repeated over and over again. We have to make an effort to stop repeating and replacing them with positive thoughts about ourselves.

My 21 days of forgiveness is an exercise of re-writing the past and replacing the bad with the good. My point is that we have the power to stop the words in our own mind. We can stop believing they are true and get out from under the lies we tell ourselves. We can experience freedom for the first time.

Forgiveness in 21 days - Freedom

I heard a teacher talk about forgiveness and the brain and how saying out loud the people that you still have angst against "I forgive you ____" will set you free.  Just like everything else this starts to sink in brain after 21 days. You get another path etched in your brain just like a new habit.  I have to admit that it feels fake. It reminds me of the slogan "fake it until you make it".  It does feel like it is working.

I have three people on this list and after a couple weeks of practicing this I can actually say their names without making comments afterward. One person in particular has been hard to forgive my stepmother. The other two are just my ex's and the venom is just not there anymore.  I was an adult and they were adults and the pain has passed.

My stepmother was the adult and I was the child.  She was vicious towards me and really everybody else. Every word that came out of her mouth was hateful never a kind word for anyone even now. I think the difference for me was that I was a child and I believed ever word she said about me well into my adulthood.  I stayed that fearful child never measuring up to her standards which became my standards. This is why childhood trauma is so hard to unto for most people. The child inside is still there in some capacity and still believes the words said back then.  

I couldn't understand why she disliked so much. I tried to be perfect in every way but "I was never enough".  I thought it was me that I was not lovable and took this with me through most of my life. In every relationship I felt I was not enough. Really in the end I was not enough for myself. I had to get that thought out my system.  Since I am analytical I can list reasons why this idea is true.  This is not a good combination and can cause a loop of negativity. 

I was surprised that my Dad wasn't on this list of forgiveness. I have forgiven him mainly because after our last meeting together I realized he did not have the ability to be more than he was. After a violent childhood where an angry father beat everyone into submission my dad and most of his siblings shut down and are still that way today. They are all kind and generous but show little emotion. This is how he survived.

I always longed for him to stand up for me when I was being verbally abused by my stepmother. I thought his silence meant that he didn't love me. My mother was dead and now my daddy obviously didn't think I was worth fighting for either.  He had a new family and I was disposable. I left at sixteen because I felt unloved and my position in the family was the maid and babysitter. My cleaning was inspected like I was in the military.

I know her life was not easy and she made a bad choice at an early age and married a man who left her while she was pregnant. She has never gotten over that and the last time I saw her she was still talking about how he left her.  I am sure even though she blamed him in her heart she felt that it was her fault.. Her mother moved in with her a strict woman with high standards the divorce was a disgrace.

I have to admit that I can say her name out loud without wincing. It is truly the last hurdle the child in me has to jump to be set free. The patterns made in my brain so long ago were deep and my belief in them just deepened their truth for me. Because I believed them it made them stronger. The brain goes to what is familiar the thoughts and beliefs we have always had. We have to replace those thoughts to move on. This is why we try to escape through addition which is also a familiar pattern. 

Twenty one days seems to be the magic number to create lasting habits and in this case forgiveness. I feel lighter even if I am just half way through at this point. She always represented evil to me. A person so hurt going through life spreading  that hurt to other people. Another slogan "hurt people hurt people" she isn't any different than my own dad damaged by her childhood and rejected by someone she thought would love her forever. I surely can relate to this. 

Try forgiveness for 21 days - You know who they are when you can't say their out loud without a little pain but you will get past it.  I have been an adult a long time now physically and spiritually but this last little act of forgiveness, maybe not so little, feels good. The child in me wants to hold a grudge but trust me now to do what is best for the both of us. We are ready to forgive it will set us free.