It has something to do with this, which is saved as a PDF, unfortunately, because I don't have a good graphics program right now that will let me move it out of powerpoint into a jpeg. Later for that.
This is the world of trauma damage and recovery according to Jeneane. I shared it with my therapist via email, who I was supposed to see today except that strep intercepted me, and she wrote, "Wow. It looks as though you've been working hard." And so I have.
This is a schema of wounding and release, as related to silence and genuine voice, as experessed by self (or not expressed in the false self's case). I am planning to write more about this, which made me draw it one night last week, soon.
The underlying message is the difference between consuming and beholding. It was during a recent conversation with RageBoy that I stumbled upon the consume/behold difference. A week or so ago when I was so sick, and landing right back in my childhood sick bed which, twisted as it is, is one of my warmest memories (later to realize, during the massage, that it was my father's sickbed I was longing to get back to, if not for anything else but to comfort and be comforted, and maybe to say goodbye), that Uncle Rage said, "Get yourself some flowers when you stop at the pharmacy."
I said, "I don't really like flowers. They bother me."
He said something like, "Huh?"
And I said, "I don't really see the use for flowers."
And he said, "They're important, because they are not something you consume, like cigarettes or food or alcohol. They just sit there and let you look at them."
Then he began talking about himself again, that motherfucking narcissist.
While he told tales of his latest trip to Starbucks, I was left thinking about that consuming thing. And I thought, what word is the opposite of that? What is that THING I don't do so well (or at least not as well as I consume). I said to myself, it's BEHOLD.
The consume versus behold idea was born. It was one of those ah-ha moments that can't be neatly expressed in a post or two--I couldn't email it to George or even tell my therapist about it because it is one of those network/node things. It is an ah-ha among interrelated ah-has. And so I set out to diagram it.
There is a consuming that parallels nicely with addiction. Especially in my life. Probably in yours. It's cigarettes, it's food, it's booze, it's sex, it's gambling, it's any repetitive movement that's sole result is to numb, psychically. Sometimes physically. And it is numbing something. The pain behind it.
Enter narcissistic wounding. Enter the damage side of the diagram. Enter addiction, pain, terror, the trauma side of the equation. Enter the place where some of us come from, bouncing furiously as children around neglectful or abusive or alcoholic or non-existent homes.
The trauma related side, the wound side, of the diagram, is the 'shit happens' side, but it also, if you look closely, is the SHIT CONTINUES TO HAPPEN side.
As in, we do this and we let this be done to us. If we don't make moves to get better. We bounce up and down the left side, mostly DOWN, until we are so unreal we might not even recognize our selves if we HAD selves to recognize.
That is the side that our culture has a vested interest in imprisoning us within. It is related. To consumption. Dig it.
The other side of the diagram--call it the healing side--is how to become free. It is the beholding, the appreciating, not the addictive obsessive. It is the wanting not the needing. You see? You see how I connected that with my previous post!?
I am something else.
(watch that grandiosity, jeneane).
okay.
Proud. To have, at least in my own mind, put SOME (this is a baby step for me) constructs around what happened to me, and how I can get better.
If it resonates with you, let me know.
If you hadn't noticed, blogging made it into the getting better side.
Go figure.
We can all get better.
And it DOES get better than this.
That's why it's called, "Getting Better."
