The hypnotist

 It's quite the task to try to describe in an online journal post the changes that have occurred in the past few weeks. All I can do is try.

I have undergone hypnosis. The first two sessions were foundational sessions where we worked on issues related to my childhood and the repercussions of things that didn't happen back then (as opposed to things that did happen).

I will try to put it as simply as I can. There was a 'part' of me that was left behind in my childhood, fragmented, not assimilated into my sense of Self. By the end of the first session, this had been completely healed. Three hours later, I was a new, much happier, lighter person. I can't begin to describe to you in words the relief I felt to have this monkey off my back.

We worked on my ability to say NO when I needed to, to love myself as much as I love others. Many things. It was a reworking of my belief systems. 

In the second session, it was about the inner child; that part of me that needed to be rescued, loved and cherished by me. She lives within me now; is praised and loved. How she flourishes with this sort of attention!

And then onto my sexual identity and sexual responses...

I am, authentically and naturally a sexually submissive woman who wants to serve, loves to serve. I radiate in praise and in being a 'good girl'. I don't need or want anything nasty in my life. But I do feel safe and loved in the submissive role led by a loving dominant man.  I want to be in a position to offer my strengths, to be of service, and to that end there is equality. We would, in an ideal scenario serve and love one another equally well.

Just to know this to the tips of my toes feels wonderful; to have clarity, to see it all clearly. This has been the greatest gift.

Re-evaluate

The coronavirus came upon us quite suddenly, at the same time as various circles of people understood that it was just a matter of time before we hit a world crisis. My little sanga of people attempting to walk the spiritual path had access to information that suggested that the time was close.

Jane Goodall came out and said in the past few days that we had brought it on ourselves. Imposing on the habitat of animals had forced them to come closer to one another and to us and that put pressure on the relational systems of animals and humans living together. It could be more sinister than even this idea. I don't know about that. I am not a conspiracy afficionado but I acknowledge that there are evil forces in the world, so maybe so.

This is a way of saying that I wasn't completely shocked by what has occurred, but anxious and sad and worried, just like the rest of us. I am, one could say, a bit better off than those in large cities such as New York or London, and yet there has been a breakout in an aged care home just a moment from where I purchase petrol (gas) and a few minutes walk from my home. It is everywhere.

I eat well. I sleep well. I take supplements to boost immunity. I do yoga and shake daily (TRE) and I keep on top of how I am breathing, thinking and feeling. I stay at home almost all the time aside from a daily walk. I am doing all I can to stay well and ensure I don't make other people sick. I am in awe of front line workers. They deserve our praise and appreciation. They deserve Medals of Bravery.

Whilst at home I have used the extra time to do a lot of research. Whether you call it self-differentiation, or healing from a toxic relationship, or self love, or what have you, it really does boil down to the same thing, I think.

Some of us are too nice. Part of this is our personality (also looked into the Enneagram) and some of this is learned behavior and surviving a situation where we were brought up by people with a narcissistic bent (to put it nicely).

If that's the case, (and I bet it is for most people reading here) the trick now is to let yourself shine, as best you can. Just as it is understood you put on your own breathing mask if there is an emergency in a plane, and then put on the breathing mask of others around you who need your help, so in life we empaths needs to understand that we must put ourselves first.

Since I also study spirituality and seek to live that life, of course we don't become selfish ourselves. We need to live in balance, caring for ourselves at the same time as we keep in mind and attend to those other people in our lives. Another way to say this is that we put boundaries in place. We do all the caring things but we don't let people walk all over us. Maybe we did this to survive as children, but we don't have to keep doing the same things as adults.

As we come to know ourselves intimately, what triggers us, where the wounds are, we come to see that we don't have to absorb the behavior of others all too willing to hurt us or ignore us to boost themselves up. Instead, we observe them. We become a bit detached, in a good way, because now we are differentiated from them. We know where we end and they start. We build a strong backbone. We become strong at the same time as we stay warm and tender. These are not people who can change. We are people who can change, grow and mature.

It definitely isn't easy. It was very hard for me. But, I assure you, it is entirely possible. Check out The Avaiya University online for tonnes of material.

We are in a period of huge transition in every way. It's a very hard time for nearly all people, but I am betting on the fact that this is a reality check we, unfortunately, needed to have and that good people will come forth to make the changes for our world that need to be made.

Selfishness and greed won't go away. People like this have and will always be with us, but I think we have a good chance to reevaluate where we are and what we have to do as a Universe. We need every good person now to be counted. That's why you need to heal, energize and ready yourself. The world needs every good person in this fight.

Healing

There is a saying that you can't heal what you can't see. This is why I went searching for answers about how I felt because I knew what I felt wasn't how I wanted to feel, and intuitively I understood that I needed to know where I had been to begin to heal.

I've read a number of books now on topics that seemed related to my circumstances. There was marginal assistance through the psychology sessions I have had but nothing directly related to a full understanding of my circumstances and certainly no advice was administered as to what to do. In other words, there was no diagnosis and no treatment plan.

However, I feel quite clear about what happened to me now and this is a great blessing, to see the history clearly. This is profound.

I think when the brain has been subjected to thinking in a certain way over a long period of time - I am in my early 60s - it is not realistic to think that I won't have some tough moments going forward, but I definitely feel grateful to have understanding, and so long as I am kind to myself, which I see as vital, I think there is much reason to be hopeful that the shame and blame that I put on myself will fade.

It was difficult to say the least to learn that it was my inner critic that kept me in torment. I blamed myself for not being stronger and more resilient, whereas now I am learning to turn that message around:

"Things were difficult for you for no fault of your own. You had to survive, and you did what you could to survive. Now, new strategies are needed to thrive. And, you are putting those strategies in place. Be proud of yourself."

Without going into too much boring detail about my reading and understanding here's what I discovered:

- Although my parents loved me in an overarching way (the feeling was no doubt in their hearts) I was not given a childhood. I have no memories of being kissed, cuddled, held. I have no memories of being read to at night, or being tucked into bed. I didn't eat with my parents. My parents demanded that their two children be as little effort as possible and so I closed down my emotions, was 'good'.

- I began to masturbate at a very early age and this was my attempt at 'self-soothing'. My childhood environment did not provide me with a sense of safety and masturbating myself to sleep became a survival strategy for me; a way of soothing my troubled mind that was flooded with chemicals that made my body and mind anxiety prone.

- I am kinky and this is now hard wired and cannot be alerted. Fear and sexual arousal at a certain point intertwined.I don't seek to alter it. It is obvious, day by day, that I am aroused in a 'feel good' and sexual way when I have an overt sense of ownership. I want to be 'attached' to my husband. He gets this, fortunately. He is comfortable with it. I have shared my understandings with him.

- I was susceptible to having my attachment system activated due to the lack of mother love. I was also susceptible to having my inner critic activated and exacerbated. It hadn't occurred to me that the lack of mother love repercussions were the fault of my parents but rather I blamed myself, unconsciously. I now understand the thoughts. I wasn't lovable. I wasn't worthy of love. I wasn't pretty enough, or sexual enough. Importantly, I needed to be pleasing. I had learned this as a child. If you don't act how they want you to act, they reject you.

- In short, I was highly vulnerable to any sort of narcissistic behavior of another; to love-bombing, to verbal abuse; manipulation. My trained sense of loyalty to people, even when they behaved in a  selfish and unloving way made me feel that I needed to find even more tolerance and strength for toxic behavior.

- What I came to see was that in the end it wasn't about the Other. It was about the fact that I had failed to understand that any disrespectful behavior towards me should have been a red flag on which I acted to create a boundary against the toxicity of the relationship.

- I was kind of right. It was all my fault, no matter what the training of my childhood. You see, I can't change the behavior of others, but I can change my behavior and in this way I can change how I feel. It is in my power to say no to a sense of blame and shame, to have some control over the depression; to say yes to a sense of personal power; to have respect for myself.

This is a game changer. I can't say I won't have tough days. I know I will. But, there's a huge sense of power over my destiny now.

I am eternally grateful to Kelly McDaniel who wrote 'Ready to Heal: Breaking Free of Addictive Relationships' and to Abdul Saad of Vital Mind Psychology who has free on You Tube videos that have helped me so much.

There are very good people in the world. Of this, I have no doubt. If you have struggled in a similar way to the way I have struggled, I encourage you to seek your answers. Once you know what in fact happened to you, you are on your way to healing. Know that you are not alone. You deserve to be happy.

Empty headed

I have heard people talk of spiritual homes and if there is such a thing, mine is on mountains. I thrive in the thin air at the same time as it slows me down. Life up there reduced to its bare essentials seems right to me. Most importantly, what happens to me is that I become like an animal. I just am. Very little thinking goes on.

When we were training back at home for the adventure we went on, I often found that my head was filled with unpleasant thought. I thought  of it at the time as toxicity. Technically, the challenge of the training should have emptied my mind, but it rarely did.

On the adventure, it was a different story. My mind totally emptied such that when people express their admiration for what I did at my age I tell them that it wasn't me that did that trek. I really wasn't there at all.

I have a few specific memories. Perhaps with two, maybe three hours to climb to get to the Summit, having no idea at that stage how much longer it would take, I became aware I was walking alone. A Sherpa wasn't that far behind me and later he was in front of me, so technically I wasn't walking alone, except to say that is how it felt. I had a safety valve but also the feeling that I was in the wilderness alone.

I felt invincible. I felt like a machine that simply has one task: to put one foot in front of the other. I'm not inclined to tell myself 'Good job' but it was at the moment of the rocks being sort of wide and flattish that the thought came into my mind something like, 'Nothing can stop you.'

On the way back to the bus on the final day, maybe 3 hours walk, I purposefully stayed about 30 seconds behind the main group and a minute in front of the final group. In this blessed space I could feel alone but supported; a creature walking through the Andes aware of my feet, the gushing water beside me, the sound of the water rolling over rocks, and the sacredness of being there. I was in my bliss state. So alive!

To change the subject somewhat I just finished eating lunch listening to Shirley MacLaine being interviewed.  She made the statement that her greatest teachers have been the people who hurt her the most. This resonated with me.

I always knew in my bones that when I was exploring the BDSM space that it was a scary place to go. Yet, I felt absolutely compelled; drawn to it like a moth to a flame. When I was deeply hurt in that arena I needed to know why these were such open wounds and why it took so long to heal. I also felt compelled to understand this.

In this way, it was all quite inevitable, necessary and productive. Through the emotional pain I explored the wounds and healed. Without the pain I would have been hurt in some other way, or else I might have had to live with the wounds forever.

Fortunately, I am strong and not silly, so the pain was contained. I listened to my intuition. I never went further than to investigate the physiological responses and the emotion responses, although there was plenty of looping; repeating the material enough times until the wound had completely healed; almost as if the wound needed to be dressed again and again until the seeping stopped.

I wasn't meant to think much; as little as necessary. This is what makes the mountains so appealing. This is what made the doll state so luxurious.

My confidence in the ability or desire of man to engineer this state is not intact. Possibly, I just didn't have a lot of luck there, but more likely I think is that there are next to no men who are that steady. I don't say that in a critical way entirely. I just think men become overcome with their careers and their place in their world and the state of the world. It's almost an impossible thing to ask, I think. So, I have no expectations and I've made my peace with that.

I engineer those experiences now for myself. I empty myself of the contents of mind and I float in my bubble of bliss, as often as I can. It's finding happiness (happiness? perhaps 'authenticity is a better word), again. It's all good.

The sacral chakra

When you find yourself on a 'spiritual journey' of some sort it's a clear indication that something about your inner or outer life has gone wrong. Catherine Ingram, a woman who has met nearly all the great spiritual leaders in terms of interviewing them likes to say, 'I hang out with the broken hearted'.

It's almost guaranteed that an exploration outwards on this spiritual journey leads you inward. Meditation, of course, is a going inward experience. In the course of meditation I think most people search for the nothingness phenomena only to realize that the mind doesn't stop for more than a few breaths at a time.

In fact, it becomes an exercise in acceptance. The mind doesn't stop but it gets quieter as breathing is deeper and more relaxed. The thoughts in the mind are more available and so we notice the thoughts, the madness of the mind, and we find that it doesn't really matter after all. We can't control the thoughts - didn't ask for them, aren't responsible for them - and so we can begin to laugh at the absurdity of them.

Somewhere in the process you learn more about yourself on the spiritual journey. Most likely, it is the behavior of other people that led you to go off and explore the spiritual life, but isn't it ironic that it all leads back to you, your understanding that forgiveness of others is a gift to yourself, for example.

Katie Byron is famous for her very simple and profound realization that life is much happier and calmer if we remind ourselves constantly, until it becomes second nature, that we need to look after our own business, and not that of other people. There's no tolerance for trying to change or modify others, for spending time trying to fix people. As she says, if you busy yourself worrying about other people's lives, who is it that is living your life?

When things get chaotic and dramatic in your life, I do feel that there is good cause to investigate that, if for no other reason than to stop the drama. Some people have more tolerance for drama. As a younger person I did better with drama than I do in my older years. Eventually, drama wore me down and I needed to put an end to it.

I became almost an expert in the reasons for drama in one's soul and behavior, and once I had that sorted out, I became adept in stopping the drama to the extent possible. There is a warning here, a pitfall that comes with this sort of knowledge and expertise. In the same ways that stars in  the eyes will protect young love, it is easier to love someone when one is ignorant of what is going on. Disconnection occurs when conversation fails. You are on your own.

For those with an open and forgiving heart, almost too much empathy, it is a shock and a deeply felt sense of discomfort to realize that the heart can close down. Defensive measures used to end drama and chaos of those with limited awareness or consciousness can create a blockage in the sacral chakra. This comes as a great shock.

Accepting reality, the 'what is', the question becomes, how does one maintain boundaries such that chaos and drama is kept at bay at the same time as one endeavors to open the heart again; puts on display again the sort of vulnerability that allows for intimacy that is actually deeply desired? This is part of a closed heart chakra, the push and pull.

It's interesting that as a blockage is acknowledged, an opportunity is created for the heart to begin to open up again, much like a flower. It is not likely to be a gush of momentum, for the heart is tender now. More like a soft breeze that flows through an open window, felt gently on the skin. It feels good. It feels like a delightful change in the atmosphere of the inner landscape. One begins to feel that healing is occurring.

Meditation

I am home from a meditation retreat where we spent considerable time in silence and in a meditative pose. It wasn't the same experience for me this year and I was grateful for that. Last year I felt overwhelming emotion consistently; trying not to weep, holding back tears, finding my voice breaking when sharing. I had sometimes been unable to prevent tears pouring down my face when in meditation or on the day when we visited the group who sang sacred music. It was a private meltdown.

I suppose the good news story of last year is that I returned to my life in a still, private space. I felt that I had somehow gathered strength for those parts of my life that were raw and painful. I had been confronted by the intense pain of other people and I had been softened by it; opened up. It felt like a good thing. I felt like I had found my tribe, the walking wounded; those who knew that something had to be done about their emotional damage before they were annihilated by it. On some level perhaps I understood that more emotional pain was to come and I was grateful for the shoring up of reserves.

If left to my own devices I would not have attended again this year, but my friend had been onto me for several months, wanting me so much to be there with her. There came a point where there seemed no choice and I made the necessary preparations.

This year there were so many more sick people. I was affected by it, no doubt about that, but I also took it somewhat in my stride. I think I had developed an understanding of the reality of the situation. People are prematurely dying from cancer from the way they live and think and from unresolved damage of their past and present experiences. It was inevitable that at a meditation retreat, unlike a health resort, there were would be many sad stories to hear.

The first conversation that stood out to me was that of a middle aged local woman; by that I mean she lived in New Zealand. She had had a double mastectomy several years ago. Recently, she had discovered a lump in her neck and would return from the retreat to hear the results of tests; whether the primary cancer was located in her breast region or in a gynecological region. Either way, her prognosis was dire. She already had the news that she was terminal.

I asked questions about the support in her life. Fortunately she had been helped with a little counseling to deal with her anger and fear but any further help she could get would be useful. So, I pointed out her situation to one of the 'teachers' and received a very odd response. The woman had to come to her, she told me, and she wouldn't be doing anything about it unless she did. It felt like a slap across the face and I immediately closed down, merely offering that she was a woman with little support and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be aware of her situation and keep a watch on her. As if this 'triggered' her in some way she said that if she wanted specific advice she should attend a cancer workshop not a meditation retreat..

This made me incredibly angry. It felt heartless. Don't ever make the mistake of wholly trusting spiritual people, as if they are people without triggers and flaws of their own. We are just people who sometimes act well and sometimes not. Of course, I took the matter further in a subtle way and she did receive some one-on-one counseling from my friend. By the end of the week she seemed much lighter, smiled often.

At the end of the sacred singing this year, a deeply moving experience, we talked a little. There came a moment when I felt a need to move closer into her inner world. 'May I hug you?' I asked. She nodded yes. We embraced for several seconds and I stroked her hair. Now my tears escaped. 'It has been wonderful to meet you,'  I said. 'You will be all right.' I didn't mean she would live, because I don't think she will be alive for all that long. What I meant was that she would find the strength to die well.

Rightly or wrongly, I said as few 'goodbyes' before I left on the shuttle bus for the airport as I could. I had given all that I had to give. I had held in my own sorrows. I had been kind and supportive and good company. Now, I needed to go, as quietly and as quickly as possible.

The retreat is in a remote location and so I stayed overnight at the hotel airport on the first Friday, before I caught the shuttle bus that would transport me to the retreat. It was there when I turned on my phone that I received a message from my doctor's office to call them. I have been trying very hard to get a handle on my stress response over the past year but this message terrified me. I had recently had a battery of blood tests and prepared myself for the news that a cancerous state was indicated.

In fact, the news related to an elevated cholesterol count and I immediately researched, whilst I had access to the hotel's Internet, what to do about that. I love cheese and of course I determined immediately that it was another food to eliminate from my diet. I wrote a list of foods to focus on, flax seeds that I could soak overnight and add to my porridge, for example.

But, I knew in my bones that I had to work harder to resolve the significant stress that I was living with; stress being a significant factor in elevated cholesterol levels. My needs have not been, and are not met, and living with someone who can't process that has been stress provoking.

On the final morning one of the participants was asked to say a 'thank you' on behalf of the group to the 'teacher' who is retiring. She shared that when she met him her mind was a living nightmare. Her relatives being Jewish had been through the concentration camps and many of them had ultimately taken their lives. She had deemed that perhaps this was the only way out for her too. But, the teacher had taken her under his wing and instructed her to meditate consistently. Although she sometimes felt nauseous doing so she had kept up the practice until, day by day, the freakish nightmare inside her head started to lose its hold over her sanity.

It was Kate's comments that truly reached me. There has been a nightmare going on in my head and changes must be made. Time on my cushion must be increased. A sense of peace will come from the inside out. My job is to sit with myself in silence until then.

Awareness

For those people who sometimes find themselves stepping on invisible emotional landmines when in conversation with their spouse and wonder what to do to make communication better, I cannot recommend more highly The Intimacy Factor by Pia Mellody.

Many times over four decades I have found myself in the company of an irate and distressed husband in response to something I have unwittingly said. Over time I watched more and more carefully what I said, how I said it and when I said it, but these confusing and upsetting exchanges continued regardless.

In the same vein, I think I have been confusing to talk with too. If something that is said triggers a certain feeling, then the conversation becomes not about the words but about the feeling the words evoke, whether that was the intention or not at all the intention.

I began in more recent times to look for answers, both as to what was happening within me and what was happening within him. I determined that I had a sensitivity to any statements that conjured a feeling of abandonment and of feeling a failure. I determined that he had a sensitivity to any signs of disrespect, of having made a mistake or of having been accused of being lazy.

I'll give an example. Last night I was exhausted. It was just the two of us for dinner and after dinner I made what I thought was an innocent remark, a sort of silly remark.

'Wouldn't you think that by 2016 someone would have devised a way to just press a button and the kitchen would be all cleaned up!'

'That's why people eat take away food,' he responded.

'No, I mean, to clean up the kitchen after making a meal.'

I can't relay his response because it went on for several minutes, a sort of tirade of me making cheap swipes at him, and how if I wanted help I should ask for it and how it was all about my family and the way I'd been brought up wrong. He was angry and defensive and very worked up. He began doing the dishes as he spewed out hurtful comments.

I only said that I didn't understand what had caused this upset and please sit down and have a cup of tea and I'd do the dishes later, but this didn't help.

I left the room, drew a bath and took 'The Intimacy Factor' with me. Using the index I found this:

'Maintaining boundaries takes energy. It requires being alert and ready to put our boundary skills to  work. Even though we may have had a fair amount of boundary practice, because we are perfectly imperfect human beings, the words of our partners will cause us to make up that we have been demeaned and we may feel pain, shame, anger or fear.'

Pia offers a technique to settle oneself down in this situation:

'When we have generated these emotions as a result of becoming improperly vulnerable, we rely on a technique to reduce the emotion and to keep it from infecting the air, thereby making our partner a victim of our carried energies...

She called this technique "breathing into the submission".

"We take a deep, slow breath and imagine the emotion we are feeling as having a bodily presence right before our eyes. Then we breathe into it and let it go. We imagine it passing right through us like a ghost. This way, we keep the emotion from becoming toxic, floating out into the air, and infecting our partner."

Pia explains that when we breathe out the emotion we feel we are learning a lesson in humility. That lesson is that we are never totally free of our traumatic past.

'We are not perfect, but we can be aware.'

I tried this strategy and felt instant relief. I know that my husband bears scars from what happened a half century ago and this reading helped me to see that whilst he will always carry those scars I can be aware and sensitive to those scars.

In the same way, I now know that I am sensitive to what I generally refer to as abandonment thoughts. Whilst not rational in my life today since I have loyalty, love and care from those who matter to me, sometimes a comment will invoke those old  and very painful feelings. I can imagine the feeling passing right through me in the same way. I recognize the importance of not letting the feeling become toxic and infecting the other, since I have allowed it to happen before and that's simply not fair.

We hold most of what happens to us in our sub-conscious. We can live in a sort of denial or dream world, devoid of awareness. But, I believe that you cannot defeat what you cannot see. To become aware of what ails us, what holds us back from happiness or peace or serenity, that's where the power lies. That is when progress is made.

Codependence

My reading about love and sex addiction has covered  much ground. My research led me to 'Sex and Love Addiction Anonymous' online and on that site 40 questions for self-diagnosis. In answering the questions truthfully for myself it became clear that I had a problem; not the sort of problem where I count the lovers. That number is meagre. This is not about sex addiction. However, as an example of the sort of questions where I answered 'Yes', no question is more relevant than Question 4: Do you get "high" from sex and/or romance? Do you crash? Oh my goodness, YES! I most certainly do.

I think of the codependent state of mind as being on a roller coaster. In terms of the real ride, I detest roller coasters, every bit of it. At times, the roller coaster ride of romance/connection is a delicious and most intoxicating 'high'. Other times it is a very low mood that germinates from that experience.

It's important to understand that I am not talking about a romance with a open and engaging partner who wants to know you and to be known; who wants to connect with you and talk about important matters such as emotions and boundaries. I'm talking about something that is expressed as being more manipulative than that. The love addict tends to connect with someone whose conscious and unconscious mind demands something different to this; a love avoidant.

In the initial stages of a power exchange dynamic it is completely exhilarating; so exhilarating that I was certainly able to ignore the lows almost completely. In fact, the lows were simply eroticized; part and parcel of the ride. Oddly and irrationally, I believed that I had overcome my fear and loathing of roller coaster rides.

Over time, it got to be more the case that the lows hung around. A sane mind, a healthy mind, doesn't take long to question the value of the ride where upset states endure. However, a codependent mind hangs in there, justifies the lows and remembers vividly the highs. How on earth does one give up on the highs? So, strong of mind and committed to the drug, one endures. There is a sense of a lack of respect at times, a sense of degrading oneself, of feeling weak to want this, but the girl has been 'hooked'. Once hooked, the need for the drug of choice endures.

Time marches on. The turbulence inside oneself continues and increases in decibal in one's brain until a moment comes when the thought is very much there: 'I have to stop this crazy-making situation. I just have to if I am ever to have peace of mind.' Not only was my brain tired of all this effort to stop something that felt unhealthy for me but I worried about the effect my unsettled mind might be having on my bodily health. Meditation, walking, yoga and writing all helped but so far there had been nothing I had found to achieve peace of mind; ongoing stability; a lack of upsetting jolts. Nothing overcame for too long the uneasy sense that the containing of my emotions was not a good thing.

One thing led to another. I read many texts. If any or all of this is making sense to you and you want to do some reading on codependency I found particularly helpful the following books. 'The Human Magnet Syndrome, Why We Love People Who Hurt US' by Ross Rosenberg is a bit repetitive and not especially well laid out, in my opinion. Ross admits that it was written in a rather 'stream of consciousness' way and I think it shows. Nevertheless, he has a lot of great material in his book and as a recovered co-dependent himself, he has huge credibility.

I cannot speak more highly of Kelly McDaniel's 'Ready to Heal'. I underline sentences in texts that are meaningful to me and my copy of this text is now heavily underlined.

I have yet to receive my copy of Pia Mallody's latest book but I have watched just about everything available on UTube and read all the material on her site and other locations. It is this woman who really spoke deep to the core of me.

For my own purposes I don't want today to type out quotes but rather to put her words into my words. It helps me to do this exercise. What impressed me the most was that her words spoke directly to me as if she had seen right into my head and my heart.

I put a great deal of emphasis in my life on a loving relationship. That's okay as far it goes. However, I choose, unwittingly, partners who are love avoidant. They create walls around themselves. I do this because if I can get through that wall, if I can get the attention of someone who insists on being unknowable, then I must not be as insufficient a person as I often feel. It's a self esteem issue as a carryover from a difficult childhood. It's not about achievements, or prettiness or capability. It's about my own internal lack of worth.

I've told my husband all about my feelings of inadequacy now, and have benefitted already with a greater sense of true intimacy, but as I said to him, "To read about that thought process and to own it as mine was a real kick in the guts."

This is what has caused the rollercoaster rides; those rides that seemed endless, taxing; exhausting; fruitless, failures. My desire to know someone wholly who categorically refused to be known was completely getting me down. Yet, I endured.

Not only that. It was made clear that I too was not to be known. Only a part of me was welcome. I just didn't know how to deal with that. I won't ever know. I learned that I am no good with walls. I am too innately curious to not know or to want to have the sort of intimacy where I am known for the complete woman that is writing these words.

Here's another thing. I lost track of me; of who I am and what I want. I wasn't sure in the end if my needs and wants were actually mine or if they had been impregnated into my mind.

It was time to stop everything and just learn to live in my own head without influence. That's what I do these days. I take it slow and I listen to my thoughts. I still love kinky stuff, but I won't be enmeshed again. I won't mistake submission, being a "good girl", with codependence ever again. I'm learning to accept the shame from childhood, to increase my self-esteem which will keep me happy and healthy, and to increase the self-care too. I am indeed not at all "worthless".

Loneliness

When we harbour an emotional pain, especially one that we have carried from childhood, there can be glimpses of that old feeling in what appears to be random moments. I've glimpsed my childhood loneliness in moments of stillness early in the evening when it is time to close the curtains in my bedroom. The sense of loneliness comes to me for an instant, a returning shadow. There is a feeling of heaviness, like a weight or anchor is holding me to the spot. I acknowledge its presence, the moment moves on into the next moment. I get on with my evening tasks and the feeling goes away. I've had a vague sense of understanding of these moments of hurt over time but I haven't dwelled on them. We tend not to do that. It's called denial.

As uplifting as the vast majority of my experiences have been in a power exchange, I have experienced moments of what I will call 'loneliness' through that connection also. In some acute way a particular experience, or just words, would tap into a deep emotional pain that made me want to run from the dynamic and end the pain. Eventually - a minute, an hour, a day, or a week later - the feeling would pass and I'd realize that I couldn't run from it, needed it. There was nothing else to do but to return the pain to its deep recesses in my mind and to hope that it didn't return; to attempt to mitigate the possibility of those same scenarios playing out in the same way.

For the past few months those feelings of what I am going to call 'loneliness' returned repetitively, almost to a point where they were with me more than they were absent. I can only guess that my mind had reached a point where it was ready to interrogate the feeling.

I read voraciously online and I had a stroke of good luck. I came across two reputable therapists of long standing who had written books about this word that kept speaking to me - co-dependency - and I sent for both of them.

Co-dependency, I have learned, is a symptom of trauma. No-one intends these traumas but not everyone is designed for parenthood and, unfortunately, all children have the same needs, regardless of the quality of the parenting style. In the face of a narcissistic parent, a parent who needs to feel special in their own way, children must determine a way to cope. My way of coping was to be good, quiet, no trouble; to keep my feelings to myself; to provide the space and caring they needed, whilst not getting the care I needed.  This is nobodies fault. It is just the way it played out.

Sensing that there is something significant about these moments of 'loneliness' I intentionally explored my experiences for an explanation. I have been surrounded by family all my adult life, and their friends, who love/like me very much. I've the opportunity to see my friends and acquaintances when I choose and those friendships are warm. I am not alone, and still I was feeling deep loneliness.

Of course, it is the quality of the connections you make that factors into a sense of loneliness or not. A couple of years ago now I had a single session with a healer type of person and I remember now that he said to me 'You don't give anybody all of you, do you?' My response was immediate, 'No, I don't.' I knew that deep in my bones, but I didn't know why. I didn't know that I carried shame (is 'shame' the right word...?)  that needed to be hidden, even from myself.

When a co-dependent meets someone who has also suffered a similar sort of childhood trauma (e.g. neglect or conditional love only), a dominant type of person, the sense of comfort and arousal is immense. The pull towards him is magnetic. The force field is as strong as an addict towards his drug of choice. The experience can be electrifying and joyous. But, for someone like me that power dynamic can also result in a sense of isolation for a number of reasons.

It is often said by a submissive or a dominant that the other "completes" them. But, what if you have two underdeveloped people - two half-people that need each other to make one complete person? It is only when there are two individuated people that there can be one healthy relationship.

If I am correct in this analysis, then I have no alternative but to address the co-dependency, for as much as I love power exchange so much of the time, the low times are overwhelming for me.

So, how does one heal from this dilemma left over from childhood experiences; from core needs not being met? My reading says the answer lies in self-love. As I come to understand the problematic issues that can relate to the power exchange dynamic and that have affected my life, I feel stronger.