Befriend yourself.

 It might be a confronting thought for some people. I know it was for me, until I embraced the wisdom therein. It's this. Regardless of companions along the way - spouses, children, extended families, business associates and random people we meet as we go about living out our days - we walk the path of our individual lives alone.

We carry on a dialogue with ourselves, critique ourselves, berate ourselves and tap ourselves on the back. Regardless of what we say to other people, we know internally how we are doing; if we are proud of ourselves, or scared, or lonely, or fearful, or if we know it's time for something new.

In essence, we compete against no-one but ourselves. Really let that statement land.

We can keep eternally busy and maybe these thoughts may never come up. But, they will. They do. We all, at the least, have dark nights of the soul whether we choose such reflections or not.

I try to keep it simple here in the journal; try to narrow it down to one idea even when my brain is flooded with thoughts. So let me tell you about the pain in my left shoulder area; this almost constant nagging pain that has been there for years.

It's an injury, I am told. It's arthritis, I am told. It's where you hold your emotional pain, I am told. There's some truth to all this analysis.

Yet, something deep in the psyche whispered to me that I had some power over the pain. What gave me hope was that in a deeply relaxed state at a retreat a few years back, I left the retreat pain free.

When I returned to my life, the pain returned with me, but what I had realized was that injury or not, arthritis or not, mental pain or not, it was possible to be pain free.

I read widely and so I can't say exactly where my inspiration stemmed from exactly, but a few days ago I found myself in conversation with my body. It was a yoga-free period as I nursed a sore back muscle and instead of going to a class, I was doing some simple yoga movements at home. 

I found myself saying internally, 'It's okay body. You and I are on the same team. You don't need to keep giving me signals. I'm looking after me now.'

I cannot take full credit for the vast improvement in my shoulder area since I did have an acupuncture treatment last week. Still, something's changed, profoundly changed in my relationship with the pain. To not get too weird, I acknowledged it; acknowledged what it might be doing to help me, in its strange sort of way. I talked back to it, offered to be in consort with it, and in doing so, found relief, a truce of sorts.

To see myself as the star of my own life; as the one walking solo through my own life (together with companions, of course) was to remove anyone else being responsible for my well-being. This provided me with a lightness of being. (Note: I should say I have been listening to Worthiness recordings from richsmithhypnosis.com and highly recommend them)

I can honestly say that if I had an easy sort of path, someone who offered me the kind of attention and affection I have always craved, a comfortable life, I would have stayed in my comfortable lane. What reason would there have been to leave? Who can blame those with blessed lives for thinking that life is about being comfortable; more and more comfortable?

I once asked a wise woman what I should do now? At my stage of life, what would make a difference? She suggested I should not feel burdened by a need to seek to do more; if something comes, let it come, she said, but don't force it.

I took that advice, awaiting patiently a sign of where I could do better, or more. After trauma, first you have to heal yourself. Then, you can take your healed self beyond. That's the stage I am at; actively seeking to venture further and further outside my comfort zone; to see what I am capable of.

It's some old saying, isn't it - that the solution lies within?

A recent acquaintance likes to say, 'If you can't be happy without her, you can't be happy with her.'

Using fewer words, I suggest, 'Befriend yourself.'

Befriend all parts of yourself and be comfortable with the truth: that you are a work in progress, as you should be, and always were.

Being oneself

In the early period of writing in this web journal I noted the fact that I masturbated at a very early age. It seemed to be part and parcel of being a kinky girl, since so many other kinky girls had written about this as well.

I don't reject the thought that kinky girls masturbate early but what I also now know is that if a child's emotional needs are not met in childhood they use two tools to soothe themselves: masturbation and food. It stands to reason that this was the primary reason for my nightly activity between the sheets.

It's really very hard to say for sure what were the first images in my head. I was so young; maybe four or five when I started to self stimulate every night, once the lights were off and the covers enclosed me. So, I can't with confidence say that I imagined this or that image as I masturbated at that young age. However, I do know that I have many memories of images where I was being disciplined and humiliated. It was about a school environment, masters and mistresses. Considerably later, it moved into domestic environments, and even later, it became debauched; multiple use; orgies, the whole gamut of the sexual experience on the big screen in my head.

School, at first, my real school that is, was a frightening place for me. For two years it all felt foggy, wobbly. I think what happened, though I have no proof to offer, is that the teachers were making me write with my right hand when I am most certainly a left handed person. I remember having to write on the board and looking back on what I had written. It seemed indecipherable. My reports for the first two years of school, which I still have, make clear that I was unsettled and unfocused. I needed to "try harder". If you then read the report for Second Grade you'd swear this was the report of a different child. It is glowing; a high achiever, focused, motivated and self disciplined.

Of course, when I was a child there was no ADHD diagnosis, no panic attack or anxiety diagnosis; no assistance for a child that entered school life feeling foggy and wobbly. The only other difference between the first few years and Second Grade that I can ascertain, apart from the possible demand that I use my right hand, is the Second Grade Teacher. She was a tough Irish woman who brooked no nonsense and, as I recall, demanded performance from me. I was her mission and I think it is fair to say that one way or the other she got me going at school, even though I feared her and thought her a mean person. I think I just responded to the attention she gave me, even if it was not always pleasant.

At about the same time as I became this model student my ballet years were settling into place. I started ballet early at age 4, I think it was, and the first few years there were wobbly too. My ballet master was extremely strict and not afraid to criticize. I somehow found myself thriving in a strictly controlled environment where excellence was demanded of me. If you didn't get it right the first time you just kept doing it until you got it right. This was all fodder for my nights, when I masturbated myself to sleep to images of this sort of containment, including corporal discipline; something which I never received at home at any age. It wasn't the real life people in my imaginations but rather faceless sorts of people who performed roles; disciplinary roles.

For those who did in fact get a paddling or a spanking when little I don't have any doubt that most of them find this a most galling memory. If it happened to me I suppose I'd feel the same way. But, left to my own devices to more or less bring myself up, it strikes me as caring, assuming it was about care and not about abuse. In my fantasies someone cared enough to monitor, to create expectations, to discipline when there was wrong doing. These images of being disciplined were soothing to me, you see. There was a fear factor, definitely, but it was under the auspices of it being for my own good too.

I do have a couple of memories of the Third and Fourth Grades. By third grade I'd developed a fear of making a mistake such that my anxiety made it difficult for me to focus on the meaning of words at times. I imagine that, using today's understanding of what can happen to children I was having a panic attack, not unlike the way my youngest child had panic attacks in the classroom in Grade 7 when we got him some therapy for this debilitating situation. But, I got the results somehow or other and navigated my way through to the end of school frustrating most teachers because my exam results were rarely up to the expectations they had of me given my standard of work through the year in class. I lived a certain kind of hell during exams since my brain would freeze and I'd only remember snippets here and there.

If you fast forward to when I was having my first child, I undertook a Diploma of Education wherein there was a subject 'Educational Psychology'. Between the baby's naps I prepared for the final exam. I still have a vivid image of sitting in the Philosophy Room of my University and seeing the paper for the first time. It was complete gobbledy gook. I knew nothing. I managed to settle myself down with this thought: that I must know something.

Bit by bit, I began to see that I did know something here and there on the paper and over the course of the two hours, more and more knowledge returned to me. I thought perhaps that I might just pass. With trepidation two weeks later I went to the Notice Board and looked up my academic number to discover that I had got 17/20. I was really pleased. I looked down the notice then to see what sort of other marks were recorded and discovered that 17 was indeed the highest mark.

What I have suffered from all my life is not an ability issue and that's not to have tickets on myself. I was just born with some strengths in that department. Where I am very weak is in self esteem and self confidence. I can struggle to have confidence as to my ability to complete a task well, a perfectionism that can hold me back. And, I can have very weak self-esteem, an inability to believe that I am good enough as I am; that I have inherent worth as I came into the world.

It is an undeniable fact that my issues are greatly improved when I accept that I am a woman who needs a dominant man in her life. I really would hate to be that person. Honestly. I'm not easy to keep in line. My head can reject that need. Other women around me don't need that sort of supervision and containment. But, I do. I do. I do. I do. That's just a simple fact.

I've spoken to a number of dominant men in my life, mostly via this blog, but via other routes as well, and I know that each man has his own approach. These approaches rarely resonate with me. I am not sure why this is. Sometimes I think, well, I can't actually be 'submissive' since simply being obedient or serving doesn't do it for me.

What happened to me is that one day I began to correspond and then chat with this one person, and something therein clicked for me. It was something about an element of care that I felt. He was definitely getting something out of it for himself to have these chats. Why else would he or anyone else keep chatting? But in his case it felt that he had somehow got to the core of my needs; needs that I didn't understand myself. But, he did.

He talks about me needing to be "anchored" and interestingly I think my ground chakra is by far the weakest. I am much too often in my head. I live up there when I need to feel the ground under my feet.

Pia Mellody talks and writes about self esteem being made up of values, power and abundance notions in our heads. Self esteem is in tact when we say to ourselves that we matter as we are, when we have self control and self containment, and good self care.

There's a part of me that feels that I should be able to get to this place of healthy self esteem all on my own. I don't feel that I should be leaning on someone else to get me through this. Yet, it is hard to dispute the facts as I know them to be. I've a certain 'bimbo' sort of disposition. I do best when certain methods are used; methods for which I have a love/hate relationship. I feel, on certain days, that I am weak to need this, and yet, I rise up when those methods are in place. I am indeed anchored.

There is no one 'right' way for all of us. We do all have certain human emotional needs, of course. There are wonderful tools available for the recovery process useful for all who have need of them. I am glad to have them at my disposal. I am also relieved to have kinkiness at my disposal. It's when I accept all of me that I really thrive.

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".