Nurturance

 I listen to quite a few people on topics related to integrative medicine. My husband is a big believer in an integrative approach for cancer and I instinctively feel that there is so much merit to looking at life style and the mind for a sensible approach to healthy aging and happy living.

Deepak Chopra is on the record saying, 'Emotional trauma is the beginning of disease' and I feel the same way. When we are in turmoil on the inside that's when the body and mind have little choice but to believe that something is seriously wrong with this Being.

Michal Singer said in his podcast series (I listen on Spotify) that when a disregulated feeling occurs, to go away and relax the body and let the feeling release.  

I have noticed within myself for some time a sense that I need to rely on myself. It's not just a need perpetuated by circumstance - the pandemic, for example - but a need for this Being to be quiet; deliberate; self generating.

Some examples of this are the self-hugging I learned in yoga classes; befriending myself (accepting all parts of myself as welcome), walking alone, yoga online (we are in lockdown) and looking to be alone and silent as much as possible.

A thought has been simmering away, and gaining momentum more recently, that my interactions with some people aren't really in any way equal. Equal is a loaded word. It's hard to define equality since relationships have built into them a sense of give and take, with the scales tipped in one direction sometimes and in the other direction at other times. But, I don't mean that sort of 'not equal'.

What I mean is that I began to get a sense that I was there for the other person, not for them to be a source of friendship or comfort as I was for them, not with that empathic desire that is inbuilt in me, but rather as a stable presence for them.

This feeling didn't occur with just one person but with a handful of people. When I first noticed that feeling, and for some time after, I carried on as usual. I did my best to ignore the feeling. Yet, over time, what happened was that the feeling became more pronounced. The feeling became very uncomfortable.

There is intelligence in listening to the messages of the body. I noticed that I might get to the end of an email message and feel this empty feeling in my stomach. There was no nurturance. I hadn't got a jot of a sense that I was being offered anything genuine; heartfelt. The comments felt like such platitudes it left me to feel that what was keeping me in the relationship was a sense of duty.

Last June, I was scheduled to go to a Silent Retreat for a week, and if that had not needed to be cancelled due to lockdowns this would have been a wonderful experience for me. I can try to be as silent as possible in day to day life to create a sort-of Silent Retreat, but it will never match an environment where the expectation is that nobody talks.

For empaths especially, silence is a tonic. People tend to naturally want an empath in their lives. Empaths don't ask for much from people and they often don't get much, either. I don't mean material things. I mean nurturance.

It's true that empaths like to be of service; to give. They do get a lot out of making other people happy and seeing other people happy. In my earlier years I wouldn't have thought the way I am thinking now. I was just there for people; slipped off alone when it got too much, without thought about that behavior.

I don't know if it's a good or bad development. All I can say is that I began to see interactions where I felt that something was being taken without something being given in return as like a rock clinging to my leg. I began to feel I wanted to be freed.

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".