States of Mind

Whilst we all experience a range of moods and emotional states, some people experience, almost randomly, a heightened state of arousal. If you happen to be with the person when this happens, it's discombobulating. You can't be sure exactly what they are saying or why they are saying it, because it isn't particularly related to what happened just before their state reared itself. Most importantly, the sense of anger or even rage seems so out of kilter for the moment. My husband is inclined to do this; to be relatively at ease and then to suddenly speak fast and intensely about a subject. 

Last evening we were cuddled up on the couch, perfectly content, when at the end of the episode of a Netflix series we had been watching, he began to talk fast and emotionally with many, many f-words sprinkled into his language. The character's predicament was the trigger, I believe.

Of course, I know him (though don't necessarily always understand him) well enough to keep quiet whilst this is going on. He's not looking for conversation, unless it happened to be the words, "Yes, you are right."

I'm no Mother Theresa and I make mistakes and when he made a comment that seemed, to me, perfectly ridiculous and simply not true, I made a statement saying so. I didn't say he was wrong. I just stated what I felt I know to be true. This wasn't a good idea and escalated his sense of fury. I just left the room.

I've read enough about relationships to know that the ideal outcome is repair. Earlier in our lives, this happened a lot such that I said one day, "It's nice that you apologize, but I wish that we could avoid these situations altogether." Er, unfortunately that's not the way it went.

I believe that my husband sort of 'talks to himself' and by that I mean tries to do better in this regard. But, each brain is its own unique entity and it continues to be hard for him to stay on a even sort of kilter.

The next time we talked, this morning, he wants it to be as if nothing troubling happened. It's a new day. Not able to snuff things off quite that easily, I keep to myself.

For me, as much as I know it is part of his makeup to lose the plot with emotional hyperbole, I hate it. I try valiantly to not think about it, but I just do. On the nights when I can get through the night asleep after such a rant, I count as a great blessing. The norm is for me to wake up after a few hours or sleep.

I remember PP (the psychologist I saw a few years ago for a few sessions) say to me, "Look, people argue over spilt sugar", as if it was somehow my fault that I don't want these emotional tirades in my late evening repertoire. Hmm, maybe an insight into his own marriage.

I mention all this as a way into explaining my remedy...

There are different ways to meditate for different people and in different circumstances. When my interoception is high; that is to say when I am aware of my distressed emotional state and struggle to take my mind elsewhere, such as my external environment, the last thing I need is to focus on my third eye. Breathing exercises can be good, longer exhales than inhales, because that is calming at almost any time, but there is no way focusing more on what's going on inside me is a good idea.

If I am just awake in the middle of the night because something is vaguely on my mind, but not intensely so, Steven Snyder's 'Absolute Peace Meditation' does the trick. He takes you to a vast blackness, so black and so deep there are no edges. He then talks about the qualities there and the first one is peace. Everything that peaces touches become peaceful. And, so it goes. Blissful.

However, if I am stewing (I have a strong sense of justice and won't take the blame for things I didn't do) that's when I go to a Sound Meditation where it is a whole lots of disjoint sounds that mess with my  mind and simply will not allow me to think, at all.

When Deity and I got to know one another he did a bit of a research project on me and discovered - we both discovered - that I love to have an empty mind. He used to send binaural beats amongst other scripts.

Same goes for the people at the Ayurveda Retreat who quickly established that bliss for me was having someone pour a substance from above my head onto my third eye and then stroke it away. In fact, two women sat on either side of me doing this wiping away whilst I lay there like a person on a surgical bed with my veins full of anesthesia.

I mentioned it to the chiropractor last week and he said, 'That's a method for torture!' Well, not for me.

Earlier last evening I did a slow flow yoga class. The teacher is very gentle, has a gorgeous, soft voice and the class is as slow as a class can be. I said to her afterwards, "You are amazing. That hour always seems to me like 10 minutes."

I think one has to be aware of how one takes in information. I am a kinesthetic thinker. This was established when a meditation teacher asked us to listen to a script and raise our hands if we saw ourselves, heard ourselves or were there as ourselves. I was in the third category.

Hence, to move slowly in a meditative way is ideal for me. To breathe and move slowly in this way is to experience bliss, as opposed to moving fast, which also closes down the mind but in a more taxed way. (An example of this would be a challenging hike where the brain closes off but so too does common sense. I completely forget to drink water.)

I am very naturally drawn to experiences of deep peace (and a sense of connection), but it's more than that. I had to focus on them for my own well being under the circumstances in which I found myself.

Grief

 Grief, as we now know has various stages, not necessarily linear. When I first heard the news D had died, there was no 'I can't believe it' stage for me. I think that came a day or two later, when I wrote those words to his sister, 'I still can't quite believe it.' No, immediately, I knew it was absolutely true. I was gutted; quietly emotional; reduced to a flood of tears.

Of course, like so many other thousands of people who are or have been in grief, I played the 'if only' game with myself. If only I had been in touch on chat in the last few months; if only I had been more persistent, more loving. I finally realized that I don't have and never did have that sort of control. This sort of thinking and feeling is like the bargaining stage.

There was a bit of anger in the mix. Why couldn't he have taken better care of himself? I had tried in any number of ways to achieve that goal. Grief has a component of desire for something to happen, so I wasn't without some desire, but protected from that physical expectation that usually associates grief.

What I didn't have to contend with, as his partner now has to do, is the expectation that he would walk through the door sometime soon. I only had to contend with the fact that he would never answer my final email to him; that our chats were now over forever.

Depression is another stage of grief and I suppose my waking at odd times in the night is associated with that stage. I think it's all part of the acceptance stage and trying to make sense of these things that happen. In the right circumstances he had another fifty years to live, to love, and to achieve more great things for the communities he had served to date.

Although it hasn't been a long time since his death, I have in large part accepted what happened. I think I had some time to prepare for this knowing what I knew for some time. I think, and I am trying to pry open the door of my subconscious here, it is why I didn't communicate so often in these past few months; I expected it and found it too painful to watch too closely. I wanted to believe the song I had been sung; that all was well and I could do that better with some distance.

So, my grieving is also about giving myself some self-compassion. I tried valiantly to protect and I failed. But, I did try and I did care. I find myself with profound compassion for those professional people who work with people who have experienced terrible things.

A final stage of grief has been added to the model of the five stages of grief and that is meaning. There is no meaning in his death but there was great meaning in his life. He loved and was loved by a great many people. He was frustrating at times, bloody stubborn in moments, but he was a very lovable character who vehemently worked to make the world a better place. His time on this Earth had great meaning for many, many people, including me.

He was someone who was tolerant of difference and deeply caring of people; particularly those underprivileged. I once told him it seemed he was trying to carry the weight of the world and maybe he needed to take a rest. No, no, he said, there was too much work to do. The world had to be made a better place.

As his mother wrote, he was overcome by beautiful women. It wasn't easy for him to see the entirety of a woman because he was besotted with love; not necessarily romantic love, but the deep caring a compassionate woman could provide. Mostly, I think he felt safe with a caring woman of any age.

We both appreciated Ricky Gervais's 'After Life' and discussed it one day this year in quite a lot of detail. He wrote to me, 'Do you know the female character that sits with him (Tony) in the graveyard?' Yes, I did. 'She reminds me of you.' 'Oh?', I replied, though I had a fair idea what he was meaning. 'She listens to him and she cares about him. But she calls him on his bullshit too.'

Of course, I smiled. It meant a lot to me. My more strident comments didn't appear to be well received and I didn't make them often,but I carried on when I felt the need. This was his acknowledgment of them as a form of my care and it felt good to be seen in that way.

All he ever really wanted was peace. When I would ask him what he wanted, and I must have asked a half dozen times over the years, it was always the same; just the one word, 'peace'.

May his ashes fertilize the landscape where he grew up. May he find the peace he so richly deserves

Deity

 In the kinky world he was Deity, maybe Mr D. For me, for many years, he was just D.

His words, many years ago, those written on his blog, struck a chord.

I wrote first. He'd talked about a sore leg, as I recall, maybe the dog too, and something made me reach me out and ask if he was okay?

Thus began an email and text exchange, and a sometimes complicated, but always rich and meaningful friendship.

Considerably younger than me, I sometimes 'mothered' him, or 'sistered' him, something he never appreciated but usually tolerated.

In latter times, when my worry about him would have me reaching out to his sister, he was angry with me. He could take care of himself, he said.

He was always sensitive; prone to feel the angst of the world so deeply. He would dive into the world of orchestral music for relief; meditated.

When he experienced grief a few years ago, he struggled to know what to do with it.

My concern would be relieved by a new burst of energy on his part and like this, it would go.

Worry. Relief. Worry. Relief.

It seemed a few months ago like his life was on track. We exchanged notes and he had a dream job, he said and was dating a "gorgeous" girl.

However, in the past few days I couldn't stop worrying about him, and last night I sent a note, please just write back and let me know how you are doing. 

How mysterious it all is. I experienced a stillness after I sent that note that was heavenly in nature. 

Peace.

I hoped to wake to a note from him but instead I had been sent an email from his sister with a link to his memorial service.

He was a complicated man, not easily understood and sometimes perplexing.

But he was a good man, wanted good things for the world and those he cared about.

He loved well. He had an extra good heart.

 Oh my goodness, but I will miss him.

Healing

When experiences occur earlier in life and are not felt and processed, they sit there in the subconscious (an untreated, unhealed wound) until something or someone triggers them. At this point, the person who has experienced and carries a wound from the past has a reaction. It may even be that they are, in a sense, transported back to the event or events of the past. 

Personally, I have had a few experiences with my husband where I felt that he didn't know that it was me with him. I felt that he was talking to someone else; talking to someone who had hurt him long ago. This was a very disturbing situation and I didn't feel I knew what to do. I stayed completely quiet and after the eruption, so did he.

In general, when my husband is triggered by something I have said, I tend to stop talking. This is a technique I decided to use after I realized that it didn't matter what I said, my words were not going to help the situation.

Aware of the trauma that sits in my husband's subconscious, wholly untreated, I have learned to take it into account.

Recently, a member of the extended family to which one of our children married into, was strident, outspoken and inappropriate with my husband when the subject veered onto politics. This was at a children's birthday party and my husband chose to close the conversation down, which the woman in question did not want to do. She was in for the kill and angry he wouldn't fight.

 My husband had no way of knowing, and I didn't know either, that the young couple were supporters of Trump and his politics right across the board. They don't believe the Earth is warming, for example.

Recognizing the quicksand he had landed into (and I have since raised it with a senior member of the family who admitted it is a difficulty being carried in their family), he made the fastest exit he could. But, it was too late. The woman in question, and now her husband, don't engage with my husband at family celebrations.

This is, of course, upsetting. After listening to my husband again recently explain to me what happened, I suggested that he simply engage one or both of them in a totally safe conversation - the weather, the children, football (we support the same team so that's safe, right?).

But, due to this trauma that sits in his subconscious, maybe him feeling that he made a mistake in some way, my making a suggestion wasn't a good idea. I know this but sometimes I see growth and healing in him that suggests we can go a little deeper in our relationship and that I can talk authentically.

It can be useful to make a note of what happens and what is said in these situations between us. In the past, I have been too blindsided by the verbal attack to remember (or even take in) what is said. The value of writing it down is to evaluate how the situation ensued and what the trigger might have been. It may never be helpful to him if we can't discuss it, but it is helpful to me to understand where the trauma sits.

It went like this in a broad brush way:

- He explained the initial event in detail.

- I acknowledged what happened but reminded him this was in the past, couldn't be undone, but maybe engaging one or both of them in a simple, harmless conversation might break the ice.

- He said to me, at least I remember distinctly these particular words, "Don't make things up?"

- I repeated the words 'Don't make things up' in an effort for him to see where his mind had gone - blaming me.

-He then said, 'I don't need your advice' and said between one to two minutes more of which I don't remember anything.

I stayed silent. After he was silent I picked up my phone to check the weather (a signal from me that I was going to start my day) and he got out of bed.

Event over.

I think a great many people understand now that marriage can be about a relatively safe arena in which trauma from the past is played out. I  know that I am married to a man whose soul/heart/Spirit (whatever you want to call it) is good and pure, but who has suffered trauma that he can't necessarily heal without help, which he refuses to access.

At the same time, I also know that I carry trauma from my past, emotional needs unmet. Thankfully, I have a brother and we are each other's witness. Just talking truthfully, whilst keeping it in context of two parents who were doing their best and were also carrying trauma, has helped us both a great deal.

I do also need to acknowledge that my trauma is not entirely in the past. I continue to experience difficulties living with someone who is carrying trauma. It's a juggling act trying to be my authentic self at the same time as I do my best to have my own needs met and to keep myself emotionally safe.

I do not run from the truth. I know that I am capable of being hurt and I know that I am strong. I have much to be grateful for at the same time as I have had much to endure.

I could have run away many times. I could have ended it and found refuge in aloneness; maybe in the arms of a man who felt entirely safe. I would be lying if I said the thought hadn't crossed my mind.

But, even in the darkest of moments, it's the Buddha's words that I hear. They keep me in the game.

'Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed.'

Protector

 It was Friday night. I remember specifically because it was our Australian Football Grand Final the next day. 

I had a nightmare. 

With the benefit of hindsight I can see what happened. I had read recently that people pleasers (like me) were generally attached to some form of guilt.

Guilt!? That surprised me. I pondered. What did I have to be guilty about? What kind of guilt would lead me to a life of wanting to please people?

It's so interesting and mysterious how the mind works. My mind had dreamed up a scenario where all would be revealed.

In this terrible dream I found my father crouched by his car parked on the street. He told me that there were criminals looking to kill him and I said to him that we couldn't stay where we were. He was too exposed and we needed to find shelter.

Right across the road was an apartment, several apartments that he owned and rented out. Since he had the key I said we needed to go into one of them and hope the tenants weren't home. They were home and so we made an excuse that we were checking something. 

We couldn't stay there, eventually had to leave. My father was ahead of me just enough that when I turned around to say goodbye to the tenants he was already out on the street and making his way to the car.

Incidentally, my dream had used a whole lot of truths. My father did go to collect rent from tenants in his earlier life. And he did tend to skip ahead across roads, quite proud of his ability to speedily get out of the way of a moving car or perhaps an incident.

As soon as I saw him on the other side of the road I realized his vulnerability and I ran towards him. But it was too late. The bad guys had been hiding around the car, threw a sheet over him and pulled him into the mob. In spite of my efforts to get to him I didn't stand a chance and he was gone from me; out of my life.

In my efforts to get to him and save him, I had to wrestle with one of them; a strong, well built man painted up like a clown. (There's context from his life around that too.) He had me horizontally on the floor although we were moving quite fast, as if on an electric cord. I was slapping him in the face, trying to get him off me but he was far too strong and simply laughed in my face.

I became aware of police officers, American police officers standing in a huddle, either oblivious or disinterested in what was going on right before their eyes. I tried to scream but no words or even sounds came out. 

It was at this point that my husband very gently shook me, 'cindi, cindi, you are having a bad dream'.

I couldn't shake the dream in that I was haunted by it but sort of awake now and I lay there quietly, weeping.

Eventually I got up to pee and then went back to bed and enveloped myself in my husband's arms, told him about the dream and I remember I said that all my life I tried to protect my father in a myriad of ways.

I am not sure quite when but some time soon thereafter, after a little more sleep, I had an epiphany.

This was grief; 31 year old grief that hadn't found expression before.

My father was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor when I was living in the USA and bringing up my young family. His diagnosis had been held back from me until they could hold it back no more. 

To my mind, though I could never have expressed this before, I wasn't given the opportunity to protect him; to save him, as I would my mother a few years later. And this had played on my mind all that time without my having consciousness of it. 

(Well, not quite. I have many times replayed the feelings of being told and being upset; of calling the surgeon; of coming home to see him; of speaking to him for the last time on the telephone when he was in the hospice; of deeply regretting that no-one was with him when he died.)

Even more poignantly, I came to understand that under the sadness I was feeling after the dream, I felt something else - a fierce love for him. And that was a very good thing; to get in touch with that feeling, elusive to me for many, many years.

Over the years, I have come to understand that rather negative titles can be directed towards me, quite legitimately; people pleaser, codependent; caretaker.

But what if we could look at it another way?

Today, I did look at it another way.

I'm a protector. A fierce protector of those I love. 

Today, I am proud of myself for that.

The passing of the Queen

 Although we knew the Queen was clearly very unwell, her death seemed to be sudden. When I went to bed, I noted that the family were gathering to be with her and that the end of her life was approaching. Maybe at 4 am I woke and checked only to see the article renew and to disclose that the Queen had died.

It's my intention to note my feelings, as part of an overall plan to simply be aware of my internal experience, rather than gloss over it. So, I noted the sadness and sat with it. Very quickly I began to softly weep and eventually I got up and washed my face and blew my nose before I settled back to sleep.

I think seeing her so frail 48 hours ago, still working, still caring, still trying to do her best, and then passing away from this world last night really exposed my heart; certainly not a perfect human, a thing that doesn't exist, but someone who tried and never stopped trying.

As it is for so many thousands of people, the Queen has been a constant in my life. My grandmother was very keen on her and took me to stand amongst the crowds when she came to Melbourne in 1963, and of course magazines had her on the cover regularly throughout my life.

So many families have their share of conflict, and the Queen's family was no exception, and yet there was something particularly poignant about a daughter-in-law creating the most awful rift in the Queen's family at the end of her life. As people who put their duty to country first, all those podcasts and interviews airing dirty laundry, expressing only one side of the discord,  must have felt so ugly and alienating.

I noted too that I kept my sadness this day to myself; came here to express it rather to a person. I noted it as odd that I did that and looked up a book that I use often to see what it said. People who 'caretake' someone do this; keep their emotions to themselves because those who they 'look after' don't like emotional displays. They are the ones who do emotional displays and caretakers are the ones who stay calm.

Still, I am not made of stone but rather a vast cacophony of emotions many of which are experienced privately. This is the training.

As I lay in bed in the middle of the night absorbing the Queen's death, not just as a sense of sadness in my mind but in a somatic way, as a bodily experience, I came across this sense that nothing else truly survives but love. We can feel it, not that hard to do for most of us, but can we be love?

I believe with all my heart that the vast majority of us are doing the best we can - that there are wounds that prevent us quite often from being our best - but given the wounds, doing the best we can.

It's that thought, that acknowledgment of the human experience, that allows the heart to open deeper and tap into an unconditional love - not expecting more of someone than they are capable of being, but loving them anyway.

I wonder, perhaps if only momentarily, the Queen's passing may tenderize our hearts.

Validation

 In small or large ways, we have all experienced trauma. Some traumatic experiences seem to settle in the body, take residence in there and won't shift. It's as if they lodge. This doesn't necessarily effect every minute of the day or even every day. Some days are fine. Some days aren't so fine.

I think, when we have an issue, we look for the solution, as if there is a solution; some miracle cure that will exterminate the trauma.

In my experience, it doesn't work like that but rather there  has to be a fairly consistent approach to working with the trauma; small but consistent baby steps; without some sort of expectation that one day you will wake up and it will all be gone for good.

I think acknowledging yourself as a person living with trauma is a good start on the road to recovery; to feeling better. I don't say this lightly or flippantly. It's no small thing, for me anyway, to be able to write these words.

I find myself here sitting at my laptop writing into my online journal, aware that unless I say something deeply truthful there is no use writing here at all. The truth is that I feel quite emotional saying this, that I am someone that lives with a sense of trauma. It was probably perfectly evident to you the reader for years, but even so, it's quite the revelation for me.

If I can be helpful to the reader here, perhaps I can offer something that has helped me quite a bit lately. I take my hands to my chest, one hand crossed over the other and I hold them there. I close my eyes and I am more aware of the feelings of this sensation. If you try it now you may well become aware of a deep quiet not just inside yourself but outside of yourself too, like a protective shell. There is something deeply affirming about this action.

You might say quietly to yourself, even out loud, "You're okay." It might not feel right, right away, but maybe you can add another time, "I approve of you." or "You're a good person."

Sometimes in life, when we aren't given something we very much wanted as a child, there's a sense that even if someone were to give it to us, we allow it, perversely, to slide off us like jelly. We just don't let it land.

I am suggesting that maybe you, and maybe I do receive validation at times but maybe the validation we need is our own validation. Maybe the love we need most is to love ourselves.

So, maybe when you cross your hands over each other and hold them on your chest (I personally do this high on the chest close to the collarbones) you might say to yourself, "I love you". See how this feels.

I don't offer this as a remedy for the trauma. If the trauma lodged, it may not be ready to depart so easily. And yet, it's quite something to note after offering oneself this little act of kindness repeatedly that acceptance softens the trauma.

It's almost as if, when one stops being 'brave' and denying the trauma; when one acknowledges and offers compassion to the being that has experienced trauma, the trauma settles down. There is a quiet whisper...'finally, you've welcomed me'.