test

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Default faulty thinking:

... Growing up I was extremely enmeshed with my mother and I absorbed her posture to life which was one of fear. She was a terrified woman and she taught me how to think. Until recently, until I starting practicing Real Love i didn’t even know that I chose my thoughts and was responsible for the resulting feelings I felt. I see now that I need a terrific amount of frequent support from others who love me enough to listen to my ptsd default thinking and remind me that my fears are rarely real. I need others to love and encourage me when I can’t do that for myself. At the same time, I believe that a healthy, healed Harvey is one who is able to encourage and support himself….by himself. I am resisting the fact that I am very needy. I have shame around this and i am anxious to feel whole, complete and worthy without any help from others and yet, when I do allow myself to reach out and push thru my shame, I am always uplifted by the caring of others. Bottom line; I am not as confident, and emotionally stable as I’d like to be and I often “should” myself to be that way. 

My fear: moving away from Phoenix and the many friends who I get great support from scares me. In my history, I have never been successful at being sober and okay with my self when living alone. My sons are in college, I’m retired and divorced. I am afraid that once i relocate and settle in I will find myself suffering from chronic anxiety and depression. I never learned how to sooth myself…by myself. Uncertainty usually scares me and the truth is, outcomes in life are always uncertain. And, how I am choosing to think and thereby feel often feels (or I judge) out of my control. I have other beliefs that constrict my growth and happiness. One of the most devastating ones is the belief that the most/only really important thing in life is to find “the one”  to love and live happily ever after with. The flip side of this belief is that until that perfect romance happens I will feel incomplete and distracted by this “need”. I don’t seem to be able to visualize myself at peace and focused on goals other than love and the only “love” I know how to do is imitation love when it comes to dating. I am not comfortable or capable anymore of lying and manipulating for my own selfish gains anymore and I don’t yet know how to simply be honest and present myself as is while at the same time feeling compelled to “woo” the woman of my desire.  Limbo…uncertainty…fear.  Without  “the one” as my primary goal and motivator I don’t know what to shoot for. Don’t know how get fulfillment or a sense of direction and purpose without living for love or “outside validation”.  I know I am on my way to a happier more honest and healthy place but at times I am deeply discouraged.  The “this too shall pass” encouragement seems not to apply to lifelong negative postures to life. My thinking does change but definitely not as much or as quickly as I’d like it to. 

SAILING INTO SANITY

SAILING INTO SANITY

Okay. One would think that sailing in the warm clear waters of the Caribbean in the middle of winter for a week would be a wonderful experience but that was not the case for me recently.  Over the past 2 years I have developed more intimate relationships with others by being more vulnerable and truthful about myself. There are friends I’ve made who know me and care about me; there are new friends I find myself caring more about as they reveal themselves more deeply.  Perhaps that’s why the Caribbean vacation was not satisfying for me. I have grown accustomed to and desirous of, more honest, more intimate relationships with others (and myself).

My expectations: I sailed for two months in 1980 from Mobile ,Alabama to Jaimaca over the course of nearly 2 months. It was a long, slow and at times harrowing journey  but overall, an unforgettable adventure. There were many challenges and changes and my resourcefulness was tested time and again. I experienced the perfect calm of sunrises as well as battering waves and drenching rains. The contrasts made me better appreciate serene circumstances when they occur and my own abilities to survive difficult ones as well. 

When i signed up for this cruise I was picturing the extremes of my previous trip through the Bahamas clear waters, dangerous reefs and the normal rule that Murphys Law manifests on the seas at times-whatever can go wrong will do so at the very most inopportune moments.

Instead this trip consisted of was a series of island hopping or “bar hopping”  where we would work ourselves up into an overindulgent party of eating, drinking and touristy souvenir shopping that goes along with fleeting pleasures of distractions. Each day was primarily a recuperation from hangover so that by nightfall we were ready once again to party. Laughter, silliness, sex and other fun stuff is wonderful at times but not when a foundation of honest friendship has not been first established.

The people were nice of course. They were regular human beings acting like most of us do most of the time. But I discovered I’d become accustomed to hearing others share openly about their pain, there shortcomings and struggles.  I discovered that I have a need to be “seen” and accepted for who and how I honestly am in the moment. There is a certain response of compassion and connection when we are allowed to see into another person. Real love is a powerful and satisfying experience and evidently I’ve become accustomed to and expectant of more loving real interactions with others. That certainly did not happen that week on the waters and I am not holding any of the wonderful people I sailed with responsible for my experience. I myself did nothing to make things different than they were; i did not “become” the change I wish to see in the world-instead I withdrew emotionally and withheld the truth of my experience biding my time, holding my breath, waiting for the trip to end. 

I can’t party like I once did. I have tasted too much unconditional love and acceptance to remain satisfied with anything less.

Interestingly, i didn’t have much clarity during the experience; I was simply reacting as I usually do when faced with a reality I did not want-I went into behaviors. I ran (withdrew emotionally), and I lied (by going along and not sharing truthfully how I felt and what I thought. I behaved privately like a victim and I did not ask for what I needed so there was no way to have things go differently. I assumed or expected that others would reject more truthful intimate conversation but I really don’t know what would have happened if I’d been truer to myself and shared that truth with others. 

It was’t the worst time of my life but it did repeat the experience i’d had several months before when I went out on a sojourn wanting certain things to happen and when they didn’t, I felt disappointed, confused, fearful, and sad. So. What am I learning? 

Fortunately I am learning that all the “pleasures” I used to enjoy in lieu of a truer more sustainable state of happiness not longer fill the bill. It’s hard to appreciate vinyl jackets parading as leather once you’ve had leather. And this is all good news. The fact that I am more conscious of choices I make and my emotional responses to those choices is leading me to a different life altogether. A life in which I seek truthful interactions with others. A life in which I am becoming more and more comfortable being who I really am and not worrying so much whether others will like and accept me or judge and reject me. I guess the most productive journeys I can take are those that lead me within where I can discover better who I am which leads to me becoming better able to know what I want and need which puts me in a better position to make caring healthier choices. 

Your own responses are welcome here and i hope to generate dialogue between us that supports all of our journeys towards a more enlightened, healthier and happier life experience. 

Namaste.

Radish Sandwiches

Radish Sandwiches

September 9, 2011 at 7:30pm

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my mother used to slice radishes thin and then scatter them aboard a slice of buttered wonder bread. what a strange lady. There was rarely a moment when residual smoke wasn’t curling out of her well defined nostrils. As a kid I thought, “Dragon”. Very cool.

but really more like a witch, a frightened and pissed off witch. she had good reason to be frightened; her father molested her sister and tried to do her too. Held him off with a steak knife, so she said.

there was always a cigarette burning in one or more rooms at the same time. Viceroys. Charcoal filter. Add a little carcinogenic to the lung cancer eh?

slowly but surely televisions, small ones appeared in every room and they were on, always on.

at 4 o’clock she would stop cleaning and recleaning the house and have her first of two martinis, dry-no vermouth.

Dinner was an uncertain time. She might attack my father. Really about the only time he was home and available to be attacked. She was so very angry. She was so very needy. She needed to be needed and he hid away at his office, poker games with the guys, fucking his secretary. I like how the word “secret” is in secretary. But nothing stays secret forever. Secrets scald and burn and change people when they reveal themselves. Secrets change the course of lives, someitmes in good ways, sometimes not.

Radish sandwiches on buttered Wonder bread; builds strong bodies...how many ways? Who knew there were so many memories waiting to be told in a radish sandwich?

I Will Run No More Forever

my loneliness is of my own making

i had walled myself away

from myself

and therefore from all

it is gray today and raining

inside and out

i let the sadness soak in

and flow out

i stand in water

i lay down in this water

my water

i am soaked in sadness

washed by my own compassion

drenched to the bone

to my soul,

let it rain let it rain let it rain

i will run no more

forever…

       amen