I'm back on the Rock in my mind today
Since my dad left, I have continued to feel a ball of confusion... Today, I will look at this like a RED Ball. This Red Ball is packed with emotions and sensations. It feels like loss, it feels like hopelessness, it feels tight in my shoulders - and legs - hips - my neck. It feels like the exhaustion of adrenal fatigue and the hyperactivity of my sympathetic nervous system on guard. It feels incredibly tiring but I can't sleep or when I do I have nightmare after nightmare.
The Red Ball feels like needing comfort and support but being terrified to be touched. It feels like gravity pulling on me too hard or like a blanket of depression over my whole body. Like when something heavy is on your chest so you can't take a full breath in.
This Red Ball is encapsulated by abandonment. Abandonment from people leaving suddenly in my life, leading to neglect and more danger. Or abandonment from being outwardly abused. Or abandonment from having my voice silenced. I read a book once about an example of a little girl playing with her dad on a rock in the forest. He then suddenly says, "I have to go" and he walks into the forest and disappears.
I was also left on that rock so I use this example today.
... the little girl doesn't know what happened, where he went, why he is gone so she wonders what she did wrong. And she has no idea where in the forest she is supposed to go. So naturally she waits.
She waits on that rock in case her dad comes back to get her. Because how could he assume she would ever survive there without him.... that wouldn't make sense... the hours go by, the days go by, the years go by.... strangers stop by at the rock throughout her journey... some are kind, some know her vulnerability and use it and then wait for years in the tall grass beside the rock, watching her and making her sleep with one eye open. Making her focus on safety rather than relaxing on this otherwise peaceful rock.
She hears her dad periodically in the forest, always at surprising moments, when he feels it’s a good time to speak... but he clouds her journey with words that she will learn to listen to but from a dissociative state because they are too painful to comprehend... but she feels comforted hearing him speak, so any words, even mean ones, help her keep going. He speaks to her from the forest, where she hears new children, and she hears him play with them...
She feels she won't survive without him because while he's away she barely survives on her own, on that rock. She watches him from a distance speak to creatures in the forest with a cruel grin, as he torments others.... like an evil smiling Cheshire Cat. She shutters. This is confusing. Squirrels, fish, bears (some are wise and provided wisdom) some are childlike but adult size speaking about her father with an ugly gossip that she would ignore solely because that didn't feel right either... Their gossip felt selfish and self-fulfilling, not helpful to her so she would learn to also ignore that. Leaving her alone on that rock once again. She would rather be alone than abandon her father right back. Her mom is in the tall grass around the rock, she never leaves... but her repeated anger makes the little girl feel it's her fault. So she learns to sit on that rock, just right, just perfectly not to harm anyone, not to touch the ground below the rock, not to "rock the boat" so to speak. Her mother knows there’s danger in the grass but does nothing about it.
The rain came, the winter came, the spring came, the sun came. Years went by where the little girl took care of herself, but she disconnected from everyone else because connection led to abandonment. She did try in her young adult life to 100% connect again...
When she was 20, she met the most wonderful guy. He was head over heels from what he said. He asked her to move to him. He asked her to wait for him as he embarked on a new journey. Promising her he would be back. He left her on the same rock for 9 months, without a phone number to call (because he changed it), without a letter explaining what happened, without a trace to know if he died or not... She faithfully waited, because he asked her to, and she wanted to believe that the abandonment (for years alone on this rock as a child) meant something. That it was all for a good cause. But it wasn't. She was left on that rock again... until 9 months later he told her he would be married to this new job, this journey. That he was incredibly sorry. This was 10 years ago.
Since then, she has situated herself on this rock, her “normal”. The place she calls “home” because she knew nothing else. Where abuse was safer than neglect… she would rather have people on the rock with her than be alone.
...................
I don't like this rock. And I know this rock well. And I sit on this rock, even now as an adult, holding this red ball and I share this red ball with people. With people that are like my dad… because deep down I think they will get rid of this ball… but in fact anyone like my dad just makes the ball much, much heavier and too large to get rid of.
I feel back on this rock today.... The dread, the loss, the abandonment, the confusion, the neglect and abuse, the default setting saying I will be shamed if I make one mistake. Triggered by the most minor thing. Much of my life has been on this rock – holding this ball, so even outward abuse can feel refreshing. Like a dopamine hit while I've been rotting in silence and pain. Neglect supposedly being the most painful form of abuse.
BUT I can remember that I don’t have to sit on this rock anymore… I can find my way through the forest and find allies, and immediately distance myself from any person that would put me back on the rock or make my red ball bigger. I can recognize when the ball is back in my hands and I can honor it, sit with it, and allow it to exist. Because everytime I honor this ball it gets smaller. Every time I experience a healthy relationship the ball also gets smaller. Hopefully one day it will be smaller than a pebble and I can stop from visiting the rock entirely!
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! ! !Great visualization! ! ! Encore, encore. . .
My visualizations were radically different but they slide easily onto a visualized rock as I read along with yours. My visualized rock is still there in every reminder that the neglect, abuse, etcetera, etceteri is still happening to innocent children as I heal, but with much psychotherapy help, I no longer sleep on that rock. I am no longer paralyzed and whisked into bygone realities at every reminder. "Inner Child Therapy" was my way off that proverbial rock. I visualized rescuing my inner child from that horror.
If you buy the inner child theories, that deeply and unfairly wounded child is recovering well. Some days she even believes me when I tell her she didn't deserve any of that. She still needs allot of reassurance on that score. No, Dear, we are not going to visit that rock today. How 'bout we visit the park, instead.
Hope I didn't get too aggressive in playing with your analogy. I really do love it.
Awe that's beautiful Arfie. Thank you for expanding on this. I definitely buy into the inner child theories because I feel fragmented parts of myself show up and sometimes overwhelmingly taking control of my steering wheel. It would make sense to me that the inner child needs to heard, not ignored, but calmed and reminded that "no it wasn't deserved" and we internalized that shame - for no fault of our own. That is just the human brain and we are not broken to get stuck here.
That "little girl" is visiting me today for sure. But you reminded me I can do fun things to help her feel safe (going to the park so to speak) and pulling her off the rock, so she can rest for longer periods of time.
Using visuals to heal!! Go team!!
I also buy into the "Parenting the Inner Child" theories. I "rescued" my inner child from a closet. In my mind and heart, she was about 4 years old when I rescued her. Coaxing her out of that closet took quite allot of therapy sessions. Changing her bloodied skirt was another ordeal. Her aversion to touch was quite hysterical. Doctors called it, "Autism."
That portion of my therapy was mostly in the 20th century. I hadn't forgotten it, but I haven't had need to *go there* in quite some time.
I have since become the foster mother to my 5 year old granddaughter. She has been with me for a bit more than 2 years now, first as a kinship care foster child, now as an orphan. When she came to me at 3 years old, she was suffering severe attachment disorder. Clinically severe. Two+ years later, she still suffers attachment disorder but seems to be healing nicely.
As I type this review with you, I wonder just how much of the work I've done with her is a direct thread to what I learned from parenting my inner child. Observation in progress.
I am immensely sorry you have that space in your mind. You didn't deserve that but it's honourable that you have faced it.
Wow, amazing connection. Probably! It would make sense that you had to "re-raise yourself" (full compassion for this because I also did this and used to shame myself for not doing it perfectly).... how on earth could we know the best way to parent if we weren't parented well. But you did it and that makes you special and now it sounds like you are parting wisdom for your granddaughter. What do you feel like you needed most at her age?
I sat with the image of my 9 year old self on the rock today.... and I imagined myself (my adult self) sitting beside her and talking to her.... I don't actually know what she needs to hear... but I do know she didn't have a proper chance to be a kid... so we played in my mind. With butterflies and birds and wrote stories and songs and poems. And as I read the book BIG MAGIC... I realize that we can play as adults. We can create and design and write, without needing to be successful. So today I am going to commit to that little me and tell her whenever she wants to play... we will play! And she can have her childhood back. The childhood she deserved.
More important than **knowing** how to parent is being able to **go there** without hitting the defensive barriers of those still unhealed and heavily guarded spaces in our own hearts, minds and psyche and reacting instead of acting.
Some rather delightful results have come from helping my inner child heal. I no longer feel immensely sorry to have those spaces in my mind and I feel far less guilt since I am no longer abandoning her there. In teaching her that it is okay to be a child, I learned how to play, myself. Some folks say old age is the second childhood. That would be my first childhood. Watch out. I'm quite the prankster.
Sit with her gently and often. Perhaps even try some, "Play Therapy." It's all the rage in child psychology.
Commit well. Commit deeply. Commit joyfully. Both of you deserve no less.
Oh interesting! Going there instead of knowing how. It goes back to the quote, "Awareness is like the sun, when it shines on things they transform".
Haha I love that, "would be my first childhood"! We have to make this one count.
"Play therapy" so cool. I will see what I can find on this. Thank you for sharing your existence and wisdom - much love Arfie.