Topic : Defining Your Authentic Self

I have been trying to get through "Self Matters" and even have it on CD for the car but all the crap that it brings up just gets me down.  

How do I work through this "stuff" for the umteenth time and make it to the other side.  

I want a happy productive life.  

I have a good honest husband who in his own way supports me in any way he can.  

I feel like i just want to drown my sorrows but that is just old coping mechanisims at work.  

I lost my job last week and cant even find the motivation to get out there and look for something new.  

I'm stuck  

anyone have any good advice for me?  

Linda, my experiences were really different. When it came to those classes I was pulled out of the room because I went a little nuts.  I did this swan fights because I was told to be quiet and pretend I wasn't there ... the sisters at the school came together and I ended up joining a choir or something.  They pulled out others from their classes and we all met in 1 room.  It was cool.    

However, for me, it was the parents prejudge that showed me that things were different. I was to participate in a regilious ceremony and the parents objected and I ended not participating at all. I was to be an angel ... with wings.   

I have no memories of the kids objecting. But they must have to their parents.  For me, I was lucky to have found sisters that liked me. 

I don't think my parents would have said "nay" to being told I was evil. I kept my molestation  a secret from them so they would have gone along with the sunday school teacher.  Remember, eve as a child I knew that something bad had happened. I didn't understand why or anything - yet deep down inside, I knew it wasn't right -- I had to keep it a secret. 

I think we need to teach kids that those secrets will destroy you - you need to open your mouth and say something -- it's like we join a club of secrets that if we do not open up and say something, we lose years and years of our lives. 

Reading Self Matters and doing the exercises brings up all the painful memories that are part of your day-to-day existance.  Are you in the 1st half of the book?  Or the 2nd half? 

For me, I had to tell myself to just do the exercises and read the book.  I had to force myself to withstand the painful memories.  That they surfaced so intensely was mind numbing for me. And they made me understand that if my past were my past then these memories wouldn't hold me prisoner. So the truth was I was living a lie - I was always telling people that my past didn't run my life and yet how could their memories be so painful.  Memories are just memories -- I mean, my memories of going to the sea shore was good memories - they were memories that didn't bring pain. 

For me, I selected a long time goal that I could write out what I needed to do to learn it -- I chose Sewing - I could come up with a list of TO DOs. So in the summer of 2004, after I had finally finished reading Self Matters - I kept the book and workbook beside me as I took 2 classes back to back to listen to what I was saying.  It was my way of practicing the technique.  It worked for me. 

Once the 2 classes were over, I was able to turn to listening to other things I was saying to myself. I developed ways of listening ... like sitting down at the table with pencil, pens, journals, the books.  Then I would write what I wanted to work on at the top of my journal page and then proceed to write.  Back then, I would just get up and walk away. However, because everything was right there, I knew that I had left unfinished business ... so I would go back, begin to re-read what I wrote -- add some more and then a day or so later return to it.  It got easier over time. 

But that's the way of it isn't it.  You want to lose weight or look for a new job -- you do a little planning and the next day you wake up and move on.  A month or so later, you remember you were planning to do it and it keeps going like that.  SELF MATTERS taught me to just give the time and energy to tackling my tapes and releasing myself from the heartache I was existing in. 

Today, I'm able to quickily realize that a tape has gone off - my cycles are shorter (matter of days now) -- I have shorten the "listening" to a minute or two.  It takes time, it takes commitment -- however, I can tell you from my own experience that it's been worth it!  I'm living for the 1st time in my life without pain running my life.  I'm able to plan, to enjoy going places and I've become at peace . it's really a great place to get to.   

I thought I would post another message.  I have been working a lot of overtime lately.  I find my work takes me away from my life and I concentrate on it instead.  My thoughts remain the same. I find it so much easier to work.  I know I have some choices to make, but in due time.  

I am tired.  I think my head probably never shuts off.  I am grateful for all the good things in my life and I say thank you every night before I go to sleep.    

I feel one day all the answers I see will come to me.  

Thank you for having this site.  It is great to come somewhere and just write.  

Wishing you all well.  

I'm not that young, a few grey hairs, but my life has been an ongoing educational experience.  Someone did make the same point, more or less, about requiring guidance.  

 I think there is a consensus amongst the majority (silent) that change requires an abusive situation to arise and so the impressionable will learn a different way of existing, through it.   

That is why I believe that the nuns got away with abusing children (in Scotland etc.).  Because those adults in the lives of the children (parents, guardians) would not take the children from the life of chaos and irresponsibility and create the change and order that the nuns in convents offered.   

That in itself, loss and deprevation creates change badly needed and so abuse goes unchallenged in the hope that these children will also forget, and that only kind memories of nuns will be remembered. (the mental abuse being this alteration of reality rather than the actually physical abuse, but of course, it is all part and parcel). 

Schools are changing, especially now with more work-orientated courses, with clearer, more purposeful pathways, forgetting their grass-roots, enabling changes that are beneficial.  

With Nuns-teaching as an example, whereby students do not have enough balance and purpose to the work that they do, students do not go into the work-force fully-prepared because of the change that was brought about from their experiences.  That students would have to relearn a lot of things, like reward for work done.  This could take years.   

I'm writing this because I realise that may apply to many who write about abuse.  

I think that adults gravitate towards people who that create order, and so in their own lives, where motivation for chang and the abusive elements have been put to the back of their minds of their own dealings with these people, both good and bad, have been almost forgotten. 

to write/talk things over on-line you've read.   

That's shows patience and consideration to me.   

Write a bit more later. 

Taemanai 

     

 santiz

 Barbara Johnson quote 

I think of Marcia reading this.  Good luck for the week. 

so many other things to happen.  Independence, clear thinking, happiness, lifestyle. 

I have good genes as well.   

Have a healthy week, Linda 

Taemanai