Vortex Imagery from Mr. Fancy Poetry Guy (Yeats, in this Case)

April 15, 2008 at 3:18 am | In eeabee, family, fear, relationships, shame, vortex, writing | No Comments
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. . .

Here the vortex is out in the world, unleashed–maybe a different thing than the internal ones of individuals–but no, I think not.  I think maybe that they are all the same thing, all part of each other. Individual shame spirals don’t come from nowhere, they come from other individuals, from families, from culture–from all the systems we move in, all the systems that can house a vortex.  Some of us just seem to feel them deeply.  Some of us try not to pass them on, and so they stay with us.

Shame Binds or/and a Cliffside Dance Party

February 25, 2008 at 4:02 am | In change, coping strategies, eeabee, fear, needs, psychology, shame, trauma, vortex, work, writing | 2 Comments
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by eeabee

I’m reading John Bradshaw’s Healing the Shame that Binds You, and I see that he says: “To be shame-bound means that whenever you feel any feeling, need or drive, you immediately feel ashamed” (32).

Oh dear.

This does seem a bit of an awkward way to go through life, a bit inconvenient.

And so it is. I find things like this helpful though, not to weigh myself down with the enormity of an issue like this to be point of being immobilized, matted down, stuck to the floor, but because it makes me realize how huge of a deal it is to be able to move at all. This could become overly self-congratulatory, and probably already has, but there may be worse things. Clearly I like (and fear, but also like) attention, or I wouldn’t be writing here, so there’s no sense it denying it, not really. Even less so, if I admit that my job involves me having regular almost captive audiences, which I do admit, because it does.

Equally distressing are these quotes: “As each new shaming experience takes place, a new verbal imprint and visual image form a scene that becomes attached to the existing ones to form collages of shaming memories” (32); “As the years go on, very little is needed to trigger these collages of shame memories.  A word, a similar facial expression or a scene can set it off.  Sometimes an external stimulus is not even necessary” (33).  A whole big webby network in which a disturbance (or not even) in one spot triggers the whole thing to go haywire. And so it does. Not always–not like it used to. And I was just about to write that with this collage/network thing, the situation is as likely to worsen over time as it is to get better, and I’ve experienced some of that, some of it lately. But I’ve experienced the opposite too. It has taken great labor to get this far, which, if you haven’t gathered this already, is a bit sad considering how much room there is for improvement, but it’s more dazzling to think about where I came from. End-stage addiction, for one thing. And I do mean end stage. Which is where I now live, poised delicately above the brink I was just about to plummet from. See, I’ve been starting to think that a little melodrama–or a lot, it’s not really something that works in subtle accents–has some things to be said for it. It’s not actually that I’m exaggerating, but my prose is a bit purple at times, juicy-like, a bit oversaturated. Overdecorated with swooning-couches. But it’s such pleasure to overdo a bit like this, and it lets me play with something I certainly wouldn’t be able to wrestle down without getting myself killed in the process. But dancing with my awareness of where and how I live–on this edge of disaster, having stepped a few feet back, but I don’t think it’s possible to get far–that lightens the feeling of living here. It reminds me there is pleasure and lightness even here. Or shall I say (Oh I shall, I shall. . .) “especially here.” “Especially here” it is then, because while it sometimes seems intolerable and too scary here, sometimes it seems just as right to wonder what could possibly be more surprising and exciting?

And there’s never a problem with boredom.

I Object, I Protest, It’s not Fair, If it’s Going to be like that I’m Taking My Toys and Going Home.

January 25, 2008 at 5:44 am | In depression, eeabee, fear, rejection, shame, support, work | No Comments
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by eeabee

So. My friends here reassembled me after falling apart over various things the other day, and I’ve got a new project for you all already! The previous project is a little hard for me to untangle/piece apart, but the basic idea is that I keep having the experience of feeling some trust (for people like my spouse and therapist) and being startled to find that I’m feeling hurt by them, while at the same time knowing they don’t want to hurt me, thus making me get all confused and feeling like my cat looks when he’s running in circles after his tail. So that’s been a whole big thing lately.

And I really felt that this was plenty of this sort of thing thank you very much.

But (complain, complain) yesterday I was back at work for a whole new batch of students and classes and fairly wound up because I was so reminded of last spring, which is when my father died and everything was just a big boggy mess. My employer overheard me talking to a friend about house-hunting, and I live a ways from work and my employer does not appear to like of this situation, so she did this whole pull-me-into-her-office-close-the-door thing, accompanied by some very alarming comments. It was very out-of-the-blue and strangely without context. I handled all this with extreme dignity, of course, and burst into tears (and I do not cry glamorously but blotchily and puffily). Turns out that she wasn’t saying anything new at all and hadn’t meant to be threatening (it had sounded to me like I was on the brink of job-losing), just worried that I wasn’t getting to know some of the people I work with well enough because that might have effects on decisions they make about me in the future or something. Not quite how it came out initially, and certainly not to my ears. I had felt more like an abject creature halfway firing-squad victim and the other half small child who’s been sent to the principal’s office and is imagining catastrophic consequences awaiting. The said spouse and therapist helped me to not freak out any more than I already had–nice twist isn’t it? Maybe the next thing will be my employer helping me deal with whoever the next situation is who gets me all confused. I’m not quite ready for that though!

Mrs. Vortex of Rabbithole Junction, Wormholeville.

January 15, 2008 at 6:15 am | In change, eeabee, fear, rejection, shame, vortex | No Comments
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by eeabee

Note: I might post a few things here, like this one, that I’ve also posted a version of on my individual blog (sparks in the night on Oct. 25 2007)–things I’d like to revisit. But I’ll write different things too.

Last fall I had some major descents into shame vortexes (I think I prefer not to use the “vortices” plural form at this time) and I’m thinking back on them, from a little distance, now that I’m a few feet away from the edge, the precipice. Sometimes the ground around the vortex seems to slope, so that the vortex expands and engulfs the normally-level ground around it, engulfing whatever in it’s path. But it’s staying more contained now, for now, ’til next time.

For me, falling into the shame spiral goes like this: I am walking along feelin’ fine and not on edge (that’ll teach me not to be on edge!) and I fall right into a wormhole-rabbithole. Rejection (real OR potential OR only imagined) or anything that triggers an overwhelming attack of self-criticism seem to be what make me lose my balance, tilt, and fall.

These are moments in which the past seems to return, uncalled for and unwanted, to make the present seem like a replay of the past.

Anything that smacks of rejection and/or not being seen and/or how much I allegedly suck is potentially lethal for me. Lately it’s been moments of remembering difficulties with my spouse and therapist, and me worrying that I have ruined my car somehow (because it’s having a couple issues, and of course it must be my doing somehow, even though one issue is at least due to a faulty computer and others are due to having been hit by another driver, but so what, it could still somehow be my suckiness that is to blame). Rejection, invisibility/unrealness, suckiness–these are installed ideas that can be easily triggered, and can be harmful and even threaten to be lethal. Because that’s the life they have when stirred and not balanced out. And I’m afraid I find myself getting all dismantled more times than not. I’m told I have a choice about this, but I have little idea about how not to, and little-to-zero skill in the matter. But it’s a nice thought that it’s possible to learn to have a choice, even if it’s just a dream, and maybe it’s more.

But that’s not always available, not always there in the present moment; some days are for falling into rabbitholes, for being whisked out of time. This timelessness, this collapsing of time and space, this vortex–it swirls with shame and fear. It pulls me in, and I am gone once I enter the spiral. Or so it seems to me, and so it is in effect, for a time. If I don’t know I exist for a minute–if I lose touch with myself, I am not there for myself until it passes.

vortex.gif

I fear the vortex; I want to learn its power in a new way, without such fear. It transforms, which is scary, but it is other things too. Exchange. Recirculation. It is not a black hole, though it feels like one; it does not eat. It takes me in. But I come out, or some version of me does. What if I could move in it, through it? What if I could ride its energies?

I’m getting carried away though, as I generally do. It’s one thing not to fall apart in terror of the vortex, but that doesn’t mean I have to love it, be seduced by it, give myself utterly over to it. Like the kids so wisely say, “if I love it so much why don’t I marry it.” Just call me Mrs. Vortex. Life is never boring in our house. It’s wild.

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