Searches that Lead to this Vortex
April 28, 2008 at 3:57 am | In anxiety, change, eeabee, needs, pain, shame, support, vortex | Leave a CommentTags: blogging, change, needs, quest, shame, support, vortex
by eeabee (who is now “eeabee of the 26.2 miles”)
These are some of the searches that have lead people to our blog. Some of which are apparently from fellow silly souls, and others from fellow sufferers. Either way, we can only hope you find what you need, or a link or idea for where else to look, or even just a little company.
wiggly toes
toe of shame
toe wiggling habit
kindness to oneself
“trauma reenactment”
mrs vortex
the feeling of being in a vortex
vortex in human body
always feel shame
why do my toes wiggle
body memories
wiggly toe
what are body memories
feeling wiggley anxiety
vortex
“body memories”
toe wiggle
vortex as metaphor
shame vs fear
vortex healing depression anxiety
shame and self care
blogs about shame on oneself
trauma vortex
heart get suck down a vortex
Some of these, the toe/wiggly ones and mrs vortex especially, make me smile, and some are things I’ve no doubt gone out searching for myself. There’s a lot of this kind of pain out there, and it’s not the kind of pain we can live with alone, especially not when the heart gets sucked down a vortex, as it does sometimes.
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 | Leave a CommentTags: culture, family, gyre, poetry, shame, things fall apart, vortex, Yeats
by eeabee
In Yeats’s “The Second Coming”:
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 CommentsTags: addiction, lightness, melodrama, needs, playfulness, psychology, recovery, shame, tone, writing
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 Suckery” and Body Memories of the Non-Traumatic Variety
February 3, 2008 at 2:20 pm | In anxiety, body/mind, change, eeabee, self-criticism, shame, trauma, vortex, work, yoga | Leave a CommentTags: anxiety, boundaries, change, joy, movement, running, self-criticism, shame, work, WoYoPracMo, yoga
[I posted this on sparks in the night also, but I'm revisiting and adding a bit here.]
They capture shame, but also the joy of movement and the shape of the world.
I feel like writing about movement today, no thinkies. Those haven’t been going so well, lots of “I failed” at this or that or “I suck” in various ways. Some of it must be fictional–it seems like one person can only suck in so many ways at a time–one would think. I seem to be deteriorating a bit in this area, regressing some, for the first time since I got sober. Maybe it’s just a dip (if not, I’m in trouble), but it’s strange to have so much of the I-suckery going on in my head, like it always used to be. I got all worked up over another work thing, a student complaining about my appalling cruelty (Note: I don’t think this is one of my qualities, in truth) to all sorts of higher-ups. Luckily, she lied about them failing to respond to her at all (they had responded to her) so that helps my situation. And I think I had handled it all well and had a record thereto, but I had some difficulty not taking it in, not taking it to heart. This was a constant problem before and had gotten better. I guess revisiting the “I suckery” and finding it startlingly unpleasant means some change had occured, which is good, but it does drag at my feet, threatens to pull me down deep.
So no thinkies. Movement, territory, rain. I went running the other day, 16 miles I’d guess, WITH HILLS. And I do mean hills–there are some big ones where I was. They actually make it more interesting, more of a journey with different terrains than some sort of tiresome grind. It was a bit moist, which is to say raining for much of the time, but not so cold. I ran through some semi-rural areas, with horses peering at me as if puzzled by my going by, and saw some grey and soggy but lovely views.
Yoga-wise I’ve been mostly keeping up at least some basic yoga poses/stretches each day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but more than I was in the habit of doing before WoYoPracMo. I do definitely notice some new looseness/mobile-ness that is strange with such as escalation of running going on at the same time–must be the yoga. I’ve been to some new classes, including my first all-ashtanga all the time class which was great. It kicked my butt, but it was great.
Dynamic, fiery and vigorous, intense. The first yoga instructor whose classes got me hooked had an ashtanga influence to his flows and poses, so it reminded me a bit of when I first started. That was such an intense time–I was quitting drinking, learning all kinds of new things, getting overwhelmed, living life again. They say the body remembers trauma, and so it does. It remembers other things too. It remembers renewal, the joy of movement, the pain not of injury but of aching muscles being stimulated to develop, the forms it has shaped itself to, the rhythms it has followed.
Mrs. Vortex of Rabbithole Junction, Wormholeville.
January 15, 2008 at 6:15 am | In change, eeabee, fear, rejection, shame, vortex | Leave a CommentTags: change, fear, rejection, shame, transformation, vortex
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.
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.
To begin. . .
January 9, 2008 at 3:30 pm | In resources, shame, support, trauma, vortex | 1 CommentTags: resources, shame, support, trauma, vortex
by eeabee
I am setting up this blog for a group of women who will be posting our various reflections on some of the things we struggle with (things from our pasts, mood issues, compulsions, life, relationships, spirituality. . . who knows what else) and how we find our way through. Or sometimes, how we are stuck. One thing we all share is a tendency to fall into shame spirals, hence the need to surf the vortex.
I’m starting an annotated list of books and webpages about dealing with trauma, which I’m calling the “Trauma Resources” page as you can see above.
Welcome to our blog!
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