Journey Beyond Belief

Once upon a time a new baby named Me came into this world quickly feeling she had made a wrong turn.  This wasn’t at all what she thought she’d signed up for prior to coming back to earth.  Sensing she was so different from her parents yet absorbing all of who they were, while believing on some level they were all the same.  Because her mother’s birthing experience was difficult, Me’s father gave her the middle of the night bottle.  Some 30 years later as her father told the story of how she wanted to play rather than “get down to business” so he could go back to bed, she finally knew why she’d always felt like a burden who never did anything right.  How incompetent are you, if you don’t take your bottle correctly?  These tiny, yet pivotal instances created her beliefs about who she was and how important it was to please others, especially those closest to you.

Until Me was 2 years old, her sense of success or failure/right or wrong depended solely upon her parents’ reaction to her every move eliminating any sense of her self.  Shortly before her second birthday, “NO” became a staple of her vocabulary.  Her first attempts to separate herself from her parents were met with strong resistance.  Even though the internal force was strong for her to resist, the results of resisting were often physically and emotionally painful.  Retreating into the fetal position to be invisible seemed like a good way to dodge the pain.  Committing to be as good and perfect as possible so as not to incur the wrath of her father while really believing she was truly a bad person (why else would her father punish and criticize her so frequently?) became cornerstones for her way of being in the world.  Her sister, born when Me was three, responded to being told “No!” with immediate defiance quickly strengthening her determination to do it anyway.  The wrath her sister provoked resulting in terrible punishments increased Me’s resolve to shrink even further out of the way.

Me’s earliest childhood memories were of losing any attention from her parents while gaining new restrictions upon her new born sister’s arrival home from the hospital and being told she was going to college with a full scholarship because they wouldn’t be able to pay those expenses – ingrained in her that she was on her own.  And, she won a full scholarship to college so her parents never had to pay a dime.  Oh, the power of scarcity and people pleasing programming.

As Me started school, her desire to please her teachers as much as her parents remained quite strong.  Her first report card in first grade was all A’s starting a trend that would continue until she took chemistry in high school.  Being told she would be grounded for six weeks for a C was strong motivation to continue her perfect record.  Very early on, Me’s father rewarded her straight A’s with money for each such report card cementing her belief that she only received and deserved money for being perfect.  That ensured the deep difficulty she had with receiving money for any work she ever did because, of course, she wasn’t perfect.

The Victim’s Beliefs and Behaviors

Beliefs that fuel the victim’s view were strong in Me’s life starting with those new born nights with her father and her bottle – being powerless, vulnerable, criticized, judged, punished, fearful and controlled. Victims crave attention, understanding, and nurturing, not only in the physical sense but also in the spiritual sense, having lost the connection to themselves, loved ones and spirit.   Feelings of worthlessness, dependence, fear, anxiety, stress, burn out, isolation, anger, jealousy and betrayal abound.  Victims frequently use “should, have to, must, supposed to, need to” reflecting the belief that they have no choices. They expect to make mistakes, mistrust themselves and others, and feel threatened by the bounty of life while believing there’s never enough of anything.  Victims focus outwardly, looking to some one (a lover, parent, cult leader, guru, etc.), some thing or some place to bring them peace and happiness.    Being unable to receive, they give from a place of emptiness spawned by a strong “need to be needed”.   From these beliefs come controlling, blaming, retaliatory, manipulative, judgmental, reactive, and co-dependent behaviors. One of adult Me’s huge “aha’s’ was how her need to be needed led to attracting needy people into her life.  A perfect vibrational match!  Another huge “aha” for adult Me was when her therapist asked her why she felt she had go across the country to be at her mother’s side during brain surgery and she replied “because she is my mother and she’s having brain surgery” and she didn’t know she had a choice.  At the time, Me was severely depleted, possibly heading toward a hospital stay herself if she didn’t start taking care of her – a completely new concept.  Making arrangements with her mother’s doctor and friends to inform her if anything went wrong with her mother’s surgery, Me, age 43, for the first time chose herself first by staying home.

Parents’ greatest gift

Me’s parents each gave up the work they loved due to – her father’s angry reaction to rejection of his proposal to improve efficiency in his workplace; her mother’s response to her new husband’s order to quit based on his jealousy of the men in her workplace.  The loss of their dreams resulted in both of them being angry, unhappy and unhealthy for the rest of their lives.   Seeing the lack of joy in her parent’s lives touched a knowing deep in Me’s heart that life wasn’t meant to be joyless and painful.  In fact, it was just the opposite.  In her late teens, Me made her decision to live life joyfully and easily.  She later saw this realization of what belonged to her to create in her life as the greatest gift her parents could have given her.

Journey to Vitality

Me left her 13-year marriage at age 33, 9 months after being transferred to New York City from Texas by the company for whom she worked.  Waking up one morning with clarity that her marriage was not where she wanted to be as her future unfolded, she left 3 months later choosing to give her husband residential custody of their daughter because Me felt she was a terrible mother believing her husband was much better equipped to be the full time parent.  Me thought of getting her cat back from friends as she started her new life when the “NO” from every cell of her being was deafening and unanimous:  “You have spent your whole life focused on everyone else, it’s now time to focus solely on you and find out who you are!!”

The six years that followed before Me’s daughter came to live with her were pivotal.  Seeing a therapist who instantly helped her see that the constant pain in her neck symbolized looking up from the street at the Empire State Building spire for 33 years thus mirroring how she had always looked up to everyone else believing they were much better than she at everything.  Me’s goal was to experience feeling her feelings that were blocked as solid as a frozen car engine.  She could only describe herself as being “upset” when she didn’t like the way something was going.  Her therapist revealed that Me’s face looked like she’d won the lottery when she talked of being upset.  That was her “Merry Sunshine” face – a true product of the “looking good family”. Because Me’s father was a rage-aholic she was terrified of feeling, much less expressing, her anger.   She understood how someone could be a mass murderer fearing she, too, was a heartbeat away from randomly opening fire on innocent people.  Thus, it was critical for her to keep those feelings at bay.  The support of a women’s therapy group gave Me reassurance that once she recognized that connection to rage, there were healthier ways to disperse that energy.

Me’s decision to stay home while her mother had brain surgery turned out to be a turning point in her life.  Choosing Me’s health and well-being over her feelings of obligation toward her mother was the first time in her life she had ever chosen herself first.  That brought her journey to vitality up several notches, which is often the case when we step out of our comfort zone.

Within 6 months another turning point occurred that catapulted Me into other realms.  She received her first poor performance appraisal since she’d started working in the world some 24 years before.  She was devastated as success at school and work was always easy for her framing her sense of self worth, and now the moorings had collapsed under her quickly reviving the victim role once more.  As with most situations that first appear devastating, amazing gifts arise from the ashes.

A few weeks after her devastating appraisal, Me attended an Al-Anon meeting at her nephew’s suggestion. The speaker, having just received notice that their house was being foreclosed due to her husband’s alcoholism, spoke on faith.  As several other women repeated their same experience, Me felt some itching around her waist.  Walking to the car, her fury quickly rose as she wondered why those women were allowing these men to ruin their lives.  When Me got home hives – a physical manifestation of anger – covered her body from shoulders to knees.  Her awareness of how being a victim can negatively impact and ultimately ruin lives was expanding.

Going the next evening to an Adult Children of Alcoholics aka ACOA meeting, Me experienced a sense of comfort and connection within a group of total strangers unlike anything she’d ever known.  It was as if every person in the room grew up in her family.  Those meetings provided the outline of the puzzle where she could place all the pieces she’d gotten in therapy.  So many things in her life were finally making sense!

Another huge revelation came to Me when the speaker at another ACOA meeting referred to that program as spiritual not religious.  Me, never knowing there was a difference, instantly knew that spirituality was what had been missing from the first 44 years of her life.  Over the next twenty years Me explored many spiritual traditions and metaphysical perspectives.  She took from each what resonated with her creating a framework for living a life of vitality.

So what does a life of Vitality look and feel like?  A deep connection to the Oneness of all life, supporting the trust one has in herself/himself and the abundance of the Universe. Honoring oneself and others with love, nurturing, kindness and caring.  Asking and listening to one’s body, mind and spirit to determine the needs for rest and activity. Experiencing the freedom of always having choices and following one’s heart in making those choices, while taking full responsibility for the results without attachment to what other people will think. Knowing one deserves and can receive all the Universe has to offer allowing them to detach from people, places, things, outcomes and expectations. Standing in trust, exuding joy, peace, ease and gratitude, knowing that one’s potency comes from the centered place inside.

Me’s journey to Vitality will continue to unfold and change.  Each step offers greater possibilities, more consciousness and grand adventures beyond her imagining as she continues to live from choice by choosing Me first.