From: sasnla@shadow.unx.sas.com (Nancy Agnew)
Subject: Re: for those considering Final & GOOD NEWS
Originator: sasnla@shadow.unx.sas.com
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 18:35:18 GMT
Organization: SAS Institute Inc.
Keywords: STRONG EMOTION ALERT!!!!


Sorry, folks.  For those of you who are a in a fragile place, I am
about to do a first, I'm going to write while I am still really
angry about what was put in this post.  Usually I try to put myself
in the other person's place to try to understand what is motivating
him or her to say what they are saying the way they are saying it.
Usually I use e-mail to avoid showing my emotions to all of ASAR.

For all of you in tough places today -- I am not angry at you, if
my words are too sharp and bother you try to let them pass by you if
you can.  Anyone who is pissed at what I write, please e-mail me.
I'd have e-mailed this person if s/he weren't anonymous.

by the way, poohbear, REALLY NICE JOB responding to the post in
a much more reasonable way than I want to do.  You made a lot of
things that I have thought and felt very clear in what you wrote.

also, I've had some good news about my recovery to share, and hadn't
found a way, but I think it is coming out now -- I am in a new place
and it feels really good and gives me some strength to respond to this
thing.  It comes out a little in my response, but more completely
at the end of my post.

If I were yet further along, I could dismiss this post as the babbling
of the clueless.  Please, no flames to ASAR, send 'em at me directly.

In article <9209300713.AA10367@saturn.upl.com>, anonasar@khijol.UUCP writes:
>
>I am that little piece of you that is detached from you, sitting here
>listening to you blather on about how you'd like to end it all.  

voyeuristic tendencies do not a "higher power" make.  It has been a while
since I felt I wanted to end it all, and I can say with confidence that
I have eliminated that route as a way to deal with my recovery from
sexual abuse.  But if you haven't been there, keep your judgements about
blathering to yourself....better to have someone express their fears, 
confusion, and pain here (that's blather?) here than continue hurting
themselves if there is ANY part of them that wants to not hurt
themselves.  I know this from when I was blathering on about this in my
journal (pre-ASAR at my site).

>You have total control over your environment - you just don't remember 
>that. 

and *you* don't know that some of us never knew that to begin with -- we
started out in life being without any control of anything -- even during
the "terrible twos" and exploring pre-school years we shut down our
"natural human tendencies" that lead most children to play with demanding
that their needs be met and with checking everything out and learning
boundaries.  Some of us had learned pretty severe and restrictive
boundaries in infancy -- and were totally controlled by others from
before any of those exploring years began.  We have (I have) a lot of
other stuff mashed around in our memories than this suggested knowledge 
of yours that I "just don't remember".

>... If you
>realize that you ARE playing a game, and that YOU control the rules of
>the game, and that YOU can change the game so that YOU win whatever it
>is that you want to win, things will immediately get easier for you.

yeah, well, guess what.  Things just became easier for me last weekend.
And they got that way by months and months of hard work, harder than it
sounds like you've done -- or maybe you did it so long ago that you have
"just forgotten what it feels like".

They became easier because I learned something new. (deep breath) I 
learned I can love myself.  I'm thirty-five years old -- that shouldn't
be NEW information.  A year or so ago someone posted something (I
think it was Laurie Mann, maybe?) about not understanding how people could
hate themselves -- so many of us on ASAR were beating ourselves up either
figuratively or literally.  Well, I never understood how I could possibly
love myself.  That has been an enormous stumbling block for me, and now
that I have apparently scaled it, I can turn around and say, "it was
there all the time and it really did end up being easy".

That's like giving a four year old (typical kid) a calculus test, and then
giving her time to learn the appropriate mathematics and giving her the
same test at age 15.  Well, yeah, the 15 year old is going to find it
a lot easier, a lot more possible.  Does that mean the four year old
was whining, or wimpy, or incapable?  Hell, no.  She didn't have the
tools.

Well, I didn't have the tools.  A lot of us here don't have the tools.
And we get them by working, not by chasing some elusive idea of control
and making ourselves happy by pretending we are happy.  You seem to forget
that a lot of us have tried that route.  It doesn't work for most people.
It is f***ing hard to get to this point.  I don't plan to forget the work
I did to get here...and I have a ton more to do, but at least now I am
accompanied by an advocate -- myself!  You try changing your outlook
when there is nothing you can consistently hold onto that says you are 
worth anything at all.  If you haven't been there, you can't understand.
And if you can't understand, you are in no position to judge what is
possible for any one of us at any time.

>Remember, it's me you're talking to, that ME that you see every morning in
>the bathroom mirror, so yelling at me is yelling at yourself.  

all of you out there who can't bear to look at yourself in the mirror 
raise your hands.  I can't believe I have been the only one... I know
I haven't been.  I know I've been yelling at myself for a while -- I
hated myself or at the best of times thought that maybe I wasn't a *total* 
waste.  But thinking I might love myself?  no f***ing way.  Guess what, 
I can look in the mirror without flinching this week.

If you haven't been in a position to feel a need to celebrate a "small"
thing like being able to look in a mirror, keep your opinion about how
*my* life works to yourself.

>"But, it's not that easy!" you whine.  I'm here to remind you that it IS
>that easy ...

WHINE?!  WHINE!!!!!! what's it to you how we search for the tools we
need to become whole, break open our shells, rebuild our characters,
whatever you want to call this process.  As long as we don't seek to
build ourselves up by putting others down, we will try anything we can
come up with to further our growth.

>you've just forgotten the ground rules.  By telling yourself that it's not easy,
>you're convincing yourself that "yeah, it's OK to be where I am, I like it
>just fine, really I do; otherwise, I'd get out of wherever I am.  I like it
>just fine here in the soup, thankyouverymuch."

oh, as if getting out of wherever I am is a walk down the block?  not
even close.  If we liked it just fine in the soup, we wouldn't be posting
to ASAR -- we'd still be in denial, just as I was for however many years.
The ground rules I was taught seem to have little in common with yours.
Maybe we should trade rule books and you live by mine (the OLD one) for 
a year -- see if you don't end up with some patched, broken, and as 
poohbear pointed out, temporarily warped places.  I have been learning
NEW groundrules for the past week based on the hard work from the past
18 months, and they do make things seem much more possible.  If these
are what you've known all your life, I can understand why you can't figure
out where we are coming from.

>Just your Higher Self (or pick the diety of your choice and insert here)
>trying to remind you of what you once knew, but have forgotten.

what you wrote expressed diddly about my higher self or any other diety 
of my choice or not my choice.  You are apparently clueless.  Take the
advice given to writers forever -- write about something you know about.

>Like Arnold says, "I'll be back!"  :) :)

don't come back on our account.  If you want to be here, fine.  One
thing, though....most posters here have enough respect for each other
to make *suggestions* and offer *opinions*.  We *know* that our experience
isn't necessarily the same as anyone else's.  We *know* that each of us
must find our own way and make our own choices about how we move through
life.  

Most folks give themselves some sort of a name, even those who feel 
they must post anonymously for their own safety.  What's yours?  Just who
are you that you think you can set yourself up as some sort of higher 
ANYTHING relative to me?  

=====================

Okay folks, I feel a little cleared out, now.  And it is really true.
I learned last Friday evening that I could love myself (it is still
making more sense to me to use the conditional, but that will change
over time).  IT FEELS GOOD!!!!!!!  I highly recommend it.  I feel now
as if I have enough emotional strength to do some of the really hard
stuff I've been too frightened to tackle.  I also can, for the first
time since this blasted process began, see the LIGHT at the end of the
tunnel.  For a few months now I've been saying that I knew the tunnel
had an end (last year I was convinced it was a cul de sac cut into
the mountain).  The light is far off in the distance, but it is there,
and so far (6 days and counting) it is steady.

I have had some breakthroughs that have come from months of struggle and
feeling shaky, and when they come I can feel the struggle that was behind
them.  This one is different.  I had been struggling, and struggling,
and last Friday I was in a mild state of panic all day (difficulty
breathing, etc).  I was writing to someone, and not thinking about
much beyond appreciating some of the things she had done for me (one
of my support people), and out came "maybe I can even love myself" --
from nowhere (well, not from the frontal lobe, anyway).  And when it
came out, and I saw the truth in it, I felt like I'd gotten there by
stopping struggling and just waiting, peacefully and calmly and without
hurry.  I don't know how it happened, but it felt really different from
other struggled-over breakthroughs.  Now things look different, my
perception of where I am is totally different.  I can actually believe
my friend when she says she loves me.  I can feel the love my SO has
for me.  These are things I could not do before (only now I can think of
it more as "these are things I did not know I could do before").  It's all
so new -- and so much more fun than where I was.

There are still pieces of me that aren't in on this part -- I think of
myself as having three inner kids of different ages (different major
traumas at those ages) -- this realization comes about my youngest kid - 
a three year old (maybe four yrs.)  I have a feeling I'll need to do
something like this with the other two, but now that I know it is 
possible, I am confident that it will happen.  THIS FEELS SO GOOD.

In some ways I wish I could snap my fingers and help other people have
this feeling...I know that it isn't possible to do this for anyone but
myself, though -- it honest-to-goodness came from within me.  A friend
likened this process to giving birth to a new person -- she and some
others have provided the midwifery that have helped me to accomplish this
breakthrough, but a lot of it was done by me, in that lonely feeling of
isolation because nobody can truly share another's pain.

If you can get any hope from what I am saying, please do.  If, as I always
have in the past, you read it and say "yeah, ok for her, but it can't
possibly apply to me because I *really* am hateworthy" -- I know what
you mean.  If it feels impossible now, hang in there for a while and see
if it stays that way.  I had to take it on faith for a long time.  For
now maybe you can simply be willing to take it on faith and reserve
final judgement a while longer.  I hope so because this feeling is so
good that I think everyone ought to have a chance to have it.  Stick
with it and I think you can.  (Sticking with it includes taking those
times of respite to regain your energy -- as long as you keep your
eyes on the prize.....)

And for those of you who have been able to love yourselves all along,
why didn't you tell us how good it felt???  (obvious, I guess.   Just as 
we couldn't know how good it felt because we hadn't felt it, you couldn't
know because you hadn't felt otherwise?)

warm thoughts and best wishes and lots of luck to everyone.  you all
deserve this feeling, too, so keep at it!
NLA
-- 
Nancy Agnew                         sasnla@unx.sas.com
SAS Institute Inc,  SAS Campus Dr,  Cary NC 27513-2414
My company's opinions are not likely mine, and vice versa.