Erasure of Self, Protections, and the living energy of needs

In a prior post, I explored my thoughts on safety and how I can maintain it when the instructions by Marshall Rosenberg to give almost all of my attention to the experience of the other person in an empathy session led to me interpreting it as a demand when I wasn't always resourced enough to be with anyone else's experience but my own. 

Since then, I've done more research into what it feels like to not be able to (or not even be allowed to) hold my own experience while in relation to someone else. In that last post, I described it as a kind of "erasure of self." I'm going to describe something that happened at a women's retreat during a meditation session that might give a bit more insight into what that means for me, and what that experience feels like. 

Erasure of self

We were doing a meditation in which we were asked to feel the energetic boundaries of a shield or shell that we have around our body, that protects us from the outside world. We were asked to try opening a small hole, as part of what we were learning was how to receive from life, both the pleasant and unpleasant, as being defended cuts us off from being able to receive life fully. We had also been doing some other practices for nervous system regulation and being with strong emotions, so this wasn't done haphazardly, but I was surprised at my own reaction. 

I immediately went into terror, and touched into a young child part that was so scared to be open and unprotected. Her fear was that she "wouldn't exist," because she experienced a form of transparency, as if she became invisible when faced with intense stimulation or feelings from the "outside world." Rather than being able to experience expression of something that comes from within, it was drowned out by all the stimulation and experience of the outside. And her experience was that of my emotionally disregulated mother who also sought coregulation by forcing other people to mirror her intense emotions, and shaming or blaming any other expression that didn't mirror her own. 

I was shaking and in tears as I told my teacher that I was afraid I "wouldn't exist." And she gently said, "And yet, here you are." And I remember laughing in a surprised way, realizing that my definition of "exist" would have to shift to include being open, and yet still being there. That maybe existing didn't mean either being totally closed or totally open, but some in-between state where I am at choice to move between the two as necessary. 

As a child, we learn how to take up space, to differentiate our experience of being and self. This is our sole purpose in those early, formative years, when we realize we are not mother, but separate beings. But in my case, any form of self-expression (i.e. self-exploration) that wasn't liked was not tolerated, and even punished. Thus, there was a need to build a strong shield or boundary, a density between myself and the outside world, in order to be able to feel myself in relation to the other, and protect myself from being overwhelmed by the intensity of stimulation that didn't spring from myself or my own essence. I believe that's how a protector part was born, whose strategy is to come out of myself and form a thick barrier instantly, at any time that it felt I would be overwhelmed and lose myself.

The Protective Shield

My first experience of becoming aware of it was in a Reiki course. At one point between practices, the teacher was explaining how energetic reactions are often automatic. In the middle of explaining this, she lunged toward me by one step and explained, "...and Christina most likely has put up a shield in response to what she interprets as my attacking her." Lo and behold, she was right. It was totally instant, a dense wall that came up about a foot and a half in front of me, paired with a twinge in my solar plexus that I associate with fear and anger. It was no bigger than a spark, but it was there, and I got acquainted with it and also the density that was put between she and I. 

A few days ago, I noticed it again. I was talking to my husband about something that brought up a lot of pain in me, and he was a part of it. He came to give me a hug as I cried. I noticed that as he held me I felt so much sadness and there was a belief in me, something like, "I'm alone in this, nobody cares about me, I'm the only one here experiencing this." Then there was a disconnect because a part of me realized, your husband is hugging you and being with you in your pain, so he does care. And then I was able to respond to the hug by hugging back. Then the pain became greater as I plunged deeper into it, and it was if that density came between me and him again. I put my hand back down, disconnecting again. I could physically feel the hug, but I couldn't receive the full impact - the loving intention and warmth of the hug. 

My ability to receive diminished the more I believed the painful story. The more I believed it, the more tenacious the shield between he and I grew. In the end it was a self-fulfilled prophecy of isolation. Though there was someone right next to me, it was too difficult to feel and receive their care. While I was not physically alone, my experience was of loneliness.

This difficulty with connecting with others is amplified especially in situations when I would like to practice NVC and be with others in times of conflict, but I am so deep in beliefs or judgments that self-empathy is the only viable solution. Or, I would need to meet with this part and fully listen to it, building a new relationship with it each day so that it can hand over the job it's been doing for me. But is having choice always possible?

(after 4 months in drafts...)

On one hand, a part of me believes that if I want to connect with someone else, I must forego my own needs. This is on the surface level. On a deeper level, it feels like there's not enough space for me to inhabit my own body when being with the other.  

That's why my conclusion to be fully grounded in the living energy of needs in myself was important. When doing this Robert Gonzales meditation, I felt more connected to my essence, my true self, and could feel the energy of touching into the beauty of the need I have. It requires inner stillness to do this, but it's difficult, if not impossible, to drop into stillness because that requires an openness, and when in contraction and defense then it's not possible to go there.

Working on my capacity to be with this will directly affect my capacity and quality of capacity to be the space for others to unfold in their own process.

 

Emergency self-empathy

TW: death, sexual assault

It began when I saw my daughter asleep in the backseat of the car. Her head was leaning back, and her mouth was agape. I was reminded of how my grandmother looked when she died and I was brought into her hospital room at 11 years old to see her body. I had enough anxiety to try and pat her legs and move her a little to encourage her to shift around so I could make sure she was alive. I could only feel relieved when she shut her mouth and moved a little in her sleep.

I started to think about how I sometimes get a lot of anxiety at night, with intrusive thoughts of scenarios where she is in danger or dies in some way, and I'm often brought to tears until I try to aggressively interrupt the thoughts because I know they are not real situations. I was then reminded of the nightmare I had the night before of her going into video chat rooms and accidentally exposing her private parts, and then getting messages from pedophiles. Since she was naive and innocent she believed they were just being friendly when in reality they were hoping to manipulate her into meeting with them to then rape and kill her. 

This touched something in me about the times in my life when I was younger and had been sexually assaulted. I especially remembered when I was with my mom and sister in an empty train at night and they sat together while I sat across from them alone. A middle aged man came in and made a beeline to sit next to me. I was afraid to be impolite and didn't realize I had a choice to simply say "NO, I don't want you to sit here." He then "fell asleep" and slowly leaned toward me, and I could see the outline of his penis under his clothes pointing at me. I remember looking at my mom and her being oblivious to the whole thing. I debated waking him up and telling him I want to change seats but then worrying about if I face toward him or against him when leaving the seat since I was boxed in by him, my body would still be uncomfortably close to him anyway. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore and decided to stand on the seat and hop over to the seat in front. I saw him "wake up" startled but didn't do anything after that. I moved to a seat farther away but was filled with rage, disgust, humiliation. I remembered another time of being in a crowded bus and someone grabbing my ass from behind, and again, my turning around wanting to punch whoever did it but not being able to know who did. I sometimes fantasized about that time because there was a man behind me and I would've loved to just spit on him and punch him because it was so unfair to have this done to me and feel powerless to do anything about it. 

As I was aware and watching all of this happening in me, I made the connection that the intensity of these feelings around my daughter and wanting to protect her was because of the failure of anyone to protect me from the same kind of situation. Once I recognized this I felt as if a younger part of me came up to say this, "Why didn't my dad protect me from my mom?" My mom would have such chaotic mood swings and he never stepped in to say she was going overboard because he wanted to avoid it himself. There was even a time when she was unleashing herself on him and he told her something about me that I had confided to him in private because he knew she would get mad and come barging into my room instead, taking him off the hook. It didn't help that a song from my teenagerhood came onto the music player while remmebering this, "I'm only happy when it rains" by Garbage. Listening to this I was reminded of how dark life felt, and how even feeling terribile and angry, powerless and in pain was familiar and comfortable to me in a strange way.

I thought to myself, is this really needing to happen right now? I'm in the car. It's not the best time. But yes, this was happening now. The parts of me that feel safe to bring their pain to me just happened to want to do it in that moment. So I just put my hand on my chest as a form of emergency self-empathy to be with what was alive in me, without either blocking it off nor indulging in it. This is the best I could do, with a promise to come back to it at a later date. In this experience I learned self-empathy in the way I prefer is not always possible. Sometimes the environment and situation make it impossible to fully go into my own pain. And this is OK. The amount that I'm able to be with myself is much more welcome than not doing so at all. 

Today, I was able to come back to that fear now that it wasn't so activated in me and mixed with other parts who also had stories to tell, increasing the emotional intensity. The first point was to recognize that such a strong fear response was directly correlated to the amount that I care about my daughter. So it really helped to know that all of the fear and anger was because she was so important to me, that it was due to the huge, huge amount of love I have for her. And when I connected with that, it felt a lot better. The fear can be seen for what it is, which is an indication of the large amount of capacity for love that I have. Touching into this was soothing. This was the first layer. 

The second was to be with the part of me that projected this need for safety onto my own daughter. This was a part of me that needed its own care and attention. And I let it speak to me without trying to change its experience, just being with presence. I accompanied it and reflected back to her that need for safety, the anger of ultimate abandonment when somebody should've come and saved her, the pain of feeling alone in a situation where she was made to feel responsible for the irrational and out of control emotions of her mother. I imagined my adult self and little me back in the situation of my mother raging at us, and me speaking as the adult, standing in front of little me as a shield, letting my mother know that it's not little me's responsibility to make her feel better, again and again. Finally I took little me away from the scene to a place that was safe, and she was so relieved to finally have someone to rely on, to speak up for her when everything was so unfair. 

I am not sure if this was enough to fully unburden this part of myself, but the palpable relief I felt was certainly a step in the right direction.

A Need for Safety

I am more and more coming to realize how important it is for me to apply self-empathy as emotional first aid before I can even begin to think about having the spaciousness for empathy for the other person in the conflict. 

I had an argument with my stepson. We had leftovers from the day before, but only enough for one plate. We had other food available (two bags of chicken wings in the freezer), so I ate it. When he found out, he got very angry with me. I don't even remember what he said, but he had a very sarcastic tone. I told him, "You have a right to be angry about the food. But you don't have a right to speak rudely and disrespectfully to me." He continued anyway. So I said, "You can talk to me when you're done having your tantrum, but you can't speak to me now in this way." I left the room. 

Later, I saw that he had cooked an entire bag of wings. I told him that it doesn't seem fair that he will take an entire bag for himself and then leave one bag for the other two people in the house. He told me, "It sucks, doesn't it?" I started to get upset again and repeated I didn't want him speaking to me in a rude way, but he continued. At this point I started to get really upset, and went upstairs to cry. I needed to simply sit with myself and validate that it was painful to receive that treatment. 

How Relating from Trauma Disrupts the NVC Process

Looking back at the situation, there was something else at play. Sometimes his mannerisms remind me of my abusive ex husband. The speaking in Spanish with the same accent, the sarcastic and mean tone, not even waiting for me to finish my sentence before starting to speak over me, interrupting me without addressing what I said, the complete lack of care of my emotional state, ignoring my requests for respectful dialogue, etc. 

When these things happen, I notice that though rationally I know this is not the same thing, there is an emotional response that becomes greater and greater, throwing me into fight or flight mode. Emotionally it feels like I'm arguing with my ex husband again, and there are two states existing at the same time - my mental rational state, and the emotional reactive state. And generally, the mental rational state starts to recede while the emotional reactive state starts to take control and make it difficult to think clearly. 

While in NVC it would be said that I had a judgment that caused an emotional response, I don't think that's exactly what happened. I believe there was an emotional implicit memory that was activated. And in this reaction, I felt that I am not safe. Mentally, I might then make a judgment that this person is not safe to talk to or be emotionally vulnerable with (which is what happened in the conversation). But the bodily sensation of lack of safety and resultant fight or flight reaction is not a mental judgment, but a biological preservation technique. It's as conscious and deliberate as a sneeze. 

The overwhelm to the nervous system shuts down my ability to be at choice in how I want to live and respond. This is compounded by being highly sensitive to other people's emotional states, likely an ingrained response due to growing up with a highly emotionally dysregulated, volatile and manipulative mother. Because of this, safety is very, very important to me. 

After Effects: What is needed to continue the reparation process?

The next day, he asked me how I am and if I feel better. I said I did feel better, but I still don't like the way he spoke to me. He said he was sorry, and that he did that because he was angry. At that moment I noticed almost like a switch flip in me moving him from the "unsafe" to "safe" category. What my gut instinct really needed was to see that he understood his own impact on me and that it wasn't OK. 

In my past abusive and traumatic experiences, the people who were supposed to be the closest to me and most loving of me weren't capable of this, and I felt despair in situations that I couldn't escape from. This had made me want to avoid him altogether, although naturally another part of me wanted harmony in the home as well as a good relationship with him. However, my own need for safety made it harder for me to be the first one to approach him. As well, avoidance is a sign of lingering unprocessed trauma. 

From there it was a lot easier for me to open myself vulnerably to let him know I care about him and treat him as my own, and made a request asking him what can we do the next time so that we can continue to have a good relationship together. We both agreed that if we're angry we will leave the conversation and talk after we've regulated ourselves. But if he hadn't been the first to approach me, perhaps it would've taken a day or two longer for me to work up the courage to open myself, when a part of me resisted placing myself in what it believed would be a similar situation to the past.

Learning How to Say "Yes" to Myself

Being able to have empathy for others requires a level of resilience and a resourced state that is not fully addressed in the NVC training I've had up to now. (I've been practicing and doing courses for about a year) Most of the time I'm advised to leave the conversation and get empathy from another person, but it doesn't address nervous system regulation or having an understanding of how expectations for giving all of my attention might be a big ask when my trauma is around "erasure of self"; not having any consideration at all for my emotional needs and even being punished for trying to take up space. 

The result has been to learn to meet my own needs and not ask others to meet them...even giving up hope that that could be possible. It also made me fiercely protective of my own energy when demands are placed on me to provide something when I can't reasonably ask for it to also be returned to me. 

When I first learned about NVC and saw that invariably the onus was on the person who has NVC skills to hold space for the other person, I rightfully had an unagreeable sensation of contraction, and worry for my own needs not being met in the situation. I thought, "Is it really true then, that I have to always forego myself first in order to connect with someone else?"

When I first started to learn it was because I wanted more harmony in how I relate to others. I have already been doing other self-development work and coaching aside from my NVC practice, but I'm seeing more and more how important it is to make NVC something I do for myself instead of for other people. In a sense, NVC is a strategy to serve life itself. If it doesn't first address the living energy of needs in myself, and if I'm not fully grounded in that, then how can my practice with others be anything but incomplete, inauthentic and ultimately ineffective?

After this experience, I see more and more the necessity of becoming intimately connected with my own body and the ways that it speaks to me. It's important to know when I'm starting to become disregulated and not to let it take over the direction of the dialogue. There is a question I've come up with that will help me to know when I can continue, and when I need to stop: 

Am I resourced enough in this moment to have space for empathy for the other person?

If I cannot in good faith answer with a full yes to this question, that means I need empathy myself, and need to stop the dialogue. Naturally, my body is trained up until now to search for moments of lack of safety and respond by going into fight or flight. (generally fight, to be honest) But this doesn't meet my need for choice and autonomy. It means being intimately connected to my own body, allowing it to speak to me and let me know what it needs. And that when I stop the dialogue, it's not in order to come back more prepared to give empathy to another person, but to provide myself what I need because I am worthy of being cared for. 

This is an act of care and love meant to build trust in myself. It's moving from a place of coercion ("I need to answer to the other person's needs RIGHT NOW") to a place of choice ("I have a right to tend to myself, regardless of how the other person feels or thinks what I should do"). It means saying yes to myself first, when I have always been trained to say no.

I think this is the piece I was missing when I first read that I need to focus my full attention on the other person's message when giving empathy, even when it comes out in jackal. I wasn't told anywhere that I fully deserved this for myself first. Going forward, I believe that my nervous system can be more at ease and learn to trust me more as I consciously choose strategies that serve the most vulnerable parts of me. When I do this, the life energy can fully flow in myself. When I am connected to life energy within me, then I no longer rely on others to provide this connection. Instead, feeling the flow of life between myself and others becomes a gift, instead of a demand.