I had stopped writing and within that time a point had been
mentioned that OCD reactions within myself are caused by becoming overwhelmed
by patterns that are triggered by memories which are triggered by my
environment. The difficulty here is that these memories may have occurred very
early on in life, and it may be close to impossible to recollect the particular
memories in any other way than the emotional energetic experience they create.
The reasoning behind this would be that experiences in early life occur before
language is understood, therefore there is no way to describe and comprehend
the experience, not even within oneself.
Memories that affect us in the present moment can have
happened too long ago to recall, wherein one did not have the necessary means
to communicate about the experience, or even be able to give it a name.
However, when the experience triggered by the memory occurs again in the
present, it can now be named. The experience can thus be captured in words,
words within which acceptances and allowances and associations can be forgiven,
released and/or changed. In other words, who self is within these words can be
changed. The way one lives the words can change, quite simply, yet at the same
time, with much effort as consistent application in every moment. This may seem
daunting or exhausting, except the fact of the matter is that we each and every
one of us already do apply ourselves in such a way. The only difference is that
we have done so in unawareness, in falling into patterns and habits that have
become so habitual that they have become automatic.
I have already proven to myself that such automation can be
changed. Using the tools of self-forgiveness,
self-honesty, self-commitment, and self-corrective application, new
habits and patterns can be developed, and become the new ‘normal’.
Within OCD, for me, I become overwhelmed by the patterns. I
create an entire energetic experience connected to the patterns which looks to
be released, and which I find a release for within obsessive compulsive
behaviours. This happens daily.
What I’m going to do is identify the patterns that overwhelm
me my taking a look at my day to see where the overwhelmingness begins, and
describe with words the energy that was created. I will be using some
suggestions that were provided to me by a member of the Desteni community.
These were words I could relate to and I used them to figure out the patterns
that cause them. They are: dizzying uncertainty, intense isolation and
self-damning depression.
Looking at the day:
This morning I had agreed to assist with some children
wherein I was only required to be present in the early morning. Everything was
stable as I had a very predictable and clear set of tasks, such as: make
breakfast, eat with the kids, help them get dressed, put away my bedding and
pack my belongings, and drive home. The overwhelmingness began as I was driving
home. I am living I a new city and do not yet have a routine. The prospect of
having a day wide open with no routine is something I would long for while at
work or while doing my studies. However, in this situation, it was only an
overwhelming prospect for me. The trigger is thus then being in a position
where I have to take steps to accomplish all the things I want to get done over
time.
As a child I would have used the time doing whatever I
wanted: watching television, playing with friends, playing with my toys,
drawing etc… doing whatever pleased me. Now things are different, Now I have
responsibilities and I have to structure my ‘time off’ in order to be able to
create a balance between getting things done and putting time aside for enjoyment.
So, I would consider then , that the shift occurred when I began to have
responsibilities in my life, or things that I was supposed to do and I didn’t
know how to do them, or how to organize myself to be able to begin them, or
discipline myself to see them through.
I’m recalling chaos, confusion, and dizzying uncertainty. I’m
recalling a memory of nursery school where I was first learning French. The
teacher was reading a book and asking students to name in French the images she
was pointing to, such as ‘caterpillar’. I recall the student calling out
‘chenille’, and I was struck and dumbfounded by the fact that these students
knew these words I had never heard before. I felt as though I could not
participate in the activity, and that other students were pleasing the teacher
and I could not. I didn’t understand where or how I was supposed to have known
these words, or where or how the other children had learned them. I didn’t understand that some of the students
were just learning the language for the first time, while others may have
already been exposed to it in their homes or in other programs. I felt I was at
a disadvantage, I felt embarrassed and like I wanted to disappear because my
perception was that all the other students knew and understood something that I
did not. I was not able to, at that age, consider that there is a learning
process. I did not realize that I was being actively taught something, and I
thought that I was already supposed to know these things that the other
students knew. I didn’t realize that it was ok that I didn’t know the language
yet, or that I was not the only one in the position of not knowing. I reacted
to the situation in a state of fear and confusion, and instead of remaining in
the present moment and enjoying the learning process and simply listening to
the new words, I searched into the past as if I had forgotten to do something
or missed something along the way, and I remained utterly confused and frozen
with incomprehension as I searched fruitlessly for this knowledge I was
apparently supposed to have. Obviously I did not have this knowledge yet, and
my search for it was in vain.
I can relate this experience to my present experience,
wherein, when I was presented with an open day in a new living situation, I did
not have any past experience to tell me exactly what to do; I did not
‘automatically know’ the best way to set myself up. I di dnot immediately
consider that this is not exactly true- I have moved many times, I have had to
find a new job, and I have set up utilities before and I have directed myself
through scheduling a day, the only difference now is that I’m in a new city and
country that I am not yet familiar with in these regards. What happened was
that I immediately went into the reaction of confusion, fear and uncertainty,
within the belief that this understanding is unattainable, not because it is in
fact unobtainable, but because I had created this pattern which produces a dizzying
confusion when the knowledge is not already there. Within this energetic experience
it is very difficult to think straight or make a directive decision. I fall
into the pattern of helplessness within the belief that ‘I don’t know how to do
this’, which is a belief and a pattern and not my living reality.
Looking at this pattern now, I can see that it could have
begun way earlier than this pre-school experience. Being the younger child, I
would have grown up with a sibling that would seemingly have known may many
things that I did not yet know how to do, such as speaking and walking. Even
simply being a child, new to the world, one would be presented daily with beings
that know things and are doing things that are well beyond the child’s ability
to grasp. Until the child realizes what learning is, and grasps the idea that
repetition over time equals new skills and understanding. Learning, as I recall
it as a child, was not something that was consciously done, I would simply
engage with something and I would explore and experiment and it would be fun
and fascinating. But this recalling foreign words and memorizing them was not something
I would have ever thought to do, nor was it a process I understood.
Previously, I had written a blog series called ‘Fully
Committing to My Studies’ within which I touched on ‘Becoming an Effective
Student’ and ‘Learning How to Learn’. Within this series, I realized that I did
not have a working understanding of learning. I would simply be pushed along
this process of memorizing and reading and never considered of contemplated the
actual process of breaking down the learning tasks or information into steps
and walking through each step to completion.
This pattern is connected to other patterns that together
create energies within me, such as dizzying confusion, self-damning depression,
intense isolation and extreme frustration. These energies are obviously very
uncomfortable and unpleasant to say the least, and instead of investigating
them and changing the patterns that cause them, I had accepted them as Who and
How I Am, and lived with them until they literally drove me ‘crazy’ in that I
developed OCD to cope, and OCD is a mental disorder and we tend to call people
with mental disorders ‘crazy’(although it can be argued that everyone has some
form of mental disorder or another).
The other patterns that are connected to this pattern of
dizzying confusion when confronted with a task or set of tasks is actually
fighting the learning process. This stems from the experience that I am being
forced to go through a process that I do not understand, that makes me feel
lost and confused, and one that, as a child, I felt I did not have any say in
why or how I should do it, but felt as though the entire thing was forced upon
me. Within this I felt trapped, and reacted within constantly looking for
escape. Instead of throwing a tantrum as many children do, and instead of
trying to communicate to others what I was experiencing, I would internalize
the reactions and go into fear. I would submit to this fear by seeking to
escape rather than trying to learn or understand. This escape I found within
myself within imagination and fantasy, my internal world which was the only
place I experienced safety and self-expression that I was not able to experience
in the real world. This eventually contributed to the intense isolation I would
create by giving myself only two options: either submit to the will of others,
or be alone. I would, over time, experience intense isolation to the extent
that I could escape within myself even while in the presence of another. This
would appear as ‘aloofness’ and ‘airiness’, which can create all sorts of
reactions because it would appear as though one does not care, when in reality,
one is so deeply within one’s own mind as an alternate reality of escape that
one is almost not at all present. It becomes difficult to retain details and
converse or become fully engaged with another because one is actually isolated
behind thick walls, even while in the presence of another.
I recently read about this dissociative state (in fact, the
day after I wrote this), in the book called The
Tao of Equus, where the author relates the trauma of prey animals to that
of human trauma victims. The following excerpt is from the work of Peter A.
Levine, Ph.D.: “Physiologists call this state the ’immobility’ or ’freezing’
response. It is one of the three primary responses available to reptiles or
mammals when faced with an overwhelming threat. The other two, fight or flight,
are much more familiar to us.” Levine continues to explain that this
dissociation “protects us from escalating arousal” and then that “[t]raumatic
symptoms are not caused by the ‘triggering’ event itself. They stem from the
frozen residue of energy that has not been resolved or discharged.” Levine
continues with the actual experience of this state: “In its mildest f forms, it
manifests as a kind of spaciness. At the other end of the spectrum, it can
develop into so-called multiple personality disorder”.
I can relate to the aforementioned ‘freeze response’ and have
blogged about my experiences with this in the manifestation of ‘aloofness’
within myself. Within this frozen state, or ‘aloofness’, active participation
is limited, decision making is difficult, and self-movement is next to
impossible. Mostly, I recall being moved only by outside forces in my
environment, such as the fear of reprimand. The “frozen residue of energy”
Levine describes is relatable to me as the internalization of the emotional
energetic experiences which are not dealt with, but rather remain stagnant and
fester within self. Whereas some children would well up with the energy and
then lose control as an explosion in the form of what we call a ‘temper
tantrum’ where the child will display an emotional outburst, others like
myself, would internalize the entire experience, and dwell with it. The term
‘dwell’ is interesting because the energy is literally dwelling within the
physical body, along with and as the beingness of the child (or adult, or
being). For me, I see that both the energetic experience I would seek to
escape, as well as the escape itself, existed within me. As I had previously
described the escape mechanisms I used where that of introversion, wherein I
would ‘escape’ into my mind and create alternate realities and other worlds
where I would experience myself completely differently. Within this
understanding, there are in fact multiple personalities dwelling within the
body. What is also interesting here is that I have written about OCD as a personality,
as an entity existent within and as me, which takes over and possesses me at
times, sometimes completely. This relates to Levine’s description of the
experience of the dissociative state as a ”spaciness” at the lesser extreme,
and then “multiple personality disorder” at the other. There are, of course,
many degrees of these experiences in the middle. Although I cannot recall any
particular traumatic event in my life, I do recall experiencing fear reactions
which, over time became a dominant experience and at times a form of
‘petrification’, which would cause me to ‘over-react’ in fear to situations
which others might find only slightly unpleasant.
I a related part of the book, author Linda Kohanov describes
the following effects of a particular tactic used to ’break’ disobedient
horses: “the act of forcing a prey animal to lie down by tying up one of his
front legs , dragging him to the ground, and sitting on him in this vulnerable
position until he submits causes such an intense fear reaction that the
animal’s entire nervous system short-circuits. The result [is] a sudden change
in personality. The horse acts like a zombie, which to people who prefer a
machine-like mount, appears to be a miraculous cure for chronic disobedience.”
The author continues on to explain that this technique is used for even mildly
disobedient horses that work for commercial trail riding stables where the
horses are forced to repeat monotonous behaviours such as riding the same trail
day after day.
This description reminds me of the ‘breaking’ of children in
order to force them to sit and listen in class for hours on end, absorbing and
repeating information day after day. In my own experience, being brought to the
front of the class and criticized for my poor performance placed me in a
vulnerable position where I eventually submitted. It felt like the teacher
yelled at me for an eternity. Previously, this had occurred to me in
kindergarten, where the teacher called the class’ attention to my work and
briefly asked for a consensus that it was not good. The experience was not
enjoyable, but it ended so quickly that I was able to bounce back and move on. The
first experience I described, where the teacher kept me in the experience for
longer, had a different effect. I recall feeling myself shrinking within
myself, feeling very confused, fearful and humiliated, until I finally ‘broke’,
wherein I began to cry, and something within me submitted, and from that point
I constantly feared the event ever happening again. I carried the experience
with me within the belief that it was ‘deserved’ because the teacher knows best
. It helped to confirm pre-existent beliefs about myself as ‘not good enough’
in comparison to my class-mates. Over time, I utilized this experience as part
of my self-definition of Who I Am in this world and this reality, wherein it
still comes up and limits me in some ways to this very day.
The “zombie”-like state achieved in breaking horses, as
described by author Linda Kohanov, can also be prevalent in the human species. Within
the education system, this zombie-like behavior would be preferred, where
spirited young children that ‘misbehave’ are seen as disruptive to the
education process. Children are broken with punishment, humiliation, fear, bad
grades, disciplinary actions, etc… In the past, and even still today in some
areas, children are beaten to achieve this effect. Nowadays, it is more and
more common to simply medicate the children to sedate them into compliance.
To be continued….
