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In The Beginning

It Started in the 1990’s

I had married a military man and had moved away from Colorado to Alaska.   I was in the midst of an identity crises – literally.   My first marriage was in its death throes and I was …  empty. I had no sense of identity and was suicidal, again.  I went to see a psychologist.  I had had a couple of appointments with her when she gave me a standardized test.  The results arrived and she wouldn’t tell me what the results were, but she did tell she couldn’t see me anymore. Essentially, I was fired by my shrink.  I took the rejection hard.  The psychologist did give me a couple of names and numbers for a doctor she felt more appropriate for the help I needed.

Continue reading “In The Beginning”

Journal May 24, 2022

It has been over a month since my we used Brain Spotting to access the past life event tied to the sexual abuse I received as a young child.  The child parts are quiet and at peace.  The older parts have receded into the background except for the Witches and the Administrator. I believe we are well on our way to integration similar to how we experienced it the first time in the 90’s. 

Integration has been described to us by our therapist as the fractured parts of personality reforming themselves into ego states.  These ego states coincidentally are very similar to what we worked with in the 90’s.  In the 90’s we worked with healing the ego states known as child, adolescent, critical parent, martyr, negative ego, and adult.   The ego states in psychology as defined by Berne are child, adult and parent.   

In the social media group we are a part of on Facebook many view integration as the death of the parts.  They fear it and use this description as a reason why not to integrate.  Our experience with integration is that of a rebirth of self as we reform into the ego states.  Nothing is lost and a lot is gained in the healing.  Nothing can take away the trauma I experienced, what can change is how I allow it to affect me.    Things that use to trigger me have been desensitized meaning that they don’t initiate an anxiety response or a PTSD response any longer.

In the last month and some I have encountered situations that use to trigger me in the past and I am able to stay in the adult and move through them successfully.   My husband remains a difficult personality at times, and though I find him challenging we (the Witches and the Administrator) navigate the moment.  Work continues to provide challenges.  We’ve learned that music is a distraction that doesn’t exactly trigger us, but we tend to function more in a plural state than a singular state making it difficult to function efficiently.  So we eliminate music in the background at work, working in silence allows us to focus on the task at hand in a singular state. 

In the writing of this journal I notice I am now referring to ‘us’ instead of ‘me’ or ‘I’.  This is a good indication that integration is not complete, but an ongoing process.  That’s ok.   We are closer to being ‘me’ than we have been in the past.  We have been more productive during off time, less sitting on the couch just thinking.  Chores are getting done.  We’ve become more active in following our metaphysical pursuits and our studies in perfumery.  We are reaching back out to friends we’ve neglected in the past.  Our self care is improving.  I have the energy to research and write role playing game material.  I am confident that we are heading in the right direction.

Journal: April 20, 2022

We’ve been pretty stable these past months.   The young one’s have been getting to know our therapist and are very fond of her.  Because of their relationship with the therapist we’ve become aware that they didn’t have any toys.  We picked them up a couple small things and let them color with our colored pencils.  The young ones still struggle with the why of their abuse and a huge range of emotions they don’t understand.   And, if they did understand them they aren’t able to put words to them.  The young ones also are confused as to why sexual abuse is so prolific in our world as to be normal.  Because of this, the young ones are kept hidden from the world, kept safe deep inside us.

It has occurred to us that this may be a past life issue.  We believe we are a soul that lives life after life reincarnating in an attempt to process and heal traumas experienced in each incarnation.  The purpose of this is to evolve to the point that we can return home to the Source of All That Is.   The being many call God.  We have begun to work with Brain Spotting in a past life application.  It is our hope that Brain Spotting can help us heal this anger.  We are so angry at our desecration.  We were young, innocent.  How can young children be appealing for sexual pleasure?  In what sick twisted way can a man think that a young child who trusts and knows nothing about sex is appropriate to have sex with?

The day we had scheduled for our therapy appointment we had technical issues with our laptop.  Specifically, we couldn’t get our web cam to work.  As our therapist lives in Boulder we telecommute over the internet.  In hindsight we shouldn’t have been surprised, energetically we often experience difficulties with electricity and technology when high intensity soul impacting work is happening.  While talking with our therapist about the technical issues we felt our awareness slipping.

We became aware of being in a gold room.  It is dark and hot from the brazier close to our skin, it almost burns us.  The air is thick with incense and the stink of smoke, death, and sweat.  In the distance, we can hear the screams and cries of the other priests in the temple.  We are crying silently, tears run down our face.

We are looking at the walls, they are gold and painted with hieroglyphs.  The man is on top of us, holding us down by the shoulders.  Beside and behind us, lying dead like a beached whale is the petitioner we were in ritual with.  We are painted gold, the man desecrating us gets up off of us.  He is smeared with gold paint and blood.  Another man leans against the door way watching, snearing.  He wears a loin cloth and holds a spear

In the present we are aware that we were a Priestess of Bast in the midst of a sacred sex ritual when the temple was attacked.  We were raped lying in the blood of the petitioner we were engaged in sacred sex with.  After the violation and desecration of our body and Bast’s temple, we and the survivors were made slaves.  We walked a long way, days through the desert to the jungle home of our attackers.    There is a strong sense of vindication, the attackers could desecrate our temple and yet it stands.  The temple refuses to collapse to the structural damage the attackers did.  The air in the jungle is so cold compared to our dry desert home in northern Egypt.  We died there in the jungle after the death of an elderly friend, a sister slave.  We were so tired of living.  Rape and beatings were a daily thing.  We were beaten to death.  We chose to die.  We chose that death over the endless life of abuse we had.

In the week since our appointment where this past life was revealed we’ve been quietly processing.  It has taken this long for our words to percolate to awareness.  We’ve been out of medicine which has helped create some cognitive fog in our daily life.  And with it, some chaos in our work life.

At first it seems that there is a big difference between a lifetime where we were a priest in a sacred sex act and this lifetime where we were violated as a preverbal child.  The common thread is an utter feeling of desecration.  We were involved in holy sacrament when the sacred act (sex) was used against us.  We were desecrated in body, mind, and spirit.  We felt so lost and separated from our god that we could never feel her presence again.  Our violators didn’t understand or care that there is a difference between rape and sacred sexuality.  The general attitude was that we were slaves and should just get used to it, be used to it.  That refrain echoes in our brain and matches the societal view that we the desecrated should be used to it.  It hurts us, leaves us sad, wounded.  This is the emotion that the young ones cannot understand.

In this lifetime, desecrated as an innocent.  In that lifetime, desecrated as a priest.  The priest has a strong sense of innocence lost.  In this lifetime, some of our parts are cynical – how can you consider yourself, the priest, as having experienced a loss of innocence?     Our answer is that the cynicism doesn’t change the fact of the feeling, the realness of the feeling.  Being aware, awake to it at last, is part of the healing.  We haven’t begun to deal with the anger yet.  Just being aware and awake to the past life has eased the intensity of the wounding in the present life.  There is work yet to do.  We are curious as to how the therapist is going to proceed.  Last session as about drawing forth the past life.  Next session is where we begin to work with what the past life has drawn forward.

Journal: December 4, 2021

At our therapy appointment this week we talked about Christmas and how it has triggered us in the past.  We have been observing, waiting to see if we would have the same problems this Christmas as we have had in Christmas past.  We haven’t had any difficulties with triggering, just a loathing for Christmas.  We decided to Brain Spot that.

This led towards an adolescent coming forward, very vocal about hating Christmas.  Christmas is just one big lie with a lot of obligations, things you have to do to keep peace in the world we live in.  Have to buy things, even though nobody has a need for them.  Have to go places and be with people.  Have to decorate.  Have to put up with Christmas music.  People talk about the point of Christmas being peace on earth and goodwill to man.  We do that all year, why do we have to have a holiday for that?

At some point a young one came forward, Gussie Mae (the three year old).  She talked about how she felt that things were all her fault.  This lead to conversation about how being raped was not her fault.  Towards the end of our appointment, the Administrator conveyed that the ‘fault’ that Gussie Mae was talking about was the ‘fault of being broken the way we are, multiplicity’.  We didn’t get to talk about that ‘fault’ at this point because it was time to close down the session.

Conversation drifted back towards Christmas and the loathing of Christmas.  A new part came forward.  I am Lois.  I am 20, blond, petite and curvy, and love everything about Christmas.  I’d love to decorate and sing Christmas carols.  I love being with people and baking.  And wrapping presents – it’s meditative.  Essentially, I am the opposite of the majority of us. 

Journal: October 26, 2021

It’s been a while since we’ve posted.  We’ve continued with the brain spotting therapy with some interesting results.  Apparently the one who blogs also does the sketches.  After one of our brain spotting sessions we went away and a depressed adolescent part came forward.  All we would do is sit on the couch and doze.  Literally, we’d go to work and then come home and sit on the couch and watch tv with the sound off.  Also, in a bizarre twist – we stopped brushing our teeth.  No matter what we did, we couldn’t get in there and brush our teeth.  After a month or so of this the depressed adolescent went away and lj came forward.

Lj is a witch and DnD gamer.   As a result we’ve returned to our spiritual pursuits – Saturday evenings are set aside for meditation and spiritual growth work.  We’ve renewed our studies in Ifa and have refreshed our DnD game by building an online gaming platform for our next game.  Lj is also better motivated, we keep up the house better.  We still struggle to brush our teeth and now we bathe only once a week.  Not sure what’s up with that. 

The portrait work has ground to a stop.  We miss it.  We study mouths, ears and hands when we people watch.  When I plan to set down and do some sketching it never happens. 

In addition to the brain spotting therapy, we also worked with another therapist.  This last visit we talked a little about the youngest part, she’s somewhere between a year and half to two years old.  We left the therapy appointment still triggered.  Over a period of time some things have surfaced.  The youngest part is all emotion – confusion, fear, pain.  She doesn’t understand what happened only that she was held down and touched.  She lingers in this state.  There’s just no words to say what she’s feeling.  She just wails in our head.

The second youngest part (about three years old) keeps asking why.  Why did these men touch us this way?  The three year old hasn’t heard an answer that makes sense to her.  The parts talk amongst themselves on this and the older ones have some solid thoughts as to the why.  The most obvious reason is that the men were broken in some way, just as we are broken as a result of their actions.

Now the older parts want to know is who does this sort of thing?  Who thinks to themselves ‘touching a child like this makes me feel good’ ?  I know an adult whose step-father was the one who regularly had sex with her beginning around the age of six.  The step-father told my friend that ‘sex with children is a natural act that has been happening for hundreds of years.  She just needs to get over herself.’  This makes me so angry.

But, just because that statement makes me angry doesn’t make it any less true.  Historically the sexual use of children does go way back.  I don’t agree that sexual use of children is a natural act. But, there are a lot of children who are violated this way and to this date I don’t hear a lot about the people who are supposed to be protecting them.  I know more people who are adult survivors of child violation than those who are adults who never experienced child abuse.  Granted, anecdotal conversation is not a very scientific method of tallying data.

But still, why do adults do this to children?  I understand children violating children – it isn’t right but understandable.  Someone violated them as children and they are expressing love/appreciation/gratification in the twisted way they have learned to express.   Adults know better and they do it anyway.  It seems to me it is like someone who can’t resist chocolate eating all the chocolate within reach.  Except using children sexually is truly bizarre and unnatural.  Who looks at a child and thinks of sexual gratification?  When I see a child my first thought is ‘this is someone I have to protect’.

I think of the world we live in and truly believe that sexual child abuse is rampant.  It seems to me that there are more survivors of childhood abuse than there are people with non-abusive childhoods.  This is truly sad.  How do we fix this? How do we live in a society that experiences childhood without trauma?  Child sexual abuse is so pervasive that children are abusing children.   How do we protect kids from kids?

A lot of questions spawned by a young child’s question – why?  And no answers.  If I had an answer to the question of why that made sense to a child it would make healing so much easier.

Journal: April 4, 2021

Be careful what you ask for.

It’s been a little over a week since my second brain spotting therapy.  I’ve had flashbacks and more dissociation than normal.  The extra dissociation has affected my ability to focus making it difficult to be stay on task and be efficient at work.

The dust from the flashbacks have cleared.  I remember now.  The man who was my mother’s lover held me as he touched and licked my girl parts.  I was around two years old.  My mother was, the toddler is convinced (the older parts aren’t convinced), she was where the light was down the hallway from where the man and I were on the couch together.  Was she in the bath or taking a nap or whatever? I don’t know.

I don’t remember screaming in rage or fear.  I do remember feeling confused and liking the feeling of being held and touched.  Even as a little girl I knew something was wrong I just didn’t know what was wrong.

My mother found us, her lover and I.  She was very upset and threw him out; holding us tight and crying.

There is a voice in my head that is shouting ‘she is just a little a girl.’ As if that should mean something. ‘Just’ seems like an unfair word.  It minimizes us.  Little girls aren’t ‘just’.  We survive and exist even when terrible unfair things happen.

Journal: March 29, 2021

We’ve had our second brain spotting session.  It was a very different experience.

During a previous therapy session with our therapist, we were asked if we could see the beauty in the toddler that we were.  We couldn’t.  I tried to work with the therapist’s request in meditation and experienced unexpected difficulties.  I chose to work with the toddler and dissociation with my second brain spotting session.

Just as the first time I was asked to close my eyes and ground.  Once I was grounded I was asked to find a spot my eyes were drawn to.  This spot was behind me and to the right.  I saw the room again that where the man touched me and felt confusion.  I remembered more of what happened and how he held me down.  The brain spotting therapist asked me for an intensity level and to hold the eye position.  This time I had difficulty holding the eye position.  My eyes wanted to close, but since that lowered the emotional intensity I was asked to keep my eyes open.  I felt confusion and then anger because our mother wasn’t there.  We began to get distracted with the emotions of other parts.  The anger of the One Who Rages was intense.  We felt a sadness like a stone weight in our chest.

My emotions were lingering in intensity when one of the dogs snuggled up to me.  The brain spotting was interrupted.  The brain spotting therapist and I talked about our session and finished early.  I had had enough brain spotting for the day.

In the days after this second brain spotting session I have been digesting the experience and having flashbacks to the trauma the toddler experienced.  I haven’t had the negative emotional response I had in meditation, but I feel the sadness and confusion like a weight in my chest.  I have a muted desire to open my mouth and cry – wail really.  I just can’t bring myself to do it.  Sitting here, keying this, I try open mouth exhales to relieve the pressure.  It works.  Now I’m tired.  It is so unfair that I have to deal with this.  The adults know, it isn’t a question of fairness.  It is simply what is.  I think I’m ready to try meditation with the toddler again.

Journal: March 12, 2021

Brainspotting was a very positive experience for us yesterday.  The Brainspotting therapist talked briefly with us at the beginning of our session.  We started Brainspotting by closing our eyes and grounding.  Then the therapist asked us to open our eyes and allow our eyes to look around the room until they found a place our eyes were drawn to look at.  This was the part that worried me.  What if my eyes looked around the room and didn’t find a place they were drawn to look at?

I had no cause for worry because it didn’t take long for my eyes to settle on a place above and to the right of me.  The therapist asked me what I felt and at what intensity on a scale of one to ten.  I felt sadness at an intensity level of seven.  The therapist then asked me what color it was.  It was a reddish-brown color in my aura just setting there on the body, but not in the body.  The therapist then asked me how I could release it.  I could release it by breathing it out, which I did.  The therapist asked me what intensity level and color it was.  The sadness was an intensity of a 4 and a muddy pink color.  The emotion then changed to a sense of futility at an intensity of 9.  I breathed it out again and the emotion was gone.  My aura was brighter, more free, and expanding out further than we’d be aware of it before.

The therapist asked us to scan ourselves.  We noted a tight feeling on our jaw and we could see a hand gripping the back of our neck.  We wanted it gone.  Therapist asked us to tell the hand to let go of us.  The hand would not let go.  We tried to breath the hand gone and it stayed.  We flooded the hand with white light from the source of all that is and asked our spiritual guides to help us.  The hand let us go.  The tightness in the jaw was released.

There was 20 minutes remaining in our hour long therapy session.  We spent the remainder of it talking about my Brainspotting experience and dissociation.  I felt very rejuvenated.  It has been a very long time since I experienced and used energetic healing as I did in the Brainspotting session.  We have been a master level energy healer for about 30 years.  We’ve done energy work similar to Brainspotting with our clients before.  I realize in this moment that I don’t know if Brainspotting is intended to be an energy healing experience or if that is just where we went it because we are energy healers.  I feel reconnected to my spiritual self – I’ve been adrift for a very long time. 

Today I had my normal (non-brainspotting) therapy appointment.  We talked about brain spotting and my experience.  Then our conversation developed on its own.  At one point we mentioned the husband by name.  The therapist asked who is this person you named.  We said ‘our husband.’  The therapist said ‘you’ve always called him the husband and not by a name before.’  We smiled with delight and said ‘That is because I am the wife.’  We had our first awareness as the wife in talking with the therapist.  Progress.  It is a good feeling.

Journal: March 5, 2021

Being back to work is great, but the schedule doesn’t leave a lot of time for journaling.  I’ve had a couple journal threads composing in my head.   Of course by the time I sit down at the computer I don’t remember them.

The portraits are coming along nicely.  I’m ready to start the astrology portrait for my niece.  I just need to get a larger sketch pad and finish typing up the astrology chart report.  I’m eager to get going on it and need a bigger work space.  The portrait of my brother and sister in-law is ready to move onto a larger pad too.  It feels good to have gotten to the point that I can recognize the people I’m drawing in the sketch.

Next week I have my first Brain Spotting appointment.  I’m nervous.  What if it doesn’t work?  What if it does work?  What should I target with Brain Spotting?  Do I get to choose?  If I were to choose in the moment, I need to be able to multitask better at work.  Multitasking includes being able to focus on task while people are talking around me.  When people are talking around me while I try to work I have to fight to stay focused on what I’m doing. It’s as if I have a choice.  I can listen to their conversation or do the task that needs doing.  Attempting to do both means I do neither well.  My emotion becomes negative – it’s frustrating to have inconsiderate people around me.  I resent that they don’t have anything else to do than talk around me while I work. 

What changed?  I used to be able to tune out people around me.  I wonder if its hyperawareness.  I don’t feel safe at work because of the trouble I’ve gotten into just being me, relaxed, and enjoying the flow.  When these people chatter around me about the inconsequential or what their drama is, it is a trap.  It is not as if I can leave the room in order to get my task done.  Maybe what I should do is rather than let my frustration and resentment bloom into something negative I should focus on a color.  Instead of fighting not to listen to their yamma yamma and thinking ‘those assholes’ while I try to work, I should think peaceful blue and work.

I’ve decided I want to work.  I want a paycheck and the things a paycheck can buy.  I want to feel important in my work, I want to feel valued.  I have another work problem.  One of my co-workers is asserting herself forward as a gate keeper to some of the answer people I work with.  I resent her, I think I’m downright pissed with her.  What right does she have to insert herself between the answer people and me?  The flip side of all this is the self-doubt.  Why is this happening?  Am I asking too many questions or being too needy?  Which just sinks me.  I feel worthless.  Is it a coincidence that my co-worker is one of the people polluting my work space with her yamma yamma chatter?

I need to get past this issue of multi-tasking.  To achieve my goal of working in the micro lab I have to work during the day.  The main lab is much busier during the day – more people coming and going, more people with inane yamma yamma chatter, the work itself is more complicated because different people/departments behave differently during the day than at night.  Its ironic because one of my reasons to work in the micro lab is because there are less people and distraction there.  To get there I have to learn to work amidst distraction central.  Yikes.

Journal: February 6, 2021

I’m reading “Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook”, by Deborah Bray Haddock.  I like it because it is an easy read, written in such a way that the average reader is engaged and comprehending. 

I’ve gotten to a section of the book where she is discussing how DID is not just something awful that we’ve survived, but a strength she calls adaptive functioning.  In that section she describes how a patient’s different parts are present for a family dinner and how the different parts served a purpose for nightly events.  I had to stop reading for a moment and breathe.  This is so real for me, not in a bad way.  We just sat there on the couch for a long minute, snuggled in our blanket, and held the toddler who cried and cried and then another part just sat stunned feeling an empty place in her heart, the part who rages felt vindicated.

In therapy we talked about parts and how they protected us from what we survived.  He asked me to journal about it.  I agreed to it, but I was uncertain what I had to say about this topic because it seems self-explanatory.  Bad stuff happened, we went away and another part came forward to cope with what was going on.  Or, in the case of our youngest parts – bad stuff happened and the toddler who was went so far away she never came back; a new personality was forged where the toddler’s personality was.  All the other personalities come and go, just the toddler stays gone.   New meaning to the statement, innocence lost.

There is more to say about parts and how they protect us.  The job they do isn’t a one and done event.  The ‘One Who Rages’ steps up when she perceives that we are being mistreated in social or work situations.  She handles it like the adolescent she is, she gets a rebellious attitude and smarts off or if unchecked will rage and say terrible things and stomp her feet.  Then she fades away and the rest of us are left embarrassed and responsible for the blowback from whatever The ‘One Who Rages’ did.

It is easy to get lost in the story of the disaster train that happens when the ‘One Who Rages’ comes forward, but what is pertinent here is that she comes forward when she perceives a threat.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a genuine threat or a crisis of ego.  When the ‘One Who Rages’ begins to chatter loudly in the ever present conversations in my head, we pay attention and consider her point.  We then take steps to deescalate the threat by having a conversation with ourselves or trusted friend.  We ask the question, is this threat real?  And, then we ask the next question, what can we do about it before the ‘One Who Rages’ starts the disaster train?

One of the biggest influences on our ability to work with the ‘One Who Rages’ is depression. If we are depressed it is truly difficult to work up the energy to care about anything.  Or, if we are so self-absorbed in our depression we might miss the warning signs of the ‘One Who Rages’ chatter.  This is why we have learned to stay aware and listen.  Not just for the ‘One Who Rages’ but for all of our parts.  If one of them chimes in ‘there’s something wrong’ or ‘this doesn’t feel right’ it is best for all of us to stop what we’re doing and pay attention. 

Journal: January 30, 2021

The uncertainty over my job has resolved itself.  An ADA is in place stating that the Topiramate caused cognitive disfunction.  I go back to work and living a graveyard schedule next Tuesday.  The depression has broken up into a mist of yesterday and I’ve gone back to doing portraits.  A success in it itself, but as an added bonus I did the first of practice portraits on my sister-in-law.  For some reason I hadn’t been able to put pencil to paper for her before.  It wasn’t bad for a first attempt. 

I have also been doing a lot of reading, specifically re-reading one of my favorite authors.  She’s very prolific at almost 30 books in this series.  I began at the logical place – the first book in the series.  I know I’ve read every book in this series, but I was shocked to find that I don’t remember significant parts of the books.  After this happening in a couple of books I noticed a pattern.  The parts of the books that I remembered were the parts that were about sex (soft porn).  Anything not related to sex was like reading the book for the first time.  At first, I wasn’t certain what to make of this.  Now that I’ve had a chance to consider it, I think the Sex Addict read the books the first couple of times.  Now someone else reading these books with their own sense of enjoyment and surprisingly, criticisms.  The sex in the book is still delightful, but the stories are refreshing and feeding my imagination.

When the husband had a heart attack he quit smoking cold turkey.  The wife, in support of the husband quit too.  Now those of us who like to smoke have to do it when the husband is not around.  We had been pushing our wish to smoke for a while.  This morning the husband went to spend time with his children.  I chose to stay at home.  After he was well and gone, we went out and smoked our first two cigarettes in 6 months.  They were amazing.  We miss smoking.  More accurately we miss sitting on the swing thinking unimportant thoughts smoking til we were satiated.  We resent having to smoke in secret, but it is better than not smoking at all.  

One of the things we noticed is the direction of our thoughts is different, the wife’s fantasies are not our fantasies.  While we smoked we didn’t fantasize at all.  Now that we are back inside, we are thinking about chores to get done and about our next portrait attempt.  The wife is thinking about bed (trying to get back into the habit of living a graveyard schedule) and drifting back to sleep with her favorite fantasies.