Monday, August 9, 2010

The girl who spews poison ...


Green snake
Originally uploaded by khozism

WANTED: People-pleasing child of an alcoholic with fears of abandonment and the unknown seeks friend and/or intimate partner with narcisstic wounding and engulfment issues for incompatibility and toxic interactions.

My father, all 3 of the intimate relationships I've had with women (including my current one) and 3 of my local friends all qualify as potential matches for this classified.

I am just now understanding, particularly after the healing session I had today, about why I have co-created a specific interpersonal dynamic in my life that repeatedly activates and perpetuates the injustices of my childhood.

It is called "Poisoning Ground". It differs yet is connected to another concept in our non-dual healing school called "Poisoned Ground". The first is active while the latter is passive. Poisoning Ground refers to the ways in which we continue to carry out and spread the historically toxic potion we were raised on as children (Poisoned Ground). Hence, the title of this post: The girl who spews poison. (also a playful spin on the titles of the Stieg Larsson trilogy I am in the midst of, the 2nd book being: "The Girl who Played with Fire").

Ever since my session today, the venom in me has risen to the surface and is practically oozing out of every pore. I feel its sting and its ugliness and its lethal potential. It makes me sick inside and I want it out of me and the problem is that, when in this place of really feeling it, I want to spit it on everyone that crosses me or who I think deserves it. My healer emphasized the importance of me writing and exploring this territory, so I am unleashing it here with reckless abandon and an "I don't give a flying fuck" attitude. I want it out and spilled and emptied.

The key statement that arose today which fuels my Poisoning Ground is: "I wasn't considered". It is directly associated with the Poisoned Ground of my chaotic, alcoholic family which was organized around managing and responding to my father's drunken states and therefore could not offer attention or consideration for the children in the home. It's connected to abandonment and rejection and it is projected onto others, especially those with narcisstic qualities, because of the ways in which they are self-absorbed and do not have much to give to folks like me who are seeking companionship and connection in order to not feel abandoned. People with narcisstic wounds, as my healer explained, are looking to move away from people with my history for fear of being "sucked in" and so instead, they respond by cutting us out and killing us off. It is a deadly combination when the dynamic is not understood for what it is. And, for someone like me when I am in a small, contracted place, it completely sets off fire bells and warning signals that danger lies ahead. And that I need to defend myself. Herein is an additional explanation for my boxing glove theory that I posted a few days back.

My hypervigilance can be so sensitive and acute that as soon as I get a whiff of potential changing of form (as in my dad or former partner's inebriated emotional states), my defenses find me starting to shape-shift in relation to the other's metamorphosis. This is most likely to happen when I am feeling small and am operating in the "personal-only" and this is when Poisoning Ground mode kicks in. When I am big and can hold the personal and impersonal, I am much less apt to go into this operating mode. This is what I learned today from my healer. It is both illuminating and exasperating. She shared that I may always experience an aspect of this at some level because of the fact that I am a child of an alcoholic. The anti-dote comes in the form of acceptance and being able to hold the smaller self within my bigger self.

My continued work in this territory is to let myself know the stories I tell myself when I enter this Poisoning Ground state. To name what happens for me. To give the smaller, toxic self a voice and a place. My healer also suggested working with this question: "What would it be like to be big and small at the same time?" My all-or-nothing thinking finds me being one or the other most often.

I am calmer and clearer having released this from my system. I would much rather have it be held in the safety of this writing space than to be inflicted upon innocent beings.

I am the girl who spews poison. Not all the time and not with every person or in every interaction. But it is a truth and a statement of reality about one part of me that exists. For now, she has the right to be here and be heard.

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