… this blog is the third installment of an intense healing saga. If you have not done so, I recommend first reading the two blogs titled “A Crash Course” and “Confusing Confusion” …
As I arise on Thursday morning, the first day of December 2011, a memory of something Keith said yesterday – something I had totally forgotten about until now – suddenly forces itself into waking consciousness.
“Brenda,” Keith had matter-of-factly asked me during one point of yesterday’s ceremony, “have you heard anything about that woman who posted a YouTube video on the internet regarding how she used hot chili sauce to discipline her children?”
As this memory surfaces, my mood remains depressed, self-loathing, feeling like a looser for having experienced so many judgmental emotions in yesterday’s chocolate ceremony.
In this low vibration state, the thought of searching out such a video on the internet appeals to me. Intuitions strongly guide me that the video might actually help in my process – that there is a synchronous reason Keith had come up with such an unexpected, out-of-context statement in the middle of ceremony – and that there is a reason that this memory has, only now, flashed back into full awareness.
A Mouthy Kid
When I first wrote about my childhood, in an autobiography that is now a set-aside work-on-hold, I had dedicated only a single paragraph to frequent memories of being punished as a child. In that writing I talked briefly of how I had, at many times during my younger years, been mouthy and sarcastic – and how, in addition to spankings, I had been punished by having my mouth washed out with soap or having cayenne pepper sprinkled on my tongue.
At the time of that writing, I believed my parents had been doing the right thing as they struggled to discipline and train an often rebellious and disobedient child (me). I became such a successful product of the citizen factory that I believed my punishment to be correct and even deserved, writing it off in my writing as being insignificant silliness, hardly even worth mentioning.
Just this last spring, as I sobbed one day on the porch over an issue of deep childhood shutdown, several porch-friends had gasped in horror, referring to the punishments I had received as being terrible child abuse.
“No, no, no,” I had firmly defended my parents with a smile, “you don’t understand. It was not abuse. I knew my parents loved me, and they were simply using a method of punishment that was culturally accepted at the time, trying to teach me to conform as best they could.”
Hot Sauce Mom
As I sit in mild depression, I spend about ten minutes performing an internet search before I zero in on an assortment of videos dealing with a mother from Alaska – a woman named Jessica – a woman who was struggling with the discipline of a seven-year-old adopted child. To my shock and surprise, another synchronous fact soon pushes my triggers. Jessica was, at the time, a leader of the children’s organization in a local congregation of the same religion in which I had been raised.
In her frustration, in what I believe to have been a genuine cry for help, Jessica asked her young daughter to film her as she disciplined this young boy. She then sent the video clip to the Dr. Phil show, begging for help.
Once the clip was aired on live television, it quickly caused nationwide uproar and controversy. Jessica was eventually charged and convicted of child abuse – but given a suspended sentence. I will provide no more background here. For anyone interested in more details, feel free to do an internet search for “Hot Sauce Mom” and you will find large quantities of information.
Emotional Interruptions
Today, as I attempt to write – a full eight days after watching these videos – I am overwhelmed with emotion. My heart breaks, and intense sobs consume me, as I again relive the agonizing journey of that painful day.
Screeeeeech … I interrupt this writing for an emergency emotional interruption. Full details will come in a subsequent blog. Whenever I write, I literally go back in time, re-experiencing the emotions, integrating the processes, locking-in the healing.
But as I was writing yesterday, I was unprepared for the emotions that would again slam me to the mat. Being unable to continue writing, I Instead knowingly surrendered to the energetic flow – a synchronous flow that further guided me into a roller coaster ride of deepening emotions – a flow taking me to some of the most agonizing depths yet – and a flow returning me to new and beautiful insight-filled highs.
After that intense emotional journey, additional writing proved to be impossible. Today I attempt to resume my story – again going back in time to Thursday, December 1, 2011.
Neither Insignificant Nor Silly
Seconds into watching the first video of Jessica disciplining her seven-year-old adopted child, I am sobbing. I am not just feeling the young boy’s pain; I am literally re-experiencing my own agonizing trauma as a child.
What I am viewing is not insignificant and silly discipline – not just a loving parent doing her best to teach her child how to conform – it is outright emotional terror and psychological abuse. Jessica seems “fully restrained,” but is extremely frustrated and angry. She yells sternly at the terrorized little boy, demanding that he answer her angry onslaught of punishment with responses of surrender and complete submission – demanding that he fully admit his “horrible” transgression of getting into a little trouble at school and then lying to her about it (because he was terrified of the punishment that would follow).
Heartbreak and Sobbing
My heart caves in and collapses as Jessica pours hot sauce into the child’s mouth. Out-of-control tears roll down my cheeks as I hear his audible-but-muffled sounds of terrorized whimpering. He can make no other sounds because his mouth is filled with hot sauce – hot sauce that he is not allowed to swallow nor spit out. Finally, after a continued barrage of yelling, Jessica instructs the little boy to spit into the sink, and then forces him into the shower, where he screams out in emotional agony as she turns on the cold water.
I quickly lose what little composure I have left as I begin to sob uncontrollably. The scene is heartbreaking.
Once again, nine days later, as I engage in a second attempt to write about this, I am briefly overwhelmed with new rounds of intense sobs. This time, however, I think I am now capable of continuing my writing.
Yelps Of Terror
I am devastated as I relive the emotions of my own angry and desperate childhood attempts to defend myself, of my inability to explain myself, and my defenselessness against a mother who was frustrated and determined to teach me how to behave.
In my mother’s loving defense, I have no videos to watch of my own childhood discipline. I have no concrete memories of exactly what it was that I might have done to deserve such firm treatment, nor do I have clear memories of her precise state of mind when she punished me.
What I do have are intense memories of feeling angry and rebellious, of trying in futility to verbally defend myself, of being forced to submit to humiliating admission of my guilt, of having no choice but to surrender to the adults in charge, of simply having to give up my own individual will. Firm-but-vague memories also tell me that such disciplinary situations were not uncommon – that when I was younger, they took place on an irregular-but-frequent basis.
Also, I profoundly remember that I was not the only one fighting. I emotionally feel the angry and frustrated words being thrown my way as I struggled to run away from hands that tightly gripped my wrists – from hands that forced my jaw open while sprinkling cayenne pepper onto my gagging tongue. I profoundly remember my own agonizing yelps of terror as I felt that hot pepper on my tender tongue. My mother was extremely frustrated with me as I fought to defend and protect my honor.
Again, as I write in the present day, I sink into more rounds of intense sobs.
Worshipping Conformity
After a breakfast of six marshmallows, I go into my dark bedroom, imagining myself hiding out in my own little “personal hell” closet. First, I allow the process of intense emotional release to consume me fully. I intuitively know that this pain is something that I must feel to the core – that the sobs, coughing, and piles of tissues are a necessary part of this journey to “know myself.”
Eventually I fall asleep, zoning out for over three hours. At around 12:30 p.m., I briefly step out to the kitchen for a spoonful of peanut butter and a banana before returning to my metaphorical closet, where I begin to meditate. As I ponder about my recent run-in with ever-increasing fixing energy, the insights begin to flow.
“Wow,” I suddenly realize. “I’m intensely judgmental of anyone who professes to be spiritual, but whose words and actions do not resonate with my own connection to higher energies.”
“I am angry at unhealed healers – people who profess to have a divine connection with God and then use that connection to force their unhealed projections and dysfunction onto others.” I further ponder.
“That is where this anger toward my mother comes from.” The flash bulbs again light up. “In the name of God and Religion, my free will was squashed, my inner intuitive lights were snuffed out, confidence to be creative was destroyed, right-brained intuitions all but disappeared, and conformity became the object of my worship.”
Confusing Memories
After a hunk of cheese and a bowl of popcorn, I return to my dark cave for further meditation.
I begin to ponder deeper into the shutdown process – attempting to remember portions of my childhood magic.
Tears again flow in waves as I ponder how deeply I must have hurt when this creative magic was being squashed by psychic energy that forced me to be a rational minded robot. There was absolutely nothing I could have done to stop the process.
Confusing memories flood my mind – memories of the mouthy sarcastic rebellions that were firmly squelched – and memories of how I was such a mommy-pleasing angel. I now understand that both were absolutely true. I played the role of angel until I could take no more suppression. After a period of rebellion at the shackles and chains, followed by punishments, I again resumed the role of people-pleasing angel. Soon, as my will faded, the people-pleasing conformer was all that remained.
At Wits End
As I further ponder about the “Hot Sauce Mom” from the YouTube videos, I can honestly say that I understand her intense pain and frustration – her inability to raise a child that is speculated to be suffering from Reactive Attachment Disorder – a result of the horrendous conditions of his having spent five years in a Russian orphanage.
Jessica is indeed trying to teach her adopted little boy how to properly behave in his religious and social culture – I can feel her desperation of believing that if she doesn’t teach him to be a people-pleasing sheep, that he will end up living a hellish and troubled life. Jessica is indeed frantic and at her wits end.
Just as I can only imagine Jessica’s emotions, I can only imagine my own mother’s frustration as she attempted to train me to embrace and conform to her beliefs. And I can also clearly remember my own intense frustration and fear as I too once tried to firmly discipline my own children from a similar mindset.
From today’s level of understanding, I feel slightly ashamed – yet I lovingly know that I was genuinely doing the best I knew how as a parent. With all of my heart, I also know that my mother (and Jessica) were also genuinely doing the only thing they knew how to do at the time.
Dying On The Inside
How I wish I had more concrete physical memories to back up my obvious emotional trauma. The emotions I feel today are undeniably real. With all of my heart I absolutely know I was psychologically and emotionally traumatized as a young child – yet with all my heart I also know that it was done from a motive of love.
Whenever I look at my first and third grade photos, one thing is absolutely clear in profound and vivid memory. I clearly remember the emotions that I experienced while standing in front of that camera – I remember posing for that camera as if it were yesterday.
I hated how I looked and I knew I was ugly. I did not know how to smile right, and I was embarrassed and terrified of what people would say if my appearance and smile did not turn out just right. To this day, I can see and feel that pain in my eyes. While I may have been a people-pleasing angel on the outside – at age six, I was already dying on the inside.
Scratching The Surface
After a profound journey of intense emotion, I can take no more meditation or processing – and I still definitely am not up to cooking. Soon, I gobble down two already-boiled eggs, an apple, and a few slices of stale bread. I finish off the crazy afternoon and evening simply losing myself in movies. I too, am at my wits end. I am exhausted and my eyes are once again so red that I can barely open them.
As I drift to dreamland on this first Thursday of December, I desperately hope that my intense emotional journey has now come to completion … but a strong feeling tells me that I have only begun to scratch the surface.
Focusing Futility
Early Friday morning, during a 6:00 a.m. meditation, I experience nice energy, while remembering something Keith had told me on Monday. He had lovingly suggested that I would be manifesting tearful opportunities that would provide me with an opportunity to practice using higher energies in an emotional release process.
“If more emotions come up,” I ponder with love, “I will be more focused on trying to use higher energies to facilitate the process.
But emotions are the last thing I want to manifest. I desperately desire to begin writing again. However, by 10:00 a.m., an energetic cloud of confusion in my head is so uncomfortable that I throw up my hands in desperation. All attempts to focus are futile. Intuitions tell me to go in my room to meditate.
“I am being guided to work with higher energies.” Silent Jedi voices whisper in my heart as I head to my bedroom, light some candles, turn off the lights, and close the door.
Know Myself
For more than an hour, I meditate into and out of increasingly intense childhood pain, asking the light to guide me gently through the process. Each time I reach a point of stability, I again ask for more light, which almost immediately brings deeper awareness of childhood emotional suffering, triggering yet another layer of agonizing release.
I do not know if I am inept at using the light, or perhaps the light itself is what takes me deeper into this release process. Intuition tells me it is the latter.
The tears, sobs, and coughing are more intense than anything I have yet experienced while exploring childhood pain. I know I am making huge progress into my healing goal of “Know Myself” – into the process of fully understanding what happened, of feeling those emotions to the core, and of releasing those densities and beliefs to the light.
An Inside Out Release
At one point in this process, I quietly fling swear words and hateful expressions in the direction of my mother. As the observer, I know the words to be lies, yet the buried emotions are real and seem to require throat-chakra expression before healing can take place.
Repeatedly, I experience the emotions of a child whose magical light is being snuffed out in the name of a judgmental and fear-inducing God. Many times, during this intense sobbing release, I feel as if my throat is being turned inside out as I heave dense energies out of my gut, invisibly hurling them out of my mouth.
Three-Year-Old Angel
Once the intensity of my release process begins to diminish, I focus increasingly on attempts to connect with more light. As I try to visualize a magical angel in front of me, I experience fierce resistance. Remembering past terrors of my inner children toward such energies, I call a metaphorical meeting in my heart, discussing the idea with little Bobby and Sharon.
“No way!” I get a firm response. My inner children refuse to connect with a metaphorical angel right now.
Finally, a new idea floods my mind.
“What if I ask a three-year-old little-girl angel to help us?” I ask my inner children.
As I pose the meditative question, I visualize a giggling, playful little girl with magical powers and beautiful wings.
Clenched Resistance
“Surely such a tiny playful angel will pose no threat of adult manipulation or control.” I ponder with delight as I soon feel the hesitant inner agreement of my little children.
As I imagine myself energetically connecting with this tiny angel, attempting to look into her eyes, I expect to find that feeling of giggling joy.
But instead, I suddenly experience a new round of deeper-than-ever emotions – agonizing emotions of anger and hatred, accompanied by more inside-out throat heaving
I again ponder Keith’s words from late Monday afternoon – words that told me I would be manifesting tears as a means of practicing the use of higher energies. I feel lost in the pain, incapable of moving forward, but trust that the higher energies will indeed step up and help me if I will but allow.
Soon, I follow a strong and sudden intuition – one guiding me to focus intensely on relaxing all of the clenched muscles in my body.
More Of The Same
As the image of a “little child whose heart has been broken” anchors itself immovably in my mind, I begin to picture myself as being that innocent child.
My light has gone out; my heart is broken; I feel devastated – betrayed by God, parents, and church. I am untrusting of any authority that professes to help me, because they are all the same. They manipulate, condescend, and make me feel stupid, acting as if they know everything while I know nothing.
I trust only myself. Letting others help me only results in more of the same disempowerment.
“I will never ask for help, ever again.” I hear this part of me cry out.
Perfect And Planned
“It was all perfect.” I again remind myself, knowing that I chose my parents before this lifetime – that I chose my religion and my birth circumstances – and that I chose to go through this shutdown process for divinely inspired reasons.
“Nothing is wrong here.” I repeat to myself over and over again. “I am not a victim. I am just feeling the energy of how I felt victimized as a child.”
Yes, I know that both perspectives are true. I know that I suffered great emotional trauma as a child, and I know that it was all perfect and planned.
An Angelic Butler
As I sit cross-legged in meditation, I beg the metaphorical three-year-old angel to help me.
“Please take some of these painful emotions from me.” I plead. “Please, please fill me with light.”
I sit waiting for the response, desperately needing some type of higher energy assistance to ease the burden of my agonizing process. Finally, a new metaphor unexpectedly floods my mind.
“This little angel is just a butler.” The Jedi voices whisper confidently, “She is already serving a huge amount of light on her silver tray, and she is standing equipped and ready to take any emotions that come her way.
“But she cannot do it for me.” The intuitions continue strongly. “That would be a violation of my free will. She cannot fill a hypodermic needle with light and inject it into my heart. She cannot reach inside of me and rip out emotions to which I still cling.”
Restoring Power
“If I want the angel to process my emotional density, I am the one who has to release those emotions.” I clearly understand the metaphor. “And the light I desire is already freely available … I am the one still resisting it.
“I still have a blown fuse in my energy circuits,” Intuitions further clarity, “and my clenching is somehow related to the ongoing resistance that keeps me from allowing the energy to flow.”
Finally, after deep concentrated efforts to relax fully, energy begins to twitch throughout my forearms, hips, and legs. As has happened before, the sensation is extremely uncomfortable, like the waking of a sleeping foot. It feels as if a mild low-voltage current is running nonstop through these areas of my body. Soon, the vibrations and energy flow are less agitated and increasingly peaceful, as beautiful energy begins to flow throughout most of my body.
I know that this is just a small step in restoring the energy flow, but I love it just the same.
A Well-Deserved Compliment
By 1:30 p.m., I am on overload. I cannot handle any more emotional release, and I am starved and all meditated out.
In an effort to reward my little inner children for a job well done, the “three of us” go out for a burger and fries at my favorite hamburger spot in town.
Later that afternoon, during another beautiful extended meditation, I recognize what I see as a huge unspoken compliment to Keith.
“If I were working with any other spiritual teacher that I have ever known,” I ponder with clarity, “I absolutely know I would have packed my bags long ago. If anyone else had guided me to the brink of such painful emotions, I would have long since flipped them off and gone looking for something else – something easier.”
“But somehow, in working with Keith, I resonate powerfully with unfailing confidence that these very emotions – emotions taking me to the deepest reaches of agonizing inner pain – are my ticket to freedom and to connecting with the light – and I am not about to give up my ticket now.”
Strange Sense Of Humor
Late Friday evening, I am peaceful and very relaxed, while feeling simultaneously terrified of going any deeper into this pain. I know I have only arrived at a temporary plateau, but make a tactical decision to spend the night in this peace, taking a break from thinking, knowing that I can resume the journey tomorrow.
To my surprise, when I randomly choose a movie on my computer – a movie I know nothing about – a movie called “Equilibrium” – the story ventures to a bizarre mythical future where all emotions are banned from the planet, where medications are routinely issued to push everything down. Any emotional expression is grounds for immediate execution.
As I ponder the synchronous nature of having unknowingly selected such a movie, I can only giggle. The Universe has a strange sense of humor.
Feel It To Heal It
I want nothing more than to believe that the emotional hurricane is now over, but Saturday morning as I awaken, I begin to experience extremely agitated emotions about something as small and silly as my internet connection not working. Having a flaky internet is a common situation – one that rarely affects me at all.
“F@#K you God,” I eventually blurt out angrily after two hours of unsuccessful struggle to connect via Skype to a dear friend in Arizona.
“Apparently, I am back in my God drama.” I simultaneously giggle and cry with fuming frustration.
I know that I create my reality and that this internet outage is happening for a reason – but these tantrum-like emotions are intense. I am experiencing a sense of pouting rebellion toward higher energies – a sense of livid anger about how I have been repeatedly disappointed, abandoned, let down, rejected, and ignored by higher energies throughout my life. It is a feeling of “Each time I do the right thing, I just get screwed over by God.”
Again, I know these emotions to be silly lies, but their intensity surprises me – overwhelming me. Deep inner voices reassure me that these emotions need to be felt – that they cannot be healed unless I feel them to the core.
A Plea For Help
Finally, after two additional hours of hopeless undirected floundering – bouncing all over the spectrum of possible emotions – I resolve to seek outside help.
I want to write. I do not want to experience another day of agonizing emotional processing. I am reentering so much confusion that I no longer trust myself to assess what I am feeling. Shortly after 9:30 a.m., I step quietly onto Keith’s porch,
“Help Keith,” I beg, “I know you are busy, but I am so lost and confused. I desperately need some guidance – just five minutes of your time to help me understand what is happening…”
I burst into sobs before Keith can even answer.
A Category Five
It seems that after a brief period of eerie calm, the emotional hurricane is back with full strength winds. I have experienced many agonizing emotional journeys during my lifetime, but nothing could ever have prepared me for the intensity of this week’s powerful emotional storm – a storm still shaking me at my core – a storm taking me back to the roots of intense childhood pain. If there ever was such a thing as a category-five emotional hurricane, I am right in the middle of its fiercest winds.
As I prepare to sit down for what will turn into a long private session with Keith, I again run silently through the words of the chorus to what is fast becoming my theme song.
“Close your eyes … this part is scary … take my hand … it wont last long … you will love the ending I promise … when this part of the story is gone.”
“But when is this scary part going to end?” I silently ponder in shock.
To be continued …
Copyright © 2011 by Brenda Larsen, All Rights Reserved