UNCONDITIONAL LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE ~ A powerful force for healing

~ Written 17 August 2017 ~

I’ve been beating myself up again!
As an adult survivor of severe child abuse and subsequent abuses in my adulthood, I sometimes really struggle to keep the age-old voices of abuse-negativity in my head at bay during times of struggle.  The voices that tell me how useless and worthless I am, how futile my efforts are, how invisible and unwanted I am, ugly, hopeless, etc.
 
The way things have been over the last month and a half, I have struggled greatly with guilt feelings… feelings of failure and separation from the experiencing and expectation of deserving goodness from this world.
 
Since my computer crash on 25th June this year, I have gained 3kg’s!  I can’t even really work out how, other than that for the first time, I am eating a lot of diabetic sweets… trying to fill the holes in my soul once more… through my stomach!  I’m not happy about the weight gain, and have to work out how to stop whatever it is I’m doing that is causing it. 
 
Believing that I am somehow to blame for the hard drive crash that has caused me almost more stress than I can bear at times, I have also convinced myself that “nobody loves me… how could they… everyone hates me… surely they must for all the inconvenience I (the hard drive crash), has caused”…
 
The worst of my self-destructive thoughts that I have allowed is to believe that my mentor must surely be angry with me.  She’s been quieter than usual… surely that’s because she’s cross that I allowed the crash to happen and all this chaos is my fault.  So bad were the intrusive thoughts that started to take over my every waking hour, that I even imagined that everyone wanted me out of my secretarial position and I would soon find out that someone else would be taking my place… where would I do… what would I do…….
 
Part of me wanted to run… I’ve been so exhausted from all the stress the crash has caused… struggling with the drag of dissociation which is trying to consume me in its depths. 
 
But a more powerful voice and force in me has continued to recognize my responsibility to… no matter what… make things right again… before I run… before it’s over… just make it right again…
 
8th Augus… my memtor wrote:
After a long time of not hearing from my mentor, she sent a WhatsApp…
 
 “…how are you? Miss hearing from you!...”
 
I had already built up such a story of “nobody loves me” in my head, that her caring words seemed foreign… how could I allow them into the fortress I’d built around myself already to protect myself from feeling.  (Does anyone out there understand this and identify?)  At the same time that I’m feeling this, I’m actually longing for my Mentor to write… desperately longing for her wisdom, but afraid of reaching out of my fortress in case she detects how needy I’m feeling and it looks like Transference… maybe it is!  Something I dread greatly ever happening again.  I cry every time I think of her leaving us someday when she retires from teaching the students at the workshops in our country twice a year.  It’s a long way for her to travel… it must surely come to an end sometime soon… she needs a time of rest also… she’s worked so hard for so long now.  So, in a sense, I have been mourning her loss… even before she has made the remotest suggestion of retiring.  She lives far away… I’d never see her again if she stopped coming.  No more relaxing visits to the beautiful cow farm for lunch and a chat… oh how I have cherished and loved our times there together.  The thought of them coming to an end is causing me much pain.
 
With all the self-loathing that I have been experiencing of late,, I immediately wrote a WhatsApp to my mentor in response…
 
“Thank you for your care… I’m taking one day at a time… keeping my distance for now until I feel I’m back on track again.  One blow after another for over a month now… my son is ill, and my dog.  We faced putting her down this weekend… the vet gave us a feeding plan for her on Monday which we will work on for two weeks… then decide how to proceed. 
 
I miss talking to you terribly, but so afraid of transference happening again, especially when things are as bad as they have been with the hard drive crash… I’m already in tears every time I think of you leaving sometime in the future…
 
Scared you will distance yourself if I admit the extent of my fears of you leaving…
 
Feeling like I’ve let you and everyone down terribly… feel like a fool… until I’m back on track I am unable to forgive myself… and I too suffered huge losses in the crash which hurt greatly.
 
Finding it hard to focus which doesn’t help… anxiety… exhaustion… struggling with dissociation, but still moving forward and doing my best under the circumstances…
 
So, distancing feels like my only logical option for now… until I surface again…
 
No need to respond.  I just need time to make things right again and hoping to do more catching up this week…
 
With love to you and your dear husband."
 
Well… after sending the letter… oh my goodness me… I felt so bad that I had.  My mentor didn’t answer and I never even went to check if she had seen my message… I knew I mustn’t, or it would defeat the object of my intent to distance myself from my own guilt at letting her down, as I believed I had.  So, for days I felt tortured by what I’d done… more self-destructive stories swirling around in my head… I felt like I was literally drowning…
 
Yesterday I wrote to a friend whose love and belief in me I feel I can still trust… my LogoSister, Dana.  I told her how sad I was feeling at the news of old friends and Johanna’s death, and how bad I have been feeling about failing my Logotherapy world… and she responded so kindly:
 
“Oh my dear Pana, if you weren’t so diligent in backing up, it would have been so much worse.  You are so responsible and the best thing that ever happened to Logotherapy here.  I know you are cracking about it inside, but I’m so inspired by how you have handled it and jumped right back on track.  To the students, everything is running like a well-oiled machine.”
 
I responded:
“Thank you for the vote of confidence my dear Dana… I wish everyone could see how hard I’ve always tried…. so-so-so hard!  My own dreams are drowning while I try to keep the Logotherapy institute afloat… I’m drowning too… I keep coming up for air, but get pushed down over and over again by the stormy waves… one arm up trying to hold the institute above the water, and even that arm (and hand) is now sore with arthritis (psychosomatic… I’m sure), that it hurts too much to type sometimes… I must just keep going… like The Little Engine That Could!”
 
I loved Dana’s response:
“If that little engine touches my heart… imagine how much it touches G-d to see one of His children just pushing on with all her heart and soul.  We are so loved by our Creator.”
 
Our conversation continued and as always, Dana’s loving understanding support helped me to settle and feel calmer and gave me more resolve and energy to press forward again. 
 
There’s nothing as lovely as a really good friend… a true friend… a friend who can be trusted.  I am so blessed to have her in my life and pray that nothing will ever go wrong in our friendship.  We identify both on our inner child levels, as well as with some of our struggles… our journeys have been quite different, but Dana has a unique level of empathy that I believe goes even beyond life-experience… something quite rare and beautiful.
 
Yesterday, my mentor sent a WhatsApp voice message to be played to our students at their upcoming graduation evening.  I thanked her and then asked if I could have a quick word with her… she said yes.  Still believing that she was disappointed and angry with me for the computer crash, I sent her a voice message to apologies and she sent a beautiful message in return. 

I so wanted to share these messages with you all, but it seems that I would have to upgrade my blog to do so, and at this time, I just cannot afford to. 

If you would like to hear the voice recordings, please e-mail me via my blog contacts and I will share them with you.  They were the whole reason I wrote this blog post, so I'm also disappointed that they will not post here. 

I'm not sure how much an upgrade will cost, but if someone would like to sponsor me, please let me know and I will find out.

These voice messages are MPEG – 4 Audios so you might need a Codek Pack on your computer to listen to them.  Go to the following link:
 
http://files2.codecguide.com/K-Lite_Codec_Pack_1340_Basic.exe

If you need instructions on how to download and install this pack, please e-mail me and I will send you the instructions my oldest son gave me as soon as I can.  I will be out at my dear old friend, Norma’s funeral tomorrow and hope to visit my family while I’m there, but I will get back to you when I can.
 
A link to a PDF copy of the story about the little engine that could:
http://www.mrjonathan.com/mxrm9files/AR/Little%20Engine%20that%20Could.pdf
 
I hope you enjoyed sharing with me today and I’m so grateful that you did.
 
~ Panayiota