Life Is For Living: The Agony of Self-Sabotage and The Turning Point

Well, I'm properly back from my self-inflicted hell that started last week and peaked this week. That's why I couldn't blog; okay one half-assed post on Wednesday.

Thank goodness other bloggers are on the job! As I'm sure you know, growth is damn painful. We adults resist such things because our mental processes go nuts.

Did I really say I wanted to grow and become and share? So I'm sharing. I've been hating myself so badly; I just couldn't stand me anymore. And resisting taking action to pull myself out of the emotional pit I had dug for myself is a classic fallback reaction.

When you face yourself in the mirror and look at your life laid bare and you feel that nothing's going right, it's demoralizing. I couldn't sleep, couldn't reflect, was constantly running away from myself, watching television for hours at night. My dreams clearly exposed my catastrophic self.

I was mentally and emotionally screaming for help. The tidal wave of emotions was tremendous which is why I tried staying away from people. I refused to meditate, exercise or use any of the other helpful techniques I had discovered to clean up my mess.

Self-sabotage is my preferred habit.

I walked along the lake and in the gardens and verbally abused the summer-time creeps in town for seasonal jobs who were stupid enough to step to me. And just so you know, Geneva is very small and the population is parochial at best and despite that, I felt so small acting the way I did.

I had persistent doubts about myself and always had a "yes, but ...", "I can't...", "but I don't have the money..." Yup, that "money is the root of all evil crap" reared it's ugly head big-time and instilled such terror in me that I knew I had hit the barrier I needed to breach.

MY TURNING POINT

So last night I decided I had had enough. I listened to an inspiring interview which reminded me of the tremendous progress I had made over the past four years, and also of my good qualities. The effect was instantaneous. I felt a weight lift off of me - it was palpable - and I started to feel good again; like the me I'm getting to know.

This morning I went for a walk and after my meditation, I found myself doing TAT when I really had planned to do EFT in. So I decided to go with it. Two images popped into my head; me crying in the huge, empty living room at eight or nine when my mother and stepfather fought for the first time and the rape when I was ten.

EFT AND TAT

To briefly recap - TAT is Tapas Accupressure Technique and EFT means Emotional Freedom Technique. They are both acupressure techniques which use the fingers of one or both hands to tap on specific meridian points on the body; like acupuncture but without the needles.

TAT is used only on the head area, and EFT on the upper half of the body from the crown of the head according to the practitioner's style. TAT was developed by Tapas Fleming and EFT by Gary Craig.

They both eliminate trauma and liberate the body of stress which create emotional blockages. The other difference between the two is that EFT phrases must be said out loud while tapping on the meridian points.

That's not necessary with TAT whose claim to fame is erasing the emotional link to traumatic events in two minutes. And I ended up testing that claim.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH TAT

I sat there on that bench in those beautiful gardens with my hands in the TAT position, surrounded by singing birds and magnificent trees, and relived that rape in live and living colour. The effect was amazing.

I wasn't counting so I don't know how many minutes went by but ... here's what happened. I felt a painful pressure in the middle of my forehead and then the scene kept receding and expanding. As if I was changing the focus on a telescope. Then the entire event took a "step" backward and stayed there. All the furnishings, clothing, walls etc. had turned white.

My unhappy feelings were gone. They had been with me for forty years and were the cause of my suicidal depression and just like that, they had disappeared. I thought that was a fluke, so I went back to the memory but no matter what I did - and my imagination is very vivid - I could not bring it back. That was weird.

RECREATING A MEMORY

Then I thought about recreating a memory and found myself back in the scene and this time, I was myself yet much younger. And the ten-year old me was still on the bed. I took her in my arms and we hugged and I kissed her, and I told her how much I loved her and that we'll always be together and that I loved her, loved her, loved her.

The idea of creating a better memory came from an interview I remembered with Brad Yates, EFT expert extraordinaire, and Dr Richard DiCenso of Matrix Transformation. It's a feature that DiCenso uses in his transformational work.

LIBERATION

I left those gardens feeling empty, joyful and very good; singing my heart out to Michael Jackson's Keep the Faith on my iPod. And then I saw one of the town creeps, and by reflex was tempted to whack him a good one with the branch I had picked up. But I didn't. I was feeling too good and he didn't matter at all.

Here's to sharing!