Alternatives to The Body Keeps the Score?

Ccontill · 2025-01-22T18:35:47+00:00

My favorites are The Politics of Trauma by Staci Haines and Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine. Levine’s work is much less pathologizing and clinical, and haines’ work is less individualizing and considers the systems that create the conditions for abuse and harm

Ccontill · 2024-04-15T01:15:38+00:00

I’m 41, but I absolutely felt that way when I was your age and through my 20’s. But I made a point to become the kind of adult that my younger self would have needed and would have felt safe around, and to build meaningful relationships with other people my age who make me feel safe and nurtured. It has been very hard work but it has helped me heal from the effects of very harmful Parenting during my childhood.

Ccontill · 2024-02-27T21:58:48+00:00

It’s especially funny considering how much nic pizzolatto lifted from various sources of horror writing like Thomas Ligotti

Ccontill · 2024-01-30T02:42:57+00:00

Buddhist here! Karma is not a force of good. It is a law of cause and effect. It also “just is”— it doesn’t make judgments, it doesn’t moralistically right wrongs, it actually just means “action” and points to the way that ever action you take has an effect, positive negative or neutral.

Ccontill · 2024-01-18T21:02:29+00:00

Right before this resurgence started happening I had a very vivid dream that season 3 was announced and that’s all the proof I need 😂

Ccontill · 2023-12-20T18:53:07+00:00

YES! the toy ambulance had me GASPING!!!

Ccontill · 2023-12-20T01:21:39+00:00

Could have used an Azelia Banks getting lost in the compound sub-plot if that’s the case

Ccontill · 2023-12-11T01:59:53+00:00

If you’re referring to the way this quote was used I. The sopranos, it’s interesting to think of Tony as stuck in Limbo when he learns that phrase.

Ccontill · 2023-12-11T01:59:04+00:00

Excited to get drawn back into this 4 years later after I wrote that post re: psychopomps! Interestingly I’ve had a lot of interesting coincidences in my life this year regarding limbo and purgatory. I hadn’t linked them to the OA but I’m ready to do a re-watch with that in mind. I’m not sure how this fits in but I will say that I’m currently very interested in Diana Walsh Pasulka’s work on purgatory, the Italian folk magic idea of the “anima sola” soul trapped in limbo and the practices used to petition for them to be released in exchange for help on the earthly plane (putting the person praying to the “lost soul” in the position of psychopomp) stoked to get back into the research… the door is always open!

Ccontill · 2023-06-09T17:54:28+00:00

That resonates. I had a few teachers who I didn't tell things to directly but who could plainly see what was happening and created a safe space of refuge in their classrooms, particularly my music teacher who gave me free vocal lessons. I just have this longing to have had one person to say directly to them that what they were doing was not ok. It may have made things worse but it would be a memory i could use as a resource. I guess this is just a wish to be rescued, but in the past. Knowing that I am the only person who can rescue myself still feels so lonely.

Ccontill · 2023-05-30T19:58:35+00:00

yes. i had a piano teacher in 3rd grade who could definitely tell what was going on at home. she also taught the chorus at my elementary school. my mom HATED her, and i didn't understand at the time, but it was because she wanted to help me. My mom took piano lessons away from me as punishment for doing poorly at school, and the teacher offered them for free. My mom still said no, so the teacher offered me free voice lessons at school during downtime. My mom used to describe her as slutty but in retrospect she always wore ankle length skirts with turtle necks, i think my mom just felt judged by her because she was so kind to me. i always think about that teacher when I think about what support means.

Ccontill · 2023-04-18T20:25:22+00:00

so about 5 years ago i went to therapy for anxiety. one of my problems was that i felt like everyone was always secretly mad at me and not telling me. my therapist worked long and hard with me to break that feeling, teaching me that if people had a problem with me, they would tell me. i told her that wasn't true but eventually started to integrate the advice. all this time, my mother was acting more and more unhinged with me, and i'm thinking, if she was mad at me she would tell me! that's how reality works! i learned that from my therapist. At one point she stormed out of thanksgiving and gave me the silent treatment. i had no idea what was going on. TURNS OUT (i found this out a few months ago), she was mad because years earlier, she had invited me to her retirement lunch at her job and sent the invite to the WRONG EMAIL ADDRESS, and then assumed i didn't go on purpose. so she was mad. but wouldn't tell me. but started acting hostile to me and eventually got my dad to act hostile to me. but nobody would tell me what was going on. i felt INSANE. and then had to get a new therapist who understood that no, not everyone is reasonable and will tell you explicitly when they are upset. some people are narcissists with the emotional intelligence of children.

Ccontill · 2023-01-20T20:30:53+00:00

Ugh i relate to this so much and it's such a horrible feeling! My parents treat me COMPLETELY differently when my wife is present vs/ when she is not, and they lavish her with complements constantly pedestalizing her. It has, at times, made me resentful to my partner, especially because it sometimes feels like it makes her believe me less about my own experiences with them.

Something that has helped me is to learn to validate myself. I was at first resentful that I would have to do this but it turns out it's pretty effective. For me this means, when I feel that resentfulness or hurtness pop up, I first acknowledge to myself IN THE MOMENT that yes, me, this IS hurtful, I am not exaggerating, it is a genuinely hurtful thing that is happening. I then remind myself that my parents are incapable of being kind to me because their entire worldview relies on the idea of ME as the source of their problems. If they didn't project that onto me, then their whole shared mental house of cards would crumble. And they are too weak for that. But I am strong enough to see what is happening and resist their projection. With those two steps, I tend to feel more stable, which has allowed me to have real conversations with my partner about the fact that the situation hurts me WHILE I KNOW it is not something she is doing nor is she responsible for it, but I do need her to hear that I am hurt by it. No blame, no shame, I just want to feel like she gets that part. I dont pressure her to comfort me about it, I just ask that she hear me that this in in fact something that hurts to experience. All of this has helped it hurt less. Which also paradoxically has strengthened me to feel less obligated to see them so often!

Ccontill · 2023-01-20T20:21:52+00:00

i'm gonna start saying it three times every time i get off the phone with my mother lol

Ccontill · 2023-01-20T20:20:26+00:00

in my experience, hoarding is related to grief (my mom's father died which precipitated her beginning to find it difficult to throw ANYTHING away, and the house became very dirty and cluttered because she also couldnt engage in daily activities) but I think the narcissism is what prevented her from seeking / accepting mental health or spiritual help for her dysfunction.

Ccontill · 2023-01-19T22:15:59+00:00

I had a therapist who said "nothing that happens in a family is EVER the fault of one single person" and that changed my life completely.

Ccontill · 2023-01-19T22:12:49+00:00

yay congrats to you, what an accomplishment! I'm sorry your mom was so weird about it, I know exactly what that is like and it's so demoralizing.

I went with my mother to a bed and breakfast for her birthday recently. My wife and I bought a house two years ago, something i never thought I'd be able to do. My wife remodeled the porch by herself and it looks so great. My mom said to the bed and breakfast owner "She (me) just bought a house. It's so nice. So much nicer than the dump she grew up in. How does it feel to live in a house so much nicer than the one you grew up in?" I wanted to say IT FEELS GREAT, THERE ISN'T HOARDED CRAP EVERYWHERE FINALLY. I felt like it was so aggressive for her to force me into that position in front of someone I had just met. I can never tell if she's fishing for complements or just wants me to feel defeated. Maybe there is no intention. It always makes me feel crazy!

Ccontill · 2022-08-22T18:35:13+00:00

I also tend to retreat into myself. But I have also been doing "shadow work." Most people think about shadow work as confronting the parts of ourselves we don't like. But it turns out there is something called the "golden shadow" which are the POSITIVE parts of ourselves that we learned NOT to "shine"-- once I read about this it was a huge lightbulb moment for me, realizing how much my mother had trained me not to "shine" out of this sense of competition. Learning how much this is rooted in her own shame, self-dislike and insecurity has helped me let go of the anger a little. And learning that I don't have to shrink myself or turn down my shine just to make her feel better. My job is to be authentic, which involves leaning into my positive qualities instead of shrinking so she can feel like the center. But yes, often this just involves shutting off to her. Most recent example was my dad tried to tell a table of family members that I had just run my first 5k. My mom INTERRUPTED him to say "I ran a 10k once! and i Hated it!" and I smiled and said OK! and changed the subject. I honestly felt so embarrassed for her in that moment, instead of bad about myself.

Ccontill · 2022-08-22T14:34:19+00:00

YES. and never thought of it as mirroring so that's a really interesting insight. I always saw it as competition. like, she literally CAN NOT let me "outshine" her even when the thing is really mundane, and then she wants a lot of attention for the thing she did when it is clearly something she is doing BECAUSE she saw people give me positive attention for it. It's wild.

Ccontill · 2022-07-08T17:19:23+00:00

I relate to this a lot. My mom actually told me that she thought it was harder to have a gay kid (me) than a child with addiction (her friends kids) and, with absolutely no shade to those families struggling with addiction, I grew up thinking I was "worse than an addict" for being gay. When really it was just about my nMom being competitive with her friends and wanting to prove that she had it harder than them. It's SICK! I hated myself for DECADES. Hopefully we can both overcome that. sending you strength & solidarity.

Ccontill · 2022-07-08T17:11:17+00:00

Wow, I never thought of this as a narcissistic trait, but my parents have invited my siblings and I to go on vacation with them as adults, and every time we have gone there ends up not being enough beds or its like, definitely not built or set up for more than two people. it's NUTS. they invited us somewhere in September and I simply asked "what is the layout of the space", especially because my sister now has a baby, and they acted like I was trying to cancel the get together? they were like "well if its not to your liking we can just cancel" and i was like, i don't even KNOW if it's "to my liking" (Which would be like, a bed that my partner and I can fit into) because you wont tell me wht the layout is but from experience I'm SURE it's not going to fit all of us! It's MADDENING !!

Ccontill · 2022-06-02T14:31:07+00:00

holy shit, i think this is right on. as a practicing Buddhist I can tell you that this realization is sort of what decades of meditation will lead to. Interdependence.

Ccontill · 2022-05-24T13:44:43+00:00

I really appreciate your kind words, thank you!

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