To: K-list
Recieved: 2000/12/16 22:45
Subject: Re: [K-list] empathy...
From: Mystress Angelique Serpent
On 2000/12/16 22:45, Mystress Angelique Serpent posted thus to the K-list:
Janpa, it is very delightful to see you posting in this forum again!!
At 06:25 PM 12/16/00, Debora A. Orf wrote:
>Curious mainly, about sympathetic feelings with another person. recently
>when my husband was so sick, i would have 'sympathy illness' sort of
>things happening.
>
>anyone else ever experience this?
>
>maitri,
>
>--janpa
Oy, you bet. My extreme empathic sensitivity regularly makes my life
a living hell. It has made me a hermit, rarely venturing outside of the
protective bubble of my house spell, and cautious of the company I keep.
When I do go out, it is usually with a tornado type shield that sends the
projections and incoming emotions up to Goddess before they reach my
physical body.. which is helpful, but also an oddly detached feeling.
It is an everyday thing. My beloved druid wishes me goodnight and goes
to bed at ten, sometimes I send him off to bed because his sleepiness is
contagious and can make me feel tired even tho I am a definite night owl.
Once he is asleep, my energy revives.
It often takes a conscious effort of mindfullness to separate my own
emotions from the stuff incoming.. it can be very painful, and pull me off
balance very easily. Sometimes walking onto a crowded shopping mall can be
like having 10 televisions on in my head, each tuned to a different
channel. I end up detaching, staring blankly at the lights in the store
windows. Overwhelmed.
This year I am going back to visit my family for X-mas, mostly for the
sake of my parents who are in their late 70's, and I am looking forwar to
it, but also dreading it because I tend to suffer from my family's mental
and projections and go a bit berserk.. which only increases the
projections. That the visit is falling on an eclipse and new moon has me
begging Goddess for mercy..
I'm having bad visions of handing the projections back to them like
their head on a plate... which won't help anything. I desperately don't
want to hurt them, I don't want to disrupt X-mas.. they do not understand
my vulnerability..how can they, unless they have been there? How can I
explain it when it cannot be understood by one who has not experienced it?
My family refers to this as "acting out", and they think that I do it
deliberately.. they do not understand that I have no boundaries and the
"Acting out" is me fighting for my individuality among a sea of conflicting
emotions that are not my own. The projections knock me out of my body and
cut off my connection to Spirit.. then the body fends for itself.. like a
berserker.. which only reinforces their opinions. It is a horrible cycle
for me and I wish I knew the way out.
I mentioned to my older sister once that I remembered myself to be a
very quiet child... I could not remember myself speaking. She laughed in
my face and said I was not quiet, but prone to tantrums that the whole
neighborhood could hear..
So I investigated my memories more deeply and found I could remember
some of the tantrums but the memories had no soundtrack. I have since
discovered that this is a symptom of what is called clinical detachment..
and is normally associated with a severe trauma like a car accident. For
me, the trauma was being empathically hypersensitive in a dysfunctional
family where verbal and emotional abuse was the normal mode of
communication.
So, I am preparing for X-mas by reading books with titles like "sibling
abuse trauma" and "verbal abuse survivors speak out". They don't help much,
I have read all these books before and they do not address empathic
sensitivity.
Ironically, my parents have become easy to be around, I have put the
most energy iunto resolving old hurts with them. They have opened to
accepting me.
My 4 siblings mostly do not, with the exception of my younger
brother. They judge me for my sadistic sexual orientation, even tho I am
gentle with them.. and they insist with a "holier than thou" attitude that
they are so much better than me because they are not sadistic.. but I know
that they are sadists because I have felt their cruelty so many times.. and
the rush they get from it.
Abusers create abusers and the cycle continues. It can only be broken
with awareness. I am so grateful that Goddess led me to the BDSM scene so I
could come to terms with the sadist inside of myself, and give it a
consensual outlet. I am a much, much gentler person than I was before I got
into exploring this in 1992. I wish I could share this wisdom with my
siblings but their ears are closed. They project their own sadism onto me
and it hurts.. and I don't fight back because hurting them in turn is not
consensual... and because of the berserker effect that makes me become a
helpless child again.
I wish, I wish that my family could understand.. but I learned very
young not to tell them anything that happened in my life, because it would
always be turned into a weapon to hurt me with. Not to ask for help.. They
know almost nothing of who I really am, it was not safe for me to show
myself. I never said anything about the often terrifying spiritual
experiences I was having, or the terrible problems I had as a misfit in
school, or, or or..
It is even more painful because they do not want to know the woman I
have become, they want to see the person I pretended to be.. and that
person is dead and gone into the light. But she lives on, in their minds,
in the projections and expectations that they hold... and I am more
vulnerable to that, than they can comprehend.
On my own I am fine, but around my family I become again, the helpless
child who cannot say no or defend herself... still alive and in so much
pain. I am the second youngest of 5 kids.. my younger brother was the baby
of the family, we all protected him.. but nobody protected me... and I
dared not show I needed protecting because any vulnerability only attracted
more abuse.
My first dream of aliens was when I was a preschooler, and I had an
abduction experience in a lucid dream when I was 16, afterwards my ESP
kicked into overdrive. My family knows almost nothing of this, except for
rare comments I have made recently. It was never safe to talk to them.. I
was all alone.
This is part of the drive that makes me so dedicated to maintaining
this list. I know what it is like to be alone and awakened, and have no-one
to turn to for guidance and support. Those who are having a hard time
dealing with awakening symptoms as an adult.. imagine what it was like, for
the child I was.
A few years ago I made a leap of faith, and tired to speak to my other,
oldest sister about my UFO experiences.. hoping the pattern had changed..
but it has not. Since then she gives me verbal and emotional abuse about
it (or anything else) almost every chance she gets, and when she decides to
lash out at me I am sick for days afterwards. Yet she insists she is not
sadistic... not abusive.
I know better, from bitter experience of her cruelty. She is a survivor
too, of the family and of an abusive marriage. I have sympathy for her pain
but it does not condone her actions.
It is so hard to be around her, because on one hand she is an insecure
person, post traumatic stress disorder dysfunctional and I feel like I have
to handle her like delicate glass, ... and on the other she uses any
perceived slight as an excuse to lash out all teeth and claws and no
restraint... and no responsibility for the pain she causes... because she
insists she is not a sadist.. sigh.
I once commented that she seemed to be in a bitchy mood.. which is no
insult to me, I used to be a professional bitch making $200/hr for my
talent, and I meant no harm by it.. but she chose to take offense and lash
out with no restraint. I was sick for a week afterwards, connected to her
anger and not able to escape or detach. Getting angry about events in the
past that it had never occurred to me to be angry about before. My anger
was not my own, it was hers. .. and my system cannot handle empathy with
the stress levels that are normal for her. I have sympathy for her pain but
empathy with it overwhelms me.
I recognise the pattern: when I was first coming to terms with my
repressed sadism I had to come to terms with how often I had chosen to feel
like a victim, to have an excuse/outlet for sadistic revenge. It was a very
ugly mirror to look into, and seeing it sent me to the other extreme,
refusing to blame anyone for anything that happened in my life.
The righteousness of victims is a terrible sword, and in the hands of a
repressed sadist it becomes very ugly. However, my vow was not in alignment
with Goddess Will for me. I ended up attracting many very abusive people in
my life because I never complained about how they treated me. I was taking
responsibility for what they did, like an abused child. Finally I realized
that the only way to get rid of them was to reflect victim back at them...
and accuse. I still hate to do it...
What is repressed comes up ugly.. Over the past year I have written more
than a dozen letters, trying to explain to my sister that her abuse is not
consensual.. all of them unsent because any criticism will become an excuse
for her to attack me again and I cannot handle that. Nor do I seem to be
able to say "no" to her.. and I beat myself up for being weak, for not
being able to defend my boundaries.. for having no boundaries to defend,
all wide open empathy.
Old scars reopened afresh.. hopefully to be finally healed. Dare I
hope? I have been struggling for years, to heal it within myself, but
finally it seems like it is not really mine, anymore.. it comes of family
dynamics and expectations. Projections.
Writing these letters to my sister has been like tearing out my own
liver. Not being able to send them out of fear she will attack me again is
an awful helplessness. I'm struggling with my own victimhood trying not to
fall into the trap of "the righteousness of victims". Trying to defend my
boundaries without going on the offensive while knowing my efforts at
gentleness mean nothing.
Any admission of vulnerability will be like blood to a shark... so it
has always been, in my family... and when I write to someone I go into
empathy with them.. and so I fall into old patterns that I have cleared
from myself, but are still reflected in others and so become mine again.
Trying to write to her without getting angry, when she is so full of
anger is almost impossible, no matter how carefully I ground before I begin
I always get pulled into her feelings. Easier, to write to you.. gentle
Janpa. To my list community, my shelter from a world that cannot
understand.
Now my oldest sister is having awakening experiences, but she still
does not believe I am psychic. A few months ago she asked for my help.. she
was very distressed and I opened to her. I was totally vulnerable in
"healer" mode and had no boundaries.. and it turned out to be just another
excuse for more verbal abuse..the pain of it still goes so deep, it was
months ago and I am still not over it.
The worst was, she used information that had been a leap of faith to
share with her, in the first place. She beat me up because years ago I
dared to speak to her of my Alien experiences. A leap of faith that crashed
and burned... and my burnt fingers make me shy to make another try. It
seems hopeless... I feel helpless.
When she attacks me I become once again, the helpless child who is not
able to say no. It is a nightmare. X-mas dinner is at her house, and I
wish I could look forward to it, but the prospect fills me with dread. Last
time there was a family event at her house, I lost control because I was
trying to maintain control (what I resist, persists) and I was blamed for
"ruining" my Mom's 75th b-day.. more emotional abuse. Goddess have mercy.
For the most part, my family has become gentler, except for my oldest
sister.. and my older brother whom I gave up speaking to altogether many
years ago.
All I want for X-mas is to be heard, and accepted for who I am...
instead of fending off projections of who they think I am. Wanting creates
experiences of wanting.. so it goes..
My "leather bitch" armor hides an empathic sensitivity that dares not
show any vulnerability.. so as to keep the predators away. Lately I have
wished for tears, for emotional release to be free of this.. but emotional
intensity still knocks me out of body, into the witness state.. no
emotions, no release. I get stuck there.. helpless. ADD detachment.. It is
a Goddess mercy and a nightmare, both. I have done the best I can to turn
my empathic sensitivity into tremendous power to heal.. but it only works
if the person I get it from, is willing to surrender it. My family is not,
they insist it is my problem.. and they are right, because I am the one
suffering and unable to speak.
Thankyou, everyone, for your love and acceptance, and your gentleness.
Thankyou for hearing me. How I wish I could speak to my family with
such openness.... I wish I could feel safe around them. Perhaps if I find
the courage, I will send this to my sister.. but I'm afraid it would only
become more ammunition for abuse. I forgive her, she knows not what she
does.. and I cannot tell her.
Blessings...
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