From setback to improved resilience : Rescue from a prolonged internal kidnaping of my mind the “rambling maniac” and internal re-set.
How applying the Positive Intelligence® system, meditation as well as techniques of self-parenting from “Complex PTSD: from surviving to thriving” and letting the graceful hand of synchronicity, free me from a recent setback / “attack” from my brutal inner-critics, increased my resilience and re-opened a path to creativity and joy.
CONTEXT
After a long year of intense work to launch my business as well as complete my training as a PQ coach, I left for the South of France to spend time with my family. I was very much looking forward to two weeks with them and for “real Summer” that I miss so much here in London. However lovely and warm it sometimes gets, I sorely miss the harmony which comes from a people who is used to the graceful nonchalance of a mediterranean climate. I miss the scents of fig trees, the scorching earth, the belles de nuit flowers, pine needles and rhythm of life: busy in the morning, slowing to a suspended alt during the afternoon and again lively in the evening.
There is intelligence and voluptuous grace to live in synch with the climate and a geography which I am reminded of when I cross the channel and go down to the South of Europe. Out of these varied landscapes and cultures, has come an art de vivre which I feel in tune with.
Time with my family is time with young children who I adore and dote on and… sometimes find exhausting. It is a much needed change from my calm life in London. We played, swimed, ate wonderful food, drank wine - in a civilised way, with meals, had fun together, had few arguments, and I even managed to read a wonderful book by Jean-Claude Carrière (script writer of Luis Buñuel and Milos Forman) “Mémoires Espagnoles” that I had bought a year before and never “found time” to read - In London, I seem to read mostly around Psychology, Alchemy, Sociology, Myths and Theology, all subjects that inform my life and practice as a coach.
So France was wonderful, I was sad to leave my wonderful, sometimes chaotic family and the beautiful countryside. But I was looking forward to spend a prolonged weekend with friends arriving from New York City and Glasgow: my tribe. We had a glorious time in the easy , interesting, stimulating and very often fun company of each other. Each of us so aware of precious gift of this reunion. Holidays were prolonged.
Note: you may have noticed I have used twice the word exhausting. It is important for this is the entry gate that the kidnapers will use.
Second note: During the weeks of holidays in France, I kept a strong practice of meditation every morning, and a shorter period during the afternoon. Back in London, only the morning meditation remained.
INTERNAL ATTACK : HOW I LET THE DOOR OPEN TO TMY PERSONAL INNER-SABOTEURS “THE RAMBLING MANIAC GANG”
The following week is a blur on my diary which was full with the huge list that three weeks off had created in my calendar . Three weeks of holidays may look insane, but I fully embrace my double European heritage of “the grandes vacances” (the long holidays) despite the fact that as a self-employed person, the price to pay upon return may be dire… That is what I tell myself, yet there is an internal struggle going on between my penchant for going with the flow and the disciplined, studious and creative life I have chiseled here in the U.K.
My lovely ADHD brain was still on holiday time… I failed to spend time explaining to my organ of cognition and imagination that we were back together in work mode and that we needed to lean on each other and forge ahead. I “forgot” to find interesting ways of tackling this damned list. I assumed that, fresh from a lovely time, all will be “tickety boo”, we knew what was needed in order to achieve the hefty task ahead.
I was oblivious to the signification of the growing fog and extreme tiredness that overtook me and quickly paralysed me. I just plodded slower and slower becoming each day more annoyed at myself: swinging from starving myself to indulging in foods I know trigger more craving, raise my blood sugar. Soon I was in the middle of a small eating crisis.
From age 17 until age 29, I have struggled with severe bulimia and anorexia. During my thirties Jungian analysis, help me restore balance in my life and the episodes became gradually distant from each other, I stopped purging completely. During my forties, I exercised, danced and biked until, gradually during my fifties, I let go of the intense exercising and kept a moderate daily yoga practice and started meditating towards the end of that period. I still “control” loosely my intake of food nowadays, mainly for health reasons, avoiding mostly, anything that would cause inflammation or damage my gut. I still occasionally drink good wine, a rare dry martini or G&T, eat very good cheese and meat and pâtisserie if they are perfect. So I consider myself, not cured from the eating disorders that plagued my young adult life, but mostly free from these.
I view the rare episodes of over-indulging in certain foods a warning sign that my life is out of balance, and that I need to pay attention.
During the period that just preceded the holidays and the two weeks after- but not during my time in France, I was noting but as if removed from myself, that a sensation of fog was taking hold, becoming thicker with anxiety and loud noise. Soon I was stumbling through a toxic wasteland and the ground became like a bog. I was harshly urging myself to carry on walking, prodding myself and yelling insults and trampling myself when I’d fall. I was “incapable”, “weak”, “pathetic”, “useless”, “stupid”, “old”, “unworthy”….. Difficult to really make sense of the abuse. Soon I found myself recoiling from the thrashing and the fog transformed into a leaden molasses of despondency that I found more and more difficult to shake outside of meditation practice.
FROM BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY NEFARIOUS THOUGHTS AND MOODS TO ACCEPTANCE & LETTING FEELINGS RE-SURFACE.
Until I physically realised I was held hostage by my inner-critics, I found it difficult to move, work or walk so tired I felt.
I had l abandoned my inner-child to an inner-psychopath and its gang of twisted acolytes, I was in the fog, the bog, the wasteland.
I gradually accepted that I was in the the wasteland and that no soothing was going to free me from it, the leaden tiredness slowly morphed into the feelings I had been desperately attempting to resist:
Sadness at being far from the people I love most: my daughter and her children, sadness at the loss of past romantic relationship, sadness at the strange and uncomfortable shape of my current relationship. Sadness knowing that my father who is 88 will, at some point disappear from life and what a massive gap it will be, how I will miss him.
The other feeling which surfaced like a corpse freed of heavy fetters on the stagnant waters of the swamp was fear. Her repugnant head dripping with thick dark slime, she was luring me into her empty arms, whispering incomprehensible tales that made sense for the instant it took to relax in her embrace, and feel the dread she imparted as her cold void enveloped me. She disappeared and resurfaced further away from the unstable shores fringed with reeds and grasses to which I clung to, refusing to go further.
And then from the anxiety mixed with relief at having narrowly escaped, from the fog appeared shame. Shame at having let myself fallen this low. Shame at past choices and failures. Mesmerising, she wore long diaphanous robes of oyster coloured chiffon along her lithe yet muscled body, she was very beautiful: a cross between a dryad and a dancer warrior. Her head covered with a skilfully crafted light chain mail, her movements graceful and her stare aloof, impenetrable and contemptuous. Her screeching voice, the only give away to her murderous nature. Shame rose from the reeds and I wanted to dig a hole wide enough so that i could erase myself from the landscape, but the tore at my clothes and I was soon naked, pitiable, human full of doubts that she soon shackled and dragged through the wasteland.
This is how I found myself after a few days of search: a sad, frightened, raging and ashamed adult child who had forgotten that no amount of judging, controlling, achieving, denying, hiding or soothing will ever deliver the promises of love, success and happiness I may crave, nor the peace of a well lived life, whatever it means for me.
COMMANDO INTERVENTION, DEBRIEFING, OBSERVATION, RE-INSERTION: APPLYING DELIBERATELY INTENSE POSITIVE INTELLIGENCE® TRAINING AND RE-PARENTING FROM CPTSD. The tools for recovering from a flash-bacK: self-compassion and re-parenting.
Meditation and was the HQ of the intervention*, I sat returning to the breath in my belly and releasing slowly to that vulnerable yet very strong part of the body and observing tensions that I hadn’t acknowledged during the “kidnaping”. Observing, weird sensations of discomfort, it took a few repeated sittings before I could sink into this gentle breath and start investigations of other sensations, then feelings that needed to be acknowledged patiently, repeatedly for several days. During this period, I often found myself, raging internally, kicking, screaming, escaping during meditation periods and often needing to physically exert myself or to sleep.
Once the practice came back to me, I gradually made it vaster on the one hand and more benevolent on the other.
• Deliberate and discerning application of the power of the Sage from the Positive Intelligence® system:
Positive Intelligence® (PQ®) recognises (like many schools of meditation) that we have limited to no control about our “rambling mind” especially our inner-judge and it’s cohort of saboteurs (inner-critics) which sometimes conspire to make our life difficult and sometimes miserable.
In contrast, PQ® recognises that the sage part of us, (our essence) which dwells in various parts of what we call “Right brain”, guides us throughout life, towards our goals and through our setbacks, failures, unavoidable pains and sorrows with a gentler, discerning, firm, sometimes fierce, often humorous pull.
It demonstrate the plasticity of our neural pathways and the fact that we can build new neural pathways, it proposes that we learn to recognise and interfere inner-critics hijacking and develop our sage powers: expanding our capacity for empathy, curiosity, creativity, discernment and calm, laser focused action. By re-wiring our brains to respond gracefully to life’s ebb and flow, we can sail our boats to the sunset of our lives as skilful navigators and passionate explorers. https://www.positiveintelligence.com/science/
Sometimes, the “attack” is stronger, and thus needs focused attention and practice.
CPTSD intervention:
It was obvious, once I had accepted that I was stranded in a quagmire, held hostage to my inner-brutes, that I needed the joined forces of my PQ® training and practice as well as the trauma intervention of complex PTSD principles in order to rescue myself from myself.
I needed first to allow empathy to kick in in order not to trash myself on top of what was already happening. And I needed to avoid to add an other layer of judging, shaming and guilt tripping for not having laid out a viable plan for post holidays re-insertion into reality, despite my ridiculous self-awareness! I also needed empathy to do the difficult task of (still) difficult re-parenting of the traumatised “child”. That was crucial as I had let the situation spiral to the point of immobility. I was frozen in fear, trying to numb pain.
Here the work of Pete Walker and his invaluable contribution to Complex PTSD was instrumental in the fight against my inner-aggressors. They needed to be stopped, held accountable to the pain they were causing and metaphorically made to pay for their repeated abuse and for summoning more shadowy acolytes like the “victim” and the “avoider” which freeze and numb.
An other important and synchronistic piece of the rescue was a fortuitous talk with a friend during which I verbalised regrets about some of my past behaviours towards lovers and a wonderful movie called “l’Immensita” which talked to me very intimately and which conjointly finished opening the gates of a much needed emotional release.
• Trust in myself as well as trust in the process, focused mindset and adaptability, starting to visualise the outcomes.
I will mention here the value of navigating without sight, and not knowing intellectually, just observing and making sure that the “commando” was totally free to perform at its best: meditating various times a day, walking, sleeping whenever I really needed it and attending the only real responsibilities I have: my clients and very close friends and being completely present with them.
All throughout this intervention period, my internal work and it’s outward manifestations was empathic, calm, observant, deliberate, fierce. I carried on working with my coachees and was available to them completely because I added long sessions of PQ® reps (meditation) before and after each coaching sessions. I rested when I needed, and made sure I had enough sleep as well as exercise. I decided to let go - for a brief period - of all the admin and marketing that inevitably is part of the self-employed mode of working.
I’m still in recovery and re-insertion mode: I am catching up with admin, as well as planning Autumn and Winter. I am concentrating on health - after all, I’m an astrologer and the sun has just entered Virgo, a perfect time concentrate on health matters, practical matters, writing and service to others.
THRIVING AGAIN
This episode is just a small setback, and setbacks are unremarkable, normal stuff of life, What we do with them is what matters. It is important to face them in order to improve resilience which is a crucial skill for success in life. How we become more and more resilient is crucial: Do we use our saboteurs and pull ourselves by our proverbial bootstraps, stiff upper-lip, or do we choose a more loving, compassionate, humorous manner to dig ourselves out of misery? Both styles work, but the loving path yields more joy.
I choose to welcome setbacks as “resilience” teachers. The one, I’ve just been through is a perfect episode to help me reset my priorities and review my values. It has helped me re-clarify what is important to me and I feel much more prepared, curious and looking forward to the year ahead.
UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN
I would love to hear about how you deal with setbacks in your life. Leave your comments below. Should you need any support with a current setback, do reach out. I’ll be happy to discuss with you how coaching can support you and devise with you a bespoke programme during a free discovery call.
Ressources:
Positive Intelligence® by Shirzard Shamine
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to thriving by Pete Walker
Waking Up: a guide to Spirituality without Religion by Sam Harris and the Waking Up app
I have used the Waking Up app since 2019 and cannot recommend it enough: it is a brilliant tool of deep investigation with different styles of meditations, fascinating conversations and an extensive library of teachings which go from Buddhism, to Stoicism via Dzochen and Allan Watts. Last Summer I discovered Positive Intelligence® and was so taken by its effectiveness as a daily useful tool that I decided to train as a PQ® coach. I use both apps daily.
