More insights from my movement practice

[eeks]

As I have recently mentioned, I have been going to conscious dance/movement events and classes.  I use it as a personal emotional inquiry, in some ways I find it more insightful than talk therapy. 

A good friend of mine says he is glad I am enjoying it, but he is worried I am using it as a substitute for actually going out and meeting new people.  He is a smart guy so I consider what he has to say.  I agree I might be avoiding taking the risk to meet new people a little bit.  It's something for me to revisit in the near future.  However, these events tend to attract the kind of person I want to talk to, at least for the time being (emotionally self-aware or working on it, and tend not to place a high priority on image, status or "what you do for a living" in getting to know someone). 

A few days ago I went to an event, and saw a man there who I had danced with and talked to before, and had this inexplicable reaction inside myself wanting to shout "Get out!" at him (I didn't actually shout it.)  I really puzzled over what that was about. I'd had it with some other people, too.  There seems to be this intimacy "threshold", and i was just not sure if it was genuine self-protection, or I am hitting a trauma "barrier".

Another insight I have had is that I can use fast movement, rapid thoughts, anxiety, popping all over the place so to speak, as a safety mechanism... .because I do not want to be truly "seen".

I was doing some spontaneous drawing the night after (turn on the music, don't care what the drawing looks like, sometimes sing or talk along, and I started noticing that I would draw writing/big scribbles and then want to go in and "fill in some spaces" between the lines with colour or shading.  Fill the space, fill the space... .anxiety and those rapid thoughts and actions to "fill the space"... .

I wrote in my journal in big letters "what would happen if I did not fill the space?"

And just now I thought back to these interactions with this man, who seems to really want to connect with me, why do I avoid it, feel anxious, make reasons to cut it short?  What, in all these other instances, am I running away from/avoiding?  Why do I fear such negative consequences will occur if I "be the real me"?  What don't I want people to see?

You know what I think I run away from/make excuses not to do?  Love.  Yes, love.  Sure, other 'forbidden' emotions will arise at times if I look in there at that core (I have tension in my neck and shoulders, especially upper back between the shoulder blades, and this seems to be the physical "location" of the emotions) ... .like anger, or spontaneity, or sexual desire... .but what's coming up now is loving.  Not so much loving another person, but being the love that I am.   It's vulnerable, but not as fragile as I might have thought. 

 

[half-life]

What does he mean you are not meeting people? I don't known what is conscious dance/movement. But you are clearly meeting people. Like you say they are the kind of people who share something interesting with you.

About you holding yourself back, I started to learn the most important is to just "do it". You feel a great sense of freedom once you overcome the inertia and just do it. Right now I am having a great time in a writing class. I have been deliberating for too long where do I stand and there is any worth in my writing. The class doesn't actually teach anything. It just set up us on a schedule to produce writing. So without any credential, I am now a writer because I write. I am having so much fun doing it.

[Grey Kitty]

A few days ago I went to an event, and saw a man there who I had danced with and talked to before, and had this inexplicable reaction inside myself wanting to shout "Get out!" at him (I didn't actually shout it.)  I really puzzled over what that was about. I'd had it with some other people, too.  There seems to be this intimacy "threshold", and i was just not sure if it was genuine self-protection, or I am hitting a trauma "barrier".

I see this coming from one of two rather different directions... .neither of which makes the best action clear, I might add.

1. Some intuitive part of you doesn't want you to get close or intimate with another person.

2. Some intuitive part of you is having a powerful reaction to this person (and other similar people)

I think sorting out whether it is about getting close to specific people or getting close to any people is important.

I kinda suspect that the reason could be a deep need to heal something, and you feel both the attraction to the thing you need to confront and the fear of what you will face at the same time.

You know what I think I run away from/make excuses not to do?  Love.  Yes, love.  Sure, other 'forbidden' emotions will arise at times if I look in there at that core (I have tension in my neck and shoulders, especially upper back between the shoulder blades, and this seems to be the physical "location" of the emotions) ... .like anger, or spontaneity, or sexual desire... .but what's coming up now is loving.  Not so much loving another person, but being the love that I am.   It's vulnerable, but not as fragile as I might have thought. 

And that might be part of what/why... .

[eeks]

You know what I think I run away from/make excuses not to do?  Love.  Yes, love.  Sure, other 'forbidden' emotions will arise at times if I look in there at that core (I have tension in my neck and shoulders, especially upper back between the shoulder blades, and this seems to be the physical "location" of the emotions) ... .like anger, or spontaneity, or sexual desire... .but what's coming up now is loving.  Not so much loving another person, but being the love that I am.   It's vulnerable, but not as fragile as I might have thought. 

And that might be part of what/why... .

So, in this case the common factor (I cannot believe I did not make this connection before now) is men with whom I experience emotional intimacy, but do not desire physical intimacy with them (or at least I am not as attracted to them as I suspect they are to me). 

And so, this loving, yes I want to do this loving, but my experience is that a lot of men think that once you have the emotional intimacy then the physical intimacy just naturally comes next... .

And if I do this kind of loving of everyone... .then I get raped.  Sounds extreme, I know but I let my mind fill in the sentence stem and there it was.

Where my mind wandered to next was that my mother was sexually abused at age 4 by a family friend who lived with them.  I did not know this until she told me about 5 years ago.  He had comic books and told her old stories/myths from her cultural background.  She has told me that she feels shame because she was like a prostitute, because she kept going back, he gave her what she wanted and she gave him what he wanted.  I knew that her parents did not have time for or value books and stories (too much farm work to be done), and she has always loved them, so I told her it isn't her fault that an adult man (the power dynamic there just not balanced) used her unmet intellectual needs against her.  I get that what she carries is a lot deeper than that, though. 

I will leave out the details for now but I have had things happen during self-hypnosis and breath work that cause me to believe I carry the residue of this trauma even though it did not happen to me.  I also suspect that this trauma affects how she has organized her life more than she realizes.

I think a depth approach like this risks "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" (like if you look hard enough, you're going to find things in someone's past that explain everything, but what good is that?), but the common "signature" here between her experience and the one I just described having seems too similar to ignore.  "If you innocently go for as much emotional intimacy as you would like, there will be a cost to you."

[eeks]

I also notice on reviewing this (and thinking about what I am going to say to this man, etc.) that I am trying to orchestrate everything before it happens, instead of being there in the alive moment.  "If I don't set up all these defenses first, you might unexpectedly do something that hurts me and then it will be my fault for not preparing for it"  yeah... .

[Grey Kitty]

eeks, I think you found something there--at least what it is you are afraid of, and where it may have come from.

I think the idea that your mother's sexual abuse impacted you like a survivor seems personally credible, based on some personal experience.

My stbexw's mother was sexually abused by an older brother. Her mother was also an abusive alcoholic. Stbexw (to my knowledge) never experienced any sexual abuse, but she did seem to carry milder echos of it which her mother instilled in her. On a more obvious and mundane fashion, she was raised to be terrified of dogs, due to her mother's trauma over witnessing a mauling by a dog at a young age. Stbexw didn't start to get over that 'till her 30s, and past 50 may finally have gotten over the dog phobia.

... .my experience is that a lot of men think that once you have the emotional intimacy then the physical intimacy just naturally comes next... .

We do live in a culture that makes your fear/concern justified. (I don't know how much you are feeling, but the raw visceral panic you are alluding to seems more severe than needed for the most part)

I also notice on reviewing this (and thinking about what I am going to say to this man, etc.) that I am trying to orchestrate everything before it happens, instead of being there in the alive moment.  "If I don't set up all these defenses first, you might unexpectedly do something that hurts me and then it will be my fault for not preparing for it"  yeah... .

Sigh. Again, I understand why you feel that way. We live in a culture where it is still disturbingly common to blame women for being raped.

[eeks]

Another insight I have had is that I can use fast movement, rapid thoughts, anxiety, popping all over the place so to speak, as a safety mechanism... .because I do not want to be truly "seen".

I just had an insight.  Not that the sexual aspect isn't important (I think it's a layer of it) but I just had the thought that it's something about the risk of "meeting forbidden needs".  I will explain that. 

I think I believe on some level that "I can't have intimacy unless I 'earn' it, work really hard for it".  And so, to just let myself be close to someone, and let them be close to me, and receive that without having worked for it (and/or ensured my protection against them suddenly lashing out at me in future by getting everything perfect) feels like a "transgression".