Post by juniper on Jan 26, 2003 23:59:39 GMT -5
Hi everyone--I wonder if anyone from the old pickaderms egroup is here, or anyone from ruby zoom's days--I used to be on the boards back then--then got tired of what seemed like masses of women all stuck in perpetual frozen stasis (redundant I know)--decided I didn't need this--and have been steadily picking for the three years since. (I also broke my own hand--a long story.)
Anyway, I'm crawling back now, as I'm making a BIG SERIOUS EFFORT this time to leave this behind me once and for all. So here are my tips, and I hope they help someone--I'm going to try this inositol stuff too, and thanks to everyone who left pointers and advice and good ideas--cotton gloves, Nadia used to recommend, and I'd forgotten until I saw someone mention them here. So:
1) most helpful so far--depth psychology. I've finally acquired the knowledge that as a woman stuck in this pattern of self-wounding and not allowing things to heal , I am trying to relive something and exorcise it, have a rite of passage, and it just never happens the way I want it to, so--I repeat it compulsively. A book I highly recommend if you want to try this approach, rather than cog-beh or seeing yourself as OCD (though I think that's valid too): The Pregnant Virgin by Marion Woodman. It's more about eating disorders as an attempt to make the passage, but I felt it deeply affecting me on all levels with every word. I believe that book has given me the grounding to do what I'm now trying to do.
2) In a similar vein--Woodman talks about idolatry, and that we're confusedly recognizing the need to honor the sacred--we're just worshipping at the wrong altar. This constellated in me the recognition that the bathroom sink has been my altar for the last twenty-five or so years! I have my rituals and my wordless liturgy, just like any priestess. So, with my husband out of town for the next five weeks, I'm taking this opportunity to make the bathroom into a REAL altar/shrine. There are candles (darkness--good!), incense for when I start feeling the urges, beautiful icons and postcards and messages to myself covering the mirror, and a meditation cushion. I mean sure it's inconvenient to have all this crap in the bathroom (no pun)--but then, how inconvenient has it been that I'm in there for half-an-hour every night wrecking everything that's healed in the last day?!
3) The Bach Flower Remedy Crab Apple. I'm not kidding. It's specifically for people who have issues with feeling impure or unclean, and in obsessively trying to get clean again . . . very nice, also can be used with an Flower Essence Society one, Self-Heal (comes in a cream which is only $5 off their website--look on google and you can easily locate both remedies/essences).
4) The marble stone thing is a great idea, and I devised the same thing myself unconsciously when I recently bought "for a friend" (and kept!) a little Guatemalan rainbow-colored yarn pouch which goes on a string around my neck--and I started keeping a rose quartz in it, which I now fondle during meetings, etc.--I guess I look like an aging hippie, and people look strangely at me at work, but hey, if they only knew . . .
5) Zen meditation. This is not a swift cure but something which came into my life a year and a half ago when I broke my hand and it scared me--it is slowwwwwly teaching me to sit still and be with myself and my feelings, and not feel the need to "do something" about them, but just watch them, watch them, watch myself . . .
Please let yourselves be well, in mind, spirit, and body. Don't forget how beautiful you are, even if you can't see it right now. Think of a gorgeous spring day, and the blue sky and the warm sun--that's you, darling. Blessed be--juniper
Anyway, I'm crawling back now, as I'm making a BIG SERIOUS EFFORT this time to leave this behind me once and for all. So here are my tips, and I hope they help someone--I'm going to try this inositol stuff too, and thanks to everyone who left pointers and advice and good ideas--cotton gloves, Nadia used to recommend, and I'd forgotten until I saw someone mention them here. So:
1) most helpful so far--depth psychology. I've finally acquired the knowledge that as a woman stuck in this pattern of self-wounding and not allowing things to heal , I am trying to relive something and exorcise it, have a rite of passage, and it just never happens the way I want it to, so--I repeat it compulsively. A book I highly recommend if you want to try this approach, rather than cog-beh or seeing yourself as OCD (though I think that's valid too): The Pregnant Virgin by Marion Woodman. It's more about eating disorders as an attempt to make the passage, but I felt it deeply affecting me on all levels with every word. I believe that book has given me the grounding to do what I'm now trying to do.
2) In a similar vein--Woodman talks about idolatry, and that we're confusedly recognizing the need to honor the sacred--we're just worshipping at the wrong altar. This constellated in me the recognition that the bathroom sink has been my altar for the last twenty-five or so years! I have my rituals and my wordless liturgy, just like any priestess. So, with my husband out of town for the next five weeks, I'm taking this opportunity to make the bathroom into a REAL altar/shrine. There are candles (darkness--good!), incense for when I start feeling the urges, beautiful icons and postcards and messages to myself covering the mirror, and a meditation cushion. I mean sure it's inconvenient to have all this crap in the bathroom (no pun)--but then, how inconvenient has it been that I'm in there for half-an-hour every night wrecking everything that's healed in the last day?!
3) The Bach Flower Remedy Crab Apple. I'm not kidding. It's specifically for people who have issues with feeling impure or unclean, and in obsessively trying to get clean again . . . very nice, also can be used with an Flower Essence Society one, Self-Heal (comes in a cream which is only $5 off their website--look on google and you can easily locate both remedies/essences).
4) The marble stone thing is a great idea, and I devised the same thing myself unconsciously when I recently bought "for a friend" (and kept!) a little Guatemalan rainbow-colored yarn pouch which goes on a string around my neck--and I started keeping a rose quartz in it, which I now fondle during meetings, etc.--I guess I look like an aging hippie, and people look strangely at me at work, but hey, if they only knew . . .
5) Zen meditation. This is not a swift cure but something which came into my life a year and a half ago when I broke my hand and it scared me--it is slowwwwwly teaching me to sit still and be with myself and my feelings, and not feel the need to "do something" about them, but just watch them, watch them, watch myself . . .
Please let yourselves be well, in mind, spirit, and body. Don't forget how beautiful you are, even if you can't see it right now. Think of a gorgeous spring day, and the blue sky and the warm sun--that's you, darling. Blessed be--juniper