Posted by Noa on October 11, 2000, at 10:17:55
In reply to Re: ksvt, posted by ksvt on October 10, 2000, at 21:49:48
I think you are on the right track, even if this is a difficult process (it is). As impervious as these self-experiences, non-verbal as they are, might be to dissection through logical, verbal questioning, they can be approached and perhaps shrunk down to more manageable size. That is how I am thinking of the goal for myself, anyway.
I, too have visual associations. For me, one of the most powerful, is an image of myself as a toddler alone in the hospital, crying uncontrollably, feeling overpowered by loss, abandonment feelings. Feeling not only unloved and abandoned, but like my own impotent rage is going to destroy me and the entire world with it because no one is there to comfort me. And, concluding, of course, that I must be unlovable and fundamentally defective as a human being to be in such a state where I feel so overwhelmingly hopeless.
Now, how much of this visual/visceral/emotional image is "accurate" I cannot say. I was in the hospital then, and several other times in early childhood, and did feel this way. I do have an anecdote from a friend of my parents that would confirm this kind of thing (that I was so unconsolable this woman's husband couldn't bring himself to enter the room and see me, it was so heartbreaking for him, and that my own parents "couldn't" visit me for a few days and sent these friends in their place). However, the visual image that I see in my minds eye, sees me from without, not from within. I picture myself in the hospital crib. Perhaps this is because I have build this image from the images of the babies I have visited in a local, poorly funded public hospital, where I have volunteered (and where it is incredibly heartbreaking!!!) The visceral/emotional part of the "memory" however, is from the inside--I can "become" that baby fairly easily if I allow myself to enter the image.
But now I can see it all on the split screen, PIP, though this is a new skill. Medlib, it IS a good goal. It is still a big issue for me, but a bit more manageable now that I can do the PIP/split scree/several windows open thing.
I am glad you guys can relate because describing this seems so hard. It is an experience of the mind that is so "unreal" in many ways. The technological metaphors come close, which helps.
poster:Noa
thread:901
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001011/msgs/972.html