Like a dear caught in the Headlights
April 27, 2010 in Anna's Process Blog
This title is probably the most precise way to describe how I have experienced myself the last month or so. Like a dear caught in the headlights, stiff, alert, ready to run for a safe place to hide. I experience myself in this state of ‘freeze’, not moving, standing absolutely still not be seen, heard – caught. I stopped smoking the 1. February. Started again 21 days after, smoking for 3 days, had massive headaches every time i smoked, stopped again for aproximately a month. Meanwhile I started on what I have called a diet, but what was not supposed to be a diet, because it was ultimately about me doing something for myself for the first time in my life, about me supporting me, as life, Here, The Physical – I even started exercising, which was not part of the original plan, but which made sense as i started to lose weight. Then slowly but surely I unwinded myself, recreated the cocoon of apereant ‘comfort’ and ‘safety’ that I had found in this self-abuse disguised as ‘self-love’ and ‘self-care’ – (poor me, I deserve a cookie, I can’t stop eating cookies, poor me). As I have looked at what really happened, my ‘rational’ explaination has been that I had made it about someone else – because as soon as I was not in the company of those that had pushed and supported me directly within this, I crawled back into my hidingplace, behind weight, food and cigarettes. Since I have been struggling with moral scruples and inner fights and debates. But what I have done in fact, is that I have let the thoughts, the addiction, the fear – take over. Making it about someone else having taken responsiblity for it and clamining myself to weak to Stand on my own two feet, is yet another way of attemptying to shift responsiblity. Because the matter of the fact is that what I was doing – was in fact working. I was becoming stronger, could see more clearly and began actually caring for myself in fact. What I however experiecned was that the emotions that came with the withdrawl, was too much for me to handle. What I have found absurd and still do, is that I had all the tools available to deal with my experiences – maybe as Breath, Breathing through the point, as I have done before and as I have witnessed other do first hand – simply not participating, not accepting myself as that thought, as that emotion – and breathing it through until it disapates. I found myself unable to do that. And I have wondered how the emotions was like the child screaming, because it cannot get what it wants and would have eventually capitualted, except that I gave in, again and again, because I could not bear the sound of the screams of dissatiscfaction. So I started smoking again, first one cigarette, then two, then hiding it from the people around me – which I then discovered has always been a part of the Addiction signature, that it is kept alive by hiding it, by playing myself up against other people in my mind – as though they were the ones responsible for me having made this decision for myself. Then I gave into it, and I smoked a pack in a couple of hours, ate a whole back of cookes, got a massive head ache and stomach cramps in returned – yet continued the next day, as though nothing had happened. Then I stopped smoking for a day or two, but it was constantly on my mind, lurking, calling and once I said ‘yes okay’ in ‘mercy’ to one thought, the next followed and then the next and before I knew it – I was back. All the weight I had lost, I had regained. It was almost as If I have not been able to handle actually being capable of doing something on my own and it actually worked! I don’t think two months is enough to change a habit and addiction like this one. Obviously it depends on what is invested, believed and accepted about the addiction – but for me, having smoked for 16 years, since I was 12, having used cigarettes as a point of stability, familiarity, safety, power, control and utlimately as a tool to suppress everything of myself that I did not want to see or face – it might take more than two months, before the emotional chaos and the anxiety that comes with the withdrawl disapeates. But I did not stay patient or on track. I have been so used to making idealistic agreements with myself, then breaking them, laying low for a while in shame and then coming up with a new idealistic fantasy – that part was easy. I have realized a lot about myself the last few weeks that has been mildly put apaling – a roundtrip to the core of self-interest, self-pity and loathing, self-deception and abuse, to find out – that I have never actually dedicated myself to anything real in this world, I have never disciplined myself to walk through something difficult or uncomfortable. Instead I have searched the backdoors and short cuts that would make my path as easy and painless as possible – Not knowing that the easiest path is actually the longest route, because no matter what I do or where I go – I always end up Here.
In terms of this blog and series about Transformation, which is another way I have rushed ahead of myself in an attempt to prove myself worthty and in this case, of actually having changed and stood up – I will keep writing. I have not written anything lately because I was ashamed, I was as the dear caught in the headlights and I wanted to present myself only once I again had success with my process of transformation – Instead of Realizing that this, what I am experiencing now is a part of the Process and as I Fall – I Stand up again.
Walk with me here: