I suspect that this post will have lots of excess print, so if it does, I will repost and you can skip this post.

Dear Helcat:

In this thread, you shared: “The level of abuse and neglect I experienced at the hands of my mother was severe… From the age of 4-5 I used a stove to prepare simple meals for myself and my brother if food was in the house…  Most of my childhood she spent sleeping, the rest of the time she was out (leaving us home alone), rarely purchasing food, watching tv,  getting drunk and abusing us…There is no polite way to describe the things she did… My mother was institutionalised because she expressed a desire to harm myself and my brother to a doctor. We were placed in short term care whilst she recovered in hospital“-

When I read the above yesterday morning, I remembered that I read it before, it was not news to me.

In your Buddhism Journal thread, you shared: “My mother was fond of suffocation and drowning. I practiced free diving breathing techniques to survive this. I was scared of dying in this violent way“- when I read these two sentences  yesterday morning, it was news to me and I was very surprised that I failed to read it earlier. At first, when I read this, I  “heard” myself  asking you incredulously: did it REALLY happen? I was surprised that you didn’t share such a severe traumatic detail in an original post on your first or second thread.

Not that it doesn’t happen that mothers drown their children. Very recent news, 5 minutes ago, Friday Sept 16, 2022, abc 7, ny. com: “The mother accused of drowning her three children off a Coney Island beach was arraigned on murder charges Friday from her hospital bed at NYU Langone, where she is receiving psychiatric attention. Erin Merdy, 30, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts each of second-degree murder, both with depraved indifference to human life and murder with victim under 11 years old, in connection with the deaths of 7-year-old Zachery Merdy, 4-year-old Liliana Stephens-Merdy, and 3-month-old Oliver Bondarev. According to the criminal complaint, Merdy was caught on surveillance camera walking toward the ocean with the children just before 1 a.m. Monday. About two hours later, police observed a ‘barefoot and wet’ Merdy on the boardwalk by the beach. At about 4:20 a.m., police found Zachary Merdy and Liliana Stephens-Merdy ‘lying on the shoreline unresponsive, wet and with sand on their bodies'”.

From the news yesterday “Merdy had at least two reports of neglect filed against her with the city Administration for Children’s Services for failing to bring the kids to school… (one of the children’s fathers) told the New York Times his son was often dirty and hungry when he showed up for mandated custody visits. He told the outlet he reported the mom to ‘child protective services’ and attempted to get full custody of their son, to no avail. It’s not clear to which agency the father reported the mother.”

And of course, there is the infamous Andrea Yates from Huston, Texas who drowned her five children in the bathtub of their home back in June 2001.

Back to you, Helcat: you shared about physical pain: “I have had a chronic pain condition for many years now. The level of physical pain fluctuates, when I relax before going to sleep is often when I experience the most physical pain. I find muscle tension reduces the amount of physical pain I can feel, when my muscles relax (the physical pain)  can be overwhelming… I have a bad habit of avoiding physical pain by focusing on anxiety… Worries are easier to think about than allowing myself to be immersed in the experience of physical pain.. I also have a tendency to dissociate to escape physical pain“-

– As I read this, I wondered if there is a connection between your personal experience with physical pain, particularly at night and the drowning experience. I read about people’s experiences with almost-drowning in  ranker. com, lad bible. com and in Quora. com: the reports of the experience included Panic, Pain, a shot of Adrenaline followed by Powerlessness, and the feel of Eternity.

Quotes from the sources I mentioned: “After about 10 seconds of being underwater, pain occurs. For me, this is the last chance of survival because pain tells your body to take action. And suddenly, adrenaline comes to the rescue. My body then kicked from the water so heavily, it felt like I flew, and then back in the shallow waters. And that moment I knew I was still alive because you can’t feel pain when you’re dead. I began to (drink) lots of seawater and it felt painful. But somehow, I was glad that I was in pain…  And then, my friends came to rescue me”, “Incredibly painful; a kind of tearing and burning sensation that occurs in your chest simultaneously“,

“You lose the use of your hands and limbs and become something of stranded blob with not a lot of hope left“, “I feel powerless, the water around me dark and cold”, “It’s probably been about 20 seconds but it felt like an eternity… What felt like eternity to me had really only been about a minute. I think that’s the craziest thing about this experience.”

Back to your experience with physical pain: when you relax before going to sleep, you experience the most physical pain. I wonder if it is the Powerlessness part of relaxing and almost falling asleep that triggers the Powerlessness of the traumatic almost-drowning experience, which triggers Panic, a shot of Adrenaline and Pain.

“My habits of using anxiety to distract from physical pain are probably not very helpful as stress increases pain sensitivity“-using anxiety aka physical stress (Adrenaline) so to avoid Powerlessness..?

“I still have a habit of an excessive anxiety response to small issues…Acceptance can be difficult for me. I am very stubborn and I believe in my ability to change things. This has led to me attempting to change and overcome difficulties throughout my life“- You are stubborn about NOT being Powerless, and acceptance (not trying to change things) feels like powerlessness…?

“But perhaps the nature of change itself means that I do not always have to try to force my way through a situation“- afraid of feeling powerless?

Feeling powerless: does it have a feel of eternity to it?

About shame and self-compassion: “I felt shame, anger and sadness  as I was being abused. I was bullied into feeling that I had it coming, not for doing wrong. But for existing. I felt that I existed to be abused and expected only that. This is why I chose the word shame…I would appreciate any advice you could give about processing my pain from the past regarding my mother seeing me as a mistake… What is interesting about love is that we are all born worthy of it, just by existing…To me, shame is internal.. By overcoming the self-abuse and being kinder to myself I was practicing self-compassion“-

– Make peace with the powerless aspect of existing. Make peace with being without thinking about problem-solving and about doing anything. Make peace with going to sleep whether you wake up in the morning, or not.

I am typing these words to you this morning while I am planning to go to Urgent Care in an hour or so because of an urgent health condition that was revealed to me only last night. My whole life can easily change today, maybe in 10 minutes. I am as prepared as I can be, mentally, although not practically. I know the nature of life and death, and I know that I am not more important than any one of the many billions of people and other life forms on earth. Life dies all the time and today it may be closer to me than previously. I need to relax more and more into Powerlessness and I think that you do too.

I made lots and lots of improvement in regard to my mental health, and so have you in regard to yours.  And/ but, it is my conviction that we (people) are all mentally ill and mentally healthy, it is just a matter of how much of each is true to each individual at any one time. Mental illness exists in each human, starting in the first decade of life. It is the human condition- I see it everywhere, in real life and online. Therefore, healing and improving has no end point, not as long as you are alive: there is always more to heal, more to improve. And no matter how much you heal and improve, there will still be mental illness along with mental health true to you and true to every other person (in the 2nd decade of life and onward if not in the first).

Self-compassion is indeed the answer to shame and to anxiety, and you already practiced it many times. But notice this: there is still so much more self-compassion that you didn’t practice. You (and I) need a whole lot MORE self-compassion. Whenever you feel emotional distress, think to yourself: this distress is happening in between my ears only. I suffer and no one benefits from my suffering. I don’t deserve to suffer. And then let go of the suffering. Let it go not because you solved this or that problem but simply because you don’t deserve to suffer. And… relax into powerlessness.

*I will probably answer another thread before I leave. I will be away from the computer for much of the day, I think.

anita