Our Stories

Deb DeGraff

There was a time when feeling became too painful, too much to bear and I shut it down. I shut my girl-self down.

Now, not feeling has become too much to bear and I want my girl back, I want back my capacity to feel. I want to feel the belonging my girl knows, the capacity to relate that my girl knows. My capacity to love and care and want.

Since I shut down my feelings I have lived in trauma mind. Trauma mind is the way I think, the way my mind works when it is cut off from the knowing and feeling of my girl-heart. Trauma mind is based in wrong-thinking, misperceptions and stories. Its goal is to protect me from whatever it was that hurt too much, that was too much for me to feel when I was a girl. Allowing trauma mind to control my life means that I continually recreate what originally hurt me. To escape the grip of trauma mind I need to feel my way through the contents of my trauma for on the other side of all the frozen feelings is my girl.... whole and waiting to live her life, my real life, the life of a girl who knows God.

My commitment right now is to say 'yes' to feeling whatever it is that I have said 'no' to feeling in the past. This means giving up my defenses against feeling: coping and managing, trying to keep up with everyone else to avoid the vulnerability of where I am, and jumping away from uncomfortable feelings like vulnerability and fear.

It means letting go of the life I have created to cover my loss; the life of competence and care-taking that covers the isolation and despair of living without my girl self. I have covered this wound, denied it, hidden it from the world, pretended it was not there. I have not wanted to feel the loss and the terrible aloneness of losing my girl-self.

I made a good-looking life, a full-looking life, a happy-looking life. A life full of friends and work, travel and beautiful things. In that life I had glimmers of my girl, for she is always there, has always been there. In that life I had glimmers of being on the other side of the gap, moments of feeling the love, the brilliance.... hours of belonging.... occasional days of being completely free of my neurosis. I have known what is possible in myself, but I have never lived it; I have not been able to sustain it. I have denied the feelings that are in the gap between what I know is possible and where I live my life.

I have not understood that under everything I have done is the unfelt pain of having lost my girl. This good-looking life is the lie to the world which I have participated in and believed. Without my girl-self I am a hollow person, alone without God.

Some place in me knows this and feels shame about it. It feels shameful not be my real self, to feel I do not have a real self. It is through this shame that the pathology has me in its grip. The pathology offers me a way to avoid feeling this shame. It shows me how to look good and feel good about myself; it inflates me. It allows me to function well in the world, be competent and get supported for it. We call this pride. It makes me helpful and nice, I do a good job, I am reliable. I do not have needs; I can do it all myself and I have pride in it.

The problem is that underneath the pride of doing a good job is isolation and despair. I cover it up, I put on a good show, but the truth is I feel alone in the world. All the prideful good feeling is false good feeling because it is based on avoiding what feels bad inside of me. It has no relationship to the simple joy of being my girl-self.

Because this pride feels good and when I let it go the aloneness I have to go through feels terrible, it is hard to let go of the pride, hard to let go of the false good feeling and the life that supports it. The rub is that the only way to my real self, my real life and feeling the love is to let all the false good feelings go and feel the feelings that feel terrible to feel. Only down that corridor will I find what I am looking for, what I want and what I deserve.

Through the eyes of my girl I see how destructive this pathology of pride and shame are in my life. I see that my girl-self is what the pathology wants to destroy. I see the destruction it has caused, how my life passes by and I am not living it, I am not doing what I am here to do, I am staying safe, avoiding what scares me.

I am crippled by my inability to feel what I shut down to as a child.

What is changing is that I have stopped believing this pathology is something I can manage on my own. I know I need help. Trauma mind has told me there is no help, that I am alone, that I must manage on my own. But I am stepping out of trauma mind; this is my commitment. It means going all the way back to where I lost my girl-self. Entering the frozen corridors and learning new ways of being, tolerating unfamiliar, uncomfortable feelings.

I am allowing my self to go as slowly as I need, to get the help I need, to trust that I am loved and valued and that I belong when I am allowing myself to need. Trusting that I do not have to earn my value. Trusting that in going back to the place I lost myself I will not be left behind, that I will be held and cared for in my going back. It means coming out of isolation and risking being exposed, vulnerable, needing, tender, human. Trusting I belong.

Dream: I am in a vehicle. There is a progressive narrowing at the front of it. I believe I have to move through this narrowing on my own. I feel claustrophobic and panic, fearing I will not be able to breathe. I keep approaching the narrowing and backing off. I cannot go through it on my own, but I keep trying.

This is wrong-thinking. In reality I am in some kind of vehicle. The vehicle is carrying me through. I do not have to do it alone. When I step out of trauma mind and into reality, there is help. All I need to do is sit back and allow myself to be carried through.

Working with this dream I begin recognizing the nature of trauma mind, what its thought patterns are, the black and white, all or nothing thinking of it. I begin to know where I am. I begin to recognize that when I am trying, when I feel alone and isolated, when I feel panic, I am in my trauma. Then I can choose to lean back, knowing the vehicle is carrying me through. This creates a different pathway in my brain, a pathway that knows there is help, that I am not alone. Someone is driving the vehicle to carry me through.

Dream: I am in the back seat of a car feeling alone. A man and woman are in the front seat.

My work is to climb into the front seat. To do this, first, I need to recognize where I am, I need to know when I am in the back seat feeling alone. When I recognize this, I climb into the front seat. I am stepping out of trauma mind and into a new paradigm, the paradigm of not being alone... there is help.

In my outer life I am selling my house and moving. It is the day before the movers are coming and I discover I need to make box tops for all the boxes without tops. I cannot do this on my own. I need help. I feel alone and overwhelmed with panic, it is so hard to ask for help, but I climb into the front seat and call friends. All day they stop by offering their company, helping me make box tops, bringing me food. I see there is help and it feels good to ask; I have fun.

The last thing I do in my old house is take a bath. Afterwards I lie on the floor and I feel a chasm running through my body. The word that comes is 'damage'. There is a force field pushing me away from the damage. I am in the back seat, alone again. I climb into the front seat and lie like a baby on the woman's lap. I accept this resistance and do my best to feel the damage. I do not know what will happen. Then in a moment I feel my girl-self rise up from somewhere deep inside of me and fill the chasm; she is separate from anything my mind can produce; she is separate from the me I know myself to be and my heart leaps in joy. In the discomfort there she is! It is a miracle. I am thrilled she exists, yet I am scared of her and jump away from her before I know what has happened.

I leave my old house knowing the reality of my girl-self. My commitment is to face into the damage and hold steady with my homework.

Dream: I am in the passenger seat of a car speeding down the highway. I look over and see no one is in the driver's seat yet the steering wheel does not wobble. I do not reach out to take the steering wheel. I know the Animus is driving. Then He appears in the driver's seat and we smile at each other.

This is my girl-mind trusting that He is there, even when I cannot see Him. In my dream I think that people in the cars driving by will wonder at seeing no one in the driver's seat, but I do not care. I know He is driving. I am trusting my knowing, trusting myself and Him.

Dream: I am in a room with a girl. A man walks in and she hides under the covers. Now we are in an airplane and two men stand by the open door. I think they are having a conflict. They touch foreheads and one man pushes the other out the airplane door without a parachute. I peek over the edge and see him falling. As he passes the bottom of the plane someone hands him a parachute. The other man jumps out and I watch the two of them parachute down.

Hiding under the covers is hiding in my trauma. Thinking the men are in conflict is wrong-thinking, story-telling. When I feel into the dream I know the touching of foreheads is about love.... a blessing.... a send off for the jump. My work is about making the journey from hiding under the covers to jumping without a parachute.

The first step is knowing when I am hiding and saying so. Once I do this I am out of hiding. The next step is standing at the airplane door with the Man. I feel myself a girl. The Man touches His forehead to mine. I want nothing but to stand here and receive this blessing. So that is what I do. I allow myself to feel all the feelings that come up standing there with the Man, the quiet peace of our foreheads touching, my longing for contact, my wanting. My fear of the intimacy, the closeness. I stay with the feelings. I become aware of the same feelings arising in relationships in my outer life. I stay with them as well. I feel myself as a vulnerable girl with the Man in my interior world and in my relationships in my outer life. It is unfamiliar.

It is an unstable state. I am her and then not her. When I am under the covers, I project my fear, I worry about money, about aloneness, about the chasm that opened up with the wreck of my old life. It is all projection of my loss of her, wrong-thinking. When I am standing by the door with the Man, I love life. I feel fearlessness. I am not alone; I am with the Man and I will do whatever He wants. My girl-self wants to feel the freedom of the jump, the free fall, the not knowing and not needing to know.

Dream: I am out of doors sitting in a chair and a Man is braiding my hair. I love how this feels. Then He goes down to a lower parking lot and I see Him standing with two beakers as tall as He is, they are filled to the brim with brown liquid. At first I am afraid He is going to dye my hair brown. Then I trust Him. He can do whatever He wants.

When I wake I know the beakers of filled with poison to kill the false me. They stand like a gate I cannot pass through without dying to my girl-self. My work is to deal directly with Him; go to the place in me where I trust Him. As I work with this I begin to differentiate between my mistrustful, wrong-thinking mind and my trusting heart. I realize my mind is not the part of me that can recognize and trust Him, it is my heart that does this. I start feeling a new awareness and feeling capacity in my heart.

Dream: I am sitting across from a girl. I think we are doing a session and that she is suffering. I shift from taking all of her in visually to just making eye contact. The connection between us is deep, there is no separation. Then everything starts going black around me and the blackness is closing in until all I can see are her eyes. I struggle not to black out. I feel shame I am blacking out. I want to stay with her. I black out.

She is the real me and I am projecting my suffering onto her. My work is to see her eyes, my real eyes. Know I am dying to my real self. The shame is the pathology trying to stop this process by making me feel responsible and guilty. I see her eyes everywhere and feel there is no separation between us, but I struggle with the blacking out part of my homework.

Dream: I go down to the basement to look for a box. There is a dead cat in the corner. It is creepy and I run up the stairs. I look back and see a small blond child following me. I think the child is evil and feel terror. I run to the door and see there is no door.... only a door frame. The child will be able to follow me up! I am terrified!

The child in this dream is a radiant Cindy Lu Who child; there is nothing evil about her. I am projecting my terror onto her. My work is to accept the girl and make amends with her. Part of making amends is to expose how I hold onto the life I created to cover the loss of her. I begin writing more about my constructed self and about the wounded-ness underneath, exposing my deeper self so I can be known and healed.

For the first time since we began holding retreats I go not as a teacher but as a student. I go to receive. The only expectation of me is to do my work.... make amends with my girl-self.

At the retreat I have my dreams strung in our small group. We work with five of my dreams. In the first dream I am dancing, leaping across a big room. Our meeting room is too small for leaping and I find myself spinning and I spin and spin and cannot stop spinning. I do not get dizzy. I am laughing; it seems to go on forever and I do not want to stop. As I spin I am descending into the well, dropping down into the unconscious. As we explore each dream I go through shame... fear... vulnerability... need... until we get to the dream where I am the child and the parents are holding me and I am crying; they are telling me I can cry as much as I want, that all my tears are welcome.

The last day of the retreat I notice a new feeling welling up in me. Slowly I recognize it is joy, the joy of my girl-self.

Dream: I am with a toddler and a car drives up with a mother and another toddler in the front seat. My girl runs to the girl in the car and says 'Rose'! I am amazed my girl can speak and I see she knows Rose and is happy to see her. I am amazed to know Rose's name. Our hearts leap as we run to Rose, but when we get to the car, Rose is not there. We look on the floor and see a doll. I think something has happened to Rose, that she is gone.

My work is to know Rose is around. I cannot get to her when I am lost in my terror and pain, or when I manage. Both of these places are predicated on the belief that Rose is gone. When I see myself managing, or heading towards the terror of life without Rose, I remember that Rose is around, even when I cannot see her. I am learning to stay in a new place where I know that Rose is around.

Dream: I am at a retreat and I see a girl across the room. I run to her and she grabs me and leads me dancing round in circles. She directs me in a dramatic way, is bossy and I like her.

My work is to let her have control. I am opening to her support rather than my fearfulness. When I do she is whirling me around in circles, and I am not worrying. When I wake up in the morning worried about money I know I am not with her, I am projecting my fear. I stop it and feel her whirling me around; I feel supported, my body relaxes, I smile. I am back with her,

Dream: I am alone in a house. A Man comes to the door. I let Him in, though I do not know Him with my mind. We are in the kitchen. Occasionally my mind worries and I ask Him -- 'Do you intend to hurt me?' But my heart knows He is fine. A truck pulls up to the door. I know I can ask the men for help with this Man if I felt in danger, but I do not feel in danger and say nothing to them. As they drive away I feel I am committing more deeply to something with Him. Now there is a child with us and I realize I want the Man. I want to go to bed with Him.

When I ask Him if He intends to hurt me I am not being Rose. I am in my wrong-thinking, story-telling, worrying mind believing I am alone and in danger. I am projecting my fear. My work is to be Rose with Him. When I enter into the interior world of this dream I find my self a lighthearted soul called Rose. I am opening the door of my house to my Beloved, being with Him in the kitchen. It is spacious and joyful to be with Him, in stark contrast to the despair and isolation with which I am used to living.

As I live my life as Rose with Him in the kitchen, I feel the support of Rose inside myself. I have a self inside of me. Having this self gives me an internal reference point which I have lacked my whole life. Without it, I have looked outside myself for orientation.... for approval, reassurance, love and direction. I have lived my life believing I am not enough and projecting that belief onto the world, imagining I am being harshly judged in every moment, living under the harsh judgment of the shaming pathology inside myself. I have lived believing that being enough is about doing and that I must try very hard to do it right so I can somehow catch up and be how I need to be to be acceptable.

With Rose inside there is a spaciousness, and a feeling of enough-ness and belonging. It is vulnerable to stand in this enough-ness where I feel supported. All of this is new.

It is vulnerable to expose this, who I am, who I have been.

With a self inside there is nothing for me to do, no where to go, no way to be. I am waiting to see what Rose will do, who she is, what she wants to become. What is dawning in me is an of acceptance of myself and life just the way it is in this moment.... like a big sigh.

My commitment is to stand in the vulnerability and exposure of my new found self and see what happens.