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Author Topic: Needing Help to Start Feeling  (Read 2213 times)

brad

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Needing Help to Start Feeling
« on: October 13, 2012, 03:49:28 am »
First, I'd like to take a moment to thank all those people that makes The Cauldron possible!  This is my first post here, and I look forward to a very enriching experience!

I have so much to say, and so many questions to ask, it's hard to focus on any one thing.  However, I have to realize that all good things come in time and in an order.  I think my first task is to figure out why I feel so disconnected from absolutely everything in life, and work my way up from there.

For the past few years, I have felt completely void of any signs of life.  I used to be able to feel energies flowing through people and a few things in nature.  By no means was I an energy worker of any sort, but I could feel it sometimes.  I also used to be able to use pendulum, tarot, and rune divination.

All this has vanished.  I have so many goals, so much I want to do.  However, I think the correct first step is to start being able to feel again.  If I'm wrong, please speak up.

Before everything started to vanish, I was just getting my feet wet in Druidry.  That's the direction I would like to go again.

Please ask me any questions you need to ask, even ones that might be emotional or hard to answer.  I think it's time for me to let go of my ego, to be humble, and ask for help.  I expect there to be some growing pains along the way, and I'm ready for that.  I just don't know what I need talk about to get things started, so please ask me anything.
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Waldhexe

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2012, 06:04:18 am »
Quote from: brad;76513
I think my first task is to figure out why I feel so disconnected from absolutely everything in life, and work my way up from there.

It sounds a bit like you are also disconnected to yourself and maybe it's difficult for you to connect to life emotionally as well as spiritually? Correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree, it's very important to feel something and it's hard to make religious or any other choices in life if you feel disconnected and like on remote control. I've been there.

In my opinion it's good that you want to feel more and it's really important to find out what obstructs the connection. Have you been through a rough time where you felt overwhelmed? Could that have disconnected you from life?

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2012, 07:17:37 am »
Quote from: brad;76513
I think my first task is to figure out why I feel so disconnected from absolutely everything in life, and work my way up from there.

 

 
In my experience feeling was more important than knowing why I was disconnected (I found that out latter.)  

What worked for me was finding a group of people who were doing what I used to love to do.  Interacting with them brought me back to life.
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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2012, 08:27:17 am »
Quote from: brad;76513
All this has vanished.  I have so many goals, so much I want to do.  However, I think the correct first step is to start being able to feel again.  If I'm wrong, please speak up.

I think the find people who do what you like to do is a good idea. Also, if you have a lot of things you want to do you may be disconnected from life simply by being unable to feel like you are moving along toward any of them -- if so, you may want to select a couple of goals and work on them, temporarily forgetting about all the others others. Then adding another goal as you succeed in one or at least make real process on it if it is a very long term goal. Actually accomplishing something can really help connect you with the world again -- at least in my experience.
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brad

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2012, 11:30:42 am »
Quote from: Waldhexe;76514
It sounds a bit like you are also disconnected to yourself and maybe it's difficult for you to connect to life emotionally as well as spiritually? Correct me if I'm wrong.

...

Have you been through a rough time where you felt overwhelmed? Could that have disconnected you from life?


I don't know if I'm disconnected emotionally.  What I do know, is that I'm the type of person that never reveals any of them to anybody.  No matter if it's sadness, anger, happiness, or love,  I just haven't been expressive.  I haven't had the desire to be around people or see things, either.  I never thought of the idea of being disconnected with myself.  I'd like to hear more about this.

Yea, I think I've hit some pretty serious bumps that really ruffled my feathers.  All around the same time frame, I experienced:

-->  Missing my daughter, and trying to get her mother to comply with visitation agreement ( in this state, the police don't help in that matter )
-->  Watching my long term friend of 14 years, and partner of 3 years first cheat, then leave.
-->  Suffering the loss of my younger brother.  ( He finished his time here just before he turned 21 )
-->  Loss of job
-->  My beloved doggie ( please call her Squeaky, that was her name ) got ran over.

Squeaky was the hardest, I think.  She was there for me through all the other things, then she too was gone.  After that, I tried taking my own life many different time.  Planned, calculated, and researched things that should have worked.  I felt very much like I was being punished because everything that I loved and sustained me was taken away.  From time to time, the punished feeling still enters my mind.  Some of the things above are just shy of three years ago.

I live in a very rural area. Meeting people with similar interests would be very unlikely.  The nearest population center is about an hours drive away on a good day.
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Laveth

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2012, 12:53:55 pm »
Quote from: brad;76523
I don't know if I'm disconnected emotionally.  What I do know, is that I'm the type of person that never reveals any of them to anybody.  No matter if it's sadness, anger, happiness, or love,  I just haven't been expressive.  I haven't had the desire to be around people or see things, either.  I never thought of the idea of being disconnected with myself.  I'd like to hear more about this.

Yea, I think I've hit some pretty serious bumps that really ruffled my feathers.  All around the same time frame, I experienced:

-->  Missing my daughter, and trying to get her mother to comply with visitation agreement ( in this state, the police don't help in that matter )
-->  Watching my long term friend of 14 years, and partner of 3 years first cheat, then leave.
-->  Suffering the loss of my younger brother.  ( He finished his time here just before he turned 21 )
-->  Loss of job
-->  My beloved doggie ( please call her Squeaky, that was her name ) got ran over.

Squeaky was the hardest, I think.  She was there for me through all the other things, then she too was gone.  After that, I tried taking my own life many different time.  Planned, calculated, and researched things that should have worked.  I felt very much like I was being punished because everything that I loved and sustained me was taken away.  From time to time, the punished feeling still enters my mind.  Some of the things above are just shy of three years ago.

I live in a very rural area. Meeting people with similar interests would be very unlikely.  The nearest population center is about an hours drive away on a good day.

 

It sounds more like you need to mourn to me, if I were to be very honest.

Beyond that, what really works for me isn't that you need to be expressive to others, but that you need to be expressive and completely honest with yourself. Ask the right questions, look deeper into those aspects of your life you're trying not to think about.

And most importantly, put all those goals on the back-burner for now that aren't absolutely necessary for your survival and take the time to sit down and do the relaxing things that make you happy. You'd be surprised how well this works. :)

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2012, 01:46:28 pm »
Quote from: brad;76523
Yea, I think I've hit some pretty serious bumps that really ruffled my feathers.  All around the same time frame, I experienced:

 
That definitely sounds like grieving to me - for really good reason. That's a lot of changes - and changes to your support network, as well - and those are all things that can throw our sense of connection to ourselves, others, or our interaction with the numinous world into chaos.

One thing you might try - ask your doctor, nearest hospital, or area mental health resources (I live in a rural area too, so I'm thinking through who'd have that info near me) if there's a grief support group they can refer you to. There are also some online options and resources: they vary a bit in quality.

It can also be surprising what's lurking in rural areas as far as like minded people. If you're okay sharing roughly where you are (nearest moderate size town, county, whatever) people here might be able to suggest some other resources or know of connections or whatever.

And while it always seems like a weird place to find them - I know my local community education courses periodically include classes on Tarot and various other low-key esoteric concepts, as well as things like tai chi, where sensing the moving energy is a common part of the practice. Something like that might help you find the people in your area who are like-minded.
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brad

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2012, 05:10:39 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;76526

It can also be surprising what's lurking in rural areas as far as like minded people. If you're okay sharing roughly where you are (nearest moderate size town, county, whatever) people here might be able to suggest some other resources or know of connections or whatever.


Not a problem! I live in Polk County, Missouri. Area code 417.  I'm about 45 miles due south of Clinton, MO and about 50 miles due north of Springfield, MO. The town that I live in is rural Humansville, MO.

With me living 20 miles away from Southwest Baptist University, and then Springfield having Central Bible College and Assemblies of God Seminary, I'm less than optimistic that the community college down there would offer anything even remotely in the same neighborhood as what I would be looking for.  And again, finances are a real issue for me.

I'm not really sure that I can agree with the mourning idea that some of you have brought up.  With the exception of loosing work and Squeaky getting killed, I have been able to identify a lot of good after the passing of the other three things.  I'm able to see how it's a part of the cycle.

I'm leaning more towards I have somehow closed off from myself as suggested earlier, and haven't yet reconnected.  If any of you feel like that judgement is clouded, please explain to me why you feel like that.  I'm not real hard dead set in my ways and thinking.  Again, I'm here to grow.

Something that might be noteworthy:
I just finished making myself a bracelet.  It has 22 polished crystal chips, each separated by two small black glass seed beads.  Right smack in the middle, I have white, green, and blue representing sky, land, water.  THIS bracelet I'm aware of!  It has a very distinctive weight to it and the crystals, while small in size, together make an energy that I can feel slightly.  The energy may actually be quite strong, given that this is the first time I've felt something for quite some time.  It's a big enough difference that my other wrist feels very out of balance.  I'll post a pic of it if you folks would like to see.

Any ideas on the Mourning vs Connection issue?
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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #8 on: October 13, 2012, 11:27:35 pm »
Quote from: brad;76533
I'm less than optimistic that the community college down there would offer anything even remotely in the same neighborhood as what I would be looking for.  And again, finances are a real issue for me.


Sorry, should have been a bit more clear about that. Not community college courses, necessarily, but community *education* courses. In my area (Maine), they're run out of the largest of the area high school buildings, and they include everything from learning conversational French or Spanish to baking and decorating cakes to "learn to do this thing with computers" to various community sports leagues to all sorts of other stuff. (Including, as I said, stuff like Tarot and tai chi and so on.)

They use the high school spaces, usually (so, computer lab, classrooms, etc.) but they're run mostly independently of the rest of the school district.

The costs are usually very reasonable - I think the last pamphlet I looked at, most ranged in the $25-60 range for a series of classes. (The higher cost ones are usually the ones that run for 6+ sessions - the language classes, for example. It usually works out to well under $10 a class session.)

But my point is - even if you can't take the actual class, that kind of resource will give you some ideas on who you might want to contact and see if they know of other likeminded people in the area.

Sometimes if you poke at what you can find out about them online, you'll find that they also, say, work out of a store somewhere you can more easily drive to, or there's a link on their website to a group that meets near enough to you to get to sometimes, or whatever.

Other possible resources: there's a massive Pagan picnic in St. Louis every fall: http://paganpicnic.org/ Again, even if it's not something you can get to, look through their past programming info and (when it gets closer to June) remember to come back to look at next year's. Check out musical groups - where they're playing (events, locations) might suggest there's a community of likeminded folks there.

You can also try emailing the contact address for groups within an hour or two's radius of you - Witchvox (http://witchvox.com) is still one of the prime resources for that, though the structure is pretty dated by now. Sometimes people will know other resources who aren't listed, or at least can say "Sorry, but if you can make it out this direction, here's our upcoming stuff."

Sometimes there really isn't much - but often, there's more stuff hiding that you hadn't realised. (And especially if you're willing/able to drive occaisionally: I had an email a few months back from someone who is in a small town about 45 minutes from me. I'd have been okay meeting her for coffee to talk periodically, and driving to her, but she never wrote back - what I'm not up for, because of my own health issues, is making a regular firm commitment for that kind of driving. Meh. Life moves on.)

Quote
I'm not really sure that I can agree with the mourning idea that some of you have brought up.  With the exception of loosing work and Squeaky getting killed, I have been able to identify a lot of good after the passing of the other three things.  I'm able to see how it's a part of the cycle.


Yeah. But that doesn't mean you don't still have some grieving involved. Really, grief, loss, and change are a process. They are not tidy. You have had a *massive* number of major changes in your life, and our bodies and our minds and our hearts take time to process that.

That's true even if - and I think, personally, especially if - we're handling the logistical part of the change very well. (I don't know about you, but I tend to bury what I'm feeling in "I am handling this VERY MATURELY, THANK YOU" and getting stuff done, but not actually allowing myself to feel the emotions. And yet, until I do that, I will be cut off from those emotions, and lots of others.)

We are not you. We might be wrong. But you're saying a lot of stuff that lots of people go "Huh, might want to look at that grief procesisng a bit more". In many cases, that's because we've been there: handling it well, and still having more stuff to dig through are not exclusive of each other. They can both be really really true at the same time.

And that, by itself, would close you off toward yourself. Maybe there's other stuff going on for you too. But again, you're saying a lot of stuff that's really resonant with not having fully worked through the emotions related to massive change, loss of previous state, and so on.

(And to give you my data here: in the last 3 years, I've had a major health crisis, major changes in a number of friendships and close interactions, was forced to leave a job I loved and a school I'd worked for for 10 years, and then moved across the country for a new job. There is a lot of really awesome stuff in my life now because of that, and I am very very happy much of the time - far more so than I used to be. But I am also very aware that I'm still processing some bits of those three years, and probably will be for a while longer.)

I am, in fact, very aware of that because it bit me hard this week, and it's only because I've been handling it as well as I have that it didn't make some situations worse than they were. But it's still been a sort of lousy couple of days.

(What am I doing for it? I was already committed to being out of town this weekend, and seeing friends. Friends are good. Music is good. Being sensible about my body is good. Doing stuff that gives me time for thinking without forcing me into a rigid response is good - a 4 hour drive for the weekend and back is handy that way. But there's also been a good side of writing things out to verbalise them, and talking with friends, and poking gently at what still feels inflamed and touchy in my psyche, and so on.)
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brad

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #9 on: October 13, 2012, 11:59:34 pm »
Quote from: Jenett;76562

Yeah. But that doesn't mean you don't still have some grieving involved. Really, grief, loss, and change are a process. They are not tidy. You have had a *massive* number of major changes in your life, and our bodies and our minds and our hearts take time to process that.

That's true even if - and I think, personally, especially if - we're handling the logistical part of the change very well. (I don't know about you, but I tend to bury what I'm feeling in "I am handling this VERY MATURELY, THANK YOU" and getting stuff done, but not actually allowing myself to feel the emotions. And yet, until I do that, I will be cut off from those emotions, and lots of others.)

We are not you. We might be wrong. But you're saying a lot of stuff that lots of people go "Huh, might want to look at that grief procesisng a bit more". In many cases, that's because we've been there: handling it well, and still having more stuff to dig through are not exclusive of each other. They can both be really really true at the same time.

And that, by itself, would close you off toward yourself. Maybe there's other stuff going on for you too. But again, you're saying a lot of stuff that's really resonant with not having fully worked through the emotions related to massive change, loss of previous state, and so on.


Well, now this was very unexpected!  I'm very glad that this was explained to me.  Are there any opinions as to what I should do to try to handle the events in a better way so that I can move forward again?  Should that topic actually be a different thread?  What is the process called that I need to actually go through?  ( I'm not even sure what to google to try finding articles on my own. )
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Waldhexe

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2012, 04:15:01 pm »
Quote from: brad;76533
Any ideas on the Mourning vs Connection issue?

Not sure I'm able to explain very well, but I concur with what Jenett said and I don't see it as a 'vs'-thing. I can't tell you where you are exactly, but IMO it's a pretty normal reaction to feel a bit numb and disconnected after a rough phase, especially if you have suffered a lot of losses and upheavel in a row.

People can only process a limited amount of emotional stuff (may it be grief or other emotions). Not everybody reacts with hysterical outbursts when s/he has too much on hir plate, some people just cope by keeping strictly to the rational side of what has to be done. If people get too much they can kinda shut down emotionally in order to survive and it can take a while afterwards to realize it's now safe enough to start feeling again.

The degrees and ways in which people shut down their emotional reactions can vary a lot from just feeling slightly numb and things being meaningless to feeling like life is not real like a movie or not being fully in your own body anymore or a depression...

I can't tell if that's what you feel, but I think doing something which gets your interest and connections to like-minded people is a good idea in any case. :)

I've made the experience that celebrating the wheel of the year really helped through emotional upheaval, because I'm just regularly prodded to do something good for myself, to meet others for ritual and to look at the bigger picture of how the year runs its course instead of worrying over the problem of the week.... ;)

Of course if you have been through some difficult stuff in your life it can also be very helpful to talk to somebody about it.

Painting, writing or making music to express experiences and feelings can also help a lot...there are also courses which are less about technique and more about having fun or how one can use painting, writing or music to express and support oneself...

There are also a lot of guided meditations on the market for relaxation and dealing with difficult emotions, but they don't work for everybody, you may want to find out if that's something for you and what style you like...

It's always good to have patience with oneself, because it really takes the time it takes. I've often wished one could just process difficult stuff more quickly so it's over, like running through the fire, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Everybody has their own pace and way to process stuff.

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #11 on: October 15, 2012, 08:50:53 am »
Quote from: brad;76564
Well, now this was very unexpected!  I'm very glad that this was explained to me.  Are there any opinions as to what I should do to try to handle the events in a better way so that I can move forward again?  Should that topic actually be a different thread?  What is the process called that I need to actually go through?  ( I'm not even sure what to google to try finding articles on my own. )

 
Sounds to me like you're starting to come out of it yourself - that's why you're looking for help and trying to figure out what's going on.  Which doesn't mean help isn't still useful!

Right now, I'd say you need to be self-protective.  Your spirit's taken a battering and it's gone into protective mode - big thick walls, no entry.  Which isn't a good long-term strategy, but it does make sense in the short term.

Give yourself little luxuries.  Go out for coffee, get a fancy shirt - whatever it is that's a little luxury that really is a gift to yourself.  Before you can trust anyone else, you have to be able to trust YOURSELF again.

And good luck - coming out of that hole is never good, but it's WAY better than living in it!

brad

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Re: Needing Help to Start Feeling
« Reply #12 on: October 15, 2012, 09:31:48 am »
Quote from: HeartShadow;76711
Sounds to me like you're starting to come out of it yourself - that's why you're looking for help and trying to figure out what's going on.  Which doesn't mean help isn't still useful!

Right now, I'd say you need to be self-protective.  Your spirit's taken a battering and it's gone into protective mode - big thick walls, no entry.  Which isn't a good long-term strategy, but it does make sense in the short term.

 
Thanks!  I've been asking a few different people, and somehow just in the asking, things are looking better!
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