declaredominion.com – Ritual Abuse

My Home as a Reflection of My Inner Self

May 10, 2021 by Jean, posted in alters, dissociation, healing from ritual abuse, polyfragmentation

* Two hard days in May have passed – Beltane and Mothers’ Day. There’s a full lunar eclipse coming up on the 26th (they always occur on a full moon) and then a long weekend, Memorial Day. I wrote a short little blog post on long weekends back in 2016. https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/08/10/long-weekends/

And then we have a break until Fathers’ Day on June 20 and the summer solstice on June 2.

* There are two announcements after the main part of this post.

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I follow declaredominion.com, which is the website of Katherine North, a life coach. I need a life coach because I learned a lot about death as a kid, but life? Not so much.

Katherine sends me a “missive” every Saturday. Her missives are long personal letters with a moral. This week it was about fixing a gaping hole in her kitchen wall left by electricians. I could relate, having recently had not one, but many holes left by electricians. Now that everything is all fixed up, the lighting is awesome – I can actually see really, really well! The memory of the mess is fading fast, covered by a later of dirty dishes and thirsty plants.

Anyway, this week Katherine said, among other things,

“Our homes are such powerful metaphors for what’s happening in our inner lives!”

“If your home was a metaphor, is there anywhere your energy is draining out?“

“And if so, what is the GENTLEST possible way you could begin attending to it? Not with panic, not with shame, but with love and care, as a way of honoring your sacred energies?”

“Our physical worlds are reflections of our inner ones, and we can shift the way we feel by shifting the spaces around us.”

And, just a reminder, “It usually gets worse to get better.”

Do I ever relate!

Inside, I am piles and piles of dust particles. Or sand particles. Or tiny shards of broken china. Teeny things, without form or function.

But somehow, who knows how, they come together to make a sort-of-me. Then they have a form and a function. The cook. The cat feeder. The blog writer. And when they have finished the task, they separate and collapse back into piles of tiny pieces.

I know it isn’t always the same little pieces that form the “self” that is needed at the time. The cook who is dropping things on the floor isn’t the same cook as the one who always manages to gently put plates on a flat surface. Then there is the cook who cannot remember how long it takes to boil an egg, the one who seasons things to perfection, the one who prepares five servings of fruit and vegetables, and the one who says, “Fuck this! I am having pizza and ice cream tonight.”

I do not know what holds these pieces together long enough to get food on the table. And I don’t know how the pieces are selected and assembled. I’ve never seen a me-part that was in charge of creating other parts of me.

Looking around my house, I see piles of tiny things. I also see piles of larger things waiting to be organized into something even larger. That makes me wonder if pre-assembled parts of my selves are lying around inside waiting to be used. It would be efficient, wouldn’t it? A chunk of knowledge, a chunk of competence, a piece of panic, and always two ready-formed left feet and one perfect right one.

It’s too bad there are no piles of physical things to use as spare parts. I’d like a brand-new heart with all its innate functions intact, a lot of new teeth, and, best of all, a lumbar spine in working order. When I think what a miracle that would be, I realize that the system I have inside with the intangible parts of myself is also a miracle. Imagine! At a moment’s notice, all sorts of people can appear – a mother, a copy editor, a reader of French newspapers, somebody who, oddly enough, enjoys math jokes. What a diverse bunch of interests and abilities lurk inside me!

So if Katherine is right, and we can change our insides by changing the outside, it would make sense to organize little piles into bigger, more coherent piles. I’m not sure she is, because an artist part of me may be making a mess to communicate that I am a mess inside. Tidying up would be shutting down that path of communication, silencing me as I was consistently silenced in childhood. Not helpful.

But tidying things up might just as well be an artist part trying to tell other inside parts, “Hey, look what’s possible! We can all become bigger and better and more competent and happier without giving up anything. We can become more ourselves, if we want, and we can do it in our way, not in obedience to anybody else!”

I think I will try this approach and see what happens.

PS Math nerds can enjoy fractal elephants at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DK5Z709J2eo and other “Doodling in Math Class” videos.

~~~~~~~~~~

Upcoming Holidays

May

5/12 (?) Armed Forces Day

5/23 Pentecost

5/26 Total Lunar Eclipse

5/26 Full Moon

5/31 Memorial Day

June

6/10 Annular Solar Eclipse

6/20 Fathers’ Day

6/21 Summer solstice

6/23 Midsummer’s Eve

6/24 (?) St John’s Day

6/24 Full Moon

July

7/4 Independence Day

7/23 Full Moon

7/25 St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God

7/27 Grand Climax

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups

5/17 Shavuot (Festival of Harvest, Festival of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments)

6/6 D-Day (Invasion of France in WW2)

7/18 Tisha B’Av (Jewish Day of Mourning)

7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices, and the equinoxes.)

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* You can find more information on the following holidays at:

Fathers’ Day: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2020/06/20/ritual-abuse-and-fathers-day/

Summer Solstice (corrected text) https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/well-this-is-embarrassing/

Lammas https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/category/lamas/

and https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/august-ritual-dates/

Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 1 https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-feast-of-the-beast/

Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 2 https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/feast-of-the-beast-part-ii/

Fall Equinox https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/

Halloween {personal) https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/halloween/

Halloween (background) https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/samhainhalloween/

Thanksgiving https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/thanksgiving/

Yule/Winter Solstice https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/yulewinter-solstice/

Candlemas https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/candlemas/

Valentine’s Day https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/valentines-day/

Spring Equinox https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-spring-equinox/

Easter: personal. (for background, see Spring Equinox) https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/easter-blues/

Walpurgisnacht/May Eve: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/walpurgisnacht/

Beltane: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/beltane/

Mothers’ Day: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/mothers-day/

~~~~~~~~~~

* Survivorship Regular Conference – Saturday and Sunday, May 22 – 23, 2021

Clinician’s Conference – Friday, May 21, 2021

Information on the speakers, topics, and registration is at https://survivorship.org/the-survivorship-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2021-conference/

* The May 2021 issue of SMART’s newsletter summarizes these articles about Elizabeth Loftus. https://ritualabuse.us/2021/04/issue-158-may-2021/ You can also find them at https://ritualabuse.us/smart/elizabeth-loftus/

– A Brief History of the False Memory Research of Elizabeth Loftus

– Ethics Complaints Filed Against FMSF Board Member Elizabeth Loftus

– “Lost in a Shopping Mall” A Breach of Professional Ethics

– Quotes: Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D.

– The Alleged Ethical Violations of Elizabeth Loftus in the Case of Jane Doe

Fight, Flee, Freeze… and Tenderness

April 30, 2020 by Jean, posted in healing from ritual abuse, self-criticism

* You can find more information on the following holidays at:

* Walpurgisnacht, Beltane

Well, tonight is Walpurgisnacht, or as we called it, May Eve. For us (my cult folk), holidays always started at midnight and, while we were waiting around with nothing to do, we often celebrated the eve of the holiday, starting whenever we felt like it. Some eves, like Christmas Eve, had prescribed rituals. They were more formal but not necessarily more brutal.

I’m anticipating having minimum reactions to these days and the coming weekend, partly because that’s how I have reacted to cult holidays for a good year now, partly because the depression numbs things out, even flashbacks. A good use for a depression! Fancy that.

~~~~~~~~

I remember, years ago, coming across a book about how people react to life-threatening emergencies. It focused on car crashes, but everything obviously applied to trauma, to child abuse. I learned a lot about fight, flight, and freeze and the physiological manifestations of each state. It also talked about how animals deal with the aftermath of each reaction. Fascinating!

Darn! I wish I could remember the name of the author.

Anyway, last week, a friend of mine who is a life coach wrote an article about these reactions to serious danger. Her style is very different from mine, much more exuberant. (There’s nothing wrong with my style, it’s just different.) Although I have written about this before, I thought I would share some of what she wrote.

I had to edit it down to only a third of her piece because of Internet technicalities. Lots of the good stuff got left out, but you can still get a sense of what she was saying.

If you want to read the whole thing – and I recommend you do so because there is much more, and it is both useful and hilarious – go to https://www.declaredominion.com/2019/02/01/this-will-help-with-adulting/. It’s one of Katherine North’s weekly letters to anybody who is interested. All you have to do is sign up!

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This Will Help with Adulting

When it feels like life is pummeling us, whether it’s body blows or just a dozen tiny paper cuts, most of us have a very natural human response.

We fight, we flee, or we freeze.

This isn’t always a bad thing.

In a bona fide emergency, your healthy “fight” response kicks in. This is what adrenaline is MADE for– so that you can move fast, you can mobilize, you can set up emergency hospital tents and run from tigers.

Adrenaline is wonderfully helpful in those situations. However, it’s designed to be the exception, not the rule.

Unfortunately, most people right now are on a steady drip of adrenaline.

When you’re living that way, it feels sort of like an ongoing low-level panic attack. It goes like “oh god, what about the – and I almost forgot that we have to – and shit what we will do if -” and so our brain revs and revs, sending little hits of panicky energy into our system but without any accompanying action to make things happen. It’s hard on our bodies to rev like this, and it’s hard on our spirits, too.

Another way some of us react to stress is to just freeze up. While this might be an adaptive response to a poisonous snake slithering through the grass, for most of us it’s LESS than helpful. Sometimes we can end up in a state of perpetual paralysis, where we’re so afraid of doing the WRONG thing that we do….well not much at all, really.

Sometimes we try to protect ourselves from the scariness of adult life not by fighting or freezing, but by attempting to flee. Usually, flight becomes a form of mental escape– scrolling numbly through social media or zoning out to a TV show whose characters you don’t give a fig about.

So whatever is going on, please do NOT do that thing where you’re feeling rolling, wild, nauseating waves of anxiety or paralysis or fear– and also yelling at yourself the whole time.

“Stop it, make a decision, do something, stop being such a wimp, lots of people have it worse than you do….” THAT. Don’t do that.

Because here’s the thing. You would never speak to somebody else like that when they are trapped in a wave of everything-is-too-muchness. I know you wouldn’t.

But you do it to yourself. We all do it because we’re trying to hold ourselves together, with brittleness and a positive attitude GODDAMIT.

Most of us worry that we’ll just end up huddled on the floor in a pool of snot and wailing.

So in this strange way, the mean things you say inside your head to yourself are a misguided-but-sweet attempt to take care of you.

You know what does work?

Tenderness.

It helps more than anything to try speaking to yourself the way you’d speak to a small scared child, because there’s almost certainly one living somewhere inside you.

“Oh sweetheart. This is so much, right now. You’re so scared, huh? It’s ok, kiddo, I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re all right, come let me hold you. You’re safe, little love.”

Tenderness just collapses the brittle revving cycle of adrenaline. It melts the fear. It dissolves the paralysis.

I do not know why this is.

Isn’t life an odd mystery?

~~~~~~~~

Upcoming Holidays

April
4/30 Walpurgisnacht/May Eve
May
5/1 Beltane
5/7 Full moon
5/10 Mothers’ Day
5/12 Armed Forces Day
5/25 Memorial Day
5/31 Pentacost
June
6/5 Full moon
6/5-6 Penumbral lunar eclipse. The moon will turn a shade darker during the maximum phase, visible in Asia, Australia, Europe, and Africa. Most penumbral lunar eclipses cannot be easily distinguished from a usual full moon. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-june-5
6/19 Summer solstice
6/21 Fathers’ Day
6/21 Annular solar eclipse. Visible from parts of Africa (including the Central African Republic, Congo, and Ethiopia), south of Pakistan, northern India, and China. Partial eclipse is visible in south/east Europe, much of Asia, the north of Australia, and much of Africa, Pacific, Indian Ocean. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-june-21
6/23 Midsummer’s Eve
6/24 St. John’s Day

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
5/8 V-E Day (Victory in Europe, WW2)
6/6 D-Day: invasion of France in WW2
(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes.)

Suppressing One Emotion Suppresses All

December 10, 2019 by Jean, posted in defenses, healing from ritual abuse

* Detailed instructions for making comments are in “News Items.”

* Additional information on Yule/Winter Solstice is available at:
https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/yulewinter-solstice/

~~~~~

We survivors of ritual abuse have every reason to be afraid of a lot of things, because a lot of things were used to abuse us. A lot of situations, too. Just about everything they could think of was used in a perverted way. So of course we are afraid!

But if you live your adult life being afraid, you cannot do much of anything because you are paralyzed with fear. You might be afraid of eating, or showering, or even getting out of bed each day. Let alone going grocery shopping, or having friends, or having a job, or raising kids, or …just about everything.

So the sensible thing to do is to suppress the fear and to pretend you aren’t afraid. Stiff upper lip, head high, looking as confident as everybody else. And feeling confident! “I’m not afraid – of course I can do it. Easy peasey.” Perhaps it’s not so hard to suppress fear; perhaps you have practiced it since you were a child and it’s now second nature. Perhaps all the terrified parts are hiding way down inside you, alone and voiceless as always.

Yes, you get through life looking like you are doing well. But you feel numb, sort of robotic. And why is this?

Because if you are good at one way of handling your emotions, the mind applies that technique to all emotions. You aren’t afraid, you aren’t anxious, but you are also not happy or playful or joyful. Life feels flat, dull, empty.

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I follow a life coach, Katherine North, who shares her organizational techniques and gives tips for overcoming adversities, large and small alike. By nature, she is pretty scattered, so she has test-driven these techniques. In sharing, she is vulnerable and real. And she writes like a bandit – her words are bursting with life.

I would like to share excerpts of her weekly letter to her followers because she wrote about losing and regaining the capacity to experience joy.

If you want to sign up for Katherine’s newsletter or read a few of her blog posts, go to https://www.declaredominion.com/

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I said to my husband Nick, “Babe. I feel like there’s a twinkle light in my heart that isn’t turned on.”

He laughed at me for about ten minutes, and when he recovered, he asked me why.

I didn’t have a good answer. We were doing all the holiday things; the tree was up; the presents purchased; stockings hung. But something in me wasn’t feeling the same glowy cozy feelings I usually feel this time of year.

And I wanted to feel them! Oh, I wanted them BAD.

So I rustled around inside myself for a while, looking for the answer. It was a lot like rustling around a big handbag belonging to a mom with many children: I pulled out some hopes and fears, some diapers and candy canes, the odd sock and a squished granola bar. And as I pulled out all these pieces of my heart and examined them, I realized something.

In order for me to feel the fuzzy cozy glowy feelings I want, first I have to feel utter heartbreak.

Well that was not good news. Not good news at all.

No, I don’t want heartbreak, I want candlelight and mistletoe and solstice rituals and lighting the Hanukkah candles!

But in order to have those things, first I was going to have to let my heart crack.

You see, I could feel that I had installed a little plastic membrane around my heart to hold it together.

This is a necessary move sometimes, because the world is so hard and terrible that in order to walk around and feed our kids and remember to put pants on, we have to instruct our heart that it simply cannot break – not just this second, not for at least ten minutes. But I had put on that protective membrane for an hour… and then forgotten to take it off.

And so there was a barrier between me and my feelings.

That brittle membrane that made me feel like I could keep my shit together was also keeping out the joy.

There was the joy, right there, twinkling all around my little grinchy heart, but it couldn’t trickle all the way down into the insides.

Sigh.

Reader, I did what I had to do.

I watched” Little Women” is what I did. The Susan Sarandon one, with my oldest daughter, and we both cried so hard we shook the couch.

And don’t you know, all those tears melted away that hard membrane?

. . . . Go ahead. Let the world break your heart. Let the flames of fury roar out your ears. Those intense feelings don’t make you weak, they make you awake. Let yourself cry, let yourself rage, go ahead and feel the suffering, but let it move through you and come out of you as some sort of helpful action.

The things I can do are small. But the doing of them heals me.

We can take food to our local food bank, give money to organizations that effectively do the work in the world we wish we could do ourselves, or invite over a lonely neighbor. We can buy gifts and books from truth-telling artists and support other makers. We can call our elected officials. We can tell our truth and listen to others’ truths.

Small actions, yes. Ridiculously small. But a million small actions add up.

So add yours to those millions.

Don’t be afraid to let your heart go ahead and break. Your heartbreak will show you where your energy wants to flow. It’s showing you the places where you can be useful, where your heart can meet up with the world’s need.

Remember that small is powerful. Remember that one person can make a huge difference, at least to one other person. Remember that together our small actions make us a mighty force to be reckoned with.

My little twinkle light is back on, dearheart. It might be tiny, and so might yours, but when we add all ours together, they shine like motherfuckers.

~~~~~

After thirty years, I can slip into work mode and get things done, whether it is dishes or doctor’s appointments, or writing a blog post. But when somebody tells me their story, tears still fill my eyes. It is this deep sadness at the senseless cruelty of ritual abuse that keeps me listening and writing and gives meaning to my life. And, as Katherine said, the tears release the ability to be melted by the beauty of the first ray of sunshine each day. the small kindnesses of strangers, the soft fur of my cat. Hundreds of others things, too.

It is a circle: sorrow releases gratitude for the goodness that exists next to the evil, and the gratitude and joy soothe the sadness.

~~~~~

Upcoming Holidays

December
12/15, 12/22 remaining Sundays of Advent
12/11 Full moon
12/21 Winter solstice/Yule/St. Thomas’ Day
12/24 Christmas Eve
12/26 Annular solar eclipse. Totality will be visible in Saudi Arabia, southern India, Sri Lanka, parts of Indonesia, Singapore, and parts of the Philippines.
12/31 New Year’s Eve
January
1/1 New Year’s Day
1/7 St Winebald’s Day
1/10 Full moon
1/10-11 Penumbral lunar eclipse. The moon will turn a shade darker during the maximum phase, visible in Australia, Europe, and Africa. Most penumbral lunar eclipses cannot be easily distinguished from a usual full moon. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-january-10
1/13 Satanic New Year
1/17 Feast of Fools/Old Twelfth Night/Satanic and demon revels
1/20 St. Agnes’ Eve
February
2/2 Candlemas/Imbolc/Satanic Revels
2/8 Full moon
2/14 Valentine’s Day
2/25 Shrove Tuesday/ Mardi Gras
2/25 Walpurgis Day
2/26 Ash Wednesday

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
12/22 – 12/30 Chanukah
1/12 N Birth of both Rosenburg and Goering, Nazi leaders in WW2
1/30 Hitler named Chancellor of Germany
2/10 Tu Bishvat/Tu B’Shevat (celebration of spring)
(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes)

Upcoming Holidays

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This Will Help with Adulting

Upcoming Holidays

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Upcoming Holidays

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