The Problem of Pain

I bought a copy of C.S. Lewis's book "The Problem of Pain." In it, he tackles the question of "Why must we suffer?" I am always interested in a philosophical approach to examining life's questions. To me, C.S. Lewis is someone who's thoughts and examinations of difficult topics are thought provoking, somewhat scandalous and are sure to get me to examine my own life in a new way. I'm sure as I get more into the book, I will have some postings with quotes and my thoughts.

Conversations with Mother

My mom wrote me an email the other day asking if I would want to do a book study with her. I have been rather angry at my mom for several weeks now. She rarely says anything about my eating disorder, but instead seems to focus on trying to revive my failed marriage. A marriage, that by all measure, has been a major contributor to my eating disorder and the myriad of issues behind it.

I knew by the tone, that my mom was seeking connection. I love my mom, even when I don’t understand her, and above all have been rather hurt by her actions as of late. I thought this might be a good opportunity for us to do some much needed bonding. (At times, I fight admitting that I need her even as an adult…lots!) She also went on to ask if I wanted to get together with her and go to an art show in town. So I agreed…

Our time together started ok, then got awkward as she tried to ask me indirect questions about how I was doing. I figured I should just talk. Continuing to hold back from people, especially the ones that are supposed to love and care about you more than anything, is never going to get me anywhere. So I talked and vented and explained.

We were interrupted by an unexpected call from a cousin who was in town for the day with her boyfriend. Since neither my mom nor I had seen her in 4 years, we cut our time short to go meet her. After a rather lengthy conversation, my mom finally took me back to my car in a Target parking lot. Before I could leave she asked me a question. A question that she’s been wanting to ask, but perhaps fearful to do so because of the response she might get.

She looked at me and asked, “Have I or have both Dad and I contributed in any way to what you are struggling with? Are there things we have said or done, or not done that aided in your eating disorder? I do not want you to hold back for the sake of my feelings like I know you do so often. I am your parent. I can handle it. Whatever it is, whatever you need, anything…we want to do whatever it takes to get you better. If that means going to group therapy, then we go to group therapy.”

I thought about it for a minute and answered honestly, “I don’t know.” I have been so focused on current reasons, that I have not gone back to even before my husband and I started dating to really explore other things that are there. Perhaps adoption. Perhaps a sense of not physically fitting into the family. Genetics??? I don’t know. I voiced some of this, but said that I remain convinced that despite a predetermined disposition, there were certain triggers that unleashed the “bad” parts of my personality and those triggers had nothing to do with neither her nor my dad. Then I launched into a tirade of what I believe happened to me.

After I was done, she looked sad but asked that I not pull away. That above all else, she and my dad were there to support me. She also invited that if she said anything that was hurtful or inappropriate, that I should say something right then and there. To her point, no one can ever change if the offended party does not let them know in what way they caused harm. Also back to the point of, I can’t expect other people to feel me the same way I feel them.

It was a good conversation. As I slowly peel back my prickly layers of distrust, suspicion and general self-protection, I am finding that I have many, many wonderful people in my life who want to help. I need to let them.

Amazing Grace

In the aftermath of two national tragedies this week, the church service this Sunday focused on Grace. The church choir sang the song Amazing Grace as well.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

I know the song very well. As I sat there, I was transported back to November 27, 2001 in a Catholic church residing in a small town in NW Ohio. Before me is almost every single member of my mom’s family. To my right is a coffin containing the body of my grandmother. It is also my 21st birthday.

I have walled myself off from emotion all morning because I have a job to do; a very important job. One of my grandma’s wishes was that I would sing Amazing Grace at her funeral. She’s asked me to do this since I was a small girl. Of course at the time of such requests, I would laugh and tell her, “Grandma, you’re not going to die anytime soon.” But she did die. She was mortal. My beloved Grandma was gone.

Some history here:
I am the youngest of 14 grandchildren. I am also the only adopted member of the family. I was born on Thanksgiving Day of 1980. My parents learned shortly thereafter that I was going to be theirs. As my cousin put it this past weekend, “When your parents found out they were getting you, all emergency calls were stalled due to the amount of celebratory phone calls going in and out of their house.” I had to laugh at that. Sometimes I have to remind myself how celebrated my existence into the family was at a time that was sorely needed by many people, namely my Grandma. Her husband, my Grandpa, had been recently diagnosed with larynx cancer. It was a very scary time of surgery to remove his voice box, chemo and radiation and worry over how much it had spread. I arrived two days before Christmas in 1980 giving my grandpa something to live for. (Not my words, but theirs.)

Over the years it was somewhat evident that I was their favorite grandchild. It was no one else’s fault but simply a circumstance of timing and need. As I learned to vocalize, talk and sing, my grandpa continued to be in poor health. As early as two and something months, I would get on the phone and sing songs to them that my mom sang to me every night before bed. One song was “Amazing Grace.” I learned much later that my grandparents would be crying on the other end of the line as I sang because of the hope in those lyrics. Much needed hope.

My Grandpa died when I was 8, and over the remaining years of my Grandma’s life, she would request that song from time to time. Every time she would cry and every time she would remind me that I promised I would sing it at her funeral. Including at her 80th birthday.

Back to the Catholic church in a small town in NW Ohio standing there in front of my family. Some of them believing in God, others not so much preferring to see life and their existence on their own terms. My one shot to honor my grandmother. With much trepidation, I began to sing, but getting stronger with each line. I invited everyone to sing with me for the remaining verses. I couldn’t look at anyone because most of them were starting to cry. After the song was done, I calmly got back to the pew and then collapsed in sobs finally allowing hours of pent up emotion fall freely.

In the following weeks, I received many phone calls and notes thanking me for singing that song (and lines of “I had forgotten what a good voice you had!). I mused at the thank yous wondering why so many people had been touched. After all, it is a song that people have heard a million times. I have sung that song so many times that the words can somehow become redundant. For everyone that was sitting there that day, no matter their current situations, mistakes, sorrow, etc… that song is a reminder of universal plight of every human being that grace is available to everyone.

I then thought about my Grandma and the never-failing acceptance of all she encountered. Her house was a safe-haven for those that were outcasts or going through a rough time. No matter your age, she would crack open two beers, one for her, one for you, and say, “So talk.” She reminded our family over and over again that it was our jobs to love and be there for others and not to judge, for who are we to look at another and cast a stone? “Amazing Grace” was the perfect song for her. An example of human love and forgiveness and a woman that always looked towards the heavens to take care of everything else. Amazing Grace indeed.

Virginia Tech Tragedy

I wanted to take a couple of minutes and express my deep sorrow for all of the victims, their family and friends, students and professors at Virginia Tech and all people touched by this tragedy. My prayers go out for you during this time and I hope the country at large unites to support those in need during this time.

Anger Management

I've been dwelling on the subject of anger the past few days. I have an admitted inability to deal well with anger. That applies to anger within me or anger from other people whether directed at me or me getting caught in the cross-fire. With all of my sensitivities and physical reaction to other's emotions, the fact anger completely disturbs me makes sense. It is a very violent emotion to me and I do whatever possible to avoid it.

However, today I am angry. I am angry over the physical problems that have manifested themselves and are making every trip to the doctor a complete chore. EVERY damn time I hear something that's not good.

Let me preface this rant with that I completely understand that I am NOT that bad off. People every second of the day endure suffering that I cannot even begin to comprehend. However, everything in life is relative and if you use what a person should be like in their late 20's vs. where I am at, I am not doing as well as I could. I already knew about the stomach issues, the digestive issues, teeth/gum problems and that my heart is mildly damaged. All things considered, yuck, but livable.

In January I went and had my "yearly" exam. Due to my eating disorder physical issues, my doctor has been scheduling appointments with me every month to check up on me. I thought that going in yesterday was one of those check up visits. I was met with that they needed to do another pap smear. Apparently someone dropped the ball on telling me that I had an "abnormal" reading come back and further tests were required. Hearing that anything is abnormal is bad enough; not being prepared to talk about it going into the appointment was worse. What else came out of this appointment was that there were some "issues" up there as well and my hormones are completely whacked out and "need monitoring."

Again, while I know this isn't the worst thing I could hear, it certainly isn't good. And I won't know for another week if the tests came back positive for a problem. I'm not even going to go into the big "C" word. I've been all over the place emotionally this past week with very little ability to cope with simple things at work. This only served to make it worse.

But getting back to my anger. I am so angry at people in my life for their contributions to my mental state and therefore my physical problems. I shouldn't be having to deal with any of this. I should be thinking about my career, and marriage and children. Not heart, stomach and reproductive problems!!! I don't even know what to do with myself. I know part of forgiving is letting yourself work through all of the emotional issues and scars, but I find it so difficult to a) get upset at others in the first place and b) allow people to take responsibility for their own actions. I take it all on. I have not figured out a way to balance any of this within my head and heart.

Ok, I must get back to trying to focus on work. This week, finding that focus is next to impossible.

PS. My string of not throwing up ended. I did it today. Grrrr... (Trying not to be mad at myself)

Last Time

I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the fact that it has been 4 weeks since I last threw up. Yay!

Sad

Have you ever had something that happened but you don't really want to talk about it... It would just open up such a can of worms...questions...etc... I have that now. Something happened that I am very sad about. Saturday was a bit of an emotional disaster day for me. This weekend has been a lot of strange feelings. Feelings I am having great difficulty processing. Something happened that probably was good in the long term, but upsetting to me nonetheless.

But I did want to answer a couple of questions that have been brought up by a few comments posts. #1 - Under "More Empathy Musings" My Mom is another hypersensitive person, just in different ways than me. The gecko was not mine...just one of the little harmless ones that run rampant in Florida. She lived in Florida for 8 years prior to this stint. She knows they exist in FL. She just gets highly irrational towards the little creature that can't hurt her, but rolls her eyes when I get freaked out by a spider. I suppose it is a simple case of different phobic people not understanding other people's phobias. I guess this is just complicated because she knows how sensitive I am and how I have very little ability to deal with people yelling...especially for what I consider no good reason. Whatever though. It is my mom. She is a very delicate person in many respects.

Sociopaths...I read a statistic somewhere that 1 in every 20 or so people actually has sociopathic tendencies. That is, deficiencies in their emotional spectrum. I worked for a woman that I sincerely believe was a sociopath. A high functioning and adaptable one, but a sociopath nonetheless. She did not have "normal" reactions to anything. She would express verbal sympathy, whip up the proper facial cues, but I would feel NOTHING off of her. In private she would say AWFUL things. She had two children: one in college and one in high school. My boss would come to work complaining about her overly sensitive children. She was also just subtly cruel to them. E.g. Her daughter got a hampster. My boss hated that "f-cking, disgusting hampster." Instead of dealing with it like any other mother, she waited until her daughter left for camp and "got rid of it." She came to work absolutely gleeful about it. Then a week later when her daughter came home, she came to work saying that she told her daughter the hampster had escaped and she had looked all over for it. None of us could believe she would do something like that. That's just one example of how SICK she was. She was only happy when she was screwing someone over somehow. So yes, she was someone that definitely PLAYED people.

And just to clarify, I do not LIKE being around sociopaths...especially when I encounter them in my everyday life. It creeps me out for hours afterward when I feel nothing off of someone I have been in contact with. It is fascinating in the fact it is completely opposite of me. I cannot even comprehend what it would be like to exist without real feelings. That everything is manufactured based on the moment and giving people what you think they want to hear, see, etc...

Last comment of the night involving telepathy. Said person that "pings" me simply sends a message saying something very simple. At one point, I felt that she had just sent me an email. The message I got was "Sent email. Not bad. Please check." I looked down and my email alert noted that I had a new message. Without opening it, I knew who it was from and that it was ok to open it (as opposed to other awful emails I had received) because it wasn't negative. It was a letter of concern about someone. I just wonder that the few times she "pinged" me opened up some sort of emotional connection that I can't close. I hesitate to contact her to ask/talk to her about this.

Oh yeah, one other thing... Today was Easter Sunday. I walked into church this morning and immediately felt people in pain. I looked around wondering who it was. It was so apparent to me because Easter is supposed to be a day of joy in a church. But yet, a cloud of sadness and concern hit me. During the opening songs, I noticed one of the pastors off to the side on a cell phone. After the song was over, she began the prayers but wanted to first give an update on a parishioner that was in the hospital having brain surgery. This was the 2nd and it wasn't going well. There were several people very upset about this. Incidents like this are what illustrate what I now know to be something in me that makes me VERY hypersensitive to people and what's going on within them.

I am trying to accept this now and figure out how to put it to good use instead of being overwhelmed by it. I think the most important thing I have learned is that this is unique and that just because I don't have to have people tell me how they are feeling, that ability is rarely reciprocated. Other people cannot read me and therefore I have to tell people that I am happy, sad, depressed, etc... instead of assuming they know which I admittedly did for a LONG time.

Telepathy?

I've had another occurrence of what can only be described as either telepathy or remote empathy. I don't know enough about either, but here is the deal. A person in my life with whom I have had unfortunate negative dealings with over the past year (mostly my fault) is also someone who has hypersensitivity and extreme empathy. She can actually go further than I can with some things just as I have some different abilities than her, but it all is rooted in this hypersensitivity to others. She can mentally "ping" people and also receive pings back. There were several times last year where I felt her "send" me messages...usually angry ones, but one time it was a concerned message. The first couple times it happened, I thought I was going crazy! The next couple of times I felt it, I just responded by checking my email or whatever it told me to do.

I hypothesize that when she did that, she opened up some sort of connection that has not been shut down because I can, on occasion, feel something from her states away. I think it has to be very strong though. I typically only get anger, frustration or sadness from her.

Today, around two hours ago, I started thinking about her. I thought she was sad over something. I almost sent something to a friend to ask if she had sent anything but didn't. Then I got a message saying a friend of hers had died and she was feeling terrible about it...and she had sent the message about the time I was thinking about her.

Why is this happening??? It is not something that is very welcome due to our relationship. I don't know if she even knows the connection or if she knows she is sending anything to me. But admittedly, it fascinates me. I'm going to start logging when I pick up on something to see if I can match it against anything.

Any thoughts on this? New territory for me.

More Empathy Musings

I modified an email I just sent to the person that I am discussing in this blog:

I was doing searches on posts about highly sensitive or empathetic people and one link led me to a post a professor did about young women being fascinated with sociopaths/serial killers. I have been researching my ability to feel other people's emotions. Specifically I was interested in the following:

The young women who become intensely intrigued by them are often overwhelmed by chronic feelings of guilt and a painfully acute sensitivity to other's perceptions. They are often emotionally drained and exhausted, because within their families they've frequently been the ones to shoulder all of the responsibility and do all of the "feeling work" for everyone else.

I often think of emotional sensitivity as a spectrum from 0-10, similar to the volume controls for a radio. Most "normal" folks are tuned into the needs of others at about 4 or 5 on the spectrum. They are aware of the needs of those around them, but aren't overwhelmed by them. The Michelles of the world hear the world's emotional noise at an 8 or 9 on the spectrum. The needs and demands of others are so clear and loud that these young women often can't hear themselves think. They are actually incapacitated from the effort of absorbing so much emotion, and frequently they feel immensely guilty for not meeting the insatiable demands of those around them. Is it any wonder that they become fascinated with -- and even, in some sense, envious of -- sociopaths? What else is a sociopath than someone whose "volume control" for the needs of others has been set to mute? How many bright, talented, acutely sensitive young women have fantasized about having an internal "mute button" that could silence the judging, nagging, needy voices of all of those around them?

I grew up always being able to feel other people. While not necessarily fitting the HSP standard of being overly sensitive to all-stimuli, I am always acutely aware of everyone's feelings...especially if they are negative. It bombards me constantly at work, at home, out in social settings. At times, I can even pick up on thoughts although the person has to be dwelling intensely on the subject. People never have to tell me what they are feeling...I already know. I grew up not knowing other people couldn't do this. I was often called "very intuitive" and many people would say, "You're so insightful. How do you know all of that?" Often in arguments with people, I will hear, "You have to tell me what you are feeling. I’m not a mind-reader." That, up until very recently, would confuse me. Why do I need to tell people what I am feeling? Isn't it obvious? Apparently not. Most others, I hypothesize, do not feel other people like I do.
And yes, I feel very guilty. I was just having a discussion with a friend yesterday about the fact that I avoid difficult conversations or situations in which I can feel harm or hurt that I have caused to someone else. I make mistakes all of the time and yes I have hurt people. But I literally get to FEEL to a high degree what something I do does to someone else. Most people have the luxury that when they hurt someone else's feelings, they know it. There are visual clues, the relationship might be damaged...but I experience the entire ordeal as if I were the person. It is maddening. I obsess over trying to be perfect around people because I can't stand to deal with disappointing anyone.

Two examples: I was flying on a plane recently. As soon as I got to my seat, there was a woman sitting in the aisle seat of my row. As I was putting my bags in the overhead bin, I knew she wanted to talk to me and was hoping I would be someone that would engage her in conversation. Ok, now I have a choice. I can put on my headphones and try and drown out her neediness, or I can respond to it I chose to respond. As I already knew she would, she basically told me her entire life story. In the end I was glad I talked to her, but it is very difficult to drown out other's feelings.

My other example is hurting other people with the same abilities, or even variations of the abilities, as I have. That is a horrible and magnified experience. The person I happened to cross is less emotionally empathetic, but can telepathically send messages. I was sitting at work one day and I literally felt something punch my brain. She sent a very simple message, "F-You." I do not know if I can send anything back, but I sure got hers. That connected our minds in ways that I have not been able to sever since that. I pick up on her remotely sometimes. Its aggravating.

And as for sociopaths, I am fascinated with them for a simple reason. When I come into contact with one...and I'm not even talking about someone that would kill someone...but let's just say someone that has deficiencies in the emotional arena compared to a "normal person," I can feel that. There is "empty space." Most people transmit a lot of energy to me, positive and negative. Sociopaths transmit very little. Frankly, it freaks me out.

I ended the email with this person telling him a little bit more about me and if he ever wanted to hypothesize something and get some input, I would be happy to.

On a different note, my mom blew up at me over a freaking gecko that got into her house. She blamed it on me and flew off the handle because she has an extreme phobia towards reptiles of any sort. I was toast the rest of the day. Now that I’ve taken down many of my protective shields I had in place for years, I just can’t cope the way I used to when negativity came directly at me. I just can’t. I’ve somehow got to figure out a way to balance this out. Help?