Last night I felt more scared and emotional than I have felt in probably my entire life. (No, I didn't watch CNN for 4 hours in a row, haha)
I am finally FEELING my feelings instead of analyzing/intellectualizing them or thinking about them.
It is such a different experience to actually FEEL things from the heart than "understand them" from the brain.
It is like my body has come online again, like being a dusty modem after being unplugged for many years...
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Since learning about CPTSD and the fact that emotional neglect does count as trauma and abuse, I am now, for the first time, allowing myself to mourn the fact that I never really felt like a child and never felt safe.
I have always been worried since the day I was born that I was unsafe. Literally, the day I was born, my mother had to have a Caserian because I had birth complications and then when I was born, she got into a fight with a nurse because the nurse had disconnected the feeding tube of the woman in the next bed over, and when my mom spoke up to the nurse that the woman looked ill, my mom then became paranoid that this nurse would do something evil like disconnect my mother's tubes. My mom left the hospital early and took a cab home because she thought the nurse might kill her for speaking up.
When my mom got home, my dad had left the house a mess because of his alcoholism and there was apparently garbage and bottles everywhere so my mom left and went up to Westchester to my grandmother's house for the first few days of my life. This is also the house where my Uncle lives. That same Uncle from the video...
In other words, I think it is 'safe to say' that I was born into an unsafe energy and environment, which I am sure I felt on an instinctual level.
As I mentioned, in my first Ayuhasca journey this past November, I was shown myself the day I was born, in the hospital, looking for someone to make eye contact with and nobody was there. I felt the depths of my loneliness and it was that moment I took on the belief that I was all alone in this world and had to do everything by myself to survive.
In this same ayuhuasca journey, I saw myself as a young child looking at my mother and her not making eye contact with me. I saw her closing the door to her bedroom, which was a very tall narrow door, and standing at the end of the hallway feeling like I couldn't bother her.
I always felt like I had no connection to anyone else and was so utterly alone in this world.
It was through Ayuhuasca that I began to feel the depths of my loneliness for the first time.
Thank God I figured all this before pursuing a solitary life in a camper van or cabin! Or even going on stage to do comedy again!!! I needed to learn all this!!!!!!
I learned yesterday from my therapist in our breathwork session that when a child is born, they NEED a secure mother (a mother who feels calm and grounded) to feel a sense of security. She explained that a mother needs to have a developed prefrontal cortex to wrap around the child's amygdala, which is the fight-or-flight-hypervigilance center. I absolutely did not have this environment and this feeling went on my whole life up until this point at 37.
I always thought it was normal to be afraid and worried at all times - as if that was just a part of life. My fears were so ingrained into my way of being that I just accepted it as "normal" that I should be on alert.
It didn't help that I was raised in Manhattan and grew up in a building until I was 6 with drug dealers in the lobby who would do deals at all hours of the night.
I remember once being stuck in the elevator in that building for an hour with the elevator man and it felt like it would never end. It was the worst feeling to feel so trapped and helpless, in a dark metal box in between floors.
I brought this moment up to my mom this week for the first time and she said "There is no way you were in the elevator alone with that man" but I know that I was. Or at least felt alone.
Clearly, if somehow my mother or father were with me (which I know they weren't), nobody was there to comfort me and tell me that "I would one day get out of the elevator" because it felt like it was never going to end.
I carried a lifelong fear of elevators and literally often times walked up to the 10th floor of my first job at a production company so as to avoid the possibility of getting stuck like I did as a child. I just assumed this was normal to feel this way.
What was extremely healing was befriending the elevator man in this building named Jack and him helping me to feel safe in the elevator for the first time.
I will always remember Jack as one of the most magical imaginative kind men I have ever met. I actually wrote him into my movie Loners Together but when I asked him if he would play himself, he got bashful - but he is such a natural star.
Here are some videos we made when I was 21-22 in my first job.
<below are some videos; you might have to use your computer instead of your phone to view them - if they show up on your phone, disregard this technical PSA>
Also, here is my big "editing" debut below... DO YOU WANT TO HIRE ME?
I have always been connected to people who are unseen/unheard by society, because I have felt unheard by my parents/society.
I have always been connected to people who escape reality by personifying animals and toys, which is how I coped, and clearly how Jack the Elevator and The Cat Man are getting by as well.
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