The next stage of healing for me is the continuous patterned, repetitive situations and interactions that are different to what I experienced growing up as a child. These are helpful in discarding self destructive realities my brain stored away in its earliest, emotional memory templates. Positive, supportive experiences began soon after I arrived in America 24 years ago. This is not to say they did not happen throughout my young adult life. Indeed, slowly and subtly, people have always had an impact on the way I feel about myself ever since I can remember. However, it all became more vibrant, urgent, and frequent soon after I gave myself a second chance, and consciously made the choice to better my life.
I am not sure if it was my anonymity, or perhaps my British colonial accent that made people support, acknowledge and encourage me since I arrived in the United States. Or maybe they genuinely liked me. This is a concept I am starting to enjoy believing only very recently. I am not sure about the whys or wherefores, but I do know that continuous positive experiences throughout the past twenty four years have had an effect on drowning out the negative messages in my brain, bit by bit, and healing me deeply as I begin to believe a different reality about my Self. With each constructive, positive interaction or situation, I relearn and re-experience who I am. Since I came here, the warm reception of my work and what I have to offer, has spurred me on, and inspired me to achievements I did not know I was capable of before.
Bruce Perry talks about patterned, repetitive experiences of nurturing, and compassionate caring of children as especially critical for attachment and the development of early memory templates in the brain. Each time I hear him speak about this (and I have heard him many times), I am struck by how he says it. As he speaks, his body sways back and forth as if rocking an infant in his arms, while one hand seems to be patting and stroking her gently with a rhythmic motion like the heart beat the baby has heard repetitively in her mother's womb. It is a mesmerizing and powerful demonstration of what young children need for their brain development.
Lately, I imagine patterned, repetitive experiences nurturing me with compassionate caring, swayed with a rhythmic motion as if from the heart beat of the center of earth's core, or the waving back and forth of the tops of trees blown by a gentle, comforting breeze. This enables me to allow myself to become more trusting than before, when I used to feel victimized, marginalized, and a sense of low self worth. Healing in this way supports me in making a conscious choice to open my heart and let others in.
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