The Middle Kath

I learned the hard way that healing work and energy treatment can sometimes trigger a healing crisis of the body, temporarily. In April, I attended a healing retreat, which was, without question, the most valuable retreat of my life. The focus of it was “remembering who you are” through transformative breathwork and yoga.

At the retreat, it began with a bacterial finger infection - cellulitis. A few days into dealing with the infection, I got the flu for the first time in well over 5 years. And then, the seemingly impossible happened. After 20 years in a monogamous relationship, I suddenly found myself with my first outbreak of what multiple medical professionals suspected was genital herpes - for weeks. It turned out to be “just” inflammation, but in the period of time when I fully believed it was herpes, I found myself in shock, and launched into the stages of grief. Importantly, instead of greater shame, this experience actually resulted in an upleveling of self love and inner strength.

This was my first experience of a healing crisis like this, and I believe it is evidence of the profound impact the retreat had on deprogramming my limiting beliefs, stories of unworthiness, and intergenerational sexual shame. In remembering who I am, I detoxified my body, mind, and spirit.

Notes:

Video:

Jelly Roll gives powerful testimony to Congress on fentanyl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MTQ-bXbpY

Articles:

Healing Crisis After an Energy Treatment

https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/articles/2018/08/29/a-healing-crisis-after-an-energy-treatment

Sin, Sex and the Inner Tyrant

https://ajahnsucitto.org/reflections/sin-sex-and-the-inner-tyrant/

Root Chakra Healing: The Science, Traditions, and Techniques

https://www.healthline.com/health/mind-body/root-chakra-healing

Affirmation Card deck: I Am Everything, by Tarisha Clark:

https://www.uncommongoods.com/product/i-am-everything-affirmation-card-deck

Songs:

Self-Differentiation Playlist Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/740DwOfHTeQnE7wz5BeWfw?si=e3IF1XmdQl6IBmSEgH654g&pi=u-ePm_JXzOSx6P

Self-Differentiation Playlist YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2ofevW3zoBVZj_UXQ878Y-NOXjPB-kE_&feature=shared

Shamanic breathwork is the biggest bang-for-buck healing modality I’ve tried, in terms of both money and time invested. In this episode, I share what I gained in each of my five shamanic breathwork journeys from 2019 to the present:

Journey 1: Massive rage release

Journey 2: Reunification with inner child

Journey 3: Vision of leadership that came true

Journey 4: Strength and truth

Journey 5: Letting go

Other topics featured in this episode: cord cutting energy work, improv comedy for healing, the link between autoimmune disorders and self hatred, overcoming suicidal ideation, and coregulation between parents and children.

References:

Books:

Sarah Wilson: First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety

Dr Ramani Durvasula, PhD: It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People

James Nestor: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

Articles:

Some Harsh Advice for People Who Hate Themselves | Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meaning-lost-and-found/202302/some-harsh-advice-for-people-who-hate-themselves

On Autoimmune Disease and Self-Hatred - part I | Return to Source Wellbeing - Kinesiology & Intuitive Healing | Sunshine Coast, QLD https://www.returntosourcewellbeing.com/autoimmune-disease-self-hatred-part/

Could female self-hatred be the real cause of autoimmune disease? - Sarah Wilson https://sarahwilson.com/2014/11/could-female-self-hatred-be-the-real-cause-of-autoimmune-disease/

Podcasts:

Adult Child Podcast, featuring the song Let It All Go https://open.spotify.com/show/4T65uJfo4skTLkpcHYyw9k?si=XkVFWYV3Qg6l3BilsaTy8w

In this episode, I ring in the new year by sharing some of the results I’ve realized through healing work since my breakdown/breakthrough five years ago. I hope that sharing these 11 wins will make the healing modalities episodes to follow more relevant, applicable, and realistic for you in your healing journey.

11 Healing Wins:

1. Awakening to the reality of narcissistic abuse trauma

2. Unlocking self worth through nutrition

3. Recovering from sugar addiction

4. Quitting all prescription medication

5. Increasing mental strength through physical strength

6. Overcoming fear of confrontation

7. Moving on from obsession

8. Stopping “bad mom” suicidal ideation

9. Shedding the Golden Child role

10. Shedding the Identified Patient role

11. Launching The Middle Kath podcast

References:

Butternut squash and chickpea curry recipe: https://www.keepingthepeas.com/butternut-squash-chickpea-curry/

What is the healthiest diet? - Dr. Michael Greger: https://nutritionfacts.org/

“Sugar is not a treat” TED talk - Dr. Jody Stanislaw: https://youtu.be/tic7X3ET4gE?si=oN396ulLmXVSTxat

“Are they REALLY a Narcissist? NPD vs CPTSD & Childhood Trauma” - Patrick Teahan, LICSW: https://youtu.be/mAFyxGsnqKc?si=YxU8QyfvAlLnvGi1

One of the most memorable stories in the book, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, is called “The Bed by the Window.” A jealous man destroys another only to find he did it for nothing. Instant karma.

In my experience, this story touches on what it’s like to be pedestalized as a Golden Child, which attracts intense jealousy. Jealousy is central to narcissistic family dynamics, and I have found that compliments from the self absorbed are often just an expression of jealousy. Jealousy is both a compliment and high praise from them, because they’d like to believe everyone is jealous of them, too.

Surprisingly, the Golden Child, like the Scapegoat, is also actually unseen, unknown, and unloved for who they are. Self love doesn’t come from external approval and praise, it comes from within. It’s not earned, and it actually can’t be lost.

Self love, while at times can feel elusive, is, even then, unconditional. I believe self love and the survival instinct are linked. Part of us never disconnects from love, no matter how self hating, worthless, and suicidal we might feel. Every person is a mosaic, and I do believe everyone contributes something from this part of their highest self, their soul, or their light.

My younger self from 2019 was so destroyed by low self worth that she would be astonished to hear that I now believe that self love, while at times can feel elusive, is unconditional. I also believe self love and the survival instinct are linked. Part of us never disconnects from love, no matter how self hating, worthless, and suicidal we might feel. We might feel disconnected from it, but I believe there’s a connection between love and our highest self.

Whatever someone’s accomplishments, accolades, degrees, power, fame, fortune, humanitarianism, religiosity, talent, brilliance, influence, whatever: no one belongs on a pedestal. Pedestaling is the opposite of an honor, and it hurts all parties. Circularly, we maintain our pedestals to validate our fantasy of reality. The pedestalized aren’t allowed to be real, we don’t want real, we want the pedestal.

Pedestals are harmful for everyone involved: both the idealized one required to live up to the fantasies of the admirer, and the admirer who believes the illusion of their inferiority. Freedom from both sides of the pedestal comes with seeing truth and speaking truth. Joining a narcissist in reinforcing their pedestal fantasy only enables them in their esteem addiction. Forcing someone else onto a pedestal against their will, such as a Golden Child, destroys their self worth because they are made to live up to an impossible fantasy. It is a gilded cage to be venerated for your mask, the fantasy of who you are, and not the whole you - only the parts that validate the propaganda about you. The path to freedom from the prison of one’s own pedestal is not self destruction. It is to accept imperfection, self differentiate, speak truth, and become real.

This episode on healing the extreme behavior of avoiding confrontation underwent a full rewrite and re-recording. In fact, the Scapegoat episode emerged while writing this episode on confrontation, and may be worth hearing before this one, if you haven’t already. The first version of this episode was so angry that the middle path was not in sight. While anger is certainly justified, it can turn off perspective, narrowing focus and seeing things more in black and white, rather than the complex full color mosaic of multiple truths. The point of the mosaic is clarity, and seeing as much of the whole truth as possible.

Rather than succumbing to my inner volcano of rage, I want to demonstrate how I grapple with overwhelming anger by actively increasing self worth, self love, and inner strength to protect myself, so that maybe you can better protect yourself too. I want to approach conflict with centeredness, like a Jedi, powerfully protecting my boundaries without the extremes of either total submission or getting dragged into the muck of a fight with a bully. It’s deflecting incoming attacks from the mindset of tai chi, not engaging in MMA combat with an aggressor.

Many of us avoid confrontation as if it were life-threatening, because the risk of it going badly, and resulting in us getting kicked out of our tribe, feels terrifying. But what I have learned is: healthy confrontation is love. It is loving to put in the effort to set boundaries with someone who has none. They can’t do it, so we have to, like a good parent, or both we and them suffer. It is also loving to apologize and repair. Now that I’ve finally had this realization about confrontation, and knowing it’s truly unavoidable in my quest to increase my self worth, I welcome it. I look forward to my next opportunity to do it. With practice, I get better and better at confronting calmly from an observer perspective, instead of feeling victimized by perpetrators or frozen by shame about my own mistakes.

There’s a truism that is sometimes used to let people off the hook: hurt people hurt people. Of course it’s not okay to abuse someone the way you were abused yourself. But with no healing work, how is the cycle supposed to stop? All we know for sure is: abusers are traumatized too, and need help just like the rest of us who are traumatized. As Gabor Mate says, “trauma isn’t what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” Something happened that resulted in their compulsive pursuit of women to bully and dominate without their consent. Sexual harassers are made, not born. The perpetrators were victims, and victims often become the perpetrators.

Scapegoating is a short term solution to a much bigger long term problem: narcissism in society and narcissism in ourselves as individuals.

Scapegoats serve the purpose of drawing attention away from the real problem: us. In a dysfunctional family, the scapegoat draws attention away from the elephant in the room, such as an abusive parent. A narcissistic parent puts everything they dislike about themselves, their shortcomings and shame, on the scapegoat. And more often than not, the rest of the family either enables or supplies that parent, whether they’re aware of it or not. Narcissistic abusers need a scapegoat to blame, because nothing can ever be their fault.

The scapegoat is in us, and we are in them. We have a lot more in common than we’d like to admit, as profoundly uncomfortable as that is to face. Scapegoats are made, not born. They are the symptom, not the root problem, and scapegoating villains makes all of us sicker, more vulnerable, more divided, and in the extreme of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of destroying or trying to fix them, let’s first try healing the elephant in the room: ourselves.

Did you or anyone you know play a childhood role like the Golden Child, the Scapegoat, or the Lost Child? Well, I have learned none of these roles have anything to do with who we really are underneath that trauma. Awakening to the reality of these roles, and healing from them, brings unique challenges for each.

I believe the solution to the illusion of the trauma roles lies in seeking the mix of healing modalities that work to reparent oneself and save one’s inner child. When it finally hurts badly enough to do something about it, when life has become unmanageable, the choice becomes to heal or die. Hopefully, we can act before it gets to that extreme. Staying in the dysfunctional family trauma roles, instead of discovering our true selves, keeps us in the illusion that the roles are us. But the roles are not Real.

This episode ends with a reading of The Velveteen Rabbit: Or How Toys Become Real, by Margery Williams, in its entirety. I believe revisiting these stories can be helpful in the process of reparenting yourself and nurturing and empowering your inner child. It says the audience is ages 4 to 8, and 2022 marked the 100th anniversary of its publishing.

It is healing from extremes and finding the middle path that will lead me to the Real me, in my opinion. How are you finding the Real you?

I have tried many healing modalities, and therapy is one that has made a massive difference in my life. As Trevor Hall sings in his song, “You Can’t Rush Your Healing,” healing takes time. There’s no silver bullet for trauma recovery. It’s hard to know how the healing modalities I’ve tried interacted with each other along the way in the complex experiment that is my life. I am reporting on them individually, offering my take on how each helped me. Maybe by sharing the specifics of what worked for me, someone who hears this podcast, maybe you, might try something new that really helps.

It was my therapist who gave me the concept of “mosaic thinking,” shifting black-and-white, good-and-evil thinking not to some kind of gray confusion but to a clear and vibrant mosaic of multiple truths, multiple realities, many facets. Every person is a mosaic, with distinctly different parts, both “good” and “bad.” No one is all hero or all villain. Healing my all-or-nothing thinking is a big part of healing from extremes. I have my therapist to thank for helping me to see the world, and everyone in it, as far more complex, beautiful, and valuable than I ever knew - myself included.

Throughout my life, I have found myself easily obsessed with new ideas, music, work, self-absorbed people, and more. One thing that’s important to mention about why I have so much energy to obsess about something or someone comes from, I believe, a total lack of interest in me. I didn’t want to feed me, clothe me or take care of me in any way. By adulthood, I did those things at a minimum level, to pass as normal, masking and joining were what I knew better than my own interests, and better than I knew myself.

Obsessiveness was both an escape from myself and a route to safety in some ways. I couldn’t defend myself, so how could I anticipate the next moves of bullies like my mom? By focusing excessively on them. I was a highly sensitive person raised in an invalidating environment, which resulted in deep mistrust of self, the feeling of having to fight to be ok, and deep shame.

In my experience, obsessiveness, perfectionism, and low self worth go hand in hand. I certainly tried to protect myself from punishment and shame by getting everything perfect. I was motivated solely by praise for gold stars, so being perfect was just the minimum. I had to be exceptional on top of that to get more praise. There was safety from criticism in perfection, it seemed. But really, there is no safety from criticism with critical people. They will always find something. The real safety is in elevating your self worth to the point that you don’t care what petty, critical people think. But in the absence of self worth, perfectionism is a form of protection. As is obsessing about what the bullies in my life were going to do or say, and how I could get ahead of them.