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Giving Up Worry: Challenging the Wounded Self

By Rythea Lee Worry is so insidious; it gets under your skin. It's compelling and often supported by the culture. Aren't you worried about the election? Aren't the gas prices scary? Doesn't getting older make you worry about your health? Don't you worry about your children and their future? And on and on...it's such a way to bond with people! In terms of Inner Bonding, worry is just a way of indulging the Wounded Self. Worry thoughts create fear and fear is a product of false beliefs (lies we tell ourselves). The lie often is: If I worry about this or that, I have control over it. Ha! Isn't that the biggest lie? Don't we know tons of people (often our parents) who worried all their lives about things they could not control? Or if they thought they were controlling things like their weight, their budgets, their spouse, you, they did it with a sense of panic, fear, and stress. Who wants to live that way?            Here's the rub, the only way to stop the worry addiction is to seriously pay attention to your thoughts. Worry can be happening constantly and if you are not ��                                                                                             used to noticing it, it can stay just below the conscious mind. However, whether you are just agitated or fully stressed, you probably have some kind of worry running through your mind.  You have to catch the pattern before you can change it. So make a decision to notice your worry thoughts all day long, then notice it without judgment. Say," oh there is a worry thought, and another." You can write them down and see quite a list. You may realize that you worry constantly.            Once you see the pattern, you may want to dialogue with your Inner Worrier and find out what he or she is trying to control. Getting rejected? Losing your job? Ending up on the streets? Losing your partner? Ending up alone? Find out what the core fear is and ask Guidance if this is something that worry can control. If not, then it's time to talk to and hold your Inner Worrier. You might want to say "honey, I know that your job has been to keep us safe by keeping an eye on all the things that could go wrong. You have done an awesome job but you know what? Your job is over now. You don't have to keep your eye on all these things in my adult life. After all, you are only 6 years old! You need a break. I will hold you and show you how I can handle the adult things in my life."  The next step is to not allow the worry to take hold throughout the day. Whenever it comes up, you think or say, "no, we are not running worry little one" and literally stop the thought and hold the child. Bring in Guidance and ask Guidance to stay close and help you be in the present moment. Be willing to let the worry go.            This is a major Inner Bonding practice. It takes time and it takes a loving attitude. Addictions do not change over night and worry can be a big one. The thing is, worry is not loving and it doesn't help. It does not make you more focused, competent, effective, clear, or expressive. Quite the opposite. Worry creates pain, constriction, body tension, and most important, a closed heart. I encourage you to take the Inner Bonding Worry Free Plunge and make room for something far better...Faith!

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The remarkable thing about the making of my show for me was that there was always a flow. I would get an idea for each episode and all the details would fall into place. In Episode 7, I knew I needed a new born baby and my friends with a new baby said “Sure, you can use my baby for this.” I was so happy they would allow this and even let me post it online. What a coo! The baby was super mellow while I filmed. He made all these cute faces and sounds and looked right into the camera. I was delighted that he was modeling exactly what I was talking about, innate cuteness! I was explaining that we are ALL born this cute, this lovable, this worthy of care. I was pretty sure that the baby was proving everything I was saying to be true just by hanging out in my arms. Then, for this episode, I posted a skit about the Inner Child I had filmed a year or so earlier with my collaborator Rose Oceania. It was a news program on the where-abouts of the Inner Child. I describe the Inner Child (IC) as located in our bodies, the same as our vital organs. I talk about how, just like our organs, we need to attend to our IC in order to stay in good health. While I give reports on the IC, Rose crawls all over me just like an Inner Child. I always love to bring my performance art into the episodes if possible. So it’s performance art within performance art. My favorite. The message that loving ourselves for no other reason than because we exist is essential in the self-loving piece of our learning. We need to be able to be enough just as we are, in order to love ourselves. We need to be able to take care of ourselves without conditions, judgments, and demands.  Our essence will always be shining through, no matter the ups and downs of our worldly achievements. Being in touch with our essential nature will help us find a way into self-love, a way into seeing ourselves for who we truly are.

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This episode was a total blast. I’ve never gone onto the streets of anywhere and tried to interview people. I was so nervous! I thought people would totally reject our advances with our fake microphone and real life camera but in fact, people were totally up for it.  The questions we asked about people’s Inner Child were embraced and folks thought good and hard about their answers. Every single person we asked said they did, in fact, have an Inner Child and that was a shock. I thought people were going to say “I don’t relate to that question” but no one did. Was it because Northampton was and is a mostly white privileged progressive town and the Inner Child is a privileged New Age concept? I couldn’t help but wonder. I had to be honest that in entering my own town, I was not getting a good sample. Since filming this show, I have learned much more about racism and classism and I now wish I had gone to a diverse city or town. I have regrets and that is one of them. In my enthusiasm, I picked what was easy for me and that was to go to the town I lived in.  As the show progressed through the months, I learned more about how to push my own edges, get uncomfortable, and reach outside my own race, class blinders. The valuable part of this episode was witnessing people being vulnerable while being put on the spot. I saw the child in each person I interviewed and that was heartening. I saw that there is a joy that emanates from people that is innocent and eager. The street performer we interviewed shared an incredible song that captured the connection between the Inner Child and creativity. I also loved the last person I interviewed who ended up dancing on the street, acting out her Inner Child’s movement. So refreshing and real. Tanya Rubins was such an all-in co-pilot for this episode. She made me laugh with her sincerity and went after people on the streets with total gusto. Sharing the load made it much more fun. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

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Abandonment and Engulfment

By Rythea Lee (TW: Sexual Abuse) I have loads of experience feeling abandonment trauma. The terror of being left is fresh and available pretty much anytime. Rejection fits in there nicely with the hypervigilance needed to ensure that I won’t be left. Did she just roll her eyes? Did he turn away because of what I said? Is she not calling me back because she thinks I’m too needy? Did people think what i just said was stupid? Etc, etc. Reading a room, overthinking a phone message, taking people’s facial expressions personally. Like that. Been there, done that, like yesterday. And today. But let’s discuss engulfment. That’s a different animal yet the other side of abandonment. Engulfment: the fear of being consumed, taken, and taken over. Violation. Annihilation. Losing ones self. Being forced to lose ones self. Being forced to care for another’s needs at the expense of total loss of self. The absolute need to kill one’s self off to survive by attending to another. Hell. I tell you right now, I would rather feel abandoned all day long from now until forever than feel engulfed. Rather choose the stereotypical unavailable partner all day long than feel taken over. The actual feelings of being engulfed are unbearable and so, I’d rather feel unworthy and unloved any day of the week, including today. Today, I was talking to a man who talked incessantly about himself and his love life, in detail. He was one of those talkers who goes off on long tangents and when I got lost, I would try to flag him and say something like “how did that relate to Arizona?” until finally, he stopped and said, “can you please stop interrupting me?” About an hour into this, I realized I had to just stand up and walk away since I had already tried numerous times to say “I have to go.” So finally, I stood up and said, “I have to go” while I walked out. I know, I know, an hour was way too long. I’m ashamed to say I was pinned there. Pinned there. This is interesting that I would use that word. Pinned. A childhood experience of literally being pinned down by my Father’s body. Literally pinned to the bed. Pinned, out of breath. Out of time, out of ideas, out of my childhood, out of control, most important, out. Outer space. When someone treats me as if I am not really there, that’s a trigger. Takes over. That’s a trigger. Lack of empathy, that’s a trigger. Can seem both nice and enraged, that’s a trigger. Manipulates unconsciously, that’s a trigger. Smother, that’s a trigger.

So, therefore, in fact, I surround myself (most of the time) with folks who are empathetic, spacious, considerate, sensitive, caring, and usually traumatized.  Friends who barely made it out alive, that really works for me.

But life doesn’t allow for the picking and the choosing from total maturity. I don’t pick and choose with perfect aim. I replay my traumas unconsciously just like anyone else. Life is full of narcissistic players and sometimes, I’m pinned.

But tonight, I recognize that I will never be pinned as a child again in that way. With that Father, With that tiny body. With those lack of choices. With that level of slavery. I will never be pinned to the point where my mind can’t understand because it hasn’t developed yet. Now, I will make sense of it, even if it takes a few hours, days, weeks, years. I do understand what is going on. I will understand.

I can’t be taken over, that’s where this is leading. My Father tortured me and forced me to believe I caused it. His body aimed to fully replace mine, on every level, but even then, I did not lose myself.

I thought I did. It seemed like I did. I really got lost out there. In outer space. For a long time. A lifetime?

I don’t seem to have forgotten that beautiful girl under the body of a man who couldn’t see me. I didn’t leave her alone, in the end. Cause here she is. My girl. Feeling all engulfed. Feeling all terrified that I can’t find my feet, my planted adult feet, on this strong, strong Earth.

If I didn’t lose her back then, I sure as hell can’t lose her now The one who left the planet and came back to tell. The one who sacrificed herself to survive.

Engulfment isn’t possible anymore because no one can take me, as hard as they try.

No one can take me ever again.

No one can take over and take me from myself.

I can’t be taken.

I can’t be lost.

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Episode 5 felt life-changing for me. I had never acted out my Self-Hating Voice and my Loving Adult parts with such clarity, even though I had been journaling about them and doing therapy on them for years. Something about acting it out in 3-D characters brought fresh understanding. I saw I had the strength to retire the Self-Hating Voice. I had enough empathy inside of me to understand that voice and give it respect and reverence. I finally grasped that unbearable pain the Self-Hating Voice was shielding me from, how hard it had worked all my life to keep me alive. I saw it’s terror, it’s trauma,  it’s horror. I wanted to help it, finally, relax. My Self-Hating Voice put up a really good fight on screen. It did not want to step down. It wasn’t willing to give up the reigns and was not convinced that my Loving Adult was strong enough for the job. Tears were shed. I felt terror and rage during filming. I saw the internal fight for what it was, a strategy that had saved my life. I felt such sadness for how hard I had been working to be ok all my life.  It was a pivot point. The thing about this series for me was that I was living the series as I made it. I had done all the groundwork in terms of feeling and healing my deepest issues for 20 years, but now, I was modeling it with total commitment. I was letting my audience into a private process. The risky business of being seen in that way, allowing my vulnerability to be witnessed, was supremely powerful. I learned as I filmed. I changed as I embodied what I was teaching.  Most importantly, I proved to myself that the process could work, was working, had done its work on me.

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“Empty Little Pockets”, a song featuring me & my six year old daughter that highlights the innocence and joy of a safe childhood, and promotes the ending of generational trauma and the cycle of abuse.

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Episode 4 was exciting for a few reasons. Firstly, I shot the episode in my bathroom and went into a super charged creative state while filming. I reviewed the skills we had learned in Episodes 1-3 (using little wooden dolls) to make sure we were all up to speed.  I was blown away at this point to discover that people on the web were actually engaging in my show, doing the assignments, and writing me emails about huge insights based on the teachings so far. A few fans had actually hated themselves on film and sent it to me. So I was pumped up and ready to carry on. Also exciting was the visit from Kent Alexander to discuss the issue of perspective with me. The question we looked at was how do we get enough distance from our self-hatred to realize that the messages it runs are actually hurtful lies? We discussed the idea that we could see the self-hatred, hear the self-hatred, and still know it was protection, not truth. We both had glimpsed in large ways that our self-hatred was delusional and terrified. We had begun to offer love and compassion to this part of ourselves. An potent moment for me on this episode was when Kent admits that he was beaten as a child and explains that though he could block out that physical assault, he could never block out the self-hatred that followed the abuse year after year. He pinpoints the insidious and pervasive nature of self-hatred and how seemingly impossible it seems to get rid of. At the end of the episode, Kent and I had a dance party, as I do at the end of every episode. Something about dancing with Kent was very touching to me because our joy together felt so clearly hard won. We were not just surviving by ignoring what we had lived through, we were finding joy by facing our pain. That seemed to be the core of our message. Looking at the self-hatred was the doorway through it. The pathway into the pain was leading us out of the pain and into freedom.

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I'm selling t-shirts that say I'm a Loving Bitch. All I have right now are smalls for small loving bitches but bigger ones are coming soon. I'm a bigger bitch and can't wait for my size to arrive. Meanwhile small loving bitches can contact me for shirts. The meaning is totally illustrated, explained, and lived out loud on my YouTube show Advice from a Loving Bitch. But you don't have to wear the shirt with my interpretation if you have your own. Let's join forces!

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Episode 3 was one of the most thrilling episodes of Advice from a Loving Bitch for me because it was the first time special guests came on to contribute to my vision. I was no longer doing it alone. It wasn’t just about me. It was the beginning of broadening the scope of the show.

My five guests, Kent, Flavia, Carrie, Rose, and Tom, boldly show us what their self-hate looks like. They do it with verve, honesty, humor, and with real pain. I was so surprised at how gung-ho my friends were on film once I gave them the assignment. They proved my essential premise which is: acting out our mean voices is cathartic and helpful.

When we play the hatred out loud fully, without holding back, we can finally see the shape, the sound, and the specifics our self-hatred uses and get a glaring good look at it.

Usually when self-hatred is in our heads, we don’t know what it’s really saying because it goes by so quick and is so jumbled up with our feelings that it has a quiet agonizing hold on us. It’s mostly not conscious. But even when it is conscious, we still have such secrecy and shame around it that we can’t look at it clearly. Seeing and hearing of the Self-Hating Voice acted out or written in words is paramount. It’s the wild and wacky beginning of perspective. An inch of space from the pain and lies.

My guests came on the show and kicked it out. Each person’s Self-Hating Voice was totally unique and yet very universal. All of them, without fail, were funny to hear. I think that is because we all relate so much.

The Self-Hating Voice seems absurd and desperate once you see it in full color. It becomes clear that this voice was born from coping and pain. We begin to feel a little sorry for this voice. To see it’s fear, it’s need to feel powerful, it’s need to control, and maybe even it’s need to be loved.

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Check out this podcast I was featured in on superpowerexperts.com! 

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The “Inner Child” is a popular term these days that seems to mean many things to many people. In my work, it’s the unwounded, untouched child inside who is completely intact even after living through the pain and hurt of growing up. That means that the innocent, bright, loving, open, tender, creative baby we were born as is still inside of us. There is a soul spark of goodness that is ever-present even if it is deeply buried.

Our Inner Child still wants connection, love, expression, and kindness. He/she/they is waiting for us and knows when we are on track with loving ourselves or off track and being mean to ourselves.

In Episode 2, I was very excited to illustrate in 3-D how our Self-Hating Voice goes after our Inner Child and causes us deep heartbreak. I had my daughter play my Inner Child because she is so clearly alive and full of love. Then I showed how my Self-Hating Voice sounds in my head, cursing, criticizing, trying to hide that child (it didn’t really happen in real life, it was all editing, don’t worry).

On film, you got to see the back and forth of that dialogue and it turned out to be truly disturbing and oddly funny. I think the humor comes from the absurdity of the dynamic and the horror of seeing it so front and center. There’s this kind of “what???” that happens when you bring this dynamic out of hiding.

When I showed the videos on a big screen, this episode got a big laugh because of the recognition of how tragic it is to yell at a sweet, darling, playful child.

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For her 6th birthday, she asked for an "olden day" phone. So I tracked one down, it took a while. And then we plugged it in and I gave her everybody's phone number. She tried to call all of our friends and no one picked up and then she accidentally called 911. And then the police came. And then I had to tell him that she was sorry and she apologized and he left. Then she said "put the phone away, I never want to use it again." But now, after a good talk and a bunch of feelings, she's at it again. Life is constant learning.

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I'm moving close to the day I gave birth, just about 6 years ago. One of the truly most terrifying experiences of my life. I was just lost in the pain. I felt utterly alone. But I do remember that even though I was spinning out, I kept reassuring my baby that I was with her. I never lost the connection. I kept the thread because I knew I was her ground. That's what it means to be a Mother. When things are falling all around me and I'm so unsure, I reach for her and look in her eyes. My love is the only thing I know for sure.

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Today was a hard day because I got into defending myself and that’s never fun Like my body said I’m bad please don’t remind me My mind said you can’t possibly get it right because love dies on the vine you silly hopeful reacher So I shut down the whole machine not on purpose but because I thought my lover would discover that I’m not worth it, don’t you hate that? So then, we unraveled like people do and it was boring and stressful and then we finally found an exhale and then he told me I’m his family and then he put my face in his hands and then he said I want you this close and then we rubbed foreheads and then I forgave myself long enough for the defense to become water and then I was a lot less bored

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Advice From A Loving Bitch Episode 1: How it Began

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vea0zPhJDQU   The voice in our head that rips us to pieces, what I call The Self-Hating Voice, loves to operate behind the scenes. It is the part of us that causes a huge portion of our internal pain and yet, it can only have control through our denial of it’s existence.                           It tells us we are bad, broken, unlovable, disgusting, not good enough, and hopeless. It gives us physical, emotional, and spiritual aches and pains but often, we can’t find the source. We think it’s coming from outside of us. We have internalized the judgements throughout our whole lives and now it’s our hard drive. It runs when we are asleep. It runs when we are working. It runs when we are trying to love other people. It runs when we fail, when we lose, when we get lost.                That hatred WAS from outside of us when we were kids and the culture still runs it at us constantly but now we participate without noticing. We AGREE that we are bad and then we get validated by life. Life agrees with our Self-Hating Voice that we are falling short in zillions of ways and strengthens it daily.           Episode 1 of Advice from a Loving Bitch was my attempt at outing my Self-Hating Voice. I was terrified to do it but I made myself (in the name of art). I put the camera on myself, put on hats, scarves, make-up, weird hair-do’s and I said my shit out loud. I talked about how life sucks, I suck. How people hate me because I’m jewish. How I’m essentially a bad person. How my art is meaningless. How even love is just a fantasy and I should give that up. Oh and how I’m a money losing loser. There’s always that.                Let me tell you, once I got started, this thrill took over. I was SO RELIEVED to be saying it out loud. I started laughing my ass off. I had a good old time. And I was shocked by the things that were coming out of my mouth. I regularly do major self-care and self-help in my life but I had no idea that my self-hatred sounded like that. I was really amazed.               I invited my viewers to watch me do this and then try it on. It was the beginning of 20 episodes of my on-line show and I was fully in it. I could feel that I was onto something very important. I was on a new edge and it was fresh. Alive and fresh with exposure and truth. Something to bite into, something transformational.

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Click to watch Episode 1! Like & subscribe!       Self-hatred is a tormenting affliction that so many people live with. Could it be funny and entertaining to let that part of you out? This episode deals with the Self-Hating Voice and how to recognize its sneaky powers. Let Rythea walk you through how it works and get your first assignment towards learning how to love yourself.

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Nayyarih Waheed