Small Houses

I was thinking about living in a small house and how I grew up in one. I feel safer and yet a bit lost in one. I also have been doing a bible study/small group womens’ class using the book “A Wounded Heart” by Dan B. Allender (a book on sexual abuse that gives the victim God’s path to healing: a costly path of fresh suffering that leads to a life characterized by love).  The book and workbook have guided me to remember some of my growing up in that small house misery…So I thought of a Elliot Smith song naturally.

Lyrics to Memory Lane (Elliot Smith) :

This is the place
You’ll end up when
You lose the chase
Where you’re dragged against your will
From a basement on the hill
All anybody knows is
You’re not like them
They hit you in the head
And send you back to bed
Isolation called you and passed a tunnel into a
Bright world where you can rule a place of state
Here’s a little house for you to stay
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
The mayor’s name is fear
His voice patrols the pier
By a mountain up of cliche
That advances everyday
The doctor speak in clowns
He rings out loud
He’ll keep the doors and windows shut
And swear
Never join a soul again
But isolation chased you ‘til every muscle ached
Down the only road it ever takes
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
If it’s your decision
To be open about yourself
Be careful or else
Be careful or else
Uncomfortable apart
It’s all written on my chart
That I take what’s given to me
Most cooperatively
I do what people say
And lie in bed all day
Absolutely horrified
I hope you’re satisfied
Isolation pushes past something and chained to
A place where suffering’s a game
But everybody’s scared of this place
They’re staying away
Your little house on memory lane
Your little house on memory lane

So this remembering and talking about it to a group doesnt feel good…it is not like I forgot much. It is just the way I framed remembering things as not as bad as it might seem. But as I’ve been going thru this book Dan B. Allender book, I get really unconfortable thinking about events in my childhood. I have a lot of work to continue to do…

Fear in the small house…

from http://joy2meu.com/Fear_of_Intimacy.html

Fear of Intimacy - the wounded heart of codependency

“Fear of intimacy is at the heart of codependency.  We have a fear of intimacy because we have a fear of abandonment, betrayal, abuse, and rejection.  We have a these fears because we were wounded in early childhood – we experienced being abandoned, rejected, physically and sexually abused, and/or  betrayed by our parents because they were wounded.  They did not have healthy relationship with self – they were codependents who abandoned and betrayed themselves – and their behavior caused us to feel unworthy and unlovable.”"As children we were incapable of seeing ourselves as separate from our families – of knowing we had worth as individuals apart from our families.  The reality we grew up in was the only reality that we knew.  We thought our parents behavior reflected our worth – the same way that our codependent parents thought our behavior was a factor in rather they had worth.”

“The simplest and most understandable way I have ever heard intimacy described is by breaking the word down: in to me see.  That is what intimacy is about – allowing another person to see into us, sharing who we are with another person.

Sharing who we are is a problem for codependents because at the core of our relationship with ourselves is the feeling that we are somehow defective, unlovable and unworthy – because of our childhood emotional trauma.  Codependency is rooted in our ego programming from early childhood.  That programming is a defense that the ego adapted to help us survive.  It is based upon the feeling that we are shameful, that we are defective, unworthy, and unlovable.  Our codependent defense system is an attempt to protect us from being rejected, betrayed, physically and sexually abused, and abandoned because of our unworthy, shameful being.

We have a fear of intimacy because we were wounded, emotionally traumatized, in early childhood – felt rejected and abandoned – and then grew up in emotional dishonest societies that did not provide tools for healing, or healthy role models to teach us how to overcome that fear.  Our wounding in early childhood caused us to feel that something was wrong with our being – toxic shame – and our societal and parental role models taught us to keep up appearances, to hide our shamefulness from others.”

“As long as we are reacting unconsciously to our childhood emotional wounds and intellectual programming, we keep repeating the patterns.  We keep getting involved with unavailable people.  We keep setting ourselves up to be abandoned, betrayed and rejected.  We keep looking for love in all the wrong places, in all the wrong faces.  Is it any wonder we have a fear of intimacy?”

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