CONDITIONED REJECTION & HEALING

© 2009 Howard McQueen

Back in 1975 I ran into a major, traumatic conditional rejection.
A girl friend and lover I had become very attached to
approached me one afternoon and said

if we are going to keep sleeping together,
you will have to learn to also start having sex
concurrently with me and my friends.

When I received these words, it was like an electric shock flew into my chest.
There was an immediate physiological tightening down of muscles in my shoulders and my neck.
I literally began hurting.
Uuuugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

And, to this day, I still have symptoms and occasional bouts,
especially when I feel rejection and am emotionally insecure.
.
Fast forward
This past week, I sent a lady I had met in Sedona a follow-up email.
We had met for the second time again this September, at an annual conference in Sedona.
The conference was about emotional maturity, so a touchy-feeling, show affection to others was part of the prevailing mood.
This trip, I found her gazing into my eyes several times
and at a break, I asked if I could speak to her.
And in a crowded public space,
we sat on a bench
and I put my arm around her shoulder
and gently kissed her cheek.

She told me that she felt a stone in the kiss. We tried talking about this but the words I offered did not make any sense to her, so I suggested we just let things be.
Later that day she said, to reinforce her feelings
I really did not appreciate your putting your arm around me or kissing me.

I sat with this and after hearing the emphatic desire
for apology in her voice the second time,
later, the next day, I slowly and sincerely apologized,
and she showed appreciation and gratefully accepted my apology.

The email I had sent her earlier this week
contained a link to a blog entry on intimacy [1]
addressing what can arise when you gaze into someone’s eyes.

In my email to her, I said that I thought that she might be interested in reading the article, since she and I had our own sort of bump in the road over expectations arising out of eye gazing.

Her email back to me caught me completely off guard.

She said

cut the crap, Howard
I made it clear in Sedona that I don’t want to ever see you again,
so don’t contact me or even reply to this email.

As I was reading her reply, this same energetic electric shock from 1975
arose in my body.
I wanted to run – to the bathroom, anywhere.
Instead, I just sat down in front of her words
And, in a meditative posture,
leaned into feeling these wildly uncomfortable sensations.

The feelings that came up around these sensations translated into sentences like

“What you have done is too terrible to repair, I am abandoning you here and now”
“Dirty little boy, how dare you show your affections under these conditions”
“You want your addiction again. Ok, come defile yourself”

And, as I sat with all this, I became increasing peaceful
and the peacefulness settled into my emotional, mental and physical bodies.

IN REVIEW

Certainly, the public kiss was a bit forward as well as assertive,
The intent: affection akin to something shared between two seven year old children (the two players in their fifties now).

When received by the other,
what was stirred up was a deeply emotionally charged projection
that resulted in them completely shutting down
to my reflections of affection.

You can never really know how your words or affections will land on another.
I take full responsibility for initiating the display of affection.
I took full responsibility for offering the sincerest of apologies.


In the moment
When I take responsibilities for these feelings welling up inside me
I realize I am actually triggering some healing energies for myself,
Trauma and defilement of self stored in memory from 1975,
and stored without words, but as uncomfortably held feelings
going way back to my childhood in the 1950s.

I cannot put any clear pictures or images to the discomforts in the 1950s,
But, by resting in 2009 with this triggered deep intimacy of rejection
I put my arms around the child
and loosen this frozen-in-fear,
bound-and-gagged energetic conditioning.

About 2:30 am this morning I awoke
and my chest and back was a bit raw and sore.
I did a few minutes of very deep breathing
and this alone broke up the soreness of the musculature
and the seemingly pasty hurt and pain
formed around my ligaments and bones.

What an amazing way to energetically heal myself / (ourselves),
By focusing your attention on the triggered emotional pain in this moment,
We are stimulating the healing that was date-stamped 195x and 197x and … XXXx.


~ ~ ~
And, by the way, I suspect this is not the end of the story with this particular lady. I will honor her request to lay low. Perhaps a future blog entry will show a melting, warming and mending with her own stored emotional pain. I am holding space and sending blessings. I hold no animosity or energy relating to animosity. I hold no revenge or feelings is blame, or need to shame, and no aggressions. I rest in peace and allow her to be and process how ever things may unfold for her. These things I cannot know in her, but I can know them in me.

This article on Intimacy and Eye Gazing can be found at http://www.thepresenceportal.com/ (in the left navigational frame, choose “Naked”). This is a set of blog entries by the awesome author, Michael Brown (The Presence Process and Alchemy of the Heart).


If you have any stories that support this type of emotional healing, I’d be delighted to hear from you (howard@mcq.com).