The Frankenstein Mom (MotherLand part 3)

Some of the most fertile ground for growth and healing is an intimate love relationship. Because such relationships bring up all of our deepest, well, everything, if you both love each other like fire, are each committed to personal development, and are both devoted to fully support each other on this journey, a healthy love relationship is a remarkable place, a magnificent gift, for transformation. 

Part of the therapy I’m doing is what I call The Frankenstein Mom Process (that’s not an official term, just my name for it). What I do is, with the help of a therapist, create a mom. And I create this mom from other women who embody the qualities that I would have wanted in my own mother (hence, Frankenstein). For me, these women are my Aunty You-You, my sister Cheryl, my cousin Kym, and my Aunty Barbara. 

Initially, the wall I immediately ran into when asked by the therapist who I think of when I think of being mothered, my heart and mind go right to my recent ex-love (if I was currently with somebody, it would go to her). When asked who I think of when I think of mothering qualities like nurturing, loving, affectionate, tender, attentive, and warm; when asked who I want giving that to me, I think of my most recent ex-love. That’s because I’ve completely sexualized all those qualities. Yes, one more dysfunctional behavior. Stick around. There’s more.

Because I sexualize these qualities, the only woman I want giving me that mothering is the woman I’m in love with, or the most recent woman I was in love with. Now, if you asked any woman I’ve ever been in love with if I was “needy”, and wanted to be mothered, I doubt any of them would describe me that way. That’s because when I was with those women, I’m aware, on a conscious level, that I want them to mother me. But I also know how unattractive that can be. So I bite back on that need, at all costs. I shut it down. Because I don’t want the woman I’m with to see me as weak, needy, or basically, a big pussy. I’m not saying I’m not loving, tender, gentle, and vulnerable with my lover. Because I absolutely am. But needing to be mothered? No way. I don’t want her to ever see that in me.

This is all my stuff, never hers. Part of it is my own male macho ego bullshit. You can call me stupid, unattractive, even old. I don’t react too strongly, because I know I’m none of those. But call a guy a pussy? If he’s got unresolved mother issues like this, it’s a huge trigger. Probably his biggest. Because it goes right to the core wound. And, because of the social context. The worst thing a guy can be called, at least in my mind, in today’s culture, is a “pussy”. That means he can’t take care of himself. That means he can’t take care of his queen. With a woman, I would think calling her ugly or unattractive would hit the same nerve.

The problem is, whenever I bite back on a need, any need, I pull back, I pull away, even just a little. I’m not aware that I’m doing it. It’s just a natural and unavoidable consequence of holding something that deep back. But the need doesn’t go away. It just gets stuffed. And stuffing isn’t good. For me. For her. For the relationship. 

I’ve never been able to fully articulate this until now, which is another reason no woman ever knew that about me. And, because I attach a shitload of toxic shame to this need to be mothered. If I had ever been able to articulate this issue clearly, and drop the shame around it, I would have been able to share it. 

Well I’m doing that now. Most importantly, I’m learning to give it to myself. And, let me tell you, it’s like getting rid of a sack of bricks I’ve been carrying my whole fuckin’ adult life. It’s like sprouting wings.

Sharing this with my lover would be part of healing it (that and me doing whatever work I need). If she loves me enough, is doing her work, and is solid enough, she can handle it. My last love was all of that. But I wasn’t yet in a place where I could open that up. Live and learn.

When you’ve got no memory of your real mother giving this to you, and aren’t yet able to give enough of it to yourself, you end up, eventually, putting that on your lover. Or, just never sharing that. And in the long run, neither options work. Women who had poor fathers and haven’t completely cleared this up do it to their men, too. 

When both partners are aware of this dynamic, are working at it on their own (through whatever methods are effective for them), then the relationship becomes a beautiful place to share this and deal with it, together. And both of you will most likely be dealing with it, to some degree, for the rest of your lives. Because we never get completely rid of this. We heal it enough, and learn how to handle it better. 

That’s a good thing, in my book. Because it’s one more place for the two of you to get real, get vulnerable, share, connect, love each other up, and heal. 

And that, to me, is just fuckin’ beautiful. 

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

MotherLand (part 2)

There’s an Alanon saying that goes “Intimate relationships will put Miracle Grow on all of your character flaws”. Nothing brings up our deepest, darkest shit like intimate love relationships. This is true mainly because we recreate our relationships with mom and dad when we, as adults, have intimate love relationships. On the flip side, nothing brings out our most loving, brightest selves like intimate love relationships either. And this makes sense from a metaphysical perspective. Carl Jung said “The brighter the light, the darker the shadow”. When our highest selves are brought out, our darkest selves are too. You’ve heard the expression, “She (or he) brings out the best, and the worst, in me”. Yup. Bingo.

My abandonment trauma started, literally, at birth. I was in the womb with my twin brother for nine months. I was lucky. I had twice the company in there: him, and my mom. Then, BAM! We were born. At 3 pounds, 9 ounces, they got my ass into an incubator, pronto. Mike and mom went home. 

In 1963, IncubationLand was not the Shangri-La it is today; back then it was basically a big metal tube. Your family, not even your own mother, was allowed to come in and hold you, touch you, or feed you. The only people not off limits to these sterile infant grounds were the hospital staff. For the first three weeks of life, I had virtually zero human contact, and absolutely none from the only two people I knew on the planet.

I know that I have a memory of this. Not a conscious one I can access, but one that is stored in my body and in the subconscious. I believe we all have some memories like that.

 Abandonment is my Deepest Attachment Wound. I mean, how far back can you go than birth (the possibility of past lives aside)? My abandonment shit goes into Hyper Warp Drive whenever a woman I’m in love with is gone; regardless of why she’s gone. The fact is, she’s not here anymore. Logic goes out the window with this stuff. At least until you start to dig it up and pull it apart. And pulling it apart is not strictly a cognitive process. In fact, if it remains strictly cognitive, you don’t get very far. You’ve got to go deeper. Because some of these cuts go so far into the brain they become unconscious. They go into the fabric of the body. We aren’t even aware of them. We go on auto pilot, and that’s when we get into real trouble.

There are cognitive processes like trauma education, central nervous system and stress response education, group therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Didactic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), individual therapy, and more. All of these modalities inform us about what drives our dysfunctional behavior. They give us priceless information and they educate us on how to apply that information. 

But again, we can’t stop with the mind. We must go into the heart. Into the body. Procedures such as Somatic Experiencing, Psychodrama, acupuncture, cranial sacral therapy, yoga, and meditation, all work the body, heart, and  the mind. These modalities are more comprehensive. Trauma must be healed, I believe, with as much of this as we can handle, emotionally, and,  given our resources. Think of it like a cocktail of healing. 

Everyone’s journey through this mission (“should you choose to accept it”) is different. The common denominators for all of us are awareness, desire, openness, hard work, time, and trust in the process. I have made so much progress because; I wanted it real bad, I showed up, I worked my ass off, and I trusted that things were happening; much of which I could not consciously experience or feel at the time. And everything builds on everything else. It’s cumulative.

Continue with me on this most amazing journey. If you are open the process of healing yourself, and thus contribute to healing and growing your relationships, I promise you will glean some gold from it. If I’m wrong, double your money back.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rightsa reserved. 

MotherLand (part 1)

As adults, virtually all of us recreate intimate love relationships that mirror, in complex ways, the childhood relationship we had with our opposite-sex parent (Woman/Dad, Man/Mom). As adults, we do this in an effort to “get it right” this time. We try it again, and want to fix whatever didn’t work, once for all, and live happily ever after. 

There is crossover as well. Meaning that our relationships with our lovers is also a function of how we related to our same sex parent. For example, my dad was a very affectionate, demonstrative, loving man. I learned that it was okay for a man to show his emotions. With woman and with men.

Most of this is unconscious. When we make it conscious, we can do something about it. We can pull it apart and find out what the hell’s going on in the depths of our hearts, in the recesses of our minds, that drive most of our behavior in relationships (especially the less than stellar behavior). When we dig it up and make it conscious, we have the ability to make different choices.

In my post “Clint & Little John”, I described my experience of developing a stronger dialogue between my adult man and my inner kid. I literally had to create a father, from scratch, who knew how to talk to and what to say when Little John (my inner child’s name) was suffering and in lots of pain. I had to create that parent because my dad wasn’t good at this at all. His method of getting me to feel better when I would come to him in tears would be one of two ways. Either he would try and convince me that the situation really wasn’t that bad (such logic rarely works on an 8 year old having a meltdown); or, worse yet, he would try and talk me out of how I felt. Neither methods validated anything I was experiencing, or helped ease any pain. 

It came from love, because my dad really did want me to feel better. And that was all dad knew how to do. But kids can’t understand all that. All I knew as a kid was, that, whenever I went to my dad when I was really upset, I usually felt worse afterwards. So I stopped going to him, or anybody else, when I was in a lot of pain. 

What about mom? She was, god bless her, no better. My mother was not at all comforting or nurturing if I went to her in pain. Unless I was physically ill. Mom was then a source of great support. Maybe because physical illness is concrete, tactile, and can be measured with a thermometer (remember the rectal ones? Those were a joy). But, tears and cries of emotional pain and hurt?….much more tricky, for a lot of people, not just my mom. She didn’t hug, she didn’t console, she didn’t offer much of anything in that department. She didn't know how. She came from a family of 9 kids. And her mom worked her ass off as well. Sorry. You can't be there for 9 kids emotionally and hold down a job. Even Wonder Woman would strike out there. So mom was out too. 

I hold absolutely no resentments towards my parents. They loved me and did the best they could. So often, people are reluctant to do this type of work because they believe it will dishonor their parents. Actually, this work eventually leads us to love and respect our parents even more. But you have to walk through the fire to get to the gold. That's just the way it works.

Which leads me to the work I’m doing now. It’s Very Heavy “Mom Stuff”, and how that shit manifests itself in my relationships with women. And it is a motherfucker (how could I not use that word there?).

This is the very deep work that I am now facing: the stuff at the very bottom of my emotional hole. I’ve been aware of lots of this stuff, and done considerable work on it throughout adulthood. I’ve learned a lot about myself from it, and it has helped me have progressively better relationships with my intimate partners. But, there is some stuff so far down the hole, I’ve had to do some serious digging. And digging can be very painful.

Follow me on my journey through this work. I hope it inspires you to dig deep and do whatever you need to create as much positive energy as possible in your intimate relationships. Not only will we love more fully, more completely, more beautifully than ever before, we’ll do it in a healthier way. We’ll be more mindful and more aware when we love our special someone. Our relationships will become less about recreating our past and more about creating something new and amazing and special with the one we love. 

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Leviathan

My recovery from trauma and depression, and all the maladaptive behaviors that go with it, is akin to a deep dive into a black hole. I wasn’t sure what was at the bottom of that hole, but I was willing to jump. Because if I stayed where I was, at the precipice of that dark, cavernous maw, my life wasn’t going to get any better. In fact, it was going to get worse.

So I took a leap of faith. The ride down has been beautiful; also painful, and the most challenging thing I have ever done. I made great progress. I got better. I healed. I inspired people and impacted lives. I kept going, and the deeper I dove, the better I got. 

Recently, I had a breakdown. Like I hit a sharp lip on the way down the hole.

And fuck, does it hurt.

It’s battered me like nothing else has yet. It’s bloodied me something fierce. It’s opened up my deepest wounds; wounds so old, I can’t remember where I got most of them. Wounds that I knew about, but that only bled occasionally. Now I’m hemorrhaging. Now, I have no choice but to heal these wounds. 

I’ve spent most of my adult life either running from, or bandaging, these deep, massive cuts. I, foolishly perhaps, thought they had scarred over enough so that, maybe, they wouldn’t open up so bad again that they would bleed all over my life.

I was wrong. 

Now, I’m up against it. Up against that which I knew, eventually, I would have to face. I’ve opened a wound that I knew I would have to heal.

The core wound is Abandonment. Specifically, early childhood abandonment. And all the other wounds it creates.

In technical terms, it comes under the umbrella of “Developmental Relational Trauma”. It happens early in life and continues to get reenacted. I mention that because, a lot, if not most of us, have this. Some of us have these cuts much deeper than others. Some of us, for a myriad of reasons, aren’t as effected by them. We all develop coping mechanisms; some, more effective than others. In adulthood, this trauma manifests itself most intensely in intimate love relationships, and the way we attach to others in those relationships.

This is my Core Trauma. I thought I had done enough work, picked up enough tools, and enough skill with those tools, to deal with this one more effectively.

Wrong again.

So I have to dive deeper still. Into the very darkest depths of this abyss. I have more diving to do. I’ve got more work, to do. 

I knew I wasn’t at the bottom yet. I just didn’t think I was this far from the bottom. Maybe I’m not. Maybe it just feels that way right now. Doesn’t really matter. Because I’m not stopping, no matter what. 

I could look at this like I’m even more fucked up than I thought. There are moments, I still do. But that sentiment won’t last. Because if there is one thing I have been, through all of this, is tenacious. I’ve faced every fear with a voracity I didn’t know I had. 

I will eventually see the opening of this gash as another amazing gift. I will get through this the way I have gotten through everything else I’ve faced over the past three months. I will come out of this with more healing, more growth, and a higher version of myself. This, just like everything else I’ve faced, will contribute to my being far more free.

But right now, it just fuckin’ hurts.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

Yoga Porn

If you're a human being, yoga is good for you; just like proper nutrition, resistance training, and mediation. There is a spiritual element to yoga that, even if you aren’t spiritual, works its way into you. Somehow, the practice synergistically enlightens you: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

And, yoga is Sexy as Fuck.

Oh Yes. Yoga has a sexual component. 

Yoga might even be the New Porn. 

Yoga has become more popular than ever. And rightfully so. Because it works. Because it’s beautiful. Because it offers us something extremely valuable. And, because it's sexy.

Just like Weight Lifting In the 1970’s, Aerobics in the 1980’s, and Circuit Training in the 1990’s, Yoga in the New Millennium has taken its place as a way of life for millions. It’s become a much needed cultural phenomenon.  

Yoga has made its way into pop culture. Whenever anything becomes so popularized, a piece of it morphs. The essence of it stays the same, yes. The essence of yoga is, well, Life. But, for a proper definition, ask an advanced Yogi. Because I’m still a neophyte. Any definition I offer will just be a rudimentary paraphrase of its larger truth. 

In this age of unlimited instant visual stimulation, thanx to the internet, 10,000 hours of quality television programming a day, (cough), and a media onslaught of eye candy like never before in human history, we’ve got literally millions of images, available, at any moment, of beautiful women, and men, practicing yoga. Their bodies are absolutely stunning: Muscular. Lithe. Supple. Flexible. Barefoot (foot fetishists like myself are absolutely thrilled that yoga is done without shoes or socks). Modern yogis in these images are in physically demanding positions. They wear body clinging, tight as fuck clothing, that shows their gorgeous physiques to maximum effect. Or they wear next to nothing. Both of that works for me. And for millions of others.

More importantly, yoga classes are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Soon, they’ll be offering them at 7-11’s. This means that yoga is now easily available to anyone who wants it. More exposure is good for the practice. It means more people can benefit from it. And, as this post proves, it means that it opens itself up to creative interpretation. So be it. Welcome to Planet Earth. 

The bottom line is that, if you don’t get at least a little sexually excited looking at women, or men, practicing yoga, then your libido is probably asleep at the wheel. And, dare I say, Yogis know this. This is not an “accident”. Part of the very reason yoga has become so popular is because it touches a sexual nerve. Just like weight training and aerobics did years ago. It’s great for us, yes. It’s benefits are proven, yes. And, oh baby, is it sexy.

This is in no way a bad thing. Maybe it is to some purists. But those purists may need a little attitude adjustment. 

I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’m a Santa Claus purist. That means that the image, the symbol, the spiritual significance, of Santa Claus, is sacred to me. Ridiculous for a grown man, maybe, but true. I am aware, however, that my view of Old Saint Nick is not shared by everybody. If I got my shorts in a knot every time somebody took a shot at Santa Claus, or lampooned his image, I would be one miserable fuck at Christmas. But I’m not. I love Christmas. Because I embrace all of it. 

And, at the same time, I keep my own vision sacred. Embracing change and grounding yourself in your own unique vision are not mutually exclusive. Anybody who tells you otherwise just hasn’t tried hard enough. Or, they’re a snob. 

You can be a snob about anything. Whatever your own Sacred Pursuit, it is open to snobbery; be it Yoga, Santa Claus, Music, Food, Money, Social Status….pick your poison. The common denominators in all snobbery is that snobs have a superiority complex, and they have difficulty embracing change. Like when minorities start making lots of money. Or when “real” musicians start playing rock music instead of jazz. Or when jokers like me get into Yoga and find it sexy.

Well, NewsFlash, Yoga IS Sexy. So is rock ‘n roll. Let's deal with it. Or don’t. Your call. I’m gonna continue to practice. I’m gonna continue to see the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and sexual beauty, in yoga. 

And I’m gonna continue to go for yoga babes. Because they totally rock my world.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.