The new kind of event: Living in the Double Bind
My husband and I were going on a vacation to the Olympic Peninsula in the fall of 1981. I was driving because I felt better when something kept me busy. I had begun to be unable to sleep because of a stream of thought that had begun to move continuously through my mind so that I couldn't lose consciousness, nor did I wake up feeling that I'd been asleep. I was aware all night long of the content of this stream of thought as well as night sounds and movements. This 'non-stop thinking' had just begun in the fall of 1981. I'd had a brief extremely vivid dream one night at about that point in Time, unlike any dream I'd ever had. The Dream
Quite suddenly I heard myself say: "I don't feel like myself anymore. I'm going to change my name. I'm not Betty any more, I'm Juanna." which I pronounced as Ju-Anna. I had not thought about my name or changing it, the words came out and I heard them without surprise or curiosity.
Just at that point a white van drew up alongside our van on the passenger side, crossing very closely in front of us to the left lane then it sped away. When it was in front of me I saw the first vanity license plate I'd ever seen: DJWANNA
The first impression of the letters formed in my mind as Do You Want To? but immediately another association for the words occurred: they repeated what I had just said. Although the letters were different, what I had just said was 'echoed back' or 'regenerated' by the letters. At the time this happened I could not have used those words or any similar words, such as coincidence, to describe this event.
"DID YOU SEE THAT?" I shrieked to my husband as I sped up to try to catch the van so that he would see it. He very curtly said: "Slow down. Do you want to get me killed?"
We didn't talk about the incident; nothing further was said about it by either of us nor did I think about it or tell anyone about it..
It was not a habit of mine to even notice license plates but for some reason I had begun to look at look at them, a fact that I didn't pay much attention to when this event happened. I was aware very dimly when this happened of some 'attention' in me that noticed them, that tried to make sense of the letters and numbers on them. I noticed this activity, only dimmly but it was annoying to me, it seemed a useless thing to do. so it bothered me when it happened. The attention in me, (I don't know what else to name it, except to say that it had a kind of visibility to me was doing what it already had been doing, but this time a mere glance at a passing license tab produced a meaning this time: how is it possible to explain the perfect timing? . The letters instantly translated, there was meaning and a context but this kind of event had not occurred previously.
There had been one other incident involving an automobile I wanted very badly as soon as I saw it. It was a red 1979 Datsun station wagon and eventually I did acquire it. The first time I read the license tab ETW 651, the words Extra Terrestrial Woman 651 came into my mind without thought of my own, just the way For Your Information springs from the letters FYI. There is quite a lot to write about ETW 651, in it's own page.
This was one of the changes that seeped into my life without any warning and I barely noticed it although I remembered such incidents later. I was noticing a 'working of my mind' without realizing that I was 'looking at something' quite new and different because only exterior world events had been 'looked at' previously.
Another incident happened at about that time: The context is this: (1982-spring when this happened) A couple we knew and saw quite frequently as a member of a square-dance club they operated had begun to capture a new kind of attention in me, emerging, just emerging then. A distinct sense of curiosity arose from what I noticed.The man had certain habits that puzzled me as a result of some things his wife had said to me about him and their relationship. They had a goal which she said would be difficult to achieve because he could not bear to be away from her for even one night. Their goal was that he become a nationally well known square dance caller which would mean he would have to travel.
She came to my house once a week for a sewing lessong because she had problems finding clothing for herself as a young woman who was nearly 6 feet tall and of an unusual shape. Big and Beautiful clothing was not available then. He was about 5'9" and not a pound overweight. She had told me one day that he loved her so much he could not be away from her for even one night. She had also told me she wanted their marriage to be like her parents, they had lived as one person. He seemed to be extremely helpful to her, extremely considerate which I had certainly noticed and perhaps envied. She was disinterested in cooking, shopping and he always did the shopping and some cooking she told me because she hated it. She remarked that she'd been married twice, to abusive men and she didn't want this marriage to fail.
The next Event happened this way:
I was sewing for her then, more than I had intended originally but she didn't seem to initiate anything herself. A garment was ready to be tried on to see what adjustments had to be made. So I called her and she suggested I come over for coffee along with the fitting because it was her birthday. She was extremely happy as she showed me her husband's birthday cards: not one card but two! She seemed thrilled at how considerate and loving he was to give her TWO birthday cards. I made appropriate remarks and felt more than a bit of envy as I looked at them.
I left, then went to pick up some film I'd left to be developed. I'd discovered the roll of film in our van when I cleaned it but I'd no idea what pictures were on it or where they'd been taken. I opened the packet and realized they had been taken on the trip to the Olympic Peninsula the previous fall. One picture of me startled me very much: It was virtually identical to one of the birthday cards the woman's husband had given her! The colors, the setting was basically identical. A woman wearing a sweater over a bathing suit, running and waving as she ran through the surf that was tinted the soft colors of late afternoon. In the picture I was running through the ocean surf, waving to my husband who was taking the picture. I was wearing a bathing suit with a pink sweater on top and the colors of the surf were soft late afternoon colors,
It seemed very odd to me, most unusual. M y first instinctive wish was to show it to the woman but for some reason I didn't.
The word 'coincidence' did not occur to me then or later.
Another Event happened very shortly:
I was in my sewing room, my mind browsing randomly apparently, settled on the square dance caller. He seemed to pay a lot of attention to me in square dance classes we attended in their basement. I felt that he noticed every mistake I made and at that point I thought I was making so many that our set kept collapsing. I literally felt that I caused the set to fall apart whenever it collapsed into chaos. It was embarrassing to be observed the way I felt observed when I was making so many mistakes. One evening I was mad, and decided to say something about what seemed like constant surveillance. I intended to say 'Please keep your eyes off of me." But what I said was: "Keep your mind off of me. The words just came out and I felt strange about not intending to say them. I was thinking about all the problems I was having in learning to dance challenge level. I literally felt that I caused the set to fall apart whenever it collapsed into chaos. It was embarrassing to be observed the way I felt observed when I was making so many mistakes that we couldn't get through more than a few movements without collapsing.
Advanced and challenge level square dancing is very difficult to do, and this man was extremely demanding. He had a small body of devoted dancers who suffered at times because he called without regard to how easily his figures could be done. He had a terrible reputation and many people felt that the pair of them made it unlikely they would ever have a stable club, which was necessary before he could develop to become nationally well known, and that was their hearts desire.
Yet he had a way of creating fascinating flowing patterns that were somehow thrilling when it was possible to accomplish them. To accomplish even occasionally, uniting8 people into one magical unit was to become part of a flow that one wanted to experience again. It kept the few devoted dancers, devoted. Just an occasional taste of perfection was enough to cause us to be able to endure the misery of being subjected to more than could easily be accomplished. Square dancing is supposed to be fun. It was not thought by mainstream level dancers or those who attempted to learn advanced dancing that anything 'fun' ought to be difficult to do .
The club simply didn't grow although every year a large new class began lessons. The frustration of the devoted dancers was tangible and I felt it without knowing that other people also felt it in the same way.
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Also I had begun to suspect both he and his wife thought I had a crush on him when in fact I thought quite differently about him. I had begun to feel a deep pity for him, for reasons I could not explain to myself. It was impossible for me to talk to him and at times I felt a strong, very strong wish to get to know him. This puzzled me increasingly because he was not a romantic interest.
The strong wish to talk to him, to get to know him may have arisen from my having noticed a discrepancy between how is wife described him to me and how I observed him to be.
I felt increasingly stifled and embarrassed when it began to become more apparent they both thought I had a crush on him. The sense of something 'unspeakable', began to emerge and I felt this to an extreme degree as being 'forbidden' to clarify a misinterpretation. It's difficult to describe such a growing sense, how painful it was.
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Another Event closely followed: : My mind, browsing, settled onto my inability to talk to him, how I felt 'stifled', and actually felt prevented from saying anything except the most banal things to him. A thought emerged: "It' s as if he has a solid fence around him, six feet high."
That night we went to a lesson at their house and I was stunned to see a new fence around the front of their house. It was chain link, 6 feet high and what I'd thought that morning came to mind. The memory of the thought caused me to feel amazed and startled. No other property nearby had a fence in the front yard so someone asked her why they had put a fence up. "So nobody can throw rocks at our picture window." she said.
This seemed absurd because anyone can throw a rock over a 6 foot fence. When someone asked if anyone had ever thrown rocks at their window she replied they had not, but they could at any time.
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These events happened and the experience made me feel 'woozy', an uncomfortable dizziness, a literal sense of being 'unbalanced' or walking on a floor that suddenly seemed to be Jello. This was new to me and there was no reason I could see for the 'sick', reeling condition that forced me to make an effort to stand up and 'act' normal.
At that point in Time, whatever powered and focused my attention on anything at all, was being 'noticed' by me, and what I saw/heard was below any form of articulation. Sso I have come to believe there was a body response to something new, observed on some level but not a conscious, articulatable level.
The important detail was one I could not have named: , I noticed what my mind produced without any awareness it was working with a kind of purposefull-ness at that point. Thought was being occasionally generated, I would say now it was and still is 'inserted thought content', not self generated at all.
One night some time later the set collapsed into chaos again and I as looked around frantically trying to see where I ought to be in the formation I noticed he was looking at me. He pointed his finger at me, stopping the music as he said; "Stay right where you are. You are in the right place. You are the only person in this set that is in the right place. When you are right, don't let anyone make you think you are in the wrong." This puzzled me and embarrassed me but after that night I began to feel somewhat less like I was the cause of everything that went wrong in the set when it collapsed. A confidence emerged very slowly that grew over a period of time so that I noticed what other people were doing. I had been so 'self absorbed' that it was quite a change to be somewhat relaxed enough to notice that other people made mistakes! In this way I recognized that my 'self absorption' was typical. Many dancers felt just what I had, so I learned that way how 'self absorption' to that degree obliterated literally what other people were doing. I was astonished to begin to notice the relationships between husband and wives. ,
I noticed that individuals had various reasons for failing to learn to dance well. I became more aware and more confident and then I had attention left over so to speak to take in more of my surroundings. This seems trivial but it's not.
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An awareness of something ghastly tragic to me, in their life had emerged. (1980-1982 into 1983)
One night I felt a sense of tragedy at one point, relating to what his wife had said about having a marriage just like her parents had, living as one person. When I looked at this man as he talked to the class a thought to emerged in my mind: "Oh, no! Oh God no! Not him, Oh God not him!"
After that evening I felt a continuing sense of grief that did not go away. Several years later I talked to a man that belonged to the club also who was also affected as I was by a sense of almost unbearable grief. He was very similar to me in that we shared an almost fanatic love of advanced and challenge level squaredancing. He left for several months and we didn't see him anywhere. When he returned he was skeletally thin, and very quiet.
When I had the opportunity (1989) to ask him why he had left for almost a year he shook his head as he said: "The pain, the grief in that house, I couldn't stand it." I had also become thin and the grief I'd felt had rained out of my eyes as tears of such a quantity that I could not explain how the body could generate them. My body was drenched with tears that felt wrenched from me, (1982-1988) literally raining down my face as though my body had become a dripping wet towel being wrung.
This painful weeping began and did not end for nearly 7 years. During that time I watched the documentary series of Joseph Campbell talking with Bill Moyers. The ideas were foreign to me, I had not heard of them but something in me became gripped by each episode. The name of Carl G. Jung emerged for the first time. When I read an advertisement of a showing of Wisdom of The Dream by the local Jung society I went to see it and bought two books authored by Jungian psychiatrists: The Scapegoat Archetype by Sylvia Brinton Perrerra and Narcissim, Character Disorder and Transformation by Nathan Salant Schwartz. When I read the book about scapegoats the idea was foreign to me but I noticed a distinct sense of familiarity arise in me as I read it. I didn't read the other book for a couple of years. So when I read a term in the scapegoat book, archetypal weeping, there was a kind of explanation for the extraordinary anguish I felt and the enormous quantity of tears. The first day that I did not weep, I noticed as though I was watching someone other than myself and remarked inwardsly that after years a single day passed when I didn't shed a tear.
This is what will seem incredible: After the 1984 event, which included specific memories of thought events relating to this couple and what I'd thought about them over a few months just prior to July 1984 all that I had felt and experienced in regard to this one man was transferred to a different man, my husband. It was not evident to me for several years that at that point in their lives this couple had been a living exhibit of the essential situation in my home, except that their roles were reversed. Near the beginning of that event, five separate thought events, very simple observational sentences had emerged into my mind and those five sentences were retrieved into my mind as a single batch, but the p
. My first impression of this retrieval was very shallow and remained shallow until 1989 when another event pointed out the significance of this very odd regeneration of material, taken from my memory and altered so specifically. The observations were quite thought words, very spare and simple: "A man must be able to live his life in his own best interests." ; "He has lost the ability to live his life in his own best interests."; "He said the words but the words are hers." "He does what she wants him to do." I can't remember the fifth one at this time but it was a simple observation also.
It was not my own mind that focused my attention on them or the situation in their lives which I became aware other people noticed in about the same way I did. There was a purposeful intelligence at work in the life of everyone involved with the square dance clubs in our area at that point in time, I believe. This is something I became aware of quite slowly, how easily it is to establish cause and effect from what we see, and have seen when in fact nothing happens from such understanding as a single person grasps. My understanding changed so gradually as a new way to hear, see and experience books I read that came along in a completely random way that I began to realize everyone misunderstands everything and each other. The people in this group felt as I did that it was unspeakable, literally to say anything to them about the couples 'short-sheeting' ways, which defeated their stated goals as though they were doing it consciously.
I was surprised to find out (1989) that almost everyone believed they knew what they were doing and were simply harsh and mean and didn't care if they made anyone feel embarrassed or discouraged enough to leave their club. I knew that this man was puzzled to the core about why he could not build a club, keeping new dancers from year to year so he could use and polish his skills. There was another nationally famous caller that had a similar problem that led me to become aware of the 'literal sense' as a result of his problem. I will write about that later, because its critically important in regard to how a conversational attribute can be added to certain content one sees and hears.
The 'voice' is not like any voice one would expect to encounter but I believe it accounts for the phenomonen of paranoia. This man was painfully shy when he wasn't calling and actually both callers shared one common problem, they were creative callers but unable to 'sparkle' in any way when they were in social situations. Neither am I a sparkler, if that matters.
I became aware later that even that man had not a clue as to why he was not invited back to our area for several years.
There were several other important events that happened before 1984, that I can relate now although the timing is difficult to present. Everything that happened in this relationship which was 'unspeakable' was almost critically important to make a point that I would have not been able to make.
My first awareness of being unable to 'talk to a man' began outside of my home in a completely unrelated arena so to speak. I didn't notice that almost simultaneously I became aware of being unable to initiate and maintain any conversation with my husband. The sense of being 'prevented' from talking about my life as it was then began to grow on two 'fronts' so to speak.
The Minnesota Multi Personality Inventory Test
The Minnesota Multi Personality Inventory has 550 questions that are to be answered True or False. Question #32 is: "I have had very strange and peculiar experiences." After I'd read a couple of books about the origin and history of this test I was outraged at the way it was used. I was educated to believe that 'true and false' tests could not be valid, so I had not answered several questions at the start of the test, then as I progressed through it, the senseless questions annoyed me so I randomly answered without reading the questions.
The report of that test which was 'read' to me was that it was a valid test!!!!
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