Tag: Auto Therapy

17. I’ve Got to Tell You About Auto Therapy.

It’s a term coined out of practical application. The phenomenon happened a couple of times so I had to name it.

Auto Therapy. Two friends in a car (the auto part of Auto Therapy) headed out for an uncharted weekend. East. West. North. South, pick a direction. Come to an intersection?  Right, Left, or Straight ahead? Sometimes it was just that simple. Other times we might have an end point in mind but no time schedule or roadmap plotted. The point was to let go of all that held us to our every day responsibilities. Just drift the weekend away, letting mind, body, spirit go unfettered. Let the unconscious lead the way. What came up, came up.

The Therapy part of Auto Therapy comes about because, if you go with the flow, the unconscious is unfettered. (You remember the unconscious is where we store all those things that we don’t want to know about ourselves or have hidden because they weren’t accepted or pleasing to people in authority over us that we wanted to be accepted and loved by. Hidden. Dark. The bloody room. Post 11) The unconscious can bring up and have you talk about stuff on a whim, seemingly random thoughts, reminisces, events, grievances—old, new, and/or deeply buried. Consciously, you may think they’re all unconnected, but I’m here to testify: If you have a problem or issue, the unconscious will weave parts and pieces in and throughout a weekend of Auto Therapy to give you insights and answers. (I’ll explain more how that happens in the next post.)

Road Trip!

I like road trips. I always felt, as the car left city limits and living, I could feel the breaking of the strings that held us to the daily grind and responsibilities. I could almost hear the ping ping ping as each string stretched taut, pulled by the passing road until each one broke. We were free. Nothing holding us now.

I worked with Bobby Bare on his tv show and I remember him saying that the tour bus was like a rolling time capsule. They were all locked into this little cocoon rolling down the road. That’s what a road trip feels like to me. Encapsulated time. Encapsulated thoughts that stick around for you to revisit or regurg. The outside blocked as a blur behind glass.

As the drive meanders spontaneous, so does the conversation. Oft times it started with airing the grievances, Gritching we called it. A hybrid of Griping and Bitching including grievances. Causal grievances are the basis of griping and bitching (as well as the root of our humor according to Marshall McLuhan). If you’re free-wheeling from the unconscious in your rolling capsule, what comes up will sit in the pot and stew.

Such was one trip that MG and I started; I’m not sure now whether it was to a civil war battlefield or just ‘headed in a southerly direction’ to a destination TBD.

I recall I was in an angst-ridden session of gritching about money (again) and meeting responsibilities, paying my bills on time, being responsible for this and that and all the other.  I like to think that my gritching is not from a victim point, but more from searching for an answer to “why do I keep getting into this same situation, and why does it bother me to vexation?” While it started out as a time to get away, this trip turned out to be a resonant “aha” moment that had me awash in tears. (Tears at an aha moment are a sure sign you’ve tapped into a pus-pocket of grief that you have just now lanced bringing instant relief! They are tears of recognition and release from the exhaustion of harboring a pus-pocket of grief for so long.)

I’m sure I gave MG some time to do some gritching of her own, but for two days I’d find myself reiterating my grievance, wailing verse after verse after plaintive verse.  Until…

As we repacked our stuff to check out at the end of the weekend, I was still twanging on the same string of not having enough money to pay my bills and why was that so important to me?  MG, who’d been listening for two days, a mule in the traces pulling along side to help me find my answer, announced, “You sound as if it is a matter of life and death.”

WHAM! BAM! THERAPY ENGAGED!

All of the scattered Dots the unconscious had been dropping all weekend, non-linear as they may have been, all zapped together in a whole new revelation. It was like I could feel tumblers of the safe falling into place. I felt the answer. I knew it! Without knowing how I got there. Without seeing how the pieces revealed their answer:

BEING RESPONSIBLE WAS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH FOR ME.  If I wasn’t Responsible, I would die. Just like my daddy had died.

Tears validated the truth I had uncovered as I gushed to my friend, “If I’m not Responsible, I will die like my daddy.” Only then did the understanding fall into place: Somehow the convoluted thinking of a nine year old girl whose father had died two days before her birthday contorted into “If I am not responsible, I will die, too.”  There is no linear explanation. No reason or rhyme. Just a young girl’s processing of feelings too intense to be recognized. Loss. Grief. Grief so devastating that her grandfather was worried “she would throw herself into the grave with her daddy.” Grief so out of control it would cause me to learn the word, keening.

There it was: I guess you can’t blame the adult me for taking on Responsibility as armor against dying. Who really can chart what effects the monumental, all-consuming, grievous loss of a loving father can manifest in the young and feeling psyche of a nine-year old girl?   It may be the reason why I have tried so hard to find out “Why” to as many questions as I can.

Oh, What a Relief It Is!

There are immediate and lasting effects of aha moments. First is the intellectual and emotional understanding that comes in a rush. An epiphany many have named it; a revelation. Then follows ‘integration’ of the new understanding and that usually takes time, work, and practice.  This particular weekend’s Auto Therapy brought an immediate load-lifting lightness that can only be felt when you finally lance a pus-pocket of grief and move to a better understanding of why you are.  (We all have pus-pockets of grief that need lancing and draining to recoup our energy.) Just knowing why I felt so “responsible” all the time made me capable of relinquishing the onus part of it.

I remember proof-positive that I had integrated my new understanding of being responsible…or not. A co-worker came by my office. I can see her standing in the doorway as she started gritching about a grievance with the office or staff. All of a sudden I got an almost-smile on my face as I was able to say, “I’m not responsible for that.” I didn’t have to take it on, fix it, solve it, remedy it, deal with it! Oh what a relief it is!

Did I never worry about paying my bills or having enough money ever again?  Probably not. But it never again held the life and death anxiety and angst that I had been living. All as a result of a free-wheeling car trip with no purpose in mind, just letting the River taking us where we needed to go. (Post 4.) I believe if we can let the unconscious talk to us, and for us, we can begin to clear out the pus-pockets of grief, the bloody-room of our best parts, and begin to live a whole life. The Dots are there.

Another Auto Therapy session with another friend revealed why I had to find Big Ron at Whirlpool. 

16. Deja Vu…Dot…Dot…Dot

I found this written in a journal from the early days of waking up and asking questions:

“Deja vu last nite, packing stuff to move: In the background a movie I’d never seen before was on TV, about a coach trying to convince this chubby, insecure little boy that he would be able to be the emergency goalie they needed to win in soccer. I was packing the breakables off the coffee table, when very subtly it seeped into my conscious that I’d ‘done this before’—the exact same words, doing the exact same thing. That wispy, curious thing—not even a thing, a feeling—called a Deja vu. Then the follow-up thought: of course I couldn’t have done this thing ‘before’ to recognize it.  Never saw that movie before. Never packed these breakables on this coffee table in this house before.”

Okay, you know I ask a lot of questions of Life, so for me, doing mindless physical labor like wadding newspaper around breakables is excuse enough for my mind to grab its freedom to think about the important things, like: What is a Deja vu?  What causes a Deja vu?  Do they mean something? What could they mean, then? I wasn’t necessarily in a rush to pin down an answer. No, I like to do that flow thing, collect more data or at least experiences, and live some long day into, if not an answer, at least a theory I can believe in.

Usually a Deja vu has been thought of as, “done this before,” and, yes, scientists have offered up some cerebral gymnastics, but I chose to formulate my own theory after lots of mind-time given to the above questions (and a lot of soul-searching for meanings to this life).

I will interject for transparency and full-disclosure that I am wont to (and feel comfortable) taking small samplings and extrapolating big theories about things that haven’t been proven yet and are, therefore, still open to the presentation of a well-thought out theory. Be it also known that my theories are always amenable to further proof and/or evolution.

Trying on Possibilities.

I like theorizing, offering up a Life Possibility.  Why bother, you ask? I’ve been blessed-and-cursed with this recurring feeling in my existence of “there has to be more.” Somewhere after The Catalyst, (Post 6 and Post 7), life got past the lower case ‘life’ to the upper case ‘Life.’ Possibilities were pieces of a puzzle that just might fit together for The Big Picture of Life. You know when you do picture puzzles how you try different pieces to see if they fit? Why not try some possibilities that might fit? Plus, there was a nagging Dot that I retained from Mrs. True, my counsellor, who said to me, “At some time, you have to name ‘It.’” (‘It’ being what I truly believed in. I’d tried a dogmatized religion at an early age and saw past that but had never quite formulated what I did believe in. That became my challenge for finding The Big Picture.)

My theorizing is taking a small sampling of pertinent dots, seeing a pattern, and possibly connecting them into a logical and resonant theory. It doesn’t cost me (or you) anything to try it on for size. It doesn’t get me (or you) lost down a drutty rabbit hole. It’s just a possibility, and one that might fit into The Big Picture.

I remember making the same observation when I chose to leave the reward/punishment job at the major record label: “There has to be more than this.” When more job titles, more money, and more acquisitions didn’t sate the hole of ‘more,’ the search turned from outside to inside. Those Dots that I retained in my “pertinent pocket” without my even knowing they were being retained? Well, at some point, they seemed to connect. Why shouldn’t I try to connect some?

So here’s my theory of Deja vu’s.

I believe a Deja vu is a ‘rending or renting of the veil.’ The veil being that inexplicable mask that hides from us the “what-was-before-this-life” and “what-will-be-after-this-life.” In that wavery watery instant of Deja vu, you recognize in-this-life what you planned before-this-life.

Yes, I said, “what you planned before-this-life.” People have always joked about needing a manual for Life—they really have one. Remember The Schematic of Life (Post 8)?

We have one. We just can’t remember it without a whole heck of a lot of concentration, introspection, inquisitiveness, yea, questioning—which is hard to do in our harried lives. Along comes a Deja vu, and in that femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) that it takes for a Deja vu to seep through—your physical life has overlaid your Schematic.  A Schematic so detailed with all the possibilities of your life that you were wrapping those same breakables, or your butt was seated in that exact seat on a production line. You saw behind the veil! Wow! 

Deja vu is a wisp of what is locked behind the veil, seeping through the ethers and into the conscious. It is a ZAP connection to that Unknown of “where-we-were-before-we-were-born and will-be-when-we-die.” I’m also prepared to hazard the theory that a déjà vu may also be a checkmark that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, no matter the triviality of the moment. A Deja vu is a freeze-moment that gives me pause. Stop and marvel at the wonder of it. Staple this one femtosecond to the storyboard of my Life. And emerge with renewed energy to keep on keeping on.

You think maybe, even if you were able to swallow a Schematic of Life, can you swallow one so detailed that it would have you wrapping breakables from a coffee table? Or seated on a Whirlpool production line? Yeah, may be hard to imagine. BUT, if your plans for this life were made on ‘the other side,’ can’t you also entertain the probability that the abilities and capabilities on ‘the other side’ are beyond our comprehension? Yes, if you have given any thought to The Creator of us, however you have named It, you know It is not comprehensible to us. Hence we just keep updating our myths in our efforts to comprehend It. 

Too deep?  Ok, back to daily life. While the Deja vu I wrote about breakables on a coffee table was, on the Richter scale, say, about a 2 or 3, I had one during a very rough time in my life that hit a 7 or 8! I literally felt as if my head were swimming, my body physically swaying!

It was a tough time in my life. I was making the transition to freelance writing. I had clients, but the jobs were not enough to keep bills paid, home intact, and my two daughters in college. What do I do when times are getting tight? I lament aka whine. So in a lamenting phone conversation with my friend MG, she mentioned her company was hiring temps for their busy season of 3-4 months. I could apply for a second shift position so I could still see clients and write during the day.  This would offer a modicum of base pay security as I built my clientele. Thank heavens I’ve almost always had the hutzpah to do what has to be done. So I did it. 

I found myself on a production line at Whirlpool in T & A (Tests and Analysis—not the other T&A). While I was forlorn that my life had come to this ’at my age’, I took up the mantle I’d worn for every job I’d ever had:

“Whatever your hands find to do…Do that with all your might.” ‘

On to the training period for us second-shift temps: the dayshift would stay late and night shift came in early. The line would start and stop and stop for long periods because the newbie temps back up the line were being trained to do tedious and exacting work. I was at the end of the line, in the testing phase, after all the building was done. During these lulls, for some reason, seems the dayshift group leader, Big Ron, found the new person (me) on Wattage Tests a willing listener tethered to a production line.

Me? I was fighting dismay and forlornness, trying hard not to feel just a complete failure that I was back on a production line. Me, who had achieved a lot—I ticked them off: carpeted office (with couch and end tables, no less), personalized parking spot (up front), national advertising for a major record label, written for television, writing award from SESAC, even attained VP title. Me? On a production line again?

All those ‘accomplishments,’ yet I couldn’t help but note that a production line was where I’d started. Shortly after high school and an aborted carhop job in Indianapolis, I ended up living with grandparents in southern Indiana driving the 45-minutes to a job ‘on the line’ as a cookie-sacker and cracker-packer. Had my life come full-circle? Was this where I was to end up?  Why? “Why, oh, why, indeed,” I woed!

I’m not sure how many days or even weeks it might have been that Big Ron would stay over from his shift, come sit and tell me about the wiles and woes of his girlfriend—who also had the same first name as I did. (Synchronicity aka a sign?) One day, well into my increasing dismay at the current status of my life, Big Ron started telling me the tale of how his girlfriend had turned down a date with him, only to find out she had a tennis date with another guy. He went to confront her on the tennis court. The tale went on…he ended up hitting the other fellow with a tennis racket, breaking his nose. W hooooaaaaa! I started swaying. I stopped him.

I said, “I’ve never met you before coming to work here, right?

He, dumbfoundedly: “No.”

Me: “And you’ve never told me this story before, right?” 

He: “No.” 

Me: “I’m having the biggest Deja vu I’ve ever experienced in my life.” 

He: “What does that mean?” 

Me, as calmly and serene and resigned as I’ve ever been: “It means my butt is exactly where it’s supposed to be. My butt is supposed to be right here in this seat.”

I didn’t know why I had to come to Whirlpool; I didn’t know why I was reliving my beginnings. Was I getting some sort of do-over? I didn’t know what was expected of me at this point, to be here. Yet a tsunami Deja vu and I was instantly reassured I was exactly where I was supposed to be, for whatever reason that might unfold. I was able to let go of all my dismay and woebegottenness. In washed curiosity instead. Why did I have to be here, in this seat, in this department, at this time of my life?

There’s a lot more to tell about my connection with Big Ron. I’m not sure if I found him or if I created all the events for him to find me.

It would take a series of dreams and an Auto Therapy weekend to reveal exactly why I had to find Big Ron at Whirlpool.