| Pressing aka Rebirthing |
| 25 years old, 6 years with Ma Bell |
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I discovered and confirmed the practice of "Pressing" works, depending on the situation, it can help a person get re-centered. Babies prefer to be bound up in swaddling clothes, so tightly that they cannot move. They relax and drift off to sleep. They effect does not end with being a baby. Try it, with someone you trust, roll up in a blanket, tight, tight tight... see how it feels when you close your eyes and relax.... My best friend was dying of brain cancer. I went to see him daily at his son's house in Beaverton. Rudy was bedridden, he was that close to dying. I found that when I went to see him... the 1st time I discovered that he was terrified, not at all like the stories you hear about "brave" patients... anyway one of the methods of pressing is to firmly "pat" the person under stress in the center of the chest or back. This would be a firm enough pat to move the whole body from its firm impact. I used this on Rudy and also on Alex when he was an infant. It calmed both of them. Another is to wrap the person tightly in blankets then lie next to or on them, speak softly and reassuringly until they are calm. This is used on infants, mostly, it is often called bunding. (and of course you wouldn't lie on them) This has also been used on adolescents. New age therapists in Denver use this as a regular treatment for unrully teens. I also used it on my sister Penny when our mother was on her death bed. I laid on top of her like a blanket, nose to nose, and we talked about her and mom, in retrospect it probably looked wierd, but it never occured to me at the time and It had the desired effect of helping her re-center her emotions and thoughts. Why I did this I am not sure, I guess it was just the "right thing" to do and I can't seem to walk away from someone that I can help, even if they have just finished hurting mde. Another is for a group to crowd around a person and press towards the center calming the person with soft reassuring words. wierd stuff huh?? |
| extra links: "Breakdown Lane" "Wasted youth" "Unexamined life" |
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If you read my ramblings regarding my childhood then you know I didn't have a normal upbringing. I don't really remember either of my parents giving me any guidance. I remember being corrected, usually a painful experience, this was the way I was taught, not by instructions on how to behave but rather a slap. I was told "you know what you did" more times than I can remember. I usually didn't have a clue. I don't remember what caused me to decide to stop trying to be a "sterling" child, as far as my behavior was concerned. I believe it was a feeling of hopelessness, I was blamed anyway. But there was a point when I changed my operating mode... my parents were divorced so my dad wasn't beating me.. my mom used my brother Jim as her whip... I can remember her screaming at Jim "get him" meaning attack me and beat me as hard as he could... on one occasion it resulted in him falling into the china cabinet and breaking all her treasures. Good for her. I wanted to be happy, my home was not where I was going to find it. I started running away from home, that behavior landed me in jail several times... at least 3. I was also committed to a Youthful runaway school for a year. Fortunately I was not so bad that I had to live there. I was not criminal, just a chronic runaway. I was only motivated by my wants. Regardless of others feelings. I didn't just runaway to a friends house, I went to places like "Lake Havasu" where I got a job and a place to live. I was arrested and my mother was sent for, then San Diego where I joined a commune, was arrested and sent home. I was a runaway and that was illegal. I was not going for just a while, I was simply leaving forever. After spending a week at "Juvey Jail" I stayed home for a while. I discovered that my ability to make friends could bring me some happiness. I didn't understand that it was not reasonable to expect them to provide all of my emotional needs, I didn't even know I had emotional needs. So I often broke off relationships based on my perception of what a good relationship should be. I could over think the strangest things... for example Do t-shirts get thinner or thicker after washing? thinner is the answer, unless you consider the fact that cotton shrinks and becomes more dense, therefore thicker. Why won't a plastic straw stay in a glass of pop? They always seem to rise out of the pop? Because the carbonation bubbles stick to the straw as they rise and lift the straw out the pop. Toilets swirl clockwise south of the equator. I "believed" I was just playing around with a guy in my gym class, he was huge but not fat. We were goofing around one day and I pretended to intimidate him. I grabbed him by the shirt in the chest area and pushed up against the wall. I don't remember what I said but it was something threatening Imp sure. He never said anything to me but I found out later that he was afraid of me from then on. I mention this because it shows that you can never tell how you will affect a persons life. That was the 1st person I got physical with and it was pretend anger. |
12 years old My parents divorced when I was 12 or so, the iron fist of my father disappeared. My shrieking mother was free of his brutality and so was I. Well no I wasn't, now she would shriek at Jim to "get him" this was his queue to attack me and beat me at will, this was her usual mode of discipline. Brutality reigned. It was very apparent that I was alone, still. I never thought that it would continue. My dad was no longer the club with which I was beaten. I started to have a "friendship" with him. I now suspect that he was bending to my mom's will when it came to abuse, if he did it, then she was innocent. My school experiences involved either hiding from my brother or hiding from other bullies that saw me as an easy mark. If you read my ramblings regarding my childhood then you know I didn't have a normal upbringing. I don't really remember either of my parents giving me any guidance. I remember being corrected, usually a painful experience, this was the way I was t aught, not by instructions on how to behave but rather a slap. I was told "you know what you did" more times than I can remember. I usually didn't have a clue why I was being beaten and no one would tell me. 13 years old I didn't like school so I stopped going most of the I spent my time alone. I was either at the house (I guess I should have thought of it as "home") watching TV. I didn't like crowds so I stayed out of them. I liked girls because they weren't mean spirited, I also discovered that they could make me really forget my problems. To say I became obsessed with girls would be an understatement. My attraction to girls was encouraged by their lack of physical meanness, They didn't try to be dominant, cruel or ask stupid questions. I felt I could really just be myself. I was pretty odd, my childhood, spent alone, left me unprepared to socialize. I didn't have any left over notions of cooties or any of that garbage. My relationship with my sister, after Steve was born, was non-existent. I think I expected it to be much more, we were born close together, age wise, she was only about 10 months older than me. When Steve was born she abandoned me (see ramblings) and we never got to know each other after that. When I was about 16 she and her best friend were making jewelry, for some reason she allowed me to be a part of that for a couple of days. I was probably pretty intense, I'm not sure, they made it clear that I was not wanted there. I had no sense of family. I often found myself being accepted into someone else�s family as a "nice kid" and would succor that relationship until I drained it. At that point or near it I was invited to stay away. 14 years old I thought I was ugly, physically, as a result of this self image I starved myself. There were several Dr visits when I was told I was mal-nourished. I found reasons for not eating, I had read research, I was a bookworm, about mice. The control group lived and ate normally, the other group was fed only enough to survive. The control group aged as expected, the other group was given a normal diet when the reached late middle age. The control group had all the problems you would expect, gray hair, balding, arthritis, and such. The other group, after a normal diet of a few weeks, had none of those problems. They had youthful appearances, full bushy dark coats. So.... I was not going to eat until I was 50. Lofty goal. Basic rules for not eating are these, eating is just a bad habit, hunger pangs subside sooner or latter, cigarettes or coffee or both would stave off or neutralize hunger. Looking back this was an obvious form of self torture or something. I think. I was very thin all the time I was growing up. When I was 20 I wore a size 28 waist, I was 6" tall. 132 lbs. I was about as unattractive as I felt. Looking at old photo's I now realize that I was pretty good looking. 15 years old At about age 15 or so I was walking and came upon my brother Steve. He had accidentally peed himself and the front of his jeans was soaked. He was embarrassed, of course, we were a long way from home. Steve was not a friend of mine, I doubt we had talked more than a couple of times in the previous 14 years. But he didn't want to walk all the way home with pissed pants. I came up with a plan, I found a yard that had the sprinklers on and pretended to throw him into the path of the water and held him there until he was soaked from head to foot. I then walked him home. I don't know why I kept helping my siblings. I know it was not to curry favor, I just couldn't abandon anyone, even them, in trouble. My father had a small place in town, it was a motel that had kitchenettes. I started going over there while he was at work. Later he moved into a small house, I continued to spend all my free time there when he was at work. He didn't seem to mind, I think it was because it probably annoyed my mother. On very hot days I would sit in front his air-conditioner drinking his milk with strawberry Quik flavoring added. I never had a key, that I remember, I think I always broke in. (snuck in). He started dating a woman, Patricia, that lived 3 blocks from me and I went over there all the time, he never hit me. She had a daughter, Kathy, that I started seeing, we were very "in love" we spent all of our free time together. We would dance to her records in her family room." She taught me the words to songs and we would sing, she would tease me, make me act like a puppy and pet me and give me bowls of water to drink. We would kiss, it was bliss. I had no idea what sex was and we were innocent. Pat was like a mom to me, I loved her too. Of course this caused me all kinds of emotional turmoil. Disloyalty and guilt were on my mind. My older brother ran away with his sweetheart. It was the best thing to ever happen to me. 16 years old My mother shipped me off to Harding Military Academy in Glendora California, I am not sure why I was chosen for this privilege, possibly to shield me from my siblings? To get rid of me? Because one of my siblings begged her to? I think that with Steven and I at Harding and Jim a recent runaway it would just leave Penny. No place to ship her off to. Anyway I was miserable and told her often how much I missed home and freedom and Kathy. Finally, after being restricted from going home, I ran away from there I went to my dads, I had packed everything I had at the school into a blanket and carried it while hitch-hiking. I was hauled back to the school and taken into a meeting of the military leadership and scholastic leadership. They agreed to allow me to return to school. I told them that I would not stay. The colonel took me for a private walk and we discussed my decision to leave school, he told me that if I promised to "not run" I would be allowed to return, but of course there would be some punishment. I told that my promise was to run as soon as the meeting was over. He thanked me for my honesty and they advised my mom that I couldn't return to school. Steve was at the same school, he requested to go and was very happy with the life. He stayed on for years. Kathy and I were an item for a long time, I still love her, she was my 1st and special. Then Dad and Pat got married. I felt more conflicted feelings and we started to grow apart eventually "not seeing" each other. I am not sure who broke up with who, but I do recall the subject of her being my strep-sister coming up. Penney and I were the only ones at home, we never spoke, not a single conversation or exchange. 17 years old I continued to be a runaway, getting arrested. One night I was out with a friend, I had just been out to the desert to pick him up at his Army base, he was a soldier. We were on our way back to town and he had a 5th of Sloe Gin, a very sweet poison. When we got back to town we went to my house, I went inside to tell my mom what I was up to. I knew she was home because her car was there. I finally found her in her bed with a strange man. Being 1/2 drunk my anger, pain, upset led me to run to my room and grab my 22 rifle. I was going to kill them both, my friend tackled me 3 feet from her bedroom door. He sat on me and told me that I was not going to do anything stupid and that I was going to come with him. I was crying hysterical, we drove around for a while and then we headed back out to the desert to his base. As we were driving I was drinking, I was shitfaced when I decided to jump from the car, we were on the freeway and he was speeding... so that was probably 80 or so. He saved me a second time, he grabbed my belt from behind just as I was headed out the passenger door. This was when I left home. One of my friends lived at a motel, his mother owned several. He allowed me to move in with him as long as I would help with cleaning rooms and such. Across the street was a restaurant and I got a job as a dishwasher. I made a friend from one of the cooks and he would slip me food from the kitchen (orders that were made wrong). I also got a job at a taco house making taco shells. I was on my own, I was 16. We would clean rooms as soon as they were vacant, there were several rooms that had full time renters. When we cleaned these rooms and changed the sheets daily we would scavenge for cigarettes, food and whatever else we could find worth stealing. After 4-5 months my mom came to my room and was crying. As she stood on the stoop, begging me to come home, I looked in her teary eyes and closed the door. A couple of months later, after scraping and struggling to feed myself I decided to negotiate my return home. My mom agreed to allow me to have control over my life. The first thing I did was to enroll in a school for dropouts. All of the courses were self paced and could be completed at the students speed. I had 2 years of high school to make up for. My mom didn't know I was going to school, I didn't tell her anything that I was doing. She found out I was in school when I invited her to my graduation in June 1968, I had made up all my lost time and graduated on schedule. I met a girl at a football game on a Friday night, it was the "main" event for kids to meet. Her name was Sondra Andresen, she was an artist and a troubled soul. On some nights if I stayed at her house too late I would sleep in her parents travel trailer or I would crawl through the donation slot of the "Goodwill" donation shed at the corner. If I was sleeping at Goodwill I would arrange all the bundles into a mattress and use other clothes as a blanket. I was a vagabond. I had found a woman that made me feel good, or was it the sex? 18 years old and out In June I graduated, turned 18 and I married my pregnant girlfriend. My mother immediately notified me that she was moving to San Francisco and was on my own. We lived with her parents for a several months. It was a family oriented group and I wasn't to sure how to act. I really enjoyed the whole environment, dinner together, sitting watching TV together, sitting in the backyard just hanging out together. I was very happy but then I overheard my mother in law screaming at her oldest daughter that if she didn't straighten up she would end up like Sondra, my wife. That made me feel as unwanted as hell. We found an apartment, a place that would give me money off of the rent, if I cared for the grounds. We had sex a lot, after a while Sondra miscarried, we lost the baby. We discussed what we should do. The thought of getting a divorce was discussed, I was against it. I had a chance to have my own family. I wanted to have a real family and I wanted her to get pregnant again right away. It was a childish idea. We were way to young, divorce felt like abandonment to me. I got a factory job and that is where I met Liz, the woman that would end up being the "rest of my life" |
| WASTED YOUTH |