The Sacral Chakra is actually located internally between the root and the solar plexis. It is tied to the reproductive organs. This centered is involved with developing and enforcing our boundaries, and also deciding to let some people inside of those boundaries. It is the area involved in permitting ourselves to enjoy life, passion and abundance. We give ourselves permission to be successful and loved and believe that we deserve these things.
The Martyr archetype sacrifices it's own goals, dreams, pleasure and sense of self to the needs and demands of others. Even when not demanded of it, it will put others first and then often use guilt to tie people to it.
The martyr does not believe it can change its situation, blames others for its suffering and refuses to see its part in its own path. It expects others to sacrifice as well and resents the joy of others who don't follow this path.
The Empress is the positive archetype associated with this chakra. The empress believes in herself, takes responsibility for choices and actions. She is proud of her achievements and enjoys life, her own and the successes of others. She is fun and at ease with people.
I have had moments with both of these characters. My mother was very much a martyr. She sacrificed everything to keep up the appearance of a perfect family. I don't know if her alcoholism had anything to do with the stress of keeping up appearances. She denied herself new clothing, food and the company of others. She may have not believed she had the right to enjoy herself. If this was the case it would explain where that little voice in my head came from.
I didn't believe I had the right to ask for food when hungry. I felt shame at needing a hug or comfort when I was sad. I learned to hide my pain. Like I didn't have the right to be upset when such worse things existed in the world than being adopted or losing a friend.
Adoption was an issue for me. It both presented an explanation as to why I felt I didn't fit in and wasn't really wanted by anyone, and it also provided an avenue of fantasy. I was able to invent a family in my head that really wanted me and would treat me the way I wanted to be treated. Not like many would think; desert before dinner, ice cream for breakfast, the kind of stuff silly kids dream about when they haven't a care in the world. I really just needed to feel wanted and have someone protect me. I didn't feel safe, ever in that house.
Mom seemed to resent my successes and my moving on. She always had a negative spin on things. Dangers I needed to watch out for. At a very young age she cautioned me on sex and exploration. At the same time she told me where babies came from, about my adoption, she also warned me to not give sex to boys because that was all they wanted and they'd leave as soon as they got it. Even if I did find a good man he could always die or divorce me so I needed to be financially smart and career savvy.
I don't know if this has anything to do with this constant anxiety about losing things and people I care about. it might. Combined with a pattern of holding out in order to test my date's sincere interest and having repetitive experiences of rejection after sex, I definitely think a pattern of anxiety around sex may have been established.
I was re-reading some of the journal entries from 2005 when I first started dating my current husband. In one I was describing the shear terror that holding his hand brought. It was around our fourth date and we had gone to the museum. He reached over to hold my hand and I stiffened up. I let him and then pulled away. I froze up over the fear of being open to him. The layers of rejections from my past seemed to crowd into my head and I just froze up.
Logically I know there's nothing to fear as far as rejection from him is concerned. My mind knows that. But I think it's my subconscious, my instincts, that have this habit of anxiety and fear. Too many disappointments and hurtful relationships. It shouldn't matter now but the emotions are stuck inside.
There was a time when I was confident in my relationship. My freshman year of college I had a boyfriend briefly and recognized the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship early and ended it. It decimated my friendship base because he was part of our circle and they chose sides. Losing him I had no bad feelings about. I did it easily. He was too clingy, controlling and tried to command all my time endangering my school work. The social fall-out was really bad. I lost everyone that year. Had to start over the following year.
But I remember that confidence. I must have made a change the following year because the relationship I got into then was not healthy. The warning signs were there and the thought of breaking up with Dave also flitted through my mind a few times but I kept it going. Maybe because I only saw him once in a while due to being 6 hours away from each other. Maybe the loss of the previous year kicked up anxiety about losing social connections I had gained over the summer. Perhaps some part of my mind decided to sacrifice a healthy boundary because I was afraid of being left or alone. I was afraid of not being enough for one person.
At this point I'm not sure, but the confident girl that dumped the bully boyfriend didn't manifest in this second relationship. I got clingy and fearful. I was expressive with him sexually but terrified of vaginal penetration.
I actually believed that irreparable damage to my body would be done if I had sex. I thought I would tear up inside, my uterus would be damaged, I'd bleed all over the place and become disabled. There was this crazy irrational fear in my head that all this could happen. I was terrified to the point of panic attacks and crying jags. We never actually did have sex. He cheated on me and I dumped him. It was a very co-dependent relationship and I was emotionally crazed when it ended.
I dated a couple more guys until Scott. That was a relationship from hell. When we first started dating he was really fun and energetic. /We took road trips and stayed up all night talking. It felt really good. It felt like a magickal connection. I knew he was smitten with me when I pulled the car over during a downpour, totally spontaneous and started splashing in the puddles and dancing. He got that look on his face. My instinctive reaction was Uhoh, run. But I didn't.
A year and a half later I was a wreck. We had moved in together in my first apartment. He brought people into my life that helped put a wedge in any healthy relationships I had from college. I lost Karol. Not a great loss but he was an interesting person and a major part of my social life. The only positive that came out of Scott's connections was Kelly. I met her through Ally and kept in contact with her when I was with him.
He wore me down. I started becoming moody, withdrawn, and pulled into some of his delusions. The coming of the anti-christ; the belief that shadows and vorlons are real forces in the universe and we had to pick a side. Like really delusional stuff. I read passages from my big green journal and am just shocked at the way my language and sentence structure changed. It's like I wasn't even writing my life anymore. I was chronicling his thoughts and plans and actions. I was repeating his language and philosophy. I wasn't me anymore. I was totally gone, disappeared.
When I met Amy, one of his love interests, after we technically broke up but still lived together in my second apartment, she hated me. Such a shame because we had so much in common. I let him pull my strings, didn't see the game for what it was, and acted out the script he wrote for me. The crazy, violent X who needs to be locked up to keep others safe. I was the dangerous one, the delusional one, the one who called the landlord to report the problems and confront the neighbor over the shared driveway situation. The one who got chased by said neighbor wielding a knife at me over that argument. I was the face of all negativity. Because I was the strong one and could handle it like he couldn't.
Amy helped me break the numbness. I hadn't even realized how numb I had gotten. Scott had been the first one I had had intercourse with. Back seat of a car. I'm not even sure it was consensual. I was having that old panic attack like I had with Dave but Scott just kept pushing through it. I remember trying to push him away. The experience was different then previous ones. I had been sexual before with others, very good experiences even with the problems I had with fear and Dave. But Dave was patient with me, or so he seemed. He never threw tantrums or tried to actually push me. Scott threw tantrums and attempted to get physical. A year later when he tried to force me, I was physically stronger than him, he backed down when I shoved him against the wall and away from me.
I had gotten so numb that I don't remember having laughed in months, no sex drive, no social connections outside of work. It was at that time that song by Evanescence hit the air waves. Bring me to Life.
It was like a voice of the goddess coming through. I didn't see that song as romantic but a message to wake the hell up. It was that spring that I began to pretend to be his puppet while undermining his plans socially.
It took a couple of months to get out and get a new place and erase contact with him. His going to boot camp, military service at my encouragement, was the final link severed.
But even being invisible online and moving across the city didn't completely erase the stain of that relationship. I felt tainted. I felt like I had this dirty mark on me that I couldn't get rid of. If anyone got too close to me they would see that filth and hate me for it. There were really nice people I avoided like the plague because I didn't want to spoil them. I didn't want to be responsible for corrupting someone or destroying innocence. It took years to remove the ideas and programming from my head.
I dated a guy twice that reminded me of Dave and helped me resolve some of the issues of guilt, loss and fear. That felt good.
Then I met Andrew. He was so close to what I was looking for, he just wasn't looking for the same thing. There was also a few deal breakers in the mix. I had casual sex and tried to turn it into a relationship. Total typical girl mistake. They write country songs about that shit. I also had a panic attack with him. The first time I broke down crying and was terrified. He was really good with me though. That might have been part of why I wanted it so bad to work with him. He comforted me and told me I was safe. I could have mistaken his simple human compassion for real love.
I did finally accept that it would never work with him. I did a spell and released my connection with him and never contacted him again.
It was about nine months later I met my current hubbie. I moved really slow in the relationship. He told me later he was on the verge of giving up on me when I finally cuddled with him. It was absolute anxiety for me. In my entries I mention in passing, as if an afterthought or footnote, the fear I felt. It took me a while to get physically comfortable with him.
The old bullshit with Scott reared its ugly head at the beginning of the relationship when I met hubbie and later when I met Rose. He had heard of Scott and I panicked at first. I didn't want him to think poorly of me because of the association. Didn't want him to see the dark stain. When Rose mentioned she had known him, Ally and Maureen I was panicked as well. She calmed me down stating she hated him and wanted him killed. After a while it became comical. I could walk into a room and mention his full name and bet that one person at least would scream, "I fucking hate that asshole!"
When I did finally relax we were like fire. I remember not being able to get enough of him.There were many movies that got put into the player that never got watched. To this day he will remind me we watched this or that while dating and I'll remind him we probably didn't "watch" it. I have no memory of it.
When we did finally have intercourse for the first time I had the panic attack again. Totally froze up and sobbing crying. He was great with me or I wouldn't have stayed with him. I certainly wouldn't be able to be doing this level of analysis on myself and be this open and honest on a public forum if I didn't have a serious level of emotional support at home.
We've been passionate with each other for years. I remember a pretty healthy sex life with each other even with all the moving I've done for jobs. There have been periods of lapse but I don't remember any longer than a month.
In my memory things changed in 2008. Maybe things were a bit dicey before that during my jobs at the uniform store and Wilson Farms. The frustration and anger over my financial situation would numb the relaxation needed for sexual desire. But 2008 was a big year with illnesses and deaths following on swift wings until now culminating in the huge loss of my mother, my adult orphanhood status, and the insanity of my brother getting another swat at abusing me as an adult during the estate dealings.
I'm not starting with just the stuff that happened in 2008 to now without an eye to looking at earlier things.
I think the issues from childhood, the martyrdom of mom, the denial of feelings, learning to hide my true self, the shame connected to sexuality and possible sexual abuse, were underneath, in my subconscious, and periodically have surfaced once in a while. I think the stress and craziness of these past years have brought everything to the surface and I can't move forward until I deal with the muck that's risen to the top of my mind and emotions. I'm being forced to deal with all this shit now. My body quit on me in December and that was a big wake up call for me to start healing so I don't get irreversibly sick.
I know this entry has gone a long way away from a discussion of sensuality and the Empress archetype.
The empress believes herself worthy of pleasure and success. I've struggled with that over the years. I will have to do the affirmations and meditations to build that confidence in myself. Removing myself from a toxic educational environment is part of that. Severing ties with an abusive and neglectful family is another part of that. Truly believing in myself without the negative talk will be a huge step toward a happier future.
Overcoming the martyr-programming from mom will have to be done as well. I almost want to do the twelve steps out of order and temporarily skip to the fifth step about sexual comfort. I've already inventoried my sexual history which is part of that step. Now I need to identify the negative messages about sex and about my body and come up with a new list of rules or positive messages to absorb about sex. This I hope will revitalize my energy levels.
I can use these positive feelings to develop a new script for sexual fantasies that is loving and nurturing. I can reprogram myself with joy instead of fear.
The Sacral chakra journaling assignment does include room for this kind of fantasy work. Creating images and fantasies of happy and confident experiences.
I can undo the numbness that I have developed these passed few years to protect myself from all this stress and uncertainty. Sensuality means feeling with all your five sense. Paying close attention to your body and letting these sensations in. Getting back in touch with your body. Not sex, but simple things like the feel of cloth, the smell of rain, the sound of the wind.
Ill focus on those things for now and revisit the inventory when necessary.
After writing all this I realized that I've not inventoried my relationship with Ally. It may have been too complex and my brain blocked it out. I'll have to work on that.
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