Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
2019 Farm Life
sKePTiKal:
I've had a new idea tossed at me, that I want to run by you all. It's confusing me.
The idea is that we can simply CHOOSE to not feel old feelings from the past and instead free our feelings from the past associations and simply feel something new/different in the now. That it is simply a matter of choosing, will, and practice.
-------------------------------
It sure wasn't that way at all, grieving Mike. Those feelings would show up when I least expected them. Sometimes with no trigger.
So, ok. I know affirmations can be useful to feel differently. I know certain realizations can lift the 16-ton anvil of "over-responsibility" for others and their feelings; sort of a manic "personal responsbility" to "save the world"... and that's not ANYONE'S job.
But I also know that acceptance of the feelings associated from past experiences is absolutely necessary, to heal from them and that trying to avoid them - pretend they don't exist - or telling yourself you're "choosing" to not feel those things is one reason those feelings just DON'T.GO.AWAY (and some of us do suffer the psychosomatic physical consequences) and almost anything can trigger them... and you can find yourself years later still stuck in feeling the same emotions as in the past, almost AS IF - it is part of WHO you are.
That it's not just something that happened to you years ago; and you felt a certain way then - and have moved on, but that it was important to your definition of your SELF, to incorporate those feelings into your everyday reality. Whether anxiety, fear, terror, paralysis... guilt/self-blame for not being a super-hero...
I'm kinda rambling to get the ideas in my head, OUT where I can see them; where you can see them too... and maybe offer some "and" to the "either/or" opposites of these two ideas and our very real experiences. Maybe chronic abuse and trauma emotions differ from the more "garden variety" life emotions. Maybe a part/parcel of those extreme experiences have permanently altered the neural pathways and really ARE a "part of who we are" now.
I dunno what I think exactly. I am hearing a bit of subtle assumption that feeling those old feelings is somehow "wrong" or "limiting" or a waste of life moments. Which I know for a fact is NOT true, when you're actively working on yourself. But maybe there's an aspect of it which IS true, when a person is so attached to that one defining experience that it becomes a defining characteristic of one's self.
I kinda also think that we Amazons have been, still are, actively involved in sorting out this bit of "emotional logic" for ourselves, in a way that frees us from those old reflexes of feeling, at all different levels. So of course, I'm posing this puzzle to you all for imput! From your own experience.
Maybe it'll help me find an "aha!" somewhere in my thinking on it. Maybe you will find one.
ETA:
This "choosing what you feel" idea seems popular. Not necessarily effective... this article kind of makes sense to me on the topic:
https://heleo.com/choosing-happy-doesnt-work-heres-instead/10498/
ETA2:
Maybe the feelings don't stop/go away and are an accepted part of who we are -or rather WERE... AND... we can allow ourselves to change, grow, and not let those feelings be the "defining characteristic" of us???
Hopalong:
What a deep and powerful question, ((((((((((((Amber))))))))))))).
I think it's taken me decades of repetitive stuckness to begin to see the reality of healing. But I measure it differently. What I see now isn't so much a change in the meaning of pain, as a change in the intervals and in the force of the pain.
The pain is pure and true and honest and reflects realities I have been through. To deny it would be to lie. But it's also okay to have hope and to notice change. Healing can't be a goal because somebody else thinks one should "get over it." Anyone who says that is only displaying their discomfort, their capacity for empathy becoming exhausted. That can surely happen, it's not evil to feel drained...though it's unkind to put it that way to someone's face. One should instead simply focus on self care to replenishment. And in some situations, one has to pass the torch to others who have a greater capacity at that moment or stronger filters just because they're made that way.
The fact that when it comes now, it comes at longer intervals, and its intensity and pitch, although real, feel less destroying...that's how I think it changes for me.
I was explaining to M recently my earliest realizations about sexism. Little stories from young childhood as I absorbed shocks about what it meant to be a girl. What I've come to accept is how profound that shock and grief felt from about age four onward. I didn't just think about it, I felt it like a blow to the soul. And I respect that little girl's pain and shock and disappointment in the way things are.
Now, it is something I accept as a deep part of who I am. I can't escape injustice and it won't be gone in my lifetime. But those emotions are part of who I am. Just as I'd never expect a black person to somehow eliminate all grief, all pain, over the culture they endure, how could I ask the same of myself or any woman? So it's part of me and rises now and then. But I'm not bitter. I'm just clear.
They're painful but the reason I think they will always be with me is that they are honest. Denying that pain would be denying myself. My voice.
I just keep minding the intervals, which get longer and are more filled with peace. The capacity for happiness increases over time, I find. The present gradually gets more important than processing the past.
As someone who went through the traumas you did, I can imagine that those particular emotions are something to respect. To honor. To recognize as deep and honest parts of your humanity.
What's disabling isn't the pain but fear of it. Or a sense that you've not "done your homework" if it recurs. I think accepting and embracing yourself with deep company, deep respect for the purity of grief, deep realization of the humanity of what you feel, is strengthening. You're not "failing" if old pain revisits.
Grief is like ripples and it makes no sense to "require" someone to be done with it. Each wave is a greeting from your purest heart. I don't perceive you as stuck, just so frantically busy that maybe a wave from Mike takes you by surprise.
It's terribly hard to sit and let the wave hit alone. It's labor. I'm glad you bring it here.
love and comfort,
Hops
Twoapenny:
--- Quote from: sKePTiKal on March 03, 2019, 11:08:45 AM ---I've had a new idea tossed at me, that I want to run by you all. It's confusing me.
The idea is that we can simply CHOOSE to not feel old feelings from the past and instead free our feelings from the past associations and simply feel something new/different in the now. That it is simply a matter of choosing, will, and practice.
-------------------------------
It sure wasn't that way at all, grieving Mike. Those feelings would show up when I least expected them. Sometimes with no trigger.
So, ok. I know affirmations can be useful to feel differently. I know certain realizations can lift the 16-ton anvil of "over-responsibility" for others and their feelings; sort of a manic "personal responsbility" to "save the world"... and that's not ANYONE'S job.
But I also know that acceptance of the feelings associated from past experiences is absolutely necessary, to heal from them and that trying to avoid them - pretend they don't exist - or telling yourself you're "choosing" to not feel those things is one reason those feelings just DON'T.GO.AWAY (and some of us do suffer the psychosomatic physical consequences) and almost anything can trigger them... and you can find yourself years later still stuck in feeling the same emotions as in the past, almost AS IF - it is part of WHO you are.
That it's not just something that happened to you years ago; and you felt a certain way then - and have moved on, but that it was important to your definition of your SELF, to incorporate those feelings into your everyday reality. Whether anxiety, fear, terror, paralysis... guilt/self-blame for not being a super-hero...
I'm kinda rambling to get the ideas in my head, OUT where I can see them; where you can see them too... and maybe offer some "and" to the "either/or" opposites of these two ideas and our very real experiences. Maybe chronic abuse and trauma emotions differ from the more "garden variety" life emotions. Maybe a part/parcel of those extreme experiences have permanently altered the neural pathways and really ARE a "part of who we are" now.
I dunno what I think exactly. I am hearing a bit of subtle assumption that feeling those old feelings is somehow "wrong" or "limiting" or a waste of life moments. Which I know for a fact is NOT true, when you're actively working on yourself. But maybe there's an aspect of it which IS true, when a person is so attached to that one defining experience that it becomes a defining characteristic of one's self.
I kinda also think that we Amazons have been, still are, actively involved in sorting out this bit of "emotional logic" for ourselves, in a way that frees us from those old reflexes of feeling, at all different levels. So of course, I'm posing this puzzle to you all for imput! From your own experience.
Maybe it'll help me find an "aha!" somewhere in my thinking on it. Maybe you will find one.
ETA:
This "choosing what you feel" idea seems popular. Not necessarily effective... this article kind of makes sense to me on the topic:
https://heleo.com/choosing-happy-doesnt-work-heres-instead/10498/
ETA2:
Maybe the feelings don't stop/go away and are an accepted part of who we are -or rather WERE... AND... we can allow ourselves to change, grow, and not let those feelings be the "defining characteristic" of us???
--- End quote ---
Skep, this is more or less where I am at the moment so what you wrote has rung a big bell for me.
My thoughts, for what they are worth, is that the current, fashionable "you create your own reality with your thoughts, what you put out you get back, you attract your experiences to you, you don't have to let your feelings control you, you can chose how you respond" - and so on - are fine for the day to day, not too troubling stuff - the bus being late, the delivery not arriving, dinner getting burnt - but really no use at all for traumatic abuse, long term stress, grief, divorce, loss of a child, and so on.
I'd go so far as to say a lot of this stuff feels like victim blaming to me. It feels that there is a trend now to be dismissive of the way someone feels - and if someone's having a nervous breakdown over a broken nail then yes, I'd be dismissive of that, but to suggest to someone who is grieving, for example, that they can chose different feelings, is not only a bit like treating someone with cancer as if they have a bit of a cold, but is also a rejection of reality. I think that pit you can fall in to after something dreadful happens can be so deep and dark that most of us are lucky if we get through it without doing ourselves some serious damage.
I'm all for being proactive, problem solving, becoming self aware and so on but I'm also - as you know from my other threads at the moment - really keen on accepting the feelings that seem to be considered unwelcome. There was an interesting Facebook discussion a while ago started by a woman who'd lived in a number of communal settings and who felt that the New Age "you attract your experiences into your life" was being used by some as an excuse for abuse and essentially browbeating victims who were being made to feel that it was their fault they'd been assaulted - same old story, just being told in a different way.
So no, I don't think we can choose to just feel differently. I am currently in day four of my stupor. I've done yoga, cleaned the house, read self help chapters, taken flower remedies, meditated, chanted, re-arranged the sitting room, watched comedy shows, visited a friend, been out with son, cuddled the cat, napped, had nice baths, eaten regularly - and I still feel like shit. In all honesty, I'd cut my own arm off it it meant I never felt anything negative or unpleasant so if simply choosing not to feel like this worked I'd be delighted :) I think it minimises the intensity of some life experiences. I don't know if this makes sense! It does to me at the minute but it might not later. Lol xx
Hopalong:
I'd go so far as to say a lot of this stuff feels like victim blaming to me.
Me too, Tupp. I kind of feel like mentally slapping people when I hear too much of this. I do get we can make effort to not be disabled by pain, just as we'd endure PT for the eventual hope of physical recovery. But the "you attract everything that happens to you and therefore are responsible for attractng a cure for everything" is bullshit, imo.
We need the help of others, interactions, being heard and validated, to heal. And some kinds of injury require more of this and some less. And that's just real, imo.
I also think that in some cases of stuckness, including my own at times in my history, true chemical depression has begun affecting the brain. I don't need them now, but for about 15 years, antidepressants were a massive help.
Not to sidestep essential pain, but to cope with too much darkness, more than my personal set of filters could cope with then. I feel no shame about that era at all.
xxoo
Hops
sKePTiKal:
Maybe acceptance of those difficult feelings is easier for some people than others? So, once accepted fully - they then "choose" to no longer linger over them? Moving on, so to speak. I wonder about the process of accepting involved; and whether it's TRULY accepting, acknolwedging, honoring and living with those feelings... and forgiving oneself for being human, warts & all... or it's more avoidance, shutting the steel gates to those feelings... hardening one's heart to the voice within??
I'm just trying to wrap my head around the ideas and understand to the best of my ability. So, this is a new age-y thing? 20-30 years ago, "new age" had a whole different set of ideas. Then, feelings were idolized and mattered more than anything else.
I can't keep up with all these things. LOL.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version