Learning to deal with pain

[Gaining Strength]

I'm sorry that this thread has devolved into this discussion, but at the same time this issue is no small potatoes to me. 

For me, it is not reasonable to determine that because people exist that they are therefore doing their best.  Each and everyone of us go through life focusing determinedly on some things and just getting by in other areas.

I cook dinner many nights but only rarely do I do my best in regards to preparing dinner.  Doing my best requires a conscious effort, determination and a certain skill set.  Just because two people procreate and have a child in their midst does not mean they have done their best.  The mother or father who abuse, neglect, murder their children would qualify as doing their best according the criteria that Ann3 and Lighter have laid out.  I simply don't buy it.  In NO way are abuse, neglect or murder the "best" of anything.

[ann3]

sorry to get off topic, but I have thought so much about this issue & decided that it's best for me to go with the cognitive therapy/radical acceptance route.

"I cook dinner many nights but only rarely do I do my best in regards to preparing dinner. "  Using the  cognitive therapy/radical acceptance route, I'd say, OK, so you rarely do your best, but you do the best you can do at that time, meaning, perhaps you were tired & weren't able to do the very, very best you could do at that time.   

Part of the cognitive therapy/radical acceptance route involves facing our longing & desire to have things differently, not as they are.  But things are as they are, we do the best we can do at that time, but it may not be THE very best we could have done.

Whatever. 

[gjazz]

Actually, I found my way out of the morass came from thinking much as Lighter and Ann3 have said here.  My problem was that I was putting so much time and energy into anger and blame, I wasn't making positive progress in directions I wanted to go.  Not that it wasn't justified, just that his actions and choices should be his problem, and they'd become my problem, and I wanted to be free of it.  So I thanked the universe that I wasn't crippled in the way he was, accepted that he is very very flawed, and perhaps--I never got to "absolutely," but perhaps, he did the best he could at the time.   He didn't care because he had no capacity for caring.  I told myself it was like he was colorblind--how do you describe red to someone who has never seen it?  He didn't fulfill his responsibilities.  He didn't love his children or his wife; indeed he abused them quite badly.  What made it happen?  Not sure.  Something.  If he wants help with that, he can confide in me.  Actually, I'd be interested to hear it.  But he won't, because he doesn't have the courage.  And I think he knows it.

[lighter]

When it comes to making a decision that effects their child they do not weigh or consider what the options are and which is best for themselves OR their child they simply chose what works best for them


Also found it gives me peace of mind to say that everyone does the best that they can at that particular point in time.  Things cannot be different than they were/are.  So, by accepting that our NPs did the best that they could at that time, we also accept they were Ns & we can acknowledge & mourn our losses.  By accepting people as they are/were, we accept reality & by accepting reality, we can make better choices for ourselves.

Exactly, G.

More a tool, or mechanism, for acceptance and giving up hope.

Less a literal literal statement, calling for review of the hurts.

We forgive for ourselves..... not for the people who hurt us.

Lighter

[sKePTiKal]

An observation related to the topic:

While speaking to my mom recently, she revealed pretty much all the anger, resentment, shaming and blaming TO me ABOUT me, that I have believed that for so long, I felt toward HER.

All I felt was unsure about what was real. Projection is that insidious. Because her feelings about me have been pushed - introjected - into my own feelings about myself - I was believing that I really felt that way about her. My hubby helped to ground me again.

All I REALLY felt, was a form of pity for her that she couldn't let go the illusion of being able to control me, hurt me, make me feel obligated to validate her warped reality. There was the unspoken "or else" in her ranting of abandonment...

... and the way I feel about it now, is that I've been without a mother 52+ years... if she wants to believe that she is my mother - OK. I don't fear her threats of abandonment. I can let her go - since she only wants me to help her sustain her delusions. I don't want that kind of mother.

That leaves me a LOT free-er to heal myself without having to drag HER along with me. I'm a lot lighter... and the job is MUCH easier now.