Learning to deal with pain

[Gaining Strength]

I was looking forward to this new year – another new beginning.  This one promises to be much better than those I have weathered the past decade – not a false hope sort of expectation but a grounded, reasoned basis for hope.  But things have gotten off to a rocky start.  The end of the year and first week of 2009 have been unbearably dreary weather – warm, gray, first cold then warm then cold again, a foggy drizzle that breaks into drenching thunderstorms day after day after day.  Finally, yesterday I slipped into the darkness.  Not a surprise but a disappointment.

Then – today, as I was picking myself up from the abyss I was hit first from one direction by a rejection that in months will be completely forgotten and then another.  This one will remain with me to the ends of my days.  I’m tired, bone weary from being hit hard from behind without warning, tired to the bone of picking myself up to be knocked to the ground yet again.

But now I have a choice.  I can choose to give in to the pain and take the emotional roller coaster.  It calls me.  It is a wild ride – not pleasant but beckoning still. More pleasant in its ending than in its twists and turns and climbs and drops.  More of an addicts draw to the ups and downs than a true pleasure.  So I can choose that ride OR I can take the newly available option – the one that removes me from the vicissitudes, the one that is calm and peaceful.

I am in such pain and so angry from what has happened and yet I am extraordinarily aware of the choice before me.  Take the ride of emotion and rail and rage or let it go over and over, choose to leave this behind and take the new, high road.  Pick the option that offers promise and hope and shake the dirt from my sandals when I leave the other behind.

All my life, I have clung to the old, trying over and over to make it right – all for naught, all for waste of time, of hope, of love, of life.  Trying to make right out of what could never by right.  That was the hopes of having a hate filled family love me.  Today I can choose to live that legacy or cut it loose and leave the rottenness behind and move on.

The way I have written makes the choice sound easy.  It should be.  The gift of writing is that it makes it ever clearer.  My habit pulls me towards that crazy rollercoaster of emotion but today I say, “No.”  Ever difficult in spite of the obviousness – as hard to let go as a drink is to an alcoholic – today I am letting the lost hope of what “should” be go, leaving it behind for what can be.  What ever it is that I am opting for cannot be worse than what I am finally letting go.

The pain is huge but I choose to let go of it as well.  Goodbye to the loss and brokenness and pain of being rejected and shut out and talked about behind my back.  Those are still parts of my life but I am letting go of longing for it to be different.  It is what it is and I must move on.

[lighter]

I hope you can release all the hope you still embrace......

and move beyond.

They were doing the best they could do....

if they could do any better......

they would.

They can't.

Feel empathy and forgive.

I hope you give up the hope, GS.

Lighter

[Hopalong]

I am so so so proud of you GS.

You are talking about RELEASE.

Releasing yourself.

Using the key that you have recognized is actually, not hypothetically, in your hand.

love
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Thank you Hops and Lighter.  I look back on my first post and actually don't remeber penning those words.  They are mine to be sure but they came during a period of severe pain.  All my work using EFT and The Four Steps is paying off.  For two days I "tapped" and tapped on the painful emotions and thoughts that were pummelling me.  All of the current ones can be traced back to earliest woundings but they all branch out like neurons and each of those branching as well to other triggers and wounds and on and on seemingly infinite. 

I am moving forward, using the EFT to get to specific, early woundings that underlie so much that hurts today.  It is slow but I have learned that it works and I must simply persevere.  The fear I have lived paralyzed under, that has ground my life to a halt has such deep roots but this process actually seeks them out, one by one, and destroys them.  The closer I get to the original wounding the more effective the process is. If I "tap" on an early childhood experience then it is like zapping the center of the neuron, knocking out all the dendrites at once.  If I "tap" on more recent painful experiences then it is like taking aim at the dendrites - it works but is far less efficient.

Even knowing the positive outcome of this process, it is still like opting to have my teeth drilled without novacaine in order to relieve the greater pain.  The process is still excruciating and difficult to step into.  It is still easier to bear the dull, relentless ache than to opt for the painful, though brief, remedy.  Crises push me to do it because a crisis ups the pain to the intolerable level.  The key is to get to the level of healing where I can access enough will to do this work by discipline and determination.

[lighter]

We're hardwired to avoid pain..... and so......  live from one distraction to another.

You're walking through the fire, facing the pain...... in order to escape it.

Brava, ((GS))

Brava.

Lighter

 

[Hopalong]

Would it help to have a very compassionate person sit WITH you while you tap?

I don't know about EFT.

But to literally feel you have to excavate every single piece, in chronological order...of your past...

What room does that give you to live your present?

Am I misunderstanding?

xo
Hops

[Gaining Strength]

Lighter - I was thinking this morning about your post in which you say that:

They were doing the best they could do....

if they could do any better......

they would.

They can't.

Actually, I don't agree in regards to either of my parents, nor even my brothers.  None of them did the best they could.  They didn't even try.  I know of several people who as parents did not do a very good job and they knew it and felt great remorse and tried to compensate and make up for it.  Buy my parents did not do their best - that is exactly the point.  I personally don't believe Ns do their best.  For the most part they make NO attempt to care about or for their offspring.  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 at that moment.  That is really the basis for the huge wounding - an utter lack of care or concern.

As I mentioned, all caring parents make mistakes and what you have written certainly applies to them but it simply does not apply to mine.  They did not care and they did not even try.

Hops -
actually the EFT allows me to live in the present. It allows me to identify and then re-write the destructive emotional patterns that were established from infancy.  Each event does not have to be identified but the earlier in my experience that I retrace a particular emotional pattern wipes out the repetitions from that time forward.

If I work on one from yesterday then I have healed the pain from that experience and nothing else will build on it.  But if I trace that pain back to a similar emotional experience from early childhood then the healing is for that entire pattern and it much more thorough and the resolution much more significant.

[Overcomer]

GS:  One thing your parents and mine probably have in common is that they would yell from the highest mountain that all they want for us is the best but their actions do not match their words.....

GS....I am proud of you for cleaning the upstairs.....you have made great strides..............you will continue to do so!!  I have faith in you as a person....you can prevail!

[lighter]

Lighter - I was thinking this morning about your post in which you say that:

They were doing the best they could do....

if they could do any better......

they would.

They can't.

Actually, I don't agree in regards to either of my parents, nor even my brothers.  None of them did the best they could.  They didn't even try.  I know of several people who as parents did not do a very good job and they knew it and felt great remorse and tried to compensate and make up for it.  Buy my parents did not do their best - that is exactly the point.  I personally don't believe Ns do their best.  For the most part they make NO attempt to care about or for their offspring.  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 at that moment.  That is really the basis for the huge wounding - an utter lack of care or concern.

As I mentioned, all caring parents make mistakes and what you have written certainly applies to them but it simply does not apply to mine.  They did not care and they did not even try.

GS:

Respectfully, it's your parent's ability to feel concern for others, I doubt. 

I'm agreeing with your perceptions.

You deserved better.

((GS))

Lighter




Lighter

[Gaining Strength]

Thanks Lighter - I agree that they did not have the ability to feel concern but I also maintain that a parent has an obligation to try to do their best and my parents did not do that.  They made no attempt and feel no remorse nor concern for their lacking or their failings.  A normal parent would have concern or remorse.

they would yell from the highest mountain that all they want for us is the best but their actions do not match their words.....

Absolutely Overcomer - actions didn't even come close.

[lighter]

But they aren't "normal" parents, are they?

They're flawed, beyond feeling empathy, for their own children.

That makes no sense, when all that really matters, is helping our children grow into strong, independant people. (my opinion, of course)

In my mind....

(and I have to look at it this way or there's no reconciling it......)

your parents gave the best they had to give, no matter how miserable the effort. 

If they could have done better....

they would have. 

They couldn't. 

If that's not the truth,

then......

forgiving would be so much harder, IMO.

Forgive me if I'm upsetting you..... I usually don't post on NFoo threads.  I'm not disputing any of your perceptions..... just putting forth my feelings in the matter and wishing you the shortest path to forgiveness and release.

Lighter

Thanks Lighter - I agree that they did not have the ability to feel concern but I also maintain that a parent has an obligation to try to do their best and my parents did not do that.  They made no attempt and feel no remorse nor concern for their lacking or their failings.  A normal parent would have concern or remorse.

they would yell from the highest mountain that all they want for us is the best but their actions do not match their words.....

Absolutely Overcomer - actions didn't even come close.

[Gaining Strength]

You are welcome to your opinion Lighter.  I simply cannot agree with you.  I don't find that view helpful.  It does not apply to my particular experience.  Perhaps it helps you deal with yours.

[lighter]

I know you'll find your own way, GS.


Lighter

[Hopalong]

I personally don't believe Ns do their best.  For the most part they make NO attempt to care about or for their offspring.  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

This fits what I've come to believe, too...most of it is semantics but I think a lack of breadth in thinking is characterisitic. An Nparent can be quite bright and focused along some particular narrow trail of thought. But the ability to be present with that plus any concern for other people (theatrical concern notwithstanding) at the same time...I think they lack.

Compassion does help, but sometimes it has to come only after actual detachment, since children of Nparents usually can't tell the difference between caring and flinging oneself onto a bonfire...

love
Hops

[ann3]

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

I have pondered this one for years & have concluded that this is the best they can do/ could have done.  They can't do any better & they couldn't have done any better.  If they could do better, they wouldn't be Ns or they'd be less Nish.

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.