Hi River,
Yes, amends are hard but the more you make them the easier they get. Amends are sort of like our discovery of drinking. When I made my real first amends I had no idea how I was going to feel afterwards, the drink of peace that came over me, propelling me to want to keep cleaning up my past. My ego got smaller as my courage got bigger. Sometimes you just have to take the bit and pull yourself to it, as the BB says.
I can understand about the introjections of people not liking us, that stuff hurts. For a long time I did not want to face the N, not so much because I could not face myself but because she looked at me with such a convinced look of pity and shame, as if I was just so beyond help, someone to be really pitied, it was part justification for her shunning of me. It was painful for me because she was so held up in my faith community and, at the time I was in my wounds from childhood where I did not get enough loving mirroring that children need in order to develop a healthy self image and sense of self worth. It was a very painful bath of confusion for me on top of so much more going on in my life. No wants to be looked at with so much contempt and despise, correct? Especially from a counselor. Her looking at me with either contempt, as I had seen her do too many times in our work together, or her looking at me like I was super mentally ill was like a thorn pressing in on a thorn in my side. At this time I was super vulnerable as I was trying to work the old thorn of trauma out, the lack of love and mirroring for the wounds are the place of healing.
As time went on I would eventually try to imagine what it would be like to face her, I would, like you say, get an introjection of her look of disgust and pity towards me and it would turn my stomach. But I have actually used that introjection to as a measuring stick to my healing. As I have worked to embrace my wounded parts of myself, the parts of self that I once hated that she was reflecting back at me, I now can imagine being around her and having her look at me with the look of fear/contempt/pity as I call it and I would be barely unchanged.
Mother Teresa says that if we are truly humble then we will be unchanged by neither praise nor discouragement. This for me means getting to know myself and accept all of me that was hidden in the dark of my mind and soul, the parts of self which included my shadow as well as my own N traits. Today I am growing closer to trust of myself, acceptance of my good bad and ugly. Humility is about seeing things as they are, seeing ourselves as we are. If you read the AA literature and any real spiritual writings you will find that the most important ingredient for growth is humility or honestly, rigorous honesty. But we need safe others, who will not judge us in order to face ourselves.
Thinking about this sort of blows me away because the N counselor seems beyond grace in that no matter how many mirrors of truth were held up to her she is alway convinced that everyone else is in the wrong. Therefore her seeing me as beyond help is actually her ultimate projection of the part of her that is beyond seeing the truth about herself. Through her I learned what the word reprobate soul means, someone who God has tried to reach out to save so many times but after awhile God, in His non-forceful way of giving us a free will, allows souls to just be left to the mind they have, to believe their own lies. However, I continue to prayer for her, really prayer for her in my spirit of love and how I would imagine God would want me to care for her, the way that He does. It is working; I am feeling better but most importantly I am changing.
You might ask yourself what this woman who you think does not like you is bringing up for you. She is getting under you skin for a reason, God is in working in this for you as He does every moment of our lives. We, who have grown up in N homes, have our own N wounds to heal.
