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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 679737" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Leafy, with great compassion for you, for your sadness and confusion and pain, please know that you can work with the feelings. That is how I am doing it, and Copa, too. And IC, who is here with us and clarifies and recharges and is part of all of us but doesn't post in so often. What we do Leafy (not me or Copa, but all humans) is label our feelings and experiences based on a kind of automatic response. The channel for our automatic responses to our memories becomes deeper each time we relive our memories. That channel of feeling is what we can work with Leafy, to help ourselves become aware of how to begin rerouting the river of feeling. Did you ever read the myth of Sisyphus? He was given an impossible job. That of cleaning the never-ending material building and building in the Augean stables. </p><p></p><p>It was impossible.</p><p></p><p>But he did it...by changing the flow of a River.</p><p></p><p>That is what we are doing, too.</p><p></p><p>Changing the flow of the River.</p><p></p><p>We are helping those little girls (or boys) we were, overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings and experiences we just were not equipped to process, to change the course of our emotional River. When we are finished, the Augean stables, thought impossible to clean, will sparkle.</p><p></p><p>We work with what we have taught ourselves to feel about our rememberings, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>When you recognize the overwhelming sadness, Leafy...who is it that recognizes that you feel sad? That part of you, that unperturbed observer, is your core self. We learned to understand how to feel about our emotions from people who may not have known how to do that, themselves. That is okay. What happened to each of us is what did happen to us. What we told ourselves about what happened to us ~ that is where we can work now, today, to heal our interpretations of self. </p><p></p><p>Leafy, if you have not read <u>The Power of Now, </u>by Eckhart Tolle, he will help you more clearly understand and recognize your core self. This is the intuitive self. This is the core of us, the part that knows what it knows. Our emotional selves are the way we were taught to understand ourselves and our feelings by other people. We were little kids. Some things happened that frightened or left us feeling isolated and afraid, and we were not cherished through it or taught how to understand either what happened or our responses to it. All of our lives, we have responded in that same way that helped us survive the event. If we were scared then and covered it with bravado and it worked, we will cover our fear with bravado for the rest of our lives. If we were lost and turned right and it worked, for the rest of our lives, we will turn right when we are lost. We will not be dissuaded because that emotional River roars in automatically telling us what it knows to help us survive.</p><p></p><p>We are all doing the best we know, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>Nobody gets this right.</p><p></p><p>It's a question of how we interpret ourselves when we are in a tough spot. If we have not been cherished and taught well as children, we freeze. We remember the isolation, the abandonment, the way nothing seemed to work. The River thunders through us and the feelings overwhelm us and we are lost in them. And headed for the rapids, and the white water.</p><p></p><p>That is where we can begin to learn to change the course of the River.</p><p></p><p>We can put a finger in the dike.</p><p></p><p>Whatever beginning imagery works for you Leafy, that is how to begin. Just with the intention that, though you may be overwhelmed today, that is okay. These are your feelings, and having feelings is wonderful. It means we are alive. If we can name the feelings, we have a beginning way to understand them. If we can say "I feel sad." Instead of "I am sad." That changes everything just a little, because we are giving our brain a different message about what to do with our emotions. </p><p></p><p>We have to be our own best mothers, Leafy. Or, our own best fathers. If you can envision someone ~ maybe the mother of another little girl who was kind and who you can imagine talking to about the feelings, I wonder what she would tell you. It would be something warm and practical and strengthening, something that could help you know that all wonderful little girls (or boys) feel overwhelmed sometimes, but that you are safe, now. </p><p></p><p>Then, change your self talk in that way, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>Listen to the words you use to describe yourself. Hear the hurt in them, or the confusion or anger or whatever the emotion is. Really hear the words that are ugly, and don't say them to yourself ever again.</p><p></p><p>This is how to begin healing, Leafy. It will be so short a time until you are listening and treating yourself more kindly automatically. </p><p></p><p>That is actually the beginning step. Resolve to be kinder to Leafy. Not kind, not invariably, perfectly anything at all. Only kinder to Leafy. Every day, remember that your intention is to be kinder to Leafy.</p><p></p><p>You will be amazed at the results, New Leaf, as your brain begins to listen and adjust accordingly. </p><p></p><p>Contrast "Kinder to Leafy" to "swallowed in sadness."</p><p></p><p>Your brain only knows what you tell it. Even if you are swallowed in sadness, that is okay. Even if you are mean to Leafy for a minute or two, that is okay, too. Your intention, the words you speak to yourself and the future you intend for yourself is only this: I would like so much to be kinder to Leafy.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No. That is what you told yourself about yourself <em>because that is what someone taught you to feel, Leafy.</em></p><p></p><p>It was a lie, Leafy. </p><p></p><p>There is no such thing as a child that is not beautiful and full to bursting with potential. Someone hurt you. Then, even worse, they taught you to hurt yourself. They changed the course of your River, Leafy. You had no choice but to believe them when you were a little girl. But please, for the sake of that beautiful little girl who was you, stop believing they had the right to make you see yourself through their eyes.</p><p></p><p>We have to stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of the abuser. We have to learn to see our abusers abusing us through our own eyes. Then, suddenly, we can see the wrongness in things we were not able to see as wrong, not in all of our lives, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>Here is a story, an example. I know sometimes what others hear when I tell this story is that my whatever was worse than someone else's. So, don't do that, okay? The story is told to illustrate how our thought Rivers are changed when we are abused. The abuse itself, the person who did the abusing ~ none of that matters, and they do not matter, to our healing.</p><p></p><p>We are the ones who decide how things will be for us now, Leafy. Now that we are adults, we can do that. We could not do that, as children. We were victimized. We broke. We believed them. We broke, again. And this time, what we came to believe of ourselves at their hands and in their eyes was internalized and we carried that imagery of ourselves for the rest of our lives.</p><p></p><p>Here is the story. I was in Family of Origin Group Therapy. Therapy was ending. The therapist asked what one thing we had learned and would take away from the experience with us. This was mine: "That it was as wrong for my abuser to kick me as it was for her to kick that dog."</p><p></p><p>I knew all my life that it was wrong for her to have kicked our dog, Leafy. In all my life, I never knew it was wrong ~ as wrong ~ for her to kick me.</p><p></p><p>I didn't have a way to know anything different than what I had been raised to know about myself, Leafy. It wasn't that I didn't know mothers should not kick their children. It was that mine had. So, my brain told me that must be okay, because it happened. And that underlying mindset was with me all my life. The course of my emotional River was changed. Until I could step outside the feelings, I was the feelings. </p><p></p><p>But the feelings were messed up. Because sane people do not kick their dogs or their children. </p><p></p><p>But I only could know what I knew.</p><p></p><p>Same for you, too.</p><p></p><p>We are so fortunate though, because we know just how to ferret out who the liar is, here. </p><p></p><p>Them.</p><p></p><p>People should not kick their dogs or their children. People should not try to get other people to go where the ice is thin.</p><p></p><p>But sometimes, people do those exact things. </p><p></p><p>We need to stop believing it was okay for them to do that to us. Or to anyone. Or any dog or cat or animal. (I still get so steamed about her kicking the dog.)</p><p></p><p>Whoever the abuser was, by virtue of the fact that we see ourselves in certain ways, the abuse did happen. Who or how or why is important, but not relevant to our healing here. Our job is to change the course of the River and clear the stable so clear, clean, sparkling water flows everywhere.</p><p></p><p>All that filth that was in the stables, all that trapped energy, is compost. Rich, nurturing, life-giving compost. It's all stuck in the stable. No good to anyone.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Actually, they were. They were children, so they did not intend to actually harm you and would have felt awful if something terrible had happened to you...but had you not protected yourself, you could so easily have drowned, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>You might have died, that day.</p><p></p><p><em>But you didn't. You were here on purpose then, and you are here on purpose, now. Healing the way we automatically think of ourselves is how we prepare for whatever it is we were born to do.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Here on purpose, New Leaf.</em></p><p></p><p><em>You are here on purpose, and by design. Here in the world, here in this life you are living, here on this site with all of us.</em></p><p></p><p><em>You matter.</em></p><p></p><p>Whatever your other roles in life, teacher or nurse or mother or wife or sister or daughter...you, specifically, intrinsically, matter.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>So, here are some other examples of words that were so cruel, Leafy. Please consider what I posted to you about the first beginning resolution to be kinder to yourself. Not kind. Not the perfection of continual perfection.</p><p></p><p>Just...kinder.</p><p></p><p>Soldiers suffering from PTSD have to start there, too.</p><p></p><p>Kinder.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>All babies are irritating. That is why God made them so cute.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ouch.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is River thinking. To fit in to some other form than you.<em> You are here on purpose. Exactly as you are, exactly who you are, with exactly the experiences that have formed you.</em></p><p></p><p>I will go through the rest of your post tomorrow for those kinds of words or phrases, Leafy. Will you do something for me, please? Will you remember, tomorrow morning when you first look into the mirror, that phrase "Kinder to Leafy."</p><p></p><p>That will be such a good beginning.</p><p></p><p>It helped me.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 679737, member: 17461"] Leafy, with great compassion for you, for your sadness and confusion and pain, please know that you can work with the feelings. That is how I am doing it, and Copa, too. And IC, who is here with us and clarifies and recharges and is part of all of us but doesn't post in so often. What we do Leafy (not me or Copa, but all humans) is label our feelings and experiences based on a kind of automatic response. The channel for our automatic responses to our memories becomes deeper each time we relive our memories. That channel of feeling is what we can work with Leafy, to help ourselves become aware of how to begin rerouting the river of feeling. Did you ever read the myth of Sisyphus? He was given an impossible job. That of cleaning the never-ending material building and building in the Augean stables. It was impossible. But he did it...by changing the flow of a River. That is what we are doing, too. Changing the flow of the River. We are helping those little girls (or boys) we were, overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings and experiences we just were not equipped to process, to change the course of our emotional River. When we are finished, the Augean stables, thought impossible to clean, will sparkle. We work with what we have taught ourselves to feel about our rememberings, Leafy. When you recognize the overwhelming sadness, Leafy...who is it that recognizes that you feel sad? That part of you, that unperturbed observer, is your core self. We learned to understand how to feel about our emotions from people who may not have known how to do that, themselves. That is okay. What happened to each of us is what did happen to us. What we told ourselves about what happened to us ~ that is where we can work now, today, to heal our interpretations of self. Leafy, if you have not read [U]The Power of Now, [/U]by Eckhart Tolle, he will help you more clearly understand and recognize your core self. This is the intuitive self. This is the core of us, the part that knows what it knows. Our emotional selves are the way we were taught to understand ourselves and our feelings by other people. We were little kids. Some things happened that frightened or left us feeling isolated and afraid, and we were not cherished through it or taught how to understand either what happened or our responses to it. All of our lives, we have responded in that same way that helped us survive the event. If we were scared then and covered it with bravado and it worked, we will cover our fear with bravado for the rest of our lives. If we were lost and turned right and it worked, for the rest of our lives, we will turn right when we are lost. We will not be dissuaded because that emotional River roars in automatically telling us what it knows to help us survive. We are all doing the best we know, Leafy. Nobody gets this right. It's a question of how we interpret ourselves when we are in a tough spot. If we have not been cherished and taught well as children, we freeze. We remember the isolation, the abandonment, the way nothing seemed to work. The River thunders through us and the feelings overwhelm us and we are lost in them. And headed for the rapids, and the white water. That is where we can begin to learn to change the course of the River. We can put a finger in the dike. Whatever beginning imagery works for you Leafy, that is how to begin. Just with the intention that, though you may be overwhelmed today, that is okay. These are your feelings, and having feelings is wonderful. It means we are alive. If we can name the feelings, we have a beginning way to understand them. If we can say "I feel sad." Instead of "I am sad." That changes everything just a little, because we are giving our brain a different message about what to do with our emotions. We have to be our own best mothers, Leafy. Or, our own best fathers. If you can envision someone ~ maybe the mother of another little girl who was kind and who you can imagine talking to about the feelings, I wonder what she would tell you. It would be something warm and practical and strengthening, something that could help you know that all wonderful little girls (or boys) feel overwhelmed sometimes, but that you are safe, now. Then, change your self talk in that way, Leafy. Listen to the words you use to describe yourself. Hear the hurt in them, or the confusion or anger or whatever the emotion is. Really hear the words that are ugly, and don't say them to yourself ever again. This is how to begin healing, Leafy. It will be so short a time until you are listening and treating yourself more kindly automatically. That is actually the beginning step. Resolve to be kinder to Leafy. Not kind, not invariably, perfectly anything at all. Only kinder to Leafy. Every day, remember that your intention is to be kinder to Leafy. You will be amazed at the results, New Leaf, as your brain begins to listen and adjust accordingly. Contrast "Kinder to Leafy" to "swallowed in sadness." Your brain only knows what you tell it. Even if you are swallowed in sadness, that is okay. Even if you are mean to Leafy for a minute or two, that is okay, too. Your intention, the words you speak to yourself and the future you intend for yourself is only this: I would like so much to be kinder to Leafy. No. That is what you told yourself about yourself [I]because that is what someone taught you to feel, Leafy.[/I] It was a lie, Leafy. There is no such thing as a child that is not beautiful and full to bursting with potential. Someone hurt you. Then, even worse, they taught you to hurt yourself. They changed the course of your River, Leafy. You had no choice but to believe them when you were a little girl. But please, for the sake of that beautiful little girl who was you, stop believing they had the right to make you see yourself through their eyes. We have to stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of the abuser. We have to learn to see our abusers abusing us through our own eyes. Then, suddenly, we can see the wrongness in things we were not able to see as wrong, not in all of our lives, Leafy. Here is a story, an example. I know sometimes what others hear when I tell this story is that my whatever was worse than someone else's. So, don't do that, okay? The story is told to illustrate how our thought Rivers are changed when we are abused. The abuse itself, the person who did the abusing ~ none of that matters, and they do not matter, to our healing. We are the ones who decide how things will be for us now, Leafy. Now that we are adults, we can do that. We could not do that, as children. We were victimized. We broke. We believed them. We broke, again. And this time, what we came to believe of ourselves at their hands and in their eyes was internalized and we carried that imagery of ourselves for the rest of our lives. Here is the story. I was in Family of Origin Group Therapy. Therapy was ending. The therapist asked what one thing we had learned and would take away from the experience with us. This was mine: "That it was as wrong for my abuser to kick me as it was for her to kick that dog." I knew all my life that it was wrong for her to have kicked our dog, Leafy. In all my life, I never knew it was wrong ~ as wrong ~ for her to kick me. I didn't have a way to know anything different than what I had been raised to know about myself, Leafy. It wasn't that I didn't know mothers should not kick their children. It was that mine had. So, my brain told me that must be okay, because it happened. And that underlying mindset was with me all my life. The course of my emotional River was changed. Until I could step outside the feelings, I was the feelings. But the feelings were messed up. Because sane people do not kick their dogs or their children. But I only could know what I knew. Same for you, too. We are so fortunate though, because we know just how to ferret out who the liar is, here. Them. People should not kick their dogs or their children. People should not try to get other people to go where the ice is thin. But sometimes, people do those exact things. We need to stop believing it was okay for them to do that to us. Or to anyone. Or any dog or cat or animal. (I still get so steamed about her kicking the dog.) Whoever the abuser was, by virtue of the fact that we see ourselves in certain ways, the abuse did happen. Who or how or why is important, but not relevant to our healing here. Our job is to change the course of the River and clear the stable so clear, clean, sparkling water flows everywhere. All that filth that was in the stables, all that trapped energy, is compost. Rich, nurturing, life-giving compost. It's all stuck in the stable. No good to anyone. Actually, they were. They were children, so they did not intend to actually harm you and would have felt awful if something terrible had happened to you...but had you not protected yourself, you could so easily have drowned, Leafy. You might have died, that day. [I]But you didn't. You were here on purpose then, and you are here on purpose, now. Healing the way we automatically think of ourselves is how we prepare for whatever it is we were born to do.[/I] [I]Here on purpose, New Leaf.[/I] [I]You are here on purpose, and by design. Here in the world, here in this life you are living, here on this site with all of us.[/I] [I]You matter.[/I] Whatever your other roles in life, teacher or nurse or mother or wife or sister or daughter...you, specifically, intrinsically, matter. :O) So, here are some other examples of words that were so cruel, Leafy. Please consider what I posted to you about the first beginning resolution to be kinder to yourself. Not kind. Not the perfection of continual perfection. Just...kinder. Soldiers suffering from PTSD have to start there, too. Kinder. All babies are irritating. That is why God made them so cute. Ouch. This is River thinking. To fit in to some other form than you.[I] You are here on purpose. Exactly as you are, exactly who you are, with exactly the experiences that have formed you.[/I] I will go through the rest of your post tomorrow for those kinds of words or phrases, Leafy. Will you do something for me, please? Will you remember, tomorrow morning when you first look into the mirror, that phrase "Kinder to Leafy." That will be such a good beginning. It helped me. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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