isitme

We've had a couple of threads lately about fear and guilt. Validation and confusion. I've finally started to realize that is one of my biggest character defects. The avoidance of ill feelings at all costs! If someone else feels bad.. fix it! It makes me feel bad to see someone else feel bad, no one should ever have to feel bad, not me, not you, not friends or strangers. I've never learned how to properly process those feelings. I always try to stuff, erase or hide them.

I was reading a totally unrelated book last night. It’s a sociology book that talks about cultural transformations. I see lots of parallels to my life and I find that sort of thing very interesting. Then this passage hit me like a ton of bricks. What it was actually referring to is not addiction or co-dependency, but it pretty accurately describes that fear feeling and what avoiding it does to you. And how processing it just might be the only way you can get through it and I wanted to share it will all of you.

“Over that year, Joanna went through a searing initiation. Living through her feeling of helplessness and rage and letting them go, allowing the next layer of feeling to roll through and letting them go, she was grieving alone for what was happening to all of us. She would say later that until you can let suffering in, you’re paralyzed. “You’re afraid of feeling the fear, the grief, the remorse, and you can’t take the next step. You can’t feel your pain for the world, for other human beings or yourself. But if something happens that lets the psychic numbing crack, then your own deepest responses break through the layers of ice. Your human feelings can flow freely, and you bring yourself to life.” “The Cultural Creatives” – p 296