Pandora's Box

We must give ourselves permission to grieve, cry and get angry. Give ourselves permission to feel and through feeling, comes healing.

Of course there are times when we put aside our feelings just so we can cope with the day to day realities of life. There will come a time though when you will find that life is all good now and you are on top of things and the only thing holding you back are the feelings and emotions and unhealed parts of your past that start to get in the way of what is right there in front of you.

It happened to me and I knew I had to do something to 'fix' the problem. I had to find a way to open my pandora's box of emotions that I had for so long and so effectively just kept packing more and more in and never let any out.

It seemed that it was the times when life was good and I was letting out my feelings of love that other emotions would surface right alongside it. Out with the love came fear, gathered in the past; anger at incidences long since passed and sadness, so strong, from my once broken heart.

After my marriage ended, my friends encouraged me to write a list of what I wanted in a man. I wrote it and started laughing, admittedly a sort of sad, sinister laugh. I thought no one could match up to these expectations, this man did not exist and I would be alone for ever. Yet I knew how much love I had to give and what I was willing to put into a relationship and the joy of life I wanted to share with someone who felt the same about me as I did about them. I actually met that man and around our 12 month anniversary I had mixed, confusing thoughts buzzing around inside my head. I felt trapped, unsure, scared and a host of other feelings I couldn’t find an explanation for so I put it down to the relationship and I called the whole thing off. 

He was devastated and hurting.  I was hurting but also sure it was what I needed to do. I loved this man and yet I thought I needed to end a wonderful thing ‘for my own good’. After much deliberating, talking to friends, feeling his absence in my life and looking to a future that did not include him I came to the conclusion that the problem was not with him (how could a man that matches such a list be any kind of problem anyway?), nor with the relationship itself. I knew the problem was also not so much me as what was inside me. The problem was what I was still carrying around inside my head and heart. I had packed so much into my Pandora’s Box when I had needed to, to get me through some really hard times but the weight of it was dragging me down and I knew I had to find a way to let it all go.

I booked myself into a residential program for people suffering loss, trauma and despair at The Quest for Life Centre in NSW. I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Depression and Anxiety. I was not looking forward to what I knew I had to do but I also knew that if I was willing to walk away from the best thing that had ever happened to me then my life would be an endless series of running away from myself and my own emotional stash.      

What I am suggesting is not an easy thing to do.  At the Quest residential program we had a session in which we were asked to “tell our stories” and talk about our feelings related to this. I listened patiently while many others shared stories of grief, anger, betrayal and sadness. I had told my story so many times but I had never once let myself feel it. My coping strategy was to push it down – Never admit the pain, bury it deep – it’s how I got up in the mornings, got through the day and slept at night.

As my turn got closer I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t breathe, I was sweating and crying and ran from the room. The councilor on the program came out to me and I was an emotional wreck. I was heaving and crying and trying to steady my breath. I was talking fast and kept saying “I can’t do it. It’s not how I operate. I have learnt to push it all down and it’s going to break me if I open it up.” I told her my heart would break and I would fall apart if I felt everything that I had buried in there. She smiled at me and told me I must have a big heart because there is so much in there. I couldn’t believe the pressure my body was under. It wanted to let it all out, it’s what I had come there to do but my brain was doing what it had always done which was to say, “No Meg . We don’t do it this way. This way hurts too much. I want to protect you.” I kept putting my hand over my heart though and saying, it wants to come out, I want it all out of me so I can really enjoy my life and live it fully. I ended up with a blood nose, something I had never had before or since from this fight I could feel so strongly between my head and my heart. The councilor very kindly suggested that maybe I should wait. I turned to her and said emphatically “I drove 7 hours to get here and won’t see my kids for a week. I will never get a chance like this again”.

I went in and admittedly told my story looking at the floor. I searched for words to describe my feelings and it hurt but I refused to look at the faces of the people I was telling my story to. I knew if I saw the sympathy and compassion in their faces, meant for me, that I would not be able to continue. Yes the pain was great and the journey was hard but I knew what I had to give to the world and that there was so much love for me if I could free myself of my past pain so I could enjoy it all.

I came away from that week with a love for myself I had never known before. The love and compassion I had so often given to others, many times at my own expense, I learnt to direct towards myself as well. I thought self-esteem and self-love were the same thing; but they are nothing alike. I have no problem speaking in public, don’t care what others think of me and have no airs or graces but I also didn’t know how to love myself, be kind to myself and insist that others do the same.

That is the part of the journey I am on now.

Needless to say, my wonderful man is still beside me and we want to share the rest of our lives together. I can believe in his love for me because I can now feel my own love for myself and it is true and pure and such a wonderful way to feel about oneself.

We all owe it to ourselves to find that inner love and to be free to express our emotions and be healed by allowing those emotions to flow through us and out of our bodies and minds.

Yours in Finding Peace, Love and Happiness,

Meg

NB A journey such is this is best undertaken under supervised guidance by a professional in the field. Seek guidance from a councilor, psychologist or health care worker and free yourself of the emotions of your past.   

  

Here is a link from Margie from The Quest for Life Foundation about the problems of holding in emotions and not allowing yourself to feel your  way through them on your way to healing. A lesson I learnt the hard way.

http://qflf.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/false-positive/

The Anger Reaction

This post was born because of a response I made on my Finding Peace, Love and Happiness facebook page.

Anger can actually be a very useful thing. It's what makes you stand up for yourself, to protect yourself, your children, your dignity, your friends etc. It can tell you things about yourself. If I get angry at something now I question: Why am I getting angry at this particular thing?

I was never very good at angry coz I learnt somewhere along the way that getting angry makes people hurt me even more. The problem was I would suppress it and learnt just not to get angry instead of questioning why I am angry. "Oh it’s because I just felt my rights were ignored." I had never let myself feel the anger long enough to think about the why so I just went on living through the same thing over and over and never learning the lesson I was being taught.

I have learnt a lot over the last couple of years about anger and about protecting myself, my dignity and my rights. I have also learnt that there is no point holding onto that anger years later because I only end up hurting myself. We have all heard the expression “Anger does more harm to ourselves than to the person we are angry with”. It is so true. It is our body and our time that is affected by our anger and it gives our power over our emotions to the person, or thing, we are angry with.

So anger is useful in two special ways:

1. It brings to our attention things that need to be changed for our own peace and happiness.

2. It gives us the physical energy and determination to carry out those changes.

Once it has outlived its usefulness though, we need to let it go but how? Saying to ‘look on the bright side’ may sound too simplistic, but is it?

What is the bright side of someone hurting us?

My answer is that they have taught me a valuable lesson. For me; suffering through a cheating, emotionally abusive husband and post traumatic stress disorder because of his actions and threats; has actually made my life better in ways I never could have imagined.

I suppressed anger for so long, I actually became a co-conspirator in his treatment towards me, an enabler if you like because I suppressed the anger each time and stayed in a loveless marriage for 15 years. Through his actions, I now know with certainty that no one will ever neglect my human rights again; no one will ever again speak to me or treat me without the respect I deserve.

I recently read in Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book ‘Something More’, the following quote. She recommended the reader be sitting down before reading it. It resonated so well with my story:

“Bad men are spiritual graces sent in disguise to teach us, through torment, to love ourselves.”

Despite not liking what I went through; I am so grateful for the lessons my marriage (and my ex) taught me because I AM learning to love myself, I am learning to respect myself and ensure others do the same. At the same time I am learning how to live with peace, love and happiness and can apply these lessons to so many moments in my life. For me; this gratefulness far outweighs the anger because his actions are working in my favour. I no longer feel anger because I now view what’s happened to me as a good thing, not a bad thing. There are times when things can trigger that memory of the anger but each time I remind myself that everything is as it should be because it brought me to where I am today.

I hope this helps you in your journey to Peace, Love and Happiness.

Meg

PS. I had a friend once say to me: Couldn’t you have learnt that lesson in an easier way? My reply was that I had been given the same lesson every day for 15 years and I ignored it; so no, it had to hit me like a sledge hammer before I sat up and took notice ;-)

That bastard cut me off !!

We started talking in the last post about choosing your emotions instead of just reacting subconsciously to a situation. The classic example is someone cutting us off in the traffic or pushing in front of us in a queue. The most common reaction, and one which society would have us believe is our God-given right, is anger. Horns start tooting, hand gestures are thrown about, and language is expelled from the lungs along with spit from the foaming mouth. In the moments afterwards that anger presents itself in the body as hormones rushing about to prepare the body for the ‘fight or flight’ response.

Our body senses danger from our reaction and slows blood supply to the digestive organs and increases blood flow to the heart and muscles instead, as well as a myriad other changes in the body to prepare us to fight this danger or flee from it. (The reaction to stress is also the same reaction whether it comes from work or relationship issues.) Some react to these changes through getting violent or aggressive but if we do not run from ‘this danger’ or ‘fight it’ and ‘use up’ all these bodily stress reactions then we are left sitting in a traffic jam or standing in a queue with our body primed for action. The hormones racing through our system and diverted blood supply leave us literally pumped with nowhere to go. It then takes us some time to calm down and we find ourselves sitting there repeatedly going over the moment, reliving it inch by inch and woe and behold any child or person who tries to interrupt these thoughts because they then become the victim of our body’s preparation for an encounter.

So why do we do this to ourselves? Why would anyone, knowing this is going to happen allow it to transpire? The answer is simple and the alternative is freedom to choose our own responses to a situation and not have our moods (or our body) controlled by the actions of another.

We grow up seeing how other people react in a given situation. We subconsciously ‘learn’ from watching others how to do certain things. It’s how we first learnt to walk, talk and drive a car. Now we don’t have to try or even think about these things when we are doing them, our body has built nerve pathways based on actions and reactions that we have and those pathways have been used so many times that the connections between the nerves (known as the synapses) actually fuse together to make a permanent and speedy route.

Nobody likes feeling angry or frustrated, just as much as we don’t like being pushed in front of in a queue. So why do we think it’s our God-given right to feel angry or frustrated when someone does something we have no control over? Why do we choose this response? It has become a habit. We are habitually reacting; we learnt something a long time ago and habitually react the same way each time.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result”. Is getting angry going to stop people from pushing in front of us? Is it going to teach them a lesson? If they are truly selfish people then no amount of you getting stressed, angry or aggressive is going to teach them anything. There is also the possibility that somewhere in their journey they learnt that to get anywhere or have their needs met they had to push in and this has now become a ‘habitual action’ for them. Consider also that if you were out and received a call to say that your child was sick or had suddenly been called into work, or any other scenario that meant you had to hurry, and you stumbled upon a traffic jam, or a queue at the chemist or whatever, would you not consider your needs and decide they warranted pushing up closer to the front?

My point is we can’t always assume that someone is being mean or selfish when they push in front of us in any situation. They could have a valid reason for doing something that if they had a chance to explain to us, we would happily let them go first; or it could be simply that they have learnt somewhere along the way that this is what they have to do to ‘survive’.

By becoming more aware of our reactions, we can question ourselves and ask: is this reaction going to serve a good purpose for me? Is getting angry in this situation going to bring about a change that will make my life better and help meet my physical and emotional needs; or am I getting angry at a situation I have no control over and the only difference my reaction is going to make to the world is a negative effect on MY own emotions and body.

In the next few days I encourage you to be very aware of your reactions in different situations and ask yourself the above questions; because, in the same way we built nerve pathways to ensure a habitual anger response, we can build new pathways that ensure we question the results first and then choose a more appropriate (and peaceful) response to a situation.

Many people believe that we can’t choose our feelings. I agree that feelings are neither right nor wrong. We can never say to someone “you shouldn’t feel that way”, because the fact is that they do. We can however, change our perception of a situation and our thoughts about it and this awareness, of a habitual reaction versus a conscious response, changes how we feel in a given situation. It is through this practice of watching our reactions and altering our response that we can find a way to inner peace in moments that could have otherwise been filled with negative emotions.    

Yours in finding Peace, Love and Happiness

Meg

We can't change how others act but we can change the way it affects our internal peace

A lot of stress in our day comes from the way other people are acting. They cut us off in traffic, don’t leave us enough room to get our car out, push in front of us in a queue or act in a dozen other selfish ways. All of these things can cause a stress reaction in our bodies: we get angry, our heart beats faster, our blood pressure rises, we say angry things or act aggressively towards those people. The situation seems to warrant how we feel in that moment and the moments afterwards as we go about our day. We then find ourselves snapping at the kids, our workmates, even our friends. 

The secret to maintaining peace is to find a way to respond to this situation rather than just reacting in a predetermined way. If we do not, we are giving away our power to control our own emotions and mood. The person who did something to us is then deciding how we feel in that moment and throughout that day.

We can’t change how other people act but we can change how we respond and can therefore choose our own emotional response to a situation. By being more conscious of where our reactions are coming from we can work towards maintaining a more peaceful internal environment and find peace and happiness where before there was anger and hurtful emotions.  

It’s not about letting people ‘get away with’ however they are treating you; it’s about giving you the power to control your own emotions and then respond more effectively to the situation. It’s also not a hard practice to master.

More on this in next week’s postings. In the meantime when a situation arises that causes you some degree of stress try to become aware of your reaction and how it makes you feel. Ask yourself why you may be reacting this way and if you like the way it makes you feel.

Yours in finding peace and happiness,

Meg   

An introduction to peace, love and happiness

We’ve all heard before that life is a journey, I’d heard it so many times in fact that it had lost its meaning to me. 

Well, despite the hurts, betrayal, fears, post traumatic stress, upheavals and all of life’s other uncertainties, I can now see that I personally am on one heck of a ride and I wouldn’t want it to stop for anything.

 

The problem is there have been times when I just can’t seem to get the car in the right gear or my tyres have been so worn or the petrol has run out and I can’t seem to get anywhere. There have been traffic jams, flooded roads, water over the bridge and fog so thick I couldn't see the road.

Throughout some of these times I have been able to call on my own internal resources to face or cope with the situation, at other times I have relied on others - authors, friends, mentors, and faith in the fact that everything happens for a reason. I have cried, yelled and questioned. I have let it run through my mind, over and over and over and I have asked the why's and the how's. 

So where am I at on my journey right now?

Well I’m here typing this out coz I have so much inside my head and so many things I am grateful for, including being able to find love and peace and happiness right here inside me despite my circumstances.

Now I want to put down in writing everything I have learnt in a way that will help me consolidate it all and to be a reminder each day and in each moment how to get myself back to that feeling of love and peace.

As I was given this gift, I thought it only fair that I pass it forward and share it with you.

So I invite you to come along and share this journey of self discovery, learning and healing with me. You are all very welcome.

Meg