Facing My Dark Side

Facing My Dark side
After many years of trying to figure out why I have felt so sad much of the time, I have finally realized over the past several years that the only way to move out of my sadness is to feel the sadness. It has been very hard for me to do that. I have been involved in the spiritual, personal development movement for 20 years and at times there has been very little support for embracing all of ones feelings whether good or bad. During the last 20-30 years there has been a very large movement towards positive thinking and denial of unhappiness. This has been very confusing to me at times. I have felt very alone many times and I have felt very misunderstood by my closest family members. I have felt angry about my inability to just let deep level feelings go. Why would I want to let deep feelings go? When they are feelings of anger, sadness, fear and helplessness I have wanted to run away as fast as I can. Feelings of this nature are very uncomfortable to live in. Not only does it feel bad to be there, but it is twice as bad when you don’t feel supported by the society you live in. It has been frustrating to see people in my life parading around like they are happy. The belief has been if you think you are happy then you are happy. I was fooled by this for years because of my own insecurities about owning my real feelings. Some of my closet friends tried to help me by suggesting I use positive affirmations, or I do something to get my mind off of it, another words get busy, or they tried to help me justify why I might be feeling this way. At that time many years ago everyone I knew who was a part of this movement was having a hard time accepting that there could be as much grief for all of us as there appeared to be. When would it go away, why was I experiencing it, what had I done wrong, was this my destiny in life to be one big emotional mess? All of this questioning of self and my situation did not help me one bit. Looking back on my very long journey I can now see how much easier it would have been to just go with it. The problem was I didn’t want to appear insane or mentally ill and I knew that people like my husband could not begin to understand what was going on with me. In fact a lot of people around me appeared to by just “fine”. Were these people happy, no they were not, would they admit they were not happy or fulfilled, no they would not. Thankfully as the years went by my girlfriends and I began to embrace the emotions and feelings more wholeheartedly but it didn’t ease the pain I felt around me family of origin, my husband or my in laws. All the grief and sadness did serve a purpose and I have a much better picture of what reality is. I see why I was so lonely and felt so sick. Outside of my close circle of friends who were in the same place of trying to allow themselves to be who they were and a few authors and teachers who professed the idea of embracing your whole self good and bad, these concepts were not acceptable by society at large. It was like the blind leading the blind and it was painful feeling blind and not being able to see if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. As I went through my process I began to see that there was no other way out for me, positive thinking would not take away the pain. I had to go through the pain instead of around it. I had to learn to trust myself and trust that I wasn’t insane, and I had to allow myself patience and kindness. And I had to give up my wanting for a different life. This was my life and I could either accept it and me or I’d probably end of dead. Not to be over dramatic, but that’s how miserable I felt inside. Facing my feelings meant, feeling my feelings, crying if I felt like it, screaming into a pillow if I felt mad, writing letters to people that had hurt me and not sending them, and loving myself even though I felt completely unlovable. I had to learn to love myself as no one else could and I had to stop expecting people to understand even those closest to me. I had to stop trying to convert my husband to my way of thinking. I now see more clearly than ever why someone like my husband whose life was quite high functioning would want to delve into all of his inner pain. Unfortunately though, because he chose not to we are not longer compatible in any way. I have changed so dramatically that we can’t find anything to connect on. This is another piece of allowing yourself to go through your process, this is a scary part of it. If you decide to allow your feelings and allow the new world that will become your world by doing this, you will most likely lose friends and possibly family members or spouses. This creates more pain and more loss and more confusion. So you say why would I do what you are proposing, why wouldn’t I run away from my pain? Well most of us do and most of us live very shallow lives. Most of us limp through life because we carry a bag full of unresolved feelings. And one thing I can guarantee is if you don’t choose to embrace your feelings and grieve your losses from childhood, etc. your limp will become more pronounced as you get older. Your bag will get heavier and heavier as you continue to hold unexpressed emotions. I know you don’t want to hear this I didn’t either. But take my husband, he is a very decent good man by societies standards, hes a good provider and has integrity in business, lots of friends and interests. He is also losing his family right now as we speak. He hangs on to old beliefs and ways of being that are in huge contrast to how I see life and live life. He hangs onto fear around money and our children being spoiled and he tries to control their destiny because he is afraid they will be as “successful” as he wants them to be. He is a workaholic who spends the best of himself at work and comes home with only leftovers for his family. He has a hard time understanding why our girls don’t rush home to see him when he is off of work. Why don’t they answer the phone when he calls? He tells himself they are busy and distracted, and yet they answer the phone almost immediately when I call, every time I call. Its not because I am so perfect, its because I accept them for who they are, I trust them to make good decisions based on their internal knowing and I allow them to make mistakes because I know this is how you learn. My relationship with them is not forced but easier going and relaxed. Even if I yell at times which I do, they know they can stand up to me and say I don’t want to talk to you right now you are being rude and disrespectful and I listen.

Letting Go Even When it Hurts

The art of letting go is not easy. It has been an ongoing process for me for the last 20 years. When I first got into looking at myself and was involved in a 12 step program, I started hearing this phrase “Let it go” Surrender what you cannot change and work to change the things you can. The introduction to these kinds of concepts were as foreign as if I had found myself in the middle of another unfamiliar country. It wasn’t computing. Had I had another choice, I probably would have run away from these concepts but I couldn’t because I had nowhere else to go. I was depressed and my personal life was on the brink of brokenness and I had a baby that I needed to take care of. Instead of leaving I started listening and I started buying books that talked about such concepts and I slowly started letting in this new language, these new ideas. It was very painful in between the few ah ha’s I was getting. How was I going to live completely differently than I had been taught to live?. Life as I knew it was all about controlling the people and things in my life to keep me comfortable. Now I was being told I couldn’t do that and find the peace I so badly wanted. So layer by layer of resistance fell off of me and little by little I started understanding a bit of what I was reading and hearing at my meetings. I began to feel a little bit of relief because I was beginning to see what had been at the root of my unhappiness for so long. And little by little I started letting go. It was a slooooooow process and there were many times I felt like I was doing something wrong. I had started reading books on self development and personal transformation and some of the very popular authors were talking about just making a choice to feel better and let go and then it would be so. I didn’t understand this concept at all but it made me feel bad because I couldn’t just make a choice to think differently and then be instantaneously changed and peaceful. I also began to hear the same thing in the meetings I was going to. They were saying just keep your eyes on what you can be grateful for and then you will feel better. This didn’t make sense to me either because I felt like the people in the group wanted to push their feelings under the carpet. They wanted to pretend everything was ok even if it wasn’t. I began to miss meetings and started looking for books and people who would validate my process and experience. It was hard. I felt very lonely and very uncomfortable. Over time, day by day, from reading, talking and seeing myself in a clearer way, I began to understand that I had a ton of grief inside of me. I believe most of us do. It comes from lost dreams, lost hope, not being able to have the kind of relationships you want. It comes from giving yourself up to different degrees to please others or getting in touch with being victimized in many different ways as a child and or adult. I began to see that if I was going to get better, I was going to have to embrace my journey, which in the end was totally unique to me. That was one of the first lessons about letting go I had to learn. I had to let go of what other people thought my journey should be, I had to let go of people telling me that if I just did this or that I would find peace and I had to learn to trust what I knew about me that no one else could possibly know. I had to trust that I could get myself to where I needed to get to. As I began to understand and practice this very profound lesson, people who could support me right where I was without agendas started coming into my life. I started seeing some of the issues in my life that needed attention and I began to go through my very personal process towards emotional healing and well being. I questioned myself a lot and resented my process at times because I had a lot of very low days for quite a few years. But when push came to shove what else could I do except for putting one foot in front of the other and little by little, day by day, experience a little more awareness and a little more self love. Letting go was not as simple as it seemed, I had to practice baby steps because I was scared to death of what my life would become. Today I am still learning to let go. As I encounter different situations in my life I face fear and worry. My youngest daughter is a teenager and she is starting to ride in other kids cars to get to activities. I went through the letting go process with my first daughter around this subject and figured I wouldn’t have to go through it with my second. Was I ever wrong. My 2nd child is my baby and now I have to let my baby go in someone else’s car to the burger joint or mall. It brings up feelings of fear and I start asking myself questions like ‘can she make good decisions?” “Will she be more cautious than risky in choosing her friends from now on?” “Will she be ok?’ I don’t know is the answer and all I can do is take charge of what I can control. I set times to be home, I tell her to call me when she gets to her destination, I tell her to call me when she is on her way back. I always insist on meeting the person that will be driving. I ask if they have had any tickets, I ask them what kind of a driver they are, what kind of car, who else is going and I pay attention to the demeanor and energy of that person and then I look at my daughter and say, “have a great time honey, talk to you later.” If fear crops up I ask myself what I can do beyond locking her up in the house to keep her safe and I always say nothing. And then I let it go again. This kind of thing happens everyday in my life with all kinds of issues. As I have done my work, I have learned how to identify what is bothering me and when I’m bothered and I look at it and make choices to do what I can to take care of myself, then I can let it go.
Ultimately the fears that we have and the need to control that we have comes from feeling out of control. If we choose to hang on to the idea that we can control the people and things in our lives, we will become more and more paranoid and our lives will become more and more small. On the other hand, the process of letting is hard and brings up a lot of grief over the fear we have. Be gentle with yourself and know that if your intention is to be free of the burdens of trying to control, you will eventually reach the place of freedom. Be patient, it will take time and be willing to listen to yourself even when someone you may look up to thinks you should be doing it another way.

Setting Limits For Your Teenager

I have 2 teenage daughters and as they have grown and I have grown, I have learned to set limits that make me a better person. I believe that boundaries or limits are for me first and by taking care of me they end up serving my children. If I can set limits that are nurturing to me, the anger I could experience at my children becomes almost non existent. This process has taken many years and much trial and error. If I can give you some clues from first hand experience, maybe you can avoid some of the pain I had to go through banging my head against the wall. Today my youngest daughter, 16 years old and a sophomore in high school got up for school and immediately told me she was too tired and needed to sleep through her first class. In the past I have allowed my daughter to do this periodically even when she had created her fatigue by poor choices. The last time I let her do it was after she made some poor choices about usage of time. She ended up with a project undone at the last minute and stayed up way too late to finish. I told her at that time this would be the last time I allowed her to sleep in after making poor usage of her time. Today was that day. She had a 3 day weekend this week and didn’t crack a book the whole time. She went from activity to activity without a care in the world and I allowed that because at this age she needs to start managing her own life. Last night at 8 pm she announced she needed poster board for a project due today, Tuesday. I told her I was going to bed because I was still sick and lucky for her, her big sis was home and she agreed to take her. I have no idea how long she was up but it sounds like it was a very late night. This morning she was a wreck. She started begging me, telling me to be a good mom, pleading, yelling and pretty much having a fit. I sat on the couch downstairs sipping my coffee and just kept repeating in a calm voice. No, honey you need to get ready for school. After the 7th or so time I added, this is a consequence of poor decisions around time usage. I didn’t go into how it was her fault she played all weekend and now look at what you’ve done. She was already in enough pain without me heaping it on. At one point she said I’m not going and I said ok but I will not sign you out for today, which means Sat school or whatever they decide to do to you. This was all said with a calm voice. She eventually came downstairs we got into the car and left for school. She didn’t speak all the way to school she just fumed. I very quickly said, “I’m sorry you are so tired.” because I was sorry for her. God knows, I had had many a morning like that for years through high school and college. I knew that anything but kind words would just make it a whole lot worse and the truth is she was suffering enough because of her mistake. When she opened the door to get out she said nothing, and I said I hope you have a good day and I love you. With that she slammed the door. I knew what she was thinking, sure you do mom, then why didn’t you let me stay home like I wanted too? Unfortunately for her I cannot be swayed nearly as easily as I used to be able to. Some people would say, why did you let her yell at you, she was disrespectful. Why didn’t you punish her for being rude? Again, my answer to that is 2 fold, she was already living in the consequences of her poor decisions and the secondly she has to have some place to vent. She was pissed off and she was feeling like an injustice had been served her. She must act a certain way out in the world and I believe home should be a place to try on how you deal with your anger. I can almost guarantee that when I pick her up today she will offer an apology for her behavior this am. One of the reasons she will be able to see she should apologize is I didn’t get into the sand box with her. I stood outside and held my ground in a firm way and let her have her fit. She was in there throwing sand all over the place. When it was done, she was ready for school, got there on time and will meet her obligations for the day. I walked away feeling good about myself because I held a very important line for me and her. Had I let her stay home I would have been pissed at her for being so irresponsible and I would have felt like a bad mother because I didn’t hold a fair boundary. Feeling bad about myself would have led me to be pissy with her and make her pay for a decision I didn’t make and should have made as her mother and the adult in the situation. There would have been no winners. She wouldn’t have learned what she needed to learn, I would have been less than kind to her and in the end we would have both felt bad about ourselves.
I hope this little story will help you the next time you need to set a limit with your child.