*sigh*

[Amber]

Just feeling kind of down tonight. :( Old memories and old pain and feeling silly for letting such old things get to me. Oh well ... this too shall pass. Eventually.

[Pilgrim]

Not silly, Amber. And old pain can sometimes be worse than current pain because you have hindsight to really kick you in the pants. I'll be praying. (My experience has been whenever I start feeling pasts pains, I'm tired and need sleep). But then other times, it's just painful memories. ((((AMBER)))) Big hug for you tonight!

[Pepper]

I've been kind of down too, "read checking in post." I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, hoping and praying for a better day. Friends, family and this Forum help. :(

[Amber]

Thanks for your replies. I saw something on TV today that triggered some old memories and the feelings of being a total loser came back with force. I do feel silly because it was all so long ago and things I should have gotten over a long time ago ... but even though it was a long time ago those events DO play into my current issues in a big way so ... yeah.... it's not really silly. Just feels that way. So much so that I'm embarrassed to even talk about it here. :\ thanks for caring.

[Theodora]

:o

Ah (((dear one!)))--- I DO wish we weren't so much alike!!! I know TOO well how frustrating it is to have "old issues" raise their ugly heads, just when we think that we have "handled" them and they're safely behind us. UGH!!! :( :p

I thought Pilgrim's comment about it somehow being worse because we can now with the benefit of additional wisdom, look back and "kick ourselves" for not doing better was apt.

However--- I have really liked Maya Angelou's wisdom as frequently quoted by Oprah: "When you knew better, you did better."

If it's a question of needing to continue to grieve/work through pain which you did NOT deserve but received at the hands of others, know too that this is truly an on-going process. Sigh?? siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!!!

Two thoughts come to mind from my own experience and those are that

1) I am most vulnerable to NEEDING to process "old stuff" when I'm already fatigued and overloaded! It's sort of like I've lost the emotional energy to keep everything "tidied up" and in their neat little "boxes."

and

2) Though it's VERY hard to need to deal with "old issues" when I'm like that, I've also come to expect that IF something is again current in my life, it's because I have something new to LEARN from it. It's NOT that we've "failed" to handle things "properly" the first time around (or the second or the third!!! ;) ) but that it's like things come around in a spiral and we have a new connecting point from our present which leads us directly to our past.

A massage therapist told me once that physical injuries created nerve pathways which are then more sensitive to being "triggered." Further, there is a kind of "cellular memory" which sometimes gets awakened for various reasons. I have had the amazing----and VERY "embarrassing"----experience of going into a massage session, feeling relatively "OK"--and CERTAINLY not on the "verge of tears," only to have tears being released unexpectedly by the work that was being done on me. In any case, it has seemed to me that something like that may happen when it's a question of emotional "issues"/pain as well...i.e. current pain connects to PAST pain, with a kind of "aHA!" familiarity.

Sadly too, if we've been TOO enmeshed in that as our reality, I think it's almost a "given" that we will be more prone to just "resign" ourselves to our "reality"--- with recognition: "Oh yes....THAT I know. That confirms my view of the world." It is only with effort as we work in "recovery," that we learn that that pain was just PART of our total world, as deep as that pain might have been and that we ARE still loved and still "OK" in a world which our faith declares is there because a LOVING heavenly Creator willed it.

:confused:

Sooooooooo......THAT leads to a further thought/comment about my own past and that is that it has been VERY difficult for me to express feelings with others, let alone to be comforted by them when I'm in pain, since I was basically TAUGHT to be a "little Stoic"----ALWAYS!!! It has only been recently that I've been able to be WITH people at all when I cry, and.....to date, that has mostly NOT been with my husband, who doesn't quite know what to "do" with me when I am most emotional.

Ironically, an unexpected BLESSING out of the most recent "explosion" at "my" Episcopal church (in which I was chastised publicly, if you remember, and interrupted in the middle of giving an announcement about new resources for the congregation)...was that two young women from our choir came and sought me out DURING the service, and found me in the chapel where I was sitting in stunned silence and great physical pain. Without much "fanfare" initially, the first woman reached out and held me and.....released the tears!....and, after she left, the other woman came and talked and held my hand while I also shed the silent tears. NEARLY a "first" in my experience.........I don't have memories even from my mother or my grandmother with whom I lived for a time....of dealing with me like that....though there was a time when my uncle heard me crying in my room and gently came in to see what he could do. --- and God bless Uncle Samuel, my surrogate dad!

Well.....obviously----one never knows WHERE memories will lead when we begin to work with them!---- ;)

So, my FINAL "final" thought would be to be as gentle as you can be with yourself as you deal with these painful memories, trusting that 1) there IS a purpose for what you're feeling and 2) you DO have the skills to handle these difficulties.

Blessings to you and yours this day, dear sister in Christ. I love you and I am keeping you and yours in prayer.

((((Amber)))))

Theodora