My therapist said, a few weeks back, "I wonder what it will be like for you after you have forgiven yourself"... getting beyond the event and into the self-actualization ...
I've wondered so much - who on earth will I be after this?
For me, it's something like stepping off a high place because there's no foundation, there's nothing beneath this, what am I going to even stand on?
But especially, what will I be like and what will my life be like. I'm thinking about this a lot because at the moment I'm having to liaise with several different parties for a legal transaction, and it's going badly. I've reacted to some people with stress (not aggression, but upset) and afterwards thought, this is not the person I want to be. But then, how do I manage it? How do I manage myself? What does even an ordinary day look like and feel like, as a more healed person?
I still struggle to find my antidote to torture... But thinking about it, I think for me it's animals. I love any animal. To me, they are such pure lights. I am guessing that is what you mean by the sublime.
Yes it is. For some reason I have no love like this for nature, animals, children or another person. Only for art and other creativity. But for each person it's whatever it is for them - whatever lifts their heart and connects them to a feeling of truth/beauty/light.
Sometimes I sit and just cry, because I can't win. And then I understand how that is also both a now thought and a then thought.
I don't know if this is helpful - it may not be, if so please disregard it. It has really helped me to think about myself not just then and now, but in the future too. I've always felt that the healing I'm doing in the present helped me survive at the time of the trauma in the past. Sometimes I've sent back strength to myself then. And the other side of that is relying on my future self, who has done even more healing, to be sending me thoughts of comfort and strength now.
When I feel hopeless, sometimes I'll ask my future healed self what she did at this point. It's a rhetorical question because I don't usually get an answer as such, but it reminds me that there is a way through and I'll find it. That there's going to be a time when this is behind me. Even if I can't move ahead right at the moment, I'm reconnecting to the fact that there is a healing path for me. However hard it is in the moment, I'm at least feeling that I'm on that path even if I have to take a rest or I've fallen back a bit.
When I was being tortured, I thought it would never end. It got to a point where I thought I'd died and was in hell, and it really would be never-ending. It's been important to me to let my then self (and my present, struggling self) know that there's going to be an end, and healing, and a future.
I do have an excellent therapist. He says he is in it for the long haul with me,
I'm really glad. And you must be doing excellent work, to be able to see that and say it.
