How To Deal With Remorse?

[Eleanor]

pretending I just wasn't there in the house as a child, and looking straight past me and not saying a word to me until I would be forced to beg on my knees for her to acknowledge me again,

Oh, (((((((((Philippa)))))))) :cry::cry::cry:

I dared not express my honest feelings by asking her to take more care with my feelings.

I should HOPE NOT. What a waste of time and electrons that message would have been. (Not that you don't deserve the respect and don't have every right to stand up for yourself just that there is no sense sending a message that has no chance of being received.)

Would you mind sharing your methods with me here.

Not at all. Basically all of them require feeling the feelings all the way through and then.. taking some action. The feeling part is really the toughest for me - I have to find where the feeling(s) are located in my body. I have to hang out with them and pay attention without judging or resisting until some words or memories come up or until the feeling dissipates. If I get a word or memory I stick with it and the feelings that come up around it until the "energy shifts." (That is the language that makes most sense to me, I don't know how else to say it.) There is generally crying and sometimes screaming and hitting pillows or throwing rocks associated with this. I try to stay away from kicking things since I kicked the old mustang hood and the hood won.:confused:

Once the feeling is processed then comes the action part:

• Tell the other person what they'd done, how I felt about it, and ask them to do something specific either as reparation or to prevent a similar event in the future..
• Don't tell them, but write it out and burn it.
• Tell someone trusted to "Get it off my chest."
• Make a strategy about how I would like to handle it in the future.
• Burn something down (not really, just joking :cautious::D)
• Ask someone trusted how to deal with this kind of thing in the future.

I don't get why my mind cannot just state the reality to myself once and be done with it? Why does it keep going over and over it even after I have argued my way out of the position of asshole the tenth time running?

God, if I knew the answer to this someone would give me a million dollars. Or the Nobel prize. Hey, doesn't the Nobel prize come with a million dollars?

It's like I want to make myself guilty,

You might. That is, some younger section of you might. Because guilt only comes if you have control, and the thing that is worse than being wrong is being powerless - which you were. It feels better to pretend you have some control when you are little, than to realize you have none. THAT is terrifying and immobilizing and immobility was probably not an adaptive option - so your "reptile brain" gave you the illusion of control to keep you moving, and the (irrational) guilt is the price you paid. And now it is a habit. But habits can be undone at least for the vast majority of the time. (In times of great stress we often still revert to our first conditioning.) So if you think of this as undoing lifetime's worth of bad "thinking habits" and be patient with yourself, it should be tractable.

I still catch myself stuffing hurt - but I'm a lot better than I used to be.

 

[Philippa]

Thankyou both for your replies. I do not have the energy right now to answer them individually, so I am going to just rest and maybe take a nap before my dance class later on. I will get back to you both though. I'm so glad I started this thread.

 

[LhasaLover]

This is a great thread. It got me thinking about where I am at emotionally on this topic. It's a lot to think about, but it's a must to sort out in recovery!

 

[Philippa]

Ok, I'm not sure if remorse is how I feel now, but has anyone else felt that they hated their parents, and then spoken to someone else who had copped a lot more physical and verbal abuse in their childhood, and hear them say they don't hate their parents at all, that they were 'doing the best they can'?

This happened to me last night. I met this amazing goth woman at a club last night, who rescued me from sitting on my own the whole night. She was just like me in that she had been a bit of a hermit and didn't go out much. We got talking and connected quite well. Both love cats and ventured on down the road to a local pub, where we made quite an odd couple.

She proceeded to share with me her past childhood traumas, and it involved lots of beatings and verbally being told she would never amount to anything.

My childhood was very different to this, and although I did have my emotional reality dismissed regularly, and was negated quite a lot, I did not receive beatings for being a vegetarian or for having my ears pierced, and nor was I told I'd amount to nothing. My father tried to instil in us that we could do anything we wanted and I am grateful for that.

I also thought the same at one point, that they were doing their best, but later came to think that wasn't necessarily true, and found that I felt hate towards them for some of the behavior. Maybe it was the hurt or the behavior itself that I hated, but I felt that I hated them.

Now I feel self-loathing that someone who had this kind of abuse can still feel love for her parents, and I have more of a love/ hate thing for them. It is part of my path to allow myself to feel whatever I feel...even if that is hatred. It goes against the whole "love and honor thy parents' rule that we have all grown up with, but that is what I felt.

 

[The Albatross]

Your goth friend and I share the same perspective. It is a perspective that is beneficial for us. Instead of self-loathing, situations like this are opportunities to re-examine your choice. Nothing more. Try to glean the value of the exchange without comparing the extent of her abuse to your own. If there's anything that you value from it, fine... if not, that's fine too. It's just two different coping styles.

 

[Philippa]

I found that perspective beneficial at one stage as well Alba. It is helpful and I know that my healing progressed in leaps and bounds when I thought that way. But I like what you said about taking it as an opportunity to re-examine my choice. Thanks for your input here Alba. I always find your style so non-judgemental and matter of fact. I appreciate it.

I guess I can take it as meeting with myself from when I was this womans age, and be able to see the difference between the two perspectives, and vouch as to whether the one I currently hold is really helping me as much as the old perspective did.

 

[The Albatross]

Contrasting and comparing habitually is a tenacious habit. Sometimes if I can focus instead on the "lesson" of the exchange, or the "opportunity" of the exchange or situation, I can find some benefit more easily and it is less troubling or rather less unsettling. My personal choice is to find value and if there is none apparent, let it go. Contrasting and comparing often leads me back into a place of self doubting and a feeling of lower self worth. If all the world is my teacher (people and situations) and I am "finding the lesson"... it puts my mind in a more beneficial place.

 

[LhasaLover]

Hi Phillipa,

I have accepted that my parents and brother and well, entire family tree, are troubled and did the best that they can. The best they could be, destructive and abusive, is not enough for me to associate with them.

Accepting that they are a mess does not mean that I should associate with destructive people or people who have hurt me or put me in danger. It's a process I believe to get to the stage of ambivalence. First you feel hurt, anger and rage and then you slowly accept you family for the people they are or were. Also you are the company you keep and they are obviously not healthy.

However, with PTSD, you can be re-traumatized and can have emotional reactions to the situation consquently.

This woman may had been at peace that night with her parents, but that does not mean that is the full story. It's one person's perspective on one night.

Personally, I think that relationships and people are far more complex and there are always mitigating factors.

Just a thought....

-LL

 

[Eleanor]

Now I feel self-loathing that someone who had this kind of abuse can still feel love for her parents, and I have more of a love/ hate thing for them.

I think you are very brave to try to "feel your way through" this bit. I feel concerned about how it could "backfire" on you at the same time. "Self-loathing" is pretty strong. Question - does that feeling have a voice? Is it really you? Or is it someone else?

Another question: Would you judge anyone else as harshly as you are (in this bit) judging yourself?

 

[Philippa]

I probably would not judge anyone else as harshly as I judge myself for many things. That is most likely true for all of us.

I did look at an email sent to me by a website that sends inspirational reminders of your connection to source/God. It told me that sometimes I have to disappoint others in order not to disappoint myself...which helped immensely in regards to the topic of this thread.

Is it really my voice speaking to me through self-loathing? Not sure? I'm asking myself now and not really getting any definitive answer. I cannot really spend too much time with it now either, unfortunately, as I am about to head off to work and thought I'd stop by before I did. I will ask myself again during the quiet spots at work when I get to meditate and even take naps.:D

Have a great day everyone, if you can.