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Hi Kate....I thought to mention too the power of God when it comes to bringing us face to face with repressed confusion and pain even when we don't have any real grasp of what our injuries are truly about on an emotional level. I have "known" intellectually in a similar way that you describe that I was harmed in my childhood and that intellectual knowledge helped me to distance myself more and more over time from the feelings of devastation and helplessness and things like that that I am now finding God is bringing me face to face with through his/her design and somehow events continually unfold that cause me to descend into the emotions that I have been cut off from....like being sucked down into the pain and darkness by things beyond my control.

Mainly, I just pray sincerely to God to reveal the truth I have become severed from through my own choices/facade/defenses/walls/intellect, etc....and then the next thing I know....I am just taken down to my knees through circumstances and choices and events "beyond my control"....it's really weird...but feels obviously like an answer to my prayer to bridge back to that unaddressed pain...because that is what it brings me deep into....and I don't know in advance what that pain is...it is exposed through the feelings these events take me into.

And, then, if I abstain from taking actions to get safe again (like trying to change others, make them see, run away, and the other things I have done in years past), a door opens to that horror and pain and largely too, to the gaping distance I feel from God....and the nature of that estrangement....that is all born of that childhood environment as well.

I do also read books and journal and do things along those lines these days...wanting to be proactive in uncovering my repressed memories, etc...but when I invite God in to expose that pain and bring it to the surface....it is pretty faith producing to see things transpire that I could/would never orchestrate myself.

As awful as the emotions are...in the midst and in the aftermath, I feel the truth that God does want me to know and heal this pain and my separation from him (even if my family does not). Because how else could these events occur that take me right into the depths of that pain and fear and vulnerability and aloneness if it is not an answer to my prayer from God?

For me moving into God reliance in terms of unearthing this childhood pain is definitely helping. Then, I just do my part as best as I can through each of the cycles that unfold (mainly by not running from the emotion, etc.)

Love,
Maureen

Kate

I wanted to look at what you said below and mention some things I feel I have applied and are working.

I’m in a similar position on some of the things you mentioned Riza, like wanting to be intellectually dominant and understand everything rather than surrendering intellectual control and letting emotions be dominant, feeling angry when addictions are not met but struggling to really connect with my anger and get beyond just angry, feeling ‘bad’ about having this anger that I’m not sincerely dealing with (judgement), living in these emotions (feeling depressed and unhappy).

I haven't listened much to the new Assistance Group sessions as I soon realised I was jumping ahead of myself and hadn't understood about will very much, but one of the very useful things I did hear was how important it is to

1. Accept our facade (my own interpretation is respect where we are as well)
2. Do not judge where we are.
3.Have compassion for where we are and what we are doing.

Personally I've also had to accept on whatever issue has come up, that I don't want to change at the moment, I am using my will to stay angry and don't want to feel whatever lies beneath (an alternative emotion) instead.

I've found Mary's description of how we have adopted and use this whole "construction" of facade and addictions to avoid our real feelings very useful. I often think about the film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" where the Dad in the film is an inventor and invents hugely complicated mechanical machines to do simple things - I think there is one where he cooks breakfast - eggs and toast. These huge constructions because I am afraid of whatever lies beneath or I was taught to be afraid of it.

Once I've accepted that I really am this angry person that I don't want to be or didn't want to see, this is where I do usually start to feel or come into contact with some of my rebellion with God or God's way - feelings like
1. I don't want to do this
2. Why should I change, they should just stop behaving like an idiot (insert your own description) or doing what they are doing
3.What is so wrong with anger anyway
4.That person deserves my anger
5. My anger doesn't hurt them or me
6.I like my anger - it gives me a sense of power and satisfaction giving someone what for or "standing up for myself"
7. I feel entitled to be angry with them
8. In that moment I don't care about them, I want to punish them/get my own way/feel powerful/defend myself etc

I often resist writing stuff down but when I do it's quite shocking to realise I believe those things.

I do love of course the advice that Mary gave which is worth repeating here:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=292&p=924#p924

Hi Kate,

I found that a crucial step in progressing from the point you are at now was to want to become sensitive to and to experience the anger that I was harbouring (under my facade). I was raging about a lot of things. Opening up to feeling the anger led to me being able to feel through a number of false beliefs I had that were driving my anger.

For example,
I had no faith that the process of feeling emotions would work,
I believe/d that being open emotionally would lead to others treating me in a condescending manner and (because I didn't want to experience the grief of that projection) it was pointless feeling my emotions,
I believe that God loved others but I had no desire or belief that I was worthy of His Love
I had no faith in my personal capacity to literally live through the process of being overwhelmed emotionally.

All of these false beliefs I kept buried under façade and suppressing them in this way, they fuelled my rage.

What I notice for yourself is that you still judge your rage, and most of your other emotions and you rely on your intellect to analyse your experiences and your understanding of Divine Truth.

Both of these blocks prevent you from simply surrendering to your rage and discovering the emotional beliefs that are driving your anger.

I noticed that you responded to a post by Patricia who shared an experience she had with feeling her anger: viewtopic.php?f=30&p=910#p910

In what you said to Patricia, you actually highlighted a lot of your judgements of the uncontrolled experience of rage. Instead of feeling your response to what she had written, you judged what Patricia had done as wrong. This shows me how you judge your own rage and free expression of emotions.

You were also quite condescending towards Patricia and her experience. This also shows me the kind of judgement you must be directing towards yourself when you think of being open and expressive emotionally.

It would assist you heaps to begin to recognise how harshly you are judging yourself, your emotions and how 'weak' you feel it would make you if you were to be soft to your emotions all the time.

At present you use self judgement, judgement of emotions and your intellectual reasoning to help you control and suppress your emotional experience.

All these things have assisted me a great deal in opening up emotionally though I am still progressing in this area myself.

Bye for now,
Mary

Cheers

Amanda

PS I do like to remind myself that kids can have a good tantrum or cry about something and its as if it never happened. Never underestimate the immense change that can happen by releasing something or changing how we feel about something even by a little.

Hey Kate

Yeah it's accurate to say I was in so much distress it felt like there was no alternative. I suppose the state I was in prior to connecting with it all, which all collapsed around the same time, was:

-desire to suppress anger/rage
-desire to avoid truth about my dad and how he'd affected my life
-desire to justify my dads behavior and want to think how he was in my childhood/present times was better than it was
-desire to avoid being direct and exactly what I felt about my dad, to my dad
-desire to maintain a relationship--even a little one--with my dad that had some semblance of seemingly "happy" times (really, a desire to maintain a relationship that was fake and codependent in order to avoid my feelings)
-desire to maintain the larger family facade where everyone felt that things were ok amongst us all
-desire to avoid emotional overwhelm
-desire to avoid severe emotional pain
-willingness to believe the things my dad said about me (that I was a mean person and wrong about it all etc.)

I don't mean to paint that I'm really good at not being in these states now; I have lots of issues with those things with various topics and people, and also more left related to my dad, but there was a major shift with my dad at the time in these areas. I remember feeling like, "this is probably going to be the end of this relationship if all this is true"--and unfortunately, it pretty much was the end. I hope that's not the case for everyone with their parents, but I do remember letting it all flow to that extent of being prepared for that to be the case.

Courtney

Thanks for your replies, much to consider there.