Maya Angelou has been noted for saying, "Once you know better you have to do better." My heart leaps up at this truth. It makes self-compassion tangible and connection with others honest. At the core of my approach to old wounds --- or even a fresh wound --- is an intention to transition organically through the hard pain so that the soft pain of understanding can prevail. My vow to do no harm can make me vulnerable to feelings of rejection when someone I'm acquainted with clearly has no regard for the path of my heart. And this is what I am determined to align with: a path of heart.
A treasury of emotionally rich and spiritually uplifting poetry and writing which demonstrate, in real life, the principles of hard pain being transitioned into soft pain, can be found in Maya Angelou's works. I count her among my favorite authors for building me up when I have been brought low.
To undo a dense tangle of what seems unforgivable is difficult work. Maybe the roots are unknowable for some. Maybe overwhelming information and emotion arise in a moment of shock. In the first concept, I have known what the roots of my former challenges were, even before I entered therapy at the age of 30. My earlier blog posts have revealed the gist of former traumas. In the second concept, I have learned to remain present to the flow of emotion when it overwhelm threatens. I may hesitate to respond, to a present day situation, in the manner people expect. It may not be outwardly obvious that I am using therapeutic tools to keep from projecting my angst onto others. In most situations, the best response may be to simply acknowledge I feel uncertain. My human vulnerability to internalizing harm makes me cautious. And sad. For some, I may even seem to be an enigma.
There is a wholeness protocol that I have developed organically. Before I understand how to respond in a given situation, I let the situation run through my system. By way of metaphor, it's as if I am downloading a software program onto the hard drive of a real-time computer (me). My process requires internal permissions regarding access (the ultimate choice, I might add). Time must be allotted for this kind of interfacing (updating) because I have, like everyone else, other programs in place and running in the background. Some are worth updating and some need to be gently deleted. To streamline my own functionality is key. But without losing emotional, spiritual, mental or physical integrity.
When my yellow flags pop-up (I rarely wait for the red flags), they are like the pop-up windows that ask me essential questions along the way --- such as, do you want this experience to make changes to your functioning? I can choose continue, in order proceed with my organic installation and the hoped for improved functionality. In real time, this might cause me to take a nap or retreat for half a day. Such a process is what I'm referring to in the context of confronting and healing the seemingly impossible. In case it needs to be said, the idea of impossibility eventually becomes a mist, dissolving when we turn around to face it. By way of an example in nature, the Bumble Bee is not supposed to be capable of flying, and yet it defies our ideas of what aerodynamics are --- and it flies anyway.
Similar to the frequent updates that occur in the life of all the running programs on our computers, life demands that we update ourselves, and our perceptions, rather often. I will be the first to admit that this is where resistance kicks in. We might feel the call to improve our capacity to engage at higher levels of reasoning but it may not be welcomed by our closest friends and family. One's own heart may feel unsteady through the grapple with changes needed, in order to make oneself healthy and whole, capable of happy and joyous moments. But within our support system of friends and family, we might become a temporary source of contention. Our loved ones' habits of resistance to change kicks in. Painful as that may be, it's when we refuse to engage in this ongoing process of conscious choice that we start to shut down. Perhaps the integrity of the core of who we are is at stake?
When resistance from others becomes a long-term inflexibility, we may begin to doubt ourselves but demand that others, in our circle of influence, shut up and become invisible. We might even unintentionally gaslight those we have loved because of issues we cannot face on our own. Our world begins to shrink accordingly. I'm not speaking to the need to retreat to gain strength and perspective but the tendency to try to control others --- as a way to limit access or exposure to a shared pain. We essentially become part of a closed system. I could say we become a cult of one. And closed systems eventually collapse from implosion. As an alternative, we can extricate ourselves from a closed system before it does damage and collapses. That will mean striking out on our own and being open to other kindred souls on a similar path. I believe that such a path will create a compassionate trail for others to follow. At their own pace. It is possible to erect a kind of bridge across those chasms into the unknown --- the ones that can't be crossed in one leap alone.
What if, right now, you lack the know how, the therapeutic tools, and the materials needed to create that bridge or compassionate path? Then what? As the stewards on airplanes always remind us: place the oxygen mask on your own face first. Then turn and help your seat-mates. It's quite right to save oneself before we try and save anyone else.
A little comic relief (1)
Returning to my opening paragraph today, about the value of allowing hard pain to exist until it matures into soft pain is, I believe, the journey of self-inquiry. The concept of hard pain turning to soft pain was introduced to me by a wonderfully present rape crisis counselor that helped me in 1991. Her name is Ashley. As the first person who sat with me in uninterrupted, companionable silence, I consider her a foundational mentor for how to approach necessary and ongoing change. With her, I stumbled through the early telling of my hardest pain stories,
One noteworthy day, about three weeks into my therapeutic sessions with Ashley, I arrived fully prepared to exit out of the agreed upon program of 22 weeks duration. Several months before I started that weekly program of therapy, I had been hit with the flooding stage of recalibrating my traumatic experiences. Brene` Brown refers to overwhelm as being "blown." I was careening toward a brick wall of false certainty that no one, and I mean no one, would believe me. That what I had survived would overwhelm the sturdiest of counselors. Recall that I wrote false certainty. At this awful stage, I was pretty much convinced that the intensity of my recall (nightmares and flashbacks) was going to push away any and all manner of potential support. Mostly because I had not encountered real support in my first 30 years of life. A bloody crash-point, with no possible recovery, seemed imminent to me. Panic attacks were increasing. Sleeping was a joke because nightmares forced me awake every hour or so, only to start up again the second I hit the requisite 5th stage of REM (2; 3).
On that noteworthy day, in which I was ready to tell Ashley I was leaving therapy...I was exhausted in every way. Lack of sleep and lack of psychological tools (except for the ineffective ones I had developed in my childhood), were proof to me that further inquiry into the hard pain was obviously wrong for me. I wanted to be whole without trudging through the debris of the past. With those thoughts haunting me, I entered the rape crisis chamber of secrets, if you will. I sat on a firm but nondescript couch facing Ashley. Fortunately, she didn't ask me how I was feeling. I might have jumped up and ran out if she had. At that early stage of my recovery, I had difficulty in isolating and identifying my feelings. My compartmentalization was profoundly disturbing and falling apart. So we sat there in silence for several minutes. My gut felt heavy, as if I'd eaten concrete. My heart was pounding in my chest. As that sensation rose into my ears, I just knew I was going to suffocate right then and there. Like going under water for the last time in an inevitable drowning. I just wanted it to stop. How could I live if this was going to be the work of the rest of my life?
Ashley generally waited for me to begin the session, but on this day she softly asked me to remove my shoes and feel the carpet with my feet. My eyes may have revealed a rather wild and confused look. But I obeyed, rather shakily. In slow motion. I was nearly out-of-body as I untied my shoes, slipping them off one-by-one and setting them neatly beside each other, to the left of my sock adorned feet. Awkwardly rubbing my feet against the carpet, I began to come back into my body a bit and found the words I had rehearsed: "I need to quit. I've decided that I made this stuff up." What sounded loud to my hypersensitive ears was barely audible to Ashley, so she asked me to speak a little more loudly. I swallowed down a rather formidable lump in my throat and repeated, a bit louder: "I need to quit these sessions. I think maybe that I made it all up." My chin was almost touching my chest but my eyes looked into hers.
The compassion I saw in Ashley's eyes was not what I expected. I had anticipated anger or surprise. Certainly judgment. But her acceptance of the state I was in pretty much confounded me. Ashley gently offered the following: "Sometimes, we need a vacation from the intensity of what we are facing. Denial can give us that." The mythological Pandora's box became unglued. The Niagara Falls of what I was holding onto broke open. I heard a horrible keening sound. It was coming from me. And it didn't stop for 10 minutes or more. Ashley stayed put. She handed me a box of tissues. When there was a neat pile of used tissues on the cushion beside me, I started to laugh --- alternating with crying. And then I started sighing. And then I got a case of the hiccups. Finally, there was a pause in the waterworks.
I looked back up at Ashley, who had moved her chair close enough to allow her to touch me on the knee. Which she did. "I can't talk right now" I hiccupped. She nodded in acknowledgement. Then she asked if I was willing "to try some sand tray play." I had no idea what that was. Ashley pointed to a small table with a 24" by 18" by 3" deep rectangle tray, filled with sand. She stood up and walked toward it. Trembling, I stood up and followed her to an area of the room I had not paid any notice to. With her hands in a sweeping gesture, Ashley indicated the floating wall shelves that held hundreds of miniature figurines. Everything from people and animals and trees to houses and tractors and toys were represented there. She told me to pick a few items intuitively.
Like a child, I quickly grabbed the following: a woman holding a baby, a man, a boy, a girl, and a park-like walking bridge. Holding these play items in my cupped hands, I turned to Ashley and she directed me to a chair she had set at the sand tray table. I heard her say, as if I were in a tunnel, "Place your toys in the sand --- in any way that feels right to you." I nodded and swiftly set the woman with the baby and the man together, in the center of the three inch deep sand. Then I placed the boy beside the couple. With my left hand I scooped a curving line separating the sand, from top to bottom. It was several inches to the right of the couple and boy figurine. In my mind, that was a curving, raging river! Then I placed the bridge over it. The girl figurine was set on the opposite side of the bridge over the river. She was alone. I looked up at Ashley and whispered, "I think I'm done."
She looked at my scene thoughtfully and then asked me to describe it. I told her that my parents and two brothers were positioned on one side of the raging river and that I was alone on the other side. "I am separated from my family by the abuse. They don't want me to ever speak of it." After a moment of taking that in, Ashley asked me to make one change. Something I wanted in the present. Without conscious thought, I grabbed the boy (my older brother) and walked him over the bridge and set him beside me. Then, so swiftly and violently that I was shocked myself, I picked up the bridge and threw it hard against the wall! I'm sure my eyes were wide with fright at what I had done.
I looked at Ashley. She had tears in her eyes. Once again I felt a wave of compassion from her and my heart gave in to the pain again. She stood up to retrieve the box of tissues for me and I sobbed for several minutes again. "I wish I could help my brother escape from the cult we were raised in," I said. And that was the first time I was ever able to acknowledge to myself that I had been reared in a religious cult (the Jehovah's Witnesses, to be exact). At this point, Ashley had me return to the couch so she could share some tools for moderating the flow of emotion and memories. That pivotal moment enabled me to begin to process my former realities at a more manageable pace.
When our session ended and I headed for the bus that would take me to my home, I felt a return of light and purpose to my life. Until that day, I had associated my locked-up feelings and containment of former experiences as a by-product of losing my beloved great grandmother when I was almost six years old. The twice-weekly sessions continued without interruption. The panic attacks that had started months before gradually abated. The nightmares continued but I learned to write them down so I could talk about them in therapy. Over time, because I was listening to the clues my mind and body were giving me and sharing them in a trusted environment, a pattern of healing developed. Rather than resist, I persisted.
With an accumulation of experiences in therapy and in nature, I eventually discovered I could trust in my capacity to heal. I learned to let go of trying to control how healed. Early in the therapeutic processes, I connected with my childlike wonder and approached my self inquiries with curiosity rather than dread. Of course, I still felt dread from time to time, whenever a layer of the really rough stuff emerged, but it didn't take me out of the loop of life any more. My sense of sanctuary expanded to include the public library and book stores. Particularly the sections on art, writing, and self-development. As new concepts, such as hard pain maturing into soft pain, were gradually integrated into my repertoire of understanding, the accompanying self-compassion brought insights into freedom.
On the plane of healing, recovery, and resilience, it is reasonable, scientifically sound, and spiritually empowering to do the work of transforming the difficult truths of trauma into the wisdom of what is waiting for us on the other side of confrontation: Life, love, and laughter (4). Learning to release the hold of former trauma makes room for what's next. Beautiful things do happen when we persist.
Footnotes
1. Calvin and Hobbes Bliss Cartoon. The Comic Ninja. https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/calvin-and-hobbes-bliss-large2.jpg
2. Sleep Cycle Center. https://www.sleepcyclecenters.com/blog/the-5-stages-of-sleep
3. Science Daily. Dreaming also occurs during non rapid eye movement sleep. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/08/160809121817.htm
4. The Wisdom of Trauma (2021, Film and course). https://thewisdomoftrauma.com/about-the-film/
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