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Healing becomes possible when all parties in a relationship come to see each other as co-creators of the relationship rather then attacker, and victim.
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hestia
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Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 16:54:57 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
Ok, so I just want to say, I don't know about you guys, but I am so important that I shouldn't have to take a breather between messages!  It always messes up my posting my positives! And my advice-giving!!!  Anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot since the chat with Dr. Hamilton. I started really taking my spritual path even more seriously around 6 or 7 years ago. My career wasn't working, my marriage wasn't working, I was depressed, etc. I went on several retreats with a spiritual director, and the one thing I didn't have in common with the others on retreat is that I was a lot younger. The spirutal director warned me: "Sometimes God brings people into this work a little early if they are about to be taken apart. This taking apart usually involves a serious illness or brush with mortaility. This may not happen to you, but this is my experience, so keep an eye on your health and keep doing your work. God knows what God is doing." About a year after she said this, I was diagnosed with cancer. Anyway, this whole spiritual path became sort of a trap for me. I learned to just accept my husband was different and to love him anyway, to be unconditional, but I did not leave when he was abusive with me. I almost did, but thought the more spiritual thing to do was to stay and try and work it out. But you can't work it out with someone who isn't rational. And my religious upbringing led me to believe divorce was not an option. (Interestingly, it is the same spiritual director who first said my relationship with my husband may need to be dissolved, reminding me that in a case like mine even the Catholic church would grant an annulment-- because of the emotional abuse. She also named my husband's spiritual sin as pride, and mine as not valuing myself enough.) Cancer helped me see how precious I am. There is something empowering about going through treatment that is literally poisoning you, getting you as close as possible to death without damaging any really important organs, and having a whole team of people fighting to keep you alive. During the worse of the treatment, I really wanted to just stop, I was so sick. And they said, "But you'll die of cancer if you stop. And if you keep getting treatments, you'll probably live." There was a moment there where I thought, "Who cares if I die?" And I realized that while I didn't care, a whole bunch of people did. And I saw my husband acting crazy and got really worried about my son. Feeling my body get strong again helped me learn to love myself. And once I loved myself, everything with my husband really hit the fan. When I first came to this board, I was so angry, at him for the abuse, and at myself for letting him abuse me. I felt like letting myself love him would just give him more power to hurt me. But then I thought, "Do I think the precepts of attidudinal healing are true or not?" My religion teaches that perfect love casts out fear. So I thought, ok, try to let yourself love him from this new place where you are and see what happens. I think part of me thought that it would save the relationship. And in a way it has saved the relationship, though not the marriage. I have seen so many people use their faith against themselves, and while I could see other people doing it so clearly, because I have great love for people, I couldn't see how I was doing it to myself. I held myself to a "higher standard", not because I believed I was better than other people, but because I thought I was worse, that I had to earn my right to breath. (This probably sounds familiar to NPDers and F/F alike.) The key seems to be loving yourself. When you really love yourself as much as you love other people, you will not let yourself be abused. Like most great truths, it sounds so simple and is so hard to live out! I think my attempt to live in love and not fear did keep me in my marriage longer than I would have been otherwise. But it was my attempts to live in love that eventually led to me loving myself. So while it might look like it was a trap from the outside, it really was the thing that set me free. Yesterday it occured to me that if I had just let fear rule me (and believe me there was a time early when I found you guys it was pretty close to taking over) I probably would have divorced my husband by now, but I wouldn't have learned a damn thing. I would have been free from him, but still in the trap of my own making. I'm still struggling with the role of anger. It seems to me that there is a sort of anger than can be redemptive if it is based in love and the desire for right and respectful relationships. I mean the sort of anger that fueled MLK's civil rights movement, or Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, etc. But I also know that anger rooted in fear is something that can eat you alive. Is there an element of fear in all anger? Can a pure anger exist on the level of individual relationships? Can't two people who respect one another be really angry in love? Can't someone on the receiving end of disrespect feel a healthy anger yet stay rooted in love-- at least for the most part-- so that over time they both feel their anger yet become more and more grounded in love? Am I on the right track? Sorry so long-- just a lot I'm working through right now. Thanks. Hes
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Re: Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 19:36:46 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
I'm with you. I too am far too important to be kept waiting!! I need to be heard!  I used to try and explain to my hubby that I could be upset or angry with him or not like what he was saying or doing but still love him. He never understood that. He assumed that if I did not like what he was doing, that meant I did not love him. I still love him deeply and would accept him back in my life, but it has become highly conditional. I think his perception of love is that you love every single thing about that person. I think you can love someone but not like them all the time. I know that's true of me. I love my family, but sometimes they drive me nuts! About the abusive situation, I don't know. I lived in an emotionally abusive situation for probably close to three years, but I don't think I realized it. I was so busy raising my kids and not sleeping I just thought that was the problem. It wasn't until months after he left I realized what he had done. And I had done in return. I wasn't exactly blameless either. I did a couple things I'm none to proud of and wish I could take back! Now that he has left people are pointing out things which at the time, I don't think I was even aware of. But I think I would have stayed anyway because like you, I was taught that that is what you do. I think I would have tried harder to change things though. At least I hope so. I was just in so much denial and so wrapped up in my own little world I just didn't pay enough attention. I am currently studying the Course in Miracles and am struggling with it. I find it hard to equate what they are trying to teach me and live in the "real world". I think part of it is tied in to my fear of not being accepted for who I am. This has always been an issue for me and enlightened people certainly aren't commonplace so I think part of me thinks if I "get it", people won't want to be around me. Ok, as usual I appear to be rambling. Hope I helped in some way. Mel
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Mlashtok
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Re: Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 19:40:18 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
Hes,
I would say that fear and anger are opposites and cannot exist together for more than a split second. Fear is an impulse to run away from, anger to strike towards something. If you are angry then you are poised to take offensive action toward something, and almost certainly you are not afraid in this situation as long as you are angry.
Anger is actually often looked at as a healthy emotion - it is a "hot" feeling that provides you with the force to change a situation that threatens you. So probably it can exist healthily in a love relationship... not sure about this from my personal experience but I would think so. And if you think about love, you will realize that there are two elements to love - tenderness and aggression. There is a softness and a caring and a responsiveness to love that is more associated with the female in our culture (tenderness), and there is a hardness and a strength and a "moving-towards/holding tight" that ism oer associated with the male in our culture (aggression).
Anger does therefore ground you in reality in many instances and is primarily a healthy emotion. Narcissistic rage, in contrast, is usually cold and unrelated to how one really feels, and is therefore more unhealthy than healthy. I think expression of one's aggression in real life is key to a feeling of self-respect and self-love... that how you feel really matters in your daily life. You sound like you are on the right track, and going through an experience like you have will often make you stronger. I hope that it was enough that you feel more experienced and resilient, but not so much that you feel untouchable and sort of "beyond this plane of existence" as a result.
Good luck in your journey,
Matt
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You know, of course, where this other world lies hidden. It is the world of your own soul that you seek. Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself... All I can give you is the impulse, the key. I can help you to make your own world visible. That is all.
- Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf |
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hestia
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Re: Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 21:30:43 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
Hey, all.
TC, I guess I am just trying to work through how to apply attitudinal healing to myself, and my problem hasn't been being a mean SOB, but being too nice. The point I was trying to make-- apparently not very well!-- is that for awhile on my journey attitudinal healing and even spirituality seemed like a trap. But it wasn't. I needed to stay in my relationship long enough that I could leave it in love, not anger or fear. Otherwise, I would have been out of the relationship, but would have just carried that baggage elsewhere. Which is why I said, "So while it looked like a trap from the outside, in the end it set me free." I will always be grateful for the work my husband and I have done together which has taught me so much of what I needed to learn about myself.
Mel, I'm also working on the Course in Miracles! Another parallel! I understand when you say, "I would have tried harder to change things." If I had been able to see more clearly earlier on, had set better boundaries, maybe it would have ended differently. But once there was physical abuse, there was no going back for me. (He says of this incident that he just didn't know his own strength, and says nothing of the times he punched me in the arm or leg. So he's not ready to be accountable, and I'm not willing to risk living with someone who isn't owning up to his abusiveness. I don't want my son to see it.) Anyway, I will be interested to see what the course says about anger. Whether it's always part of the illusion or if it's ever real.
Matt, I think you are sort of seeing what I mean about anger-- it can be a force for change as long as you stay grounded in love. Jesus got angry, yet he never stopped loving... But I think TC's right about feeling, not thinking, too.
TC, I get that you think I am just thinking too much about this, and maybe I am. But I almost feel like I have a responsibility to do just that because of my profession and my training. And because I'm a woman, and women are taught to bury their anger, to never express it. Anger is, I think, a different issue in our culture for most women than most men. But I still believe there are times when there can be an anger rooted in love. It's not a striking out, aggressive anger. It's more of a mournful, sad anger, the anger that recognizes that there has been a failure to achieve a right relationship between people. I don't think I've ever felt angry at someone else when I wasn't also angry at myself. When I feel that anger and get in touch with the sadness, I can stay in a place of love and work to repair the relationship. And as strange as it sounds, I think my husband and I have repaired a lot of the wounds of our relationship, and a big part of it was his willingness to hear a little of my anger, and for me to hear a little of his. But it was anger expressed in kindness, and our therapist worked very hard to keep us out of a place of blame. Anyway, please remember that I was trained to think theologically and have a certain responsibility to do so. On the other hand, it does and has been a trap, and spiritual growth is about feeling not thinking, so I really appreciate your feedback!
Thanks, friends.
Hes
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hestia
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Re: Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 22:30:44 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
The Course says anger is not real. Anger is rooted in judgment. Judgement is not love. And only love is real.
But if I really surrender to love, if I release the anger to God, then do I have to stay with my husband? Because I don't want to. Even with all his changes, it seems too great a risk. I literally had started to lose my mind. How can I take a chance like that with myself? He continues to lie, to manipulate, and I know it's out of his pain and his desire to keep me in his life. But it's like it contaminates me.
Marianne Williamson says in A Return to Love that if two people learned all that they can learn from a relationship and then divorce, the relationship was a success. Can't this be the truth for me?
Of course, I can't answer any of these things until I surrender the anger. i've surrendered a lot of it, but there's still a bunch near my heart, and I keep it there to protect myself from him. And I have to let it go. I have to just love him. And see where that takes us... Where it takes me. But I don't want to. I am so scared of losing myself again, and not finding myself again this time. And releasing the anger just keeps unleasing such sadness...such grief...
I will try and just stay in this place, letting go of the anger a moment at a time, grieving... I grieve him, I grieve that other soul I love, I grieve all the pain I've received and all I've caused...
Isn't it ok when you've been abused by someone for so long to say, I love you but I can't do this anymore? To say, I know you want another chance, but I can't risk it?
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CoolBlonde
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Re: Attitudinal Healing: Trap or Truth? ( 23:34:32 SunFeb 29 2004 ) | |
It seems from what you wrote that what you're really struggling with is your religious beliefs as opposed to those of Attitudinal Healing. From everything I've heard, the Catholic religion tends to instill a lot of guilt in people, not to mention the fact that Catholicism as well as a lot of fundamentalist religions are very sexist, and the underlying message is always that women should be content to be barefoot and pregnant and let the man be the boss. These religions always try to deny this when they are confronted, of course, but it's definitely there, even if it is subtle. Attitudinal Healing does teach that you don't have to put up with abusive behavior in order to forgive someone. In "Love is Letting Go of Fear", it says that forgiveness does not mean "putting up with or tolerating behavior in another person that we do not like." | Quote: Mlashtok |
[Anger is actually often looked at as a healthy emotion - it is a "hot" feeling that provides you with the force to change a situation that threatens you.
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I agree with this, but if something "threatens" you, it means you fear it on some level. It's that "fight or flight" response that all animals are given to protect themselves from dangerous situations. So the anger response means that you choose to fight the scary situation as opposed to running away from it, probably because you feel that running away is not an option, like you are "cornered" in some way. I think that the "Narcissistic rage" thing is just an extreme defense response to what we perceive on some level to be an extreme threat to our true self.
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