In one of my therapy sessions with Rhonda, she forewarned me that when I entered a new relationship with a man, I would experience painful emotions again as the new relationship triggered old wounds. I was no where near a new relationship when Rhonda told me this, and I filed the idea away.For almost two months, Michael and I have been seeing each other and going to couples counseling. Our new relationship and time together brings up so many emotions - happiness, joy, fear, distrust, sadness, excitement, anger. As we work through our individual and combined issues, I am partly fascinated by what I am learning about myself and partly (because of that perfectionist in me that I really thought I had dealt with in a perfect way) mad at myself for not seeing them and contributing to them.
One Saturday after returning from California, I was driving back from Boulder with my friends, Shari and Linda (Ardis' mom), and Linda was talking about the kind of care facility her mom, who has had Alzheimer's for 10 years or so, is in. I shared with her how hard it was to find care for my dad when he got really sick because many care facilities didn't want to care or didn't have the capacity to care for Huntington's Disease patients. This conversation, having visited my grandmother's house and catching myself looking for my grandfather who passed away six years ago, and having put my dad's ashes in the Pacific Ocean with my sisters during tht visit triggered a snow ball - well, maybe, avalanche - of emotion. Michael was in Alabama, and one night as I tried to fall asleep (in my bed, which seemed to be cursed for a few days by the gods of no sleep), I began to cry and then wept and then wailed. Great pain of the last two years sits my chest - the day Michael told me he wanted a divorce and the first night I spent alone after Michael moved out the second time. Crying in bed, the pain returned as I grieved not my dad and grandfather's death, but not having Michael with me through my dad's passing and handling his estate. A new relationsip had indeed triggered old pain.
In our counseling session today, our therapist again reminded us of the importance of letting difficult emotions out, unfreezing them in a way, and having them witnessed by others (my dear friend, Maraiya, might like to hear she's not the only one who thinks of memory as being lodged in the body, remembered by our cells). They have to move through us for us to heal, that familiar idea of feeling it to heal it. How overwhelming the hard emotions can feel as if they will overtake us and just never end! I have had to build my capacity for feeling deep pain and trusting that when that wave comes, it will roll over me, might knock me down, but I will stand again (Jesus, heal me now).
I was curious today, sharing this with a friend, why we don't have the same fear of joy, of joy never ending. When I am happy, I fear being happy because it might end. I read in the book Conscious Loving how we have to actually build up our capacity for happiness and joy in levels - really feel joy, then more joy, and slowly learn to trust joyful feelings. It might just be harder for me to build up a capacity for joy.
1 comment:
Yes, you have to let yourself feel the pain to get beyond it. I recall a friend who was so afraid to feel the pain of her divorce and all that meant that she literally shook as she lay on the couch trying to prevent the pain from surfacing. She looks today, years later, as though she is still pursued by shadows. The wounds still open and the pain still broadsides me at times, as in this summer when I traveled with Doug to places in the east where the boys and their dad and I had traveled; it was wonderful to be with Doug, but the death of my family can still hurt tremendously.And yes, I, too, believe emotions are lodged in our bodies; our muscles have memory-- so, too, must our feelings.
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