Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [73]
I suppose the molasses effect I'm experiencing at the moment is mainly due to my own fears. So many times I've tried to go out with my ideas about organizations and relationships only to be met with fear, criticism, non-interest or downright ridicule. So it's no wonder I'm reluctant to finish this work to put myself out there to be screamed at. That's it isn't it? The memory of being screamed at. The memory of being ragged on about how my ideas are not the norm and that I can't do it this way, I'm not an expert, my ideas threaten - hmmm - threaten who?
Yes, my ideas have threatened various friends before. I've been screamed at and pounded back into silence. But you know what? I refuse to be silent anymore. I will be heard and I will put my ideas out there. They aren't cast in stone but I think they can be of help to many to sort and ponder how we may do organizations and relationships that actually work. The way we do things today certainly isn't cutting the mustard.
My woman friend who encountered a psychopath was told by him that she must obey him. What weird ideas do we carry around about how we should be when we get together with another?
We have so many built in ideas, or pictures of how it should look. We expect to fall in love with someone our age, and in walks someone much older or younger. Just to stir our issues and about the time we are working through ageing stuff.
Life isn't just a dance on roses. It consists of ups and downs, failures and successes. Sometimes we are euphoric, sometimes we just stare into space, sometimes we feel murderous, sometimes we are sad and sometimes we feel happy. It's all part of life. The difficulties come when we have extended periods of trials, where it's hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. That's when it's most difficult to keep going, to keep the belief up that it's all worth it. But you have to keep trying all the same.
As I was going through the healing process around the issues from my life in Brussels in the 1700's I hit a particularly difficult spot. I shared with a friend, who was also going through a dark place, that if I didn't believe all this work was worth it and that in the end it would get better, I would go drown myself right now. She said, “at least you don't have to go far, since you live close to a lake.” Humor helps to lighten the load. We made a pact, that before we would do any drowning, we could call each other and then have a hell of a party with all our friends. We surmised that by then we would feel like living again. More of our friends have joined our drowning-party pact. I think it helps to keep us sane and it makes it ok to say, “right now my life is hell.” I think that is one of the difficulties when you feel like life isn't worth living, there is such a taboo to even utter the thought, let alone experience the feeling.
According to Per Hjalmar Svae of Norway who wrote The Five Ego Patterns, the way to heal feelings of not wanting to live is to allow ourselves to feel them. Each time we connect with the feeling that life isn't worth living we heal it a little more. The first time we reconnect with the emotion it may feel overwhelming and last for days. With each occurrence it becomes easier to be with the feeling, it doesn't last as long and eventually the emotion is healed. There is a very key distinction between feeling suicidal - we all do at one point or another – and acting on those feelings. The act of attempted suicide is a different emotion, it is destructive and most often it is a cry for help. Just helping to bring it out into the open to make it ok to have the emotion does much to help the process of healing.
When my friends and I acknowledged how we truly felt and made it ok to feel that way and created a way to connect and support each other when the going gets rough, we helped to heal ourselves and each