A. It feels incredibly strange to be that vulnerable with strangers.
1. You are usually never that vulnerable because in any other setting you might get clobbered...but in that setting you're perfectly safe.
2. You're safe because no one will marginalize or attack you. Everyone is interested and compassionate.
B. I had been nervous about committing to this, but I'm getting more and more excited about it.
1. I am grateful that the people in my group would share their most personal stories with me. It feels like a huge honor.
2. The group is not only interested in the pain or frustration that you have been bearing alone (or mostly alone)...they feel the pain along with you.a. They feel it so acutely that they sometimes cry or show rage on your behalf.
C. It is really hard to allow the group to feel my pain.b. By allowing these people to bear some of my burden I am feeling incredible encouragement and connection
1. I think this is because I don't want to burden then with it
2. But the group is happy to be burdened with it, and I believe them when they say they are, because I am happy to bear their pain and cry for them too.
3. I am thrilled to discover this level of relating; just that this exists.
4. I feel like this is what we were made for; to support and be supported. And it is so exciting when you feel like you have an idea of your purpose. It's as close to fulfilling as anything, I guess.
5. I love that this will help us heal from our dysfunctional families, because every family is dysfunctional, and yet we can honor them without letting them hurt us. We can deal with ourselves and what we can control, rather than being passive-aggressive and batting around surfacey issues (i.e., the petty things we occupy ourselves with because it is too painful to dig deeper and feel all those buried feelings). Dig them out and finally feel them, with the earnest support of others bearing them with you, and explore your true identity.
6.It is exciting to know about this, because it's like a new frontier!! A new and enlightened (yet ages old) way of relating and living with freedom and passion. Wow that sounded totally gay, but it really is about both of those things.
5 comments:
congratulations on taking the next step, it's a big one, but those big ones usually yield the most reward. do you actually think in bullet points? sometimes i do, it helps to sort through all the clutter and get right down to the nitty-gritty.
I'm so glad that group is so helpful to you. I must say, the way you describved, it made me wish I had problems bad enough to take to such a group. It made my chest swell. Not my boobs though.
You know what, you don't need to be adequately troubled to benefit from it. Everyone has trauma in their past, emotional things that still affect them somehow, and just exploring that and sharing it can be healing when you didn't know you needed it.
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I do bullets and graphs and stuff often, just to get organized in my head. I am big on balance, and I think it helps to provide the logic necessary to calm total overwhelm.
I am guessing that a group in my town would say things like, "Yeah, yeah"...and "get over it already".
New York is all hip and cool that way.
But thank you for i) doing it and ii) writing about it.
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