Folks, I have fallen off the blogging wagon. Life is full, full and discipline lapsed. But I have been around lots of interesting people this last month talking and listening.
In Trinidad this week where I had the opportunity of a group session with a psychologist thinking through in sketch format the blockages that hinder self-leadership, experiencing life with more joy, less anxiety, bitterness and regret.
The psychologist uses the metaphor of digestion, pointing out the body has complex processes for extracting nutrition and eliminating waste. Well physical waste. The ways in which the body eliminates emotional waste are less straightforward or apparent.
Human beings are hardwired to react negatively to injustice or unfairness, that is, until socialisation oppresses us into acceptance, passivity or resignation. Children are the most vulnerable to oppression, even or perhaps especially by parents, all that do this, don’t do that judginess and values contradictions.
While we may be silent, may not speak out or rebel, the body stores experiences of being unfaired or hurt as memory. Unless we find a way to work through that memory of hurt, to digest it, extracting learning and eliminating the harmful which damages self-esteem, it continually re-surfaces determining how we feel about ourselves and/or in our interactions with others.
How do we know when we have unprocessed pain? The psychologist suggests that we can know because when we recall the incident, there is a physical reaction, maybe quickening of breath, tightening in the stomach, chest pain etc.
All that internalised pain restricts the development of a healthy sense of self and blocks the full range of self-expression and development possible. People need to eliminate mental waste, release and get on with life. Sometimes that processing is about forgiving others, whether or not they seek forgiveness, whether or not they acknowledge causing pain. But always, it should involve confronting one’s pain towards resolution.
I am certainly offering up a grave simplification of the session which in any event was rather short.
While the session was going on, I was wondering whether all of that processing is not just too much navel gazing. For sure living in community, in the diversity of humanity brings with it the high likelihood of psychic abrasions, as we rub up personalities, perspectives and profound differences in cultural values.
I am the kind of person who feels one should move on, not dwell in bad memories. I value the capacity to get on with things, damn it! We ought not to live in other’s people’s chaos and inadequacy, ought not to be a belonger to the land of past hurts. But I guess that is not the same as processing and digesting. It is more of an archiving approach.
And as the theory goes, all that hurt is retrievable and usually unconsciously.
A few days down from the session, I think I agree, digesting is better than archiving. Why create a mindfill for psychic toxins?
Thanks for this follow-up Roberta. Your interpretation of the session makes interesting reading.
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Hi Roberta,
Emotional hurt can be very distressing, and how we deal with it can be even more perplexing, do you internalize it, go through the whole range of its byproducts, anger, guilt, frustration, bitterness, powerlessness, hopelessness then to its finality which is depression, and or mental breakdown.
Many times you have to question your thoughts, are they helping you, or hurting you, do you need to hold on to them or let go of them?. If you do let go of them how do you erase them from memory, unlike a computers hard drive, you can always buy software and hopefully erase its contents. The mind is a little more complex, emotions pushed under the rug will be stored in the subconscious waiting for the right/wrong moment to surface, therefore one can end up unwillingly dragging around with them an emotional garbage bag throughout their entire lives. Humorlessly we may need to employ or Personal Emotional Waste Recycling Unit in our minds to break those emotions down and use the recovered space for more productive emotions such as joy, compassion, happiness, kindness and love for fellow man/woman kind, or simply humanity and the universe, in the end your emotions can help determine your place in the cosmos of life or simply destroy you. the choice is usually yours to make whether to respond positively or negatively to emotional feelings. that is if you yourself is a rational person, who can place your emotions in context to the situation, that feeds it. or creates it.
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Samuel the distinction you make between feeings that need reolution and those that you can live with even though unresolved is real valid and commensensical. The thing is knowing the difference so that you are not brushing away everything or alternatively focusing closely on all the stuff in your life.
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Zactly!!
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Basically life is a collection of experiences , and how we respond to those experiences, whether they be good or bad or positive or negative, thus said ” a mans’/ woman’s’ thoughts can destroy oneself if used negatively, or analyzed and used as a stepping stone through life, many times one must have a mental (digestive) debate with oneself to seek a higher level of understanding or consciousness . In the pursuit of life life there are many experiences that can be swept under the rug, and those experiences that cannot be erased no matter how hard we try, we just have to co exist with them peacefully and not let them interfere with our daily life, because if you keep focusing on negative situations you can end up making yourself sick in many ways. The solution therefore is to analyze the experience find a solution, if there may be one, make a decision which is healthy to both your mind and body and spirit and move on. In the end one must seek mastery over their thoughts, instead of letting their thoughts control them throughout their entire life, always strive to to have independence of thought, think good things, never allow bitterness, anger, or fear to take a foothold in ones life for it can have destructive consequences to ones life or health, and this is easier said than done how does a person erase from their mind experience mindless violence against young women, last night I was witness to such an incident, do you forgive and forget or do you get angry and hurt someone, or just push it under the rug, and not allow your emotional self to take charge and harm yourself or others in the end, how do you take this particular experience and process it to digestibility, or do you simply archive it.
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Like everything in life, its about finding the balance. Roberta referred to both extremes in her very useful summary. I have seen how lack of reflection or absence of acknowledgement of past hurts cause people to relive them in different and often destructive ways. Destruction can be both immediate and rapid, or creeping and slow but sure in its effect; but its destruction all the same. On the other hand, there is the dwelling and wallowing – the navel gazing that knows no end, with no other objective but self-pity. This too is not good. I’m sure psychologists have by now identified how much is enough, and I am almost sure that the time needed to move on will vary by persons and type of hurt. It would be interesting to get some insight into that.
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Roberta, if you believe, as I do, that there are no ‘accidents’, you’ll not be surprised to learn that this blog came at a moment when I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject, from both a personal and professional point of view. The professional moment came with reading a fascinating paper on strengthening feminist leadership and organizations. I shared a synthesis of this with Rosina and yourself, and would be happy to share it with others. There is a very good section on the way in which the hurts and insecurities that many women carry with them into their organizations get expressed in ways that are destructive to the organization. In our organizational development work we seldom factor in psychologists and yet some psychological insights can surely help, in some well-known cases… The weblink for the PDF version is http://web.creaworld.org/items.asp?CatID=1 . I’d be interested in knowing if anyone follows up and finds it valuable.
I won’t get into the personal stuff here, but I will simply agree with Joy that, in both the personal and professional spheres ignoring the hurt does not make it go away, only underground, to resurface when something triggers the same feeling.
Thanks Roberta, as always!
Peggy
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Thank you Roberta. I love your summary of the session, which I also attended. Simone I was amused that you deisgnated the psychologist a he. She was female and it is amazing how often we make that he/doctor/psychologist connection.
I agree with the need to process and release. I have seen that happen to the betterment of all concerned. However, I have also witnessed where the processing becomes an ongoing pastime with little movement forward. This I find tedious, unproductive and when the individual gets stuck in victimhood, it also becomes a mechanism to control others.
In that respect I share Roberta’s impatience with the navel gazing and focus on the past. In my view the present is so rich, that it seems a pity not to release and get on with the wonder of life and living fully and joyfully.
Rosina
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Rosina, the psychologist I was referring to was a he. In fact, I often think of psychologists as women. Just seems like there are more female ones.
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Just read Edwidge Danticat “Breath, Eyes, Memory”. Haiti. She’ll tell you.
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I also attended; thank you Roberta!
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Never fool yourself that if you ignore a hurt that it goes away while you move on.
You may submerge it, but it will remain raw and make you vulnerable when something triggers the same feeling.
Face the hurt, throw away the negative feelings it conjures up within you in order to heal. It takes time but you will be stronger and less vulnerable.
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Roberta,
That was an excellent summary.
I was present and it was good in the midst of everything to step aside and dwell on our emotions which we normally have to keep in check as we go about our high-powered multi-tasking lives.
Thanks for these reflections.
Rhoda
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I think alot of people’s attitude is that we should move on, get over it already. But, if we haven’t processed the feelings, understood how it has affected our lives then it unconsciously becomes part of our DNA causing additional stressors that can lead to depression, heart problems, all manner of physical manifestations.
This psychologist offers some good advice in which he says “If you’re telling the same story over and over again, you won’t benefit and your friends will go crazy,” notes Pennebaker. “It’s putting things together, the cause and effect, the self-reflection that makes a difference.” http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/06/29/writing.healing.enayati/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
I’m hoping to start doing some outreach work which involves using art or help women process their feelings about some of the discrimination or injustice they’ve experienced. Apart from writing, I hope to be able to get facilitators that can also lead people through drawing, drama, dance even.
I’d like to know the name of this psychologist. Perhaps she can help me design the project.
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