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Forgiveness and the burden of toxicity which accompanies not learning to forgive

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Forgiveness and the burden of toxicity which accompanies not learning to forgive

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi Davit,

I read both posts. Thank you again. I appreciate that you posted this. I will think through this triangle stuff as it is very new information to me in terms of how these relate.

I am happy to report that I had a good week last week (which was preceeded by 2 pretty awful weeks before that). The process is slow but it is there. Accepting my limitations day to day, week to week, even minute to minute is helping.

Emotions are tricky but I am not going to give up on myself.

I will reread your posts again so I can think about them and if they relate to my experience. Thank you!

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

I forgot to mention that this is just information I acquired from my therapist and researched on the internet, it may or may not be of use to you and you may or may not fit the profile. Feel free to ask me anything about it. Feel free to question it. It works for me but we know that not all of us have the same form of condition. A good therapist will have the answers you need as does mine but I have seen here that a good match is not always possible. I have had years to separate perceptions from reality which can be hard to do without some theory of what is happening. CBT does work but you really need to know where and how to use it. Going down the wrong road once in a while during this journey is inevitable but does not have to end in a dead end. The experience will make you a stronger person for it. And as you will see from these posts experiences do affect your thought either negative or positive but the choice is still for the most part yours. Some of us have had to work very hard and very long to get where we are so don't give up it will happen and besides what have you to lose except time you were going through anyway.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

Read the other post first.

Continuing on with the triangle. CBT does work for emotions but not for BPD because a person is dealing with two different things. BPD is internal and influence internally. Emotions both an influenced both internally and externally but controlled internally. Emotions can be changed with the same triangle as anxious (or any thought or experience) thought.

Emotions and experiences work together in the second corner to influence the third corner, the action/reaction corner that recycles to your experience memory. Emotions dictate which collection of experience memories you will use to dictate your action (as thought or action) No action can happen without a thought to dictate it. If the emotion calls for an experience memory to dictate the action and that experience is locked away in dissociated memory then there is an empty spot that has to be filled some other way. Frustration can send you to a part of memory you don't want to use such as anger. This emotion will open a part of experience memory to use to form an action but it may well be an inappropriate one. The worst part is that this action gets recycled to experience memory.

My therapist told me to be careful explaining this because the facts can be very depressing and not helpful. But with diligence it does work.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

loves trees

Dissociation only becomes a problem if you try to or need to use the dissociated information. We all have some dissociation but it is usually something we want to forget or don't need to it isn't necessary. Like storing a box of tea in the cupboard and not needing it because you don't drink tea. There but not necessary. This is not the same as putting the tea an a shelf you can't access if you really want a cup of tea. The latter is a problem, the first is not even though the tea might be in the same spot. So with dissociated memory. If you never need that memory again. The solution is to get another box of tea and put it where you can use it. Same with memory. Replace the missing memory. (make it pleasant and positive thought) There is a work sheet in the form of a triangle on the net to do this. Basically it works like this when a situation calls for an action (first two corners of the triangle) and you don't have a memory to use to create an action because it is hidden away because of dissociation then you go to a different part of memory for a thought to use instead. So instead of the second corner of the triangle giving you a way to react you access memory for a way you would like to react. This is the opportunity to replace the dissociated thought because not only does this new thought dictate your reaction it gets recycled back to memory as an experience and is now available to be used next time you need an experience (second corner) to dictate an action. (third corner). All three corners work together and influence each other. So you can see how if you insert something positive in the second corner it will breed more positive. BUT, and this is a big but. If you insert something negative it is going to replace that dissociated memory with something negative because it will cause a negative experience to put into memory. The second corner is experience memories and this is my shopping bag analogy. You want to fill it with positives so that is all you can access.

Posting so I don't lose it.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Hi Vincenza and Davit,

I really really appreciate both your posts because I realize that this is not directly related to the CBT or mandate of the site although I know it is all connected.

My first few experiences seeking grief counselling specifically didn't go well but I am starting again with someone new, and with some hope it will be better this time.

I can think of two separate losses I am grieving and in one case, it is easier to think "We are moving forward now" to pull myself out of the sadness that comes when I htink about the past with this person. But in the second case, there is more to it and traumas to deal with so right now I cannot think of a happy thought or emotion to pull me out when I get to that place and that is whwere the dissociation comes into play.

I was really upset when I first read about dissociation because it sounds scary, and I can only imagine what people would think if I told them I dissociate. But I am coming to terms with the fact taht I did this for a long time to survive and that personally I should not be ashamed of that. Also it is what my mind did to cope, it was not a conscious choice. My mind did something in terms of dealing with emotions so that I could get through a dark time where no one was there for me. My mind protected itself and me from something I couldn't handle. That is how I see it now.

But then someone like me, with a lifeetime of disconnection from my own emotions, is going to have problems with the grief process, and even more so because well, surprise, I surrounded myself with people who completely ignored my need to express myself authentically and express any of my grief.

I am just at the beginning of being able to explain to myself and others that in a certain way, I am not like a person who grew up with their emotions expressed and acknowledged and validated. Things happen within that perosn in terms of their development, their growth, their maturity, their sense of trust, that did not happen for me. I think of it now like this. When a parent nurtures a child's emotional development, they are turning on switches within that child, the child can go and explore, the child can feel safe because their "safe feeling" switch got turned on and their "trust others" switch got turned on. Mine did not. A lot of switches did not get flipped to the 'on' setting. And sometimes I do wonder if those switches could ONLY be turned on in childhood. Like the switch itself disappears once you get to a certain age.

Can you go back and turn those switches on yourself? I have been doubting this for the last few years. Thoughts? CBT seems to be about telling your brain it is safe to turn the "I'm ok" feeling switch to the on position but telling someone they are safe and having them feel safe are two different things.

Also it did not help that I let myself feel safe with a counsellor and that person ended up betraying my trust. That makes me angry.

So I don't know how to feel my grief yet, I don't know how to express it a lot of the time, my emotions and intellect don't connect very well yet and all of that can be improved on with work and time and focus on myself.

IMHO is "in my humble opinion". I will think about suggestions for the grief section in the toolbox. I am reading about grief and about how it is not a linear process.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 1853

Hi loves trees,

The emotions that come with grief can be very confusing, feel completely foreign and come on when you least expect it.

Davit made an excellent point about attaching a happy emotion or thought that can pull you out of that dark place and bring you back to the present moment.

What is a happy thought or emotion that helps you out of sadness?

Thanks for your feedback regarding the section on grief in the Toolbox.

What elements or information do you think would help improve the resources on grief?

Also, what does IMHO stand for?

Thanks,

Vincenza, Health Educator

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

loves trees

Some people are really good at handling grief, they seem heartless to some one more sensitive. I think it may well be that they learned how to keep the emotions in check and we didn't. I choke up at the sight of a dead cat on the road or the news that someone died even if I don't know them. I become weepy and can't talk. It doesn't last long. I usually start to think all the good things I can about them or the situation. Like my friend who died recently, he was only fifty and had a heart attack. Now when I think of him I think of the humorous things. Same with my Dad, I think of good times we had. Same with my cat that I still miss. I remember his antics. I still miss him but in a pleasant way. I am all in favour of wakes. Or celebrations of a passing life. One thing I have trouble with is lost time. Going down the wrong road. Luckily for me going down the wrong road had enough pleasant moments to compensate. Some cultures have a set time to grieve only. That doesn't work for me. If I'm sad I'm sad but I do try to see why I am and what I can think to change that emotion. Some times I just have to be sad and get it over with. Same with all the emotions. Question if they are appropriate and if they are then feel them but always always end by switching to a happy emotion for the sake of memory because memory is what dictates how we treat our next emotion. There is a lot of truth to the saying, "never go to bed mad".

Grief can have so many emotions attached to it so it would be a root for sure. Learning how to dissipate grief by attaching happy or humorous thoughts to it could lessen it and keep anger and frustration away. Some things though are just too traumatic for this technique. Therapists talk about talking it out. A sort of exposure. You need some one you can trust though to do that. Problem though is that if you have dissociation then what you need to talk out is missing except for the emotion. You would have to fill in the spaces first. Some times you can do this with association from a similar situation. Again if it was a one time trauma this could be hard to do. That leaves " I'm not going there". Not so easy to do. CBT in the form of distractions and relaxation can help with this one. Or CBT and medication.

The thing is though that memory can not be erased, It can be modified by changing perception or burying it with something related but more pleasant though, and this built on till it seems to be gone. In this way CBT can help grief.

Is there anything that helps that you could build on by repeating?

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Thanks for the encouragement.

It is grief that I think ties everything together.

I have to be honest the section on Grief in the tool box here didn't really help and could be expanded on IMHO. I have to say though, I am at a loss as to how to think about or imagine processing grief. It is like me thinking about how to perform brain surgery. I am not a doctor and have no idea how to picture it. I draw a blank when I htink about how to grieve. My mind goes blank and then my heart starts to hurt literally. that is it. Over and over. Also for the last 2 years I have been grieving in silence and crying at family gatherings but no one has noticed. So that speaks to how the present re-traumatizes me.

Whenever I start to try to feel the pain inside, no one comes to help me so I start to panic that I won't be able to do it alone because I never have been able to process my emotions probably because of the thing you described where things didn't happen during my childhood where the ability to process emotions is supposed to develop. So its at the point now where feeling has led to panic.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 6252

loves trees.

Would it be possible to shorten the list by lumping together related things. Such as grieving, sadness and anxiety. Lumping all the things that cause anxiety and seeing if there is a common denominator. I guess I'm trying to say that if something causes anxiety and sadness and hopelessness, then as the root it is the only part that has to be dealt with. The rest will be changed with it.

Emotions are tied to thought in your mind and when a situation causes thought to dictate a reaction it also uses emotions and mood to decide what part of your memory to use to dictate the reaction. EG. It is like baskets of thoughts all labelled by emotions. A happy basket has happy thoughts in it and a sad basket has sad thoughts in it. So when a situation calls for a thought based on previous memory to cause a reaction it uses which ever collection of previous reactions have happened to decide how to react now, but it uses the ones from the appropriate basket so to speak. If you are in a sad mood you will react the same way you did the last time you were sad. Unless you can slowly fill the basket with different thoughts by refusing to be sad when the situation calls for sad. Pretty hard to do and harder to do if the alternative basket (collection of memories) Happy is empty or mixed with other thoughts.

The only way CBT is going to change emotions is by changing the reaction to the sad situation so that your memory has different memories to use for the next sad situation. This is done by focussing (dwelling on something positive or happy that happened after the sad situation.)on some thing positive even if it is forced. What this does is slowly change the thought patterns and this can change the emotion patterns. Of course if there are constant situations that cause sadness this will be hard to do.

Davit.

12 years ago 0 +0 / -0 356

Davit,

That is good advice.

I want to say I am not manipulative, but my posts may look that way because as my moods and thoughts change a lot right now I feel hopeless one moment and then a bit less hopeless a few minutes later. I have made a list of all the things I think I might be dealing with. It is a fairly long list. I won't put it in here but it includes anxiety, anger, grieving and other things. I understand that each of those items might require their own treatment and that CBt can do one thing well but can't address everything I struggle with.

It is frustrating to realize when you have anxiety and more frustrating to realize that maybe you have 5 other things to deal with as well.

And the thing is, like any other human, no one wants to be diagnosed with anything incurable. It is easier to deal with getting diagnoses for things that are treatable. You are right, I have not found a way to deal with my anger or sadness or hopelessness.

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Forgiveness and the burden of toxicity which accompanies not learning to forgive