Your Inner Historian

We mostly want to clear out, avoid, or ignore our own pain. We want, and are often told, to “get over it.” “That happened so long ago, can’t you let it go?” or “Think positive. But what if that pain is a valuable messenger? 

I’ve found that the only way to move forward is to first learn the lesson, feel the pain. To Know, viscerally (and usually painfully), what happened. Did your father beat you? Did your mother ignore you? Were you called stupid or worthless? When these things happen, our psyches create Inner critics who repeat those words messages that were either covert or overt; verbalized or unspoken. Our Inner Critics, or Inner Shame-ers ineptly try to help us the only way they know how; they mimic.

AND, our psyches many times will create an Inner Historian. The Inner Historian does its best to teach us our own history. It advocates for our wounded self by designing lesson plans, scenarios, “plays” to show us what we need to know; to connect us with ourselves. You might call this “repetition compulsion.” The Inner Historian is persistent! It may nudge us towards toxic situations that repeat old dynamics. It doesn’t stop until we listen, until we feel, with self-compassion, the old pain. It doesn’t stop teaching until we learn what happened and learn that it doesn’t define us. It doesn’t stop until we feel compassion towards our wounded selves.

When we acknowledge, feel the pain, and learn the lesson, the Inner Historian is satisfied. The wounded one feels heard and loved. The Inner Critic can ease up or change roles. We don’t have to repeat our childhoods. 

Let me help you find that new, freer way of being, with the help of your loving Inner Historian.

Your Light

..what I hope you take from this is that you are already Whole, Powerful, and of the Light. 

Sprouting

“I remember that in my boyhood, the bin in which we stored our winter’s supply of potatoes was in the basement, several feet below a small window. The conditions were unfavourable, but the potatoes would begin to sprout — pale, white sprouts, so unlike the healthy green shoots, they sent up when planted in the soil in the spring. But these sad, spindly sprouts would grow 2 or 3 feet in length as they reached toward the distant light of the window. The sprouts were, in their bizarre, futile growth, a sort of desperate expression of the directional tendency I have been describing. They would never become plants, never mature, never fulfill their real potential. But under the most adverse circumstances, they were striving to become. Life would not give up, even if it could not flourish. In dealing with clients whose lives have been terribly warped, in working with men and women on the backwards of state hospitals, I often think of those potato sprouts. So unfavourable have been the conditions in which these people have developed that their lives often seem abnormal, twisted, scarcely human. Yet, the directional tendency in them can be trusted. The clue to understanding their behaviour is that they are striving, in the only ways that they perceive as available to them, to move toward growth, toward becoming. To healthy persons, the results may seem bizarre and futile, but they are life’s desperate attempt to become itself.”

Carl Rogers (1980)
https://www.drmitchkeil.com/post/carl-rogers-and-potatoes/

We all are a little "warped." Our potato selves have strange sprouts. From my perspective, those sprouts are actually magnificent. They are a manifestation of the sacred Life-drive.

Carl Rogers wrote about giving clients the right conditions for optimal growth; specifically unconditional positive regard. I try to give that to clients; honoring them and their "sprouts," not judging, clipping or re-arranging. I trust that sacred Life-drive.

"The important thing to remember about dragons is that they guard our treasure. When a dragon appears, it means gold is right behind it -- if we have the courage to stand our ground and fully meet it.

Sera Beck, from Red, Hot, and Holy

Art by William Blake

What is the gold behind the dragon that is Covid-19?

And what do we gain by having the courage to fully meet our own inner dragon(s)? We come to realize that the dragon is not all that scary...that facing it tames it. And the gold is knowing that we can tame it.

By facing traumatic or scary memories, by feeling our own pain, we come to know that "behind" those dragons is our magnificent, victorious, true self.

Listening

"...the traumatized body can be reawakened thanks to the attention, sensitivity, and capacity of the other/analyst to really believe in the painful story that the patient brings to therapy; it is the emotional participation of the analyst that makes the body a sentient body and restores unity where there was fragmentation."

Sandor Ferenczi (from https://doi.org/10.1080/0803706X.2017.1362502)

     Photograph by W. Eugene Smith

Listening with hands and heart heals.

That's Lyrical Healing in a nutshell.

Tuning in to Our Feelings

Sometimes it’s easier to hurt physically than to hurt emotionally. Sometimes the low back pain, twisted knee or achy shoulder is less distressing than the emotions “behind” those symptoms.

Pain and Emotions

Here’s an example. I recently had a very intense therapy session in which I felt feelings from my childhood that I’d rather not feel. I hesitate to even write about them. Not long after this session, I developed a strange pain in my right low back. I imagined a tumor, a pulled muscle, I googled the Quadratus Lumborum muscle, conferred with my chiropractor brother, asked a colleague for a trade, thought about dying from cancer. Then I noticed that I felt emotionally numb. I wondered… when did I start feeling this back pain… and what was I feeling emotionally?.... As soon as I realized that I was avoiding my feelings, that the REAL issue was emotional pain, the physical pain started to subside. The less need I have to distract myself from the emotional pain, the less physical pain I manifest.

What did I really feel? (And this is a great question to ask yourself at any moment during the day.) I feel shame. Shame for not overcoming childhood pain. Shame for not loving all parts of myself, after all these years, shame for not standing up for myself with the therapist, and shame for feeling anger towards the therapist. In the past few days it became easier to feel the back pain than to feel the shame.

Healing Shame

How can I heal that shame? Feel it. Share it. Know that I am not unique. Have compassion for myself. Don’t expect the shame to disappear; what we judge won’t budge. Maybe spend some time just acknowledging and feeling the shame. Comfort the part of me that feels ashamed.

Feel the Feelings

Our feelings can guide us. If we don’t feel them they may transform into depression, muscular tension, eating disorders, etc. Let’s listen, feel, and let go. Let’s prevent the headaches or heart palpitations or back pain; feel the feeling. Try this: notice an uncomfortable or tense area of your body. See if it’s associated with a thought or a feeling.  Feel the feeling. Then, instead of jumping to a more “positive” thought or feeling, breath in that discomfort, that pain, that anxiety into your whole body! Breathe it in. Feel it. Then exhale it and let it go. Do that a few times and see what happens. Let it flow.