my therapist broke up with me

that’s right, i read the e-mail thread to a friend and that is how she summarized it. let me start from the beginning, more or less.

acceptance

recently happenings have reaffirmed some ideas and made clear other ideas. i find to be part of the discovery process called life.

i’ve  been talking about what happened with my sister for some two weeks now. some may say, “get over it.”, or “move on.” to which i say i haven’t reached a point where i can move on. and why not?

i feel emotions deeply. with what happened with my sister, others may feel mad or or upset; i feel infuriated. i mask it well from the years and years of living in the household in which i grew up. feelings were not allowed. not being allowed to feel emotions lead to them being stuffed or masked. that process also hinders the recovery process; it’s harder to recover from a elusive beast that keeps hiding. to top in off, the emotions are directed towards a member of my dysfunctional family. that makes it even harder to express emotions to her because of a familial patterns.

i often consider feeling deeply a blessing and a curse. here’s the curse. since i feel emotions so deeply, when i experience them, it creates a deep emotional chasm. the ravine that gets created has great depth and steep walls. the sheer nature of the chasm makes the travel out of it long and laborious. creating great struggles and strains along the way. sometimes it feels like scaling a tall peak where oxygen is rare, causing me to gasp for every breath i take. on the other hand, the recovery from a indentation created by a shallow emotional reaction can be exited effortlessly. the process can happen with little trial or tribulation, like a sunday stroll through the park.

in talking to my therapist the other day, i asked, “how do i recover from this a feeling like infuriation?” i felt more than a little bit disappointed when he answered, “i really don’t know since i only regularly recover from anger and seldom from deeper emotion like infuriation.” growl.

lacking an acceptable answer, my brain went to spinning; what does it take to recover from a deep emotional wound? my first thought went to what support could i use to recover? comfort came to mind. but, let’s face it, comforting is just another way to help someone be accepting of who they are and where they are. and anyone who a spent more than two weeks of reading my posts, i call this an acknowledgement. she shows her supportive head again

what does feeling acknowledged and supported really buy? how does it help? my mind spun again. in a moment of inspiration, it quickly dawned me. the real answer for recovery lay in acceptance.

the acknowledgement says, you find yourself inn a crappy place and that’s ok. and with that the process of acceptance starts. if you can’t at least notice the four ugly walls that surround you. how do you have a chance to make changes. the acknowledgement serves as a reminder of the ugly walls and hopefully creates enough strength for a further journey.

quickly, i realized the key to just about any recovery from emotional wounds can find its roots in acceptance. whether mad or infuriated, acceptance offers one way out.

as an example, i had a friend with whom i worked weekly on bettering our life. this went on for over ten years, doing activities like reading books and working through workbooks. we drifted. eventually, he decided he wasn’t getting out of it what he wanted. our weekly visits ended. i felt sad and disappointed. notice, those two emotions don’t qualify as deep, more shallow. sure, i struggled with the emotional wound of abandonment, feelings of being left alone. but, not being a deep wound, recovery happened relatively quickly.acceptance could easily be reached.

i am thankful for this discovery. the recognition of acceptance as one key to emotions recovery has already paid dividends. the energy surrounding the recent events with my sister has greatly dissipated. the trip out of the emotional chasm has seen significant progress.

life continues to school me. it has again shown me the beneficial nature of acknowledgments. being a student of life, i have also learned that one way to work on the healing of emotional wounds, no matter how deep, can be greatly aided through the process of acceptance. i feel overjoyed to add this tool to my emotional first aid kit. it’s not a cure all, there is still work to be done, but at least i can recognize one more tool to help me heal my emotional wounds.