TRANSCRIPT
Feeling negative on the healing process. Today I woke up feeling kind of negative, feeling low, sad, angry, even a little bit, just not feeling very positive. Exactly the kind of mood that doesn’t always make for a very good video. But then I thought, “No, no, I should talk about this.” All the more reason to talk about it because it’s real, because it does happen.
I think there’s an idea out there, an idea that even still can be a bit ingrained in me. That healing is supposed to lead to a blissful feeling, a feeling of positivity, a feeling [clears throat] of motivation all the time, good feelings, lack of sadness, lack of anger, sort of a spiritual enlightenment where everything is peaceful within. And there are a number of spiritual leaders out there who put this idea forward, but I don’t really think they’re talking about healing. Not healing from childhood trauma, not reclaiming their selves. I think actually what they’ve done is split off from themselves. They are dissociated.
Like I figured out a long time ago, dissociation mimics enlightenment, mimics the product of healing, but it’s not healing. And I think when people are very, very split off from themselves, they can also split off from a lot of their so-called negative feelings, the sadness and the anger. But what’s very interesting is I have seen some of these people, these sort of dissociated guru types who I’ve gotten to know pretty well. And I’ve seen that they can be very angry when their dissociative stance gets challenged, when their lies, their lack of consistency, their lack of having dealt with their past gets confronted with their dissociation. Sometimes they can be very, very nasty, very cruel.
And so that negativity, if I want to use that word, negativity really can live within them. And I think with me struggling so hard to not be dissociated. In fact, undoing the dissociation being a necessary ingredient in healing. That negativity has to come up. [sighs]
And then there’s another thing that becoming more aware, becoming more connected to my past, my history, how brutal it really was, how rejected I really was, how I really didn’t fit in in my family system, in my greater family system, grandparents, uncles, aunts, all of it. School system, teachers, culture, how terribly painful it was, how I was so let down. And now really having worked so hard to become healthier, more connected to who I really am, having succeeded greatly, [laughter] I realize I’m still living largely in that very sick world.
Yes, I have some allies, some great allies who see me and love me for me. Now, my number one ally being myself, my conscious self can really fight for me. Not perfectly, but pretty darn well. But the outer world, it’s a lot like my family still. My culture hasn’t changed that much. The world, the cultures of the world haven’t changed that much. The ideas of what is right and wrong have not changed that much. So going out in the world can be very painful. It’s like a rough reminder that healing in my own internal self, becoming healthier, becoming more real, more honest, more connected, more true to me, more consonant with the best parts of me, knowing it, living embodied in a healthier self. It’s not safe to go out into this crazy world.
I think it used to be easier for me actually because when I was more shut down, all these feelings and the memories, my ingrained reactions to trauma that I was forced to learn in childhood to shut down my feelings, they were more in sync with the world at large. They were more in sync with people out there. So when I went out into the world and I saw others who reflected being shut down, reflected what I was supposed to be to fit into my family, I felt kind of normal in a way. I got along with them better. I wasn’t so troubled by how disturbed they actually are. They being the normal people of the world. And now it’s harder. It’s harder for me to go out into the world.
Yet, I think about myself traveling in the world so often, so much sometimes and not traveling in a five-star padded way where I don’t have to deal with people. Yes, sometimes I can sort of escape people by going off into nature and being completely alone and I love that. But a lot of times really dealing with people a lot. And I wonder sometimes the degree to which I have to dissociate, push down some of my negative reactions as it were to the real negativity of the world. Like really, I have to kind of switch gears to function out in the world.
And sometimes in times when I’m not traveling, when I’m home, when I’m in a place more of making these videos, being able to speak truly, journaling a lot, being very connected, I can’t switch gears so easily, and it’s very jarring to have to deal with normal people. It brings up a lot of memories for me. Also, I have been doing some deep processing of certain aspects of my childhood. There’s an everlasting amount of material to process that’s very painful and well sometimes the processing experience of it for me is not easy.
So I’m having this sadness, having some of this anger, necessary ingredients for me to reclaim still more lost sides of myself. And usually I’m not very public about this for a very good reason. And usually it never, well certainly in my childhood and most of my adult life, it had no socially redeeming benefit because people of the world were just didn’t like it. It’s like, “Oh, be negative, feel negative feelings, feel anger, feel sadness.” Everyone is just sort of repelled by it because people push those feelings down. They don’t want to have those feelings.
But I think a couple of thoughts. One is that I’m stronger now. And so I don’t care so much about those people out there. Yeah, they still have a, you know, unhealthy effect on me, but I don’t lose myself as much. And now I have more faith in my process and I can say, “Yeah, this is necessary to feel these feelings.” And then there’s the second thing is that I know there are people out there who will listen to this who will derive some benefit from it to have more of a mirror of the reality of the healing process.
And so I can make a double use out of feeling these negative feelings. Not only because I know that they’re healthy and necessary for me and I can hold on to them, but also that I can use my experience of waking up and feeling like crap a bit to, well, share it in an honest way, in a way is like scientific data, like this is part of the healing process. This is okay. This isn’t bad. This isn’t a sign, oh, that I’ve screwed up my healing process and that, you know, all those dissociated guru types who just feel wonderful all the time and then look down their nose at these negative feelings. Well, I looked down my nose at them because they never helped me. They actually hurt me. They didn’t want me to heal. They sided with my traumatizers and these so-called negative feelings that I have now. They side with me and so I honor them.
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