Dear Mollie:

Your reflections here show such a profound self-awareness. You’re recognizing your emotional patterns, your relationship needs, and the way you want to engage with uncertainty—not from impulse, but with mindfulness. That’s a huge sign of growth.

Your words about the relationship reveal a thoughtful approach to connection—one that values honesty and mutual understanding rather than rushing forward without clarity. It’s admirable that you can acknowledge both the depth of your feelings and the importance of measured decision-making. The fact that you want to engage with him in a way that doesn’t fixate on a predetermined outcome but instead prioritizes getting to know each other in real time speaks volumes about your emotional growth.

I also love how you’re reframing your emotional journey—not seeing off days as setbacks, but as part of the ebb and flow of life. Even the most emotionally thriving individuals experience stress, boredom, sadness, and fear. The key is learning not to measure emotional success by an absence of struggle, but by how we navigate those struggles with self-compassion. And you’re doing just that.

It’s heartwarming to read about your appreciation for tiny buddha and our connection. Your thoughtfulness and openness make you a deeply engaging person to converse with. I’m grateful that you’ve shared this journey with me!

anita

Continued:

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who founded analytical psychology, was not a philosopher in the traditional sense. His approach differed from spiritual traditions that advocate immediate transcendence. He emphasized integration—meaning that emotions, trauma, and unconscious patterns must be acknowledged and processed before true transformation occurs. He believed suppressing or bypassing emotional experiences could lead to psychological fragmentation.

Jung’s concept of individuation is the process of confronting and integrating all aspects of the psyche—including emotions, fears, and unconscious drives—so that a person becomes whole rather than avoiding or prematurely “transcending” emotional challenges.

He believed that every person has a “true self” beneath layers of conditioning, societal expectations, and unresolved inner conflicts. The process of individuation is about integrating different aspects of the psyche—shadow, ego, and unconscious elements—so that a person becomes whole rather than fragmented. Transcendence, in this sense, isn’t about escaping the self but fully embracing one’s deepest truth without being bound by social, cultural, or psychological limitations.

He argued that people often live according to false identities shaped by external influences (culture, family, trauma). Transcendence involves breaking free from these limiting beliefs—realizing that one’s identity isn’t defined by past wounds, societal roles, or inherited fears.

A quote by Adyashanti, an American spiritual teacher and author known for his teachings on awakening, non-duality, and self-realization: “A total acceptance of yourself brings about a total transcendence of yourself.”- this means that true transcendence—rising beyond ego, suffering, and limitations—doesn’t come from rejecting or changing yourself, but from completely accepting one’s own flaws, emotions, and experiences. It’s a paradox: accepting yourself completely is what allows a person to move beyond the self.

If I fully embrace my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers.
I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

* Just as I was about to submit this post, I found out that you submitted a new post in which you reflected on your previous two posts, realizing that you focused too much on methods as paths to understanding when, in reality, the Taoist perspective suggests a pathless path—a way of being rather than a structured approach.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

(1) Intuitive Flow: Moving through life without fixating on resolving past trauma—instead, engaging in presence through movement and stillness.

(2) Analysis Trap: Letting trauma take attention first, trying to understand it mentally, and then working toward balance—something you liken to overeating chips despite knowing it’ll make you sick (an excess of intellectual analysis without real resolution).
Your short meditation quote seems to summarize this revelation: Movement creates life, Stillness Love → Action and presence coexist; life unfolds naturally when both are embraced.

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing. You clarify that you are not promoting your experience as a universal solution, but simply sharing your perspective.
You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state but an ongoing shift between presence and intellectual processing. (to be continued)

y fully embracing my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers.

I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

* Just as I was about to submit this post, I found out that you submitted a new post in which you reflected on your previous two posts, realizing that you focused too much on methods as paths to understanding when, in reality, the Taoist perspective suggests a pathless path—a way of being rather than a structured approach.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

(1) Intuitive Flow: Moving through life without fixating on resolving past trauma—instead, engaging in presence through movement and stillness.

(2) Analysis Trap: Letting trauma take attention first, trying to understand it mentally, and then working toward balance—something you liken to overeating chips despite knowing it’ll make you sick (an excess of intellectual analysis without real resolution).

Your short meditation quote seems to summarize this revelation: Movement creates life, Stillness Love → Action and presence coexist; life unfolds naturally when both are embraced.

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing. You clarify that you are not promoting your experience as a universal solution, but simply sharing your perspective.

You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state but an ongoing shift between presence and intellectual processing.

I will revisit all this later, of course. But for now, as with all things in life, balance is key—stillness and movement, analysis and non-analysis. Just as excess motion leads to chaos and excess stillness to stagnation, too much analysis traps the mind, while too little leaves needed insight undiscovered. All things in moderation.

As to me, all my decades-long analyses of my childhood was fruitless until most recently, and the reason was simply that I perceived the analyzer (myself) as worthless, acutely worthless and shameful. Shame has been the most acute. And the fear too, the fear of the next time I will be shamed. No way in heaven or in hell, that I could have transcended these acute painful emotions+ cognitions without facing this Shame and Fear. I am looking these in the eye right now, so to speak. Strangely, befriending them. Not for the purpose of keeping them, but for the purpose of not trying to escape them, a quest I was never successful at. Wow.. befriending all that I am. All. What a concept.

Developing this a bit further: the more I tried to escape shame and fear, the stronger and more persistent they remained. Accept them, befriend them, and I can almost feel their lack of motivation to stay.

anita

Dear Peter:

I am looking forward to processing your two posts tomorrow morning. I am excited about it, really.

“Does trauma exists in love/eternal? No.’- this is comforting to read.

anita

Dear Mollie:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with such openness. Your reflections show a deep awareness of your patterns, and that in itself is progress.

I really appreciate that you’re recognizing the nuance in your situation, particularly the idea that your job isn’t the singular cause of your struggles, but it has certainly contributed to them. The fact that you don’t expect all your problems to disappear in July 2025 shows that your thinking is becoming more balanced.

At the same time, I can sense the frustration of not feeling like your usual optimistic self. You mentioned that you want reassurance that you won’t “go back” to how you felt last summer—but perhaps instead of fearing emotional ups and downs, it might help to trust that they are part of life and don’t define your progress. Feeling low sometimes doesn’t undo the growth you have made.

You have always seen yourself as a happy, glass-half-full person, and maybe part of this journey is learning that being optimistic doesn’t mean avoiding low moments—it means navigating them with self-compassion. People who thrive emotionally still experience phases of uncertainty or exhaustion—but those phases don’t undo their growth.

I also noticed that your decision-making feels off, which makes sense given the stress your job brings. When we feel trapped in an environment that doesn’t energize us, even simple decisions—what to do after work, how to unwind—can feel overwhelming. You asked, “What do you think?”—I think that a break would likely help, but more importantly, framing this time not as a setback, but as an adjustment period would relieve some pressure. You’re adapting to changes, and part of that is rediscovering what fulfillment means outside of school and structured plans.

One last thought—you mentioned someone returning in June and not knowing what to say. It sounds like this connection still holds some weight for you. What feels unresolved there? Would addressing it help clear some of your mental space?

Overall, you’ve made a lot of progress, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. What if you stopped measuring joy as something you need to achieve permanently, and instead let it come and go naturally, trusting that it always returns?

anita

Dear Peter and Alessa:

I agree with you, Alessa, “I think the difficulty with severe abuse is that it causes structural issues – brain damage as well as deregulating the nervous system. It is not just that there is attachment. If only it were as simple as attachment.”

For survivors, trauma isn’t only a mental construct that can be resolved by detachment—it’s a lived, embodied experience that leaves lasting psychological and physiological effects.

Psychologists argue that detachment is problematic when used to bypass emotional processing. Trauma survivors often need to actively engage with their experiences rather than detach from them, as avoidance can lead to suppressed emotions and unresolved pain.

Excessive detachment can lead to emotional numbness, making it difficult to form meaningful relationships or process emotions in a healthy way. Some forms of detachment—such as dissociation—are linked to trauma responses, where individuals disconnect from reality as a defense mechanism.

Detachment can be helpful in reducing stress and gaining perspective, but it is not a substitute for emotional processing. For trauma survivors, active healing—through acknowledgment, integration, and self-compassion— are necessary before detachment can be beneficial.

Peter, you appear to be suggesting that trauma is real only in the temporal world but not in the eternal world. Your perspective seems to align with the idea that suffering, betrayal, and separation exist in human experience (the temporal realm), but in the greater reality (the eternal realm), wholeness was never truly lost.

I understand that you see trauma as real only in the human, time-bound experience, but not in the greater reality of wholeness (a belief that I still find comfort in). You suggest that awakening to this eternal truth dissolves suffering, rather than needing to “fix” past wounds.

This makes me wonder—does acknowledging the reality of trauma in the temporal world interfere with awakening, or is it a necessary step toward it?

You argued that processing betrayal only leads to “dealing with” it, not healing. But for many trauma survivors, full healing requires first recognizing the reality of harm before transcendence is possible. If betrayal is treated as merely a mental construct sustained by identification, there’s a risk of bypassing the deep emotional and physiological effects that trauma leaves behind.

Here’s my question: Does detachment need to be preceded by acknowledgment and emotional integration, or do you see transcendence as an immediate path forward? If trauma is “not real” in the ultimate sense, does that mean the suffering attached to it doesn’t warrant full emotional acknowledgment before moving on?

I’d love to hear your perspective on this.

anita

Thinking about you, Alessa, hoping you are well 🌸

anita

Dear Peter:

Good to read from you again! Inspired by our discussion yesterday, I started my own thread today: “The Betrayal We Buried: Healing Through Truth & Connection.”

You asked, “I’m curious if you feel I’m suggesting that our betrayals aren’t real or that any literal separation of relationship needs to be justified?”—I didn’t feel that you discouraged my physical separation from my mother. However, I do see a discrepancy between our perspectives: while we both acknowledge the reality of betrayal, we differ in how healing should happen.

I believe that recognizing and processing betrayal is the path forward—something I wasn’t fully able to embrace before because I doubted whether the betrayal even happened. You, on the other hand, see detaching from the narrative as the key to dissolving suffering related to betrayal.

You point to a higher-level awareness where betrayal, justification, and suffering become secondary to an inherent natural state of wholeness. However, this perspective can feel dismissive of real trauma if it suggests bypassing emotional processing. Trauma survivors often find that reconnection requires first acknowledging betrayal fully before letting it go—not simply moving past the story without processing it.

“We talked of the problem of rumination. That each retelling of our stories is an act of reliving them, often reinforcing the illusion that the past happening is happening now.”- I believe I will stop retelling my story when I fully believe it happened. I can’t emphasize enough how much gaslighting myself has played a role here. I keep retelling my story because part of me is still trying to convince the other (fragmented, separated) part that what I truly experienced was real. At this point, I am highly motivated to believe my own (retold) story so I can move beyond it.

“The danger is that we become attached to our storytelling, and it’s this attachment that creates the illusion of distance from our natural self—and so we suffer.”- If I start fully believing my story, I will stop retelling it. The distance from my natural self has been real. I know you say it’s real only in the temporal realm, but we live in the temporal realm—and for as long as we exist in it, we cannot escape its reality.

“That the question of our betrayals being real or not may be a second-half-of-life distraction. We don’t need to fix our betrayals to get back to our ‘natural selves.’ Awakening to the reality that we are already and always Are.”- I understand that you’re saying we don’t need to fix past betrayals to be whole again—rather, we should awaken to the reality that we were never truly broken in the first place.

In the eternal realm we were not broken. In the temporal realm, we were. I was. I suppose I can’t fix past betrayals, but I do need to believe they happened. I can’t emphasize enough the role of denying my own story—the one I keep retelling.

“Death, a process of detachment (not indifference), removes the illusion of separation.”- There is no illusion in the reality of separation—separation is tangible, an undeniable reality in human experience. Yes, it happens in the temporal realm, but the temporal realm is where we live. While we can incorporate a touch of the eternal, we cannot escape the reality of time and space.

I really liked all your input about the eternal realm, over time, and found comfort in it. This realm exists, of course. But the temporal exists as well, and in very practical, tangible ways.

“Innocence is knowing everything (life as it is) and still being attracted to the good.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Sound familiar?) 🙂”- Amen! The ultimate goal—not to erase the past or deny its reality (gaslighting oneself), but to move forward with awareness and still embrace connection, compassion, and love, “Healing Through Truth & Connection”, as I phrased it in my new tread.

Peter, I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness and depth you bring to these conversations. Your insights challenge me to explore new perspectives, and I value the way you articulate complex ideas with such clarity and openness. Thank you for engaging in this dialogue with me—your reflections are meaningful, and I deeply respect the wisdom you share.

anita