Hi Lulu

I’m so sorry that you’re going through this right now. You don’t need this stress after your sister dying. No one should be fighting right now.

It’s not fair on you that this is the way your Mother is choosing to grieve. You are suffering already with the loss of your sister. You don’t need anything extra on top of that.

I will say that it can be really hard on parents losing a child. Some people give up and lose it. I hope that she regains some sense and decides not to blow up the family.

I’m really sorry that you’re going through this at Christmas too. That is extra awful. I’m glad that your boyfriend is being supportive. If your family don’t get their act together, it sounds like he may be trying to invite you to Christmas with his family. If he does and things aren’t better you should definitely go. No one should be alone at Christmas!

Love and best wishes!❤️🙏

Hi John

Haha I like your sense of humour. I think she passed some of her mental fortitude onto you. 😊

I’m glad that some of the things she taught you were quite useful. It’s a shame that there were other things that weren’t true any longer.

It is refreshing to meet a man that is open minded and has such positive views about women. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future.

I do think that women have a handicap in most countries though. They are expected to do the child rearing. It is hard to overcome things so deeply entrenched in society without that changing. We can dream to be treat as equals one day.

Love, peace and blessings! ❤️🙏

Hi CKS

I’m sorry to hear that some kids were annoying you on the bus today.

How do you think this person will respond to your message? What is your desired outcome?

Love and best wishes! ❤️🙏

Hi John

I’m glad to hear that you’re fine and sorry to hear that you regret your previous message. I can understand why you do because you care deeply about not causing others to feel pain. I don’t believe that you had any ill intent.

I think that it might be hard for some people to practice stepping back from emotions regardless of intent, depending on their emotional regulation skills. I know that in the past, I would not have been able to do it because those skills would not be strong enough. I would potentially have felt defeated in trying then. Fortunately, this advise has come at the right time for me.

I suppose that this is why monks might train people that come to learn from them, as opposed to teaching on the street. And also why therapists only treat people who are ready for change.

If you like, we could continue our conversation by email? I appreciate that we have gone way off topic from the original intention of this thread as well. I appreciate Peter for being a gracious host! 🙏

Perspectives on pain differing. Hmm well I think that goes back to perseverance. Developing emotional resilience and a positive outlook. I think that belief is a very important step for change.

For example, as a child I trusted that a professional adult might be able to help me with my difficulties. I wanted to be different from my mother, I wanted to undo her teaching but I had no clue how to achieve this. I just wanted to try. I knew that I needed help and couldn’t do it on my own.

At the time, to me my pain separated me from others because I felt like they didn’t understand what I had been through. I lived through immense suffering to protect my brother.

But as an adult, I see that everyone suffers albeit in different ways. I no longer see my situation as unique and separate, just a different presentation of the same thing that everyone else is going through. Ups and downs in life.

Back when I was in the most pain as I hit adulthood due to my trauma compounding and not having the skills to cope. I didn’t see a way through it on my own, but I didn’t want to cause my adopted family pain. So once again I sought help to try to find a way through it. It took a lot for me to develop trust in the skill of the psychologist to be open to the experience. You see, the form of therapy I had was gruelling. It has a high drop out rate for participants because it involves re-experiencing severe trauma every day for 3 months. For people who aren’t ready for that experience, it can cause suicide attempts. I had to trust my therapist’s word that once I was through the difficult process that it would have a beneficial effect. I had to be emotionally strong enough to get through the process safely. Fortunately, that trust wasn’t misplaced. It was helpful in stopping the compulsive re-experiencing of traumatic memories that I was suffering from. The purpose was to fully process these memories to stop them from trying to pop up all of the time.

That therapist taught me to be my own therapist, so I would be able to take care of myself in the future and I wouldn’t need her anymore. After therapy there was a lot of work that I had to do on myself because I had to learn to live my life, which was scary and painful as it meant letting go of the safety of shutting myself away from the world.

I developed chronic physical pain and health issues and I needed to learn how to deal with that. I didn’t want to live with extreme physical suffering (for 6 months I couldn’t walk) but I had hope that I could recover somewhat, so I persevered and figured out ways to cope.

Now, I’m at a different stage again. I’ve lived my life for a time, achieved my modest goals. Grown as a person like I intended to. And now I’m raising a child. I need to continue to grow in other ways. I need to teach my son things that can help him in his life, help him to be strong and to be the best person that he can be. To do that, I need to be the best person that I can be. It is no longer about understanding pain because I see my pain as manageable in a way that I didn’t in the past. I just see it as a problem to be overcome and I have the tools that I need to do that. I’m looking for the knowledge, understanding and experience necessary for what I hope to achieve in the future.

I apologise this is going to have to be a two parter. I don’t want to lose what I’ve written so far. To be continued… Take care!