Dear Peter,

I didn’t understand why I was giving you the impression that the realizations and lettings go I experienced wasn’t complete or real. I know that wasn’t your intent but I felt that you were trying to push me back into re-analyses and put in doubt my experiences.

You yourself were talking about re-crossing the river, using the raft when it’s no longer needed, the temptation to go back and climb the mountain again, and the possibility that you might forget the moment of letting go. These metaphors made me think that you’re doubting your own experience of letting go.

When you were asked the question ‘how do you know when you have let go’ you avoided any personal information about the experiences that were related to that.

I talked about my healing process on the other threads. It was mostly related to inner child healing, which allowed me to re-experience the painful memory and give it a different ending, so to speak, so that I am no longer stuck in that particular childhood wound. But I didn’t intend to hide anything when answering your question: the reason I know that I’ve healed is because my life has changed as a result. So that would be the ultimate “proof”, I believe.

When I talked about my parents I opened the door for you to question my experience of letting go. I thought adding some personal information would help the point I was trying to make and that seems to have been a error.

In the posts where you talked about your parents, you also used the above metaphors, that might suggest a certain doubt on your part, that’s why I thought the two may be related.

Dear Peter,

Nice. You focused on the outcome and avoided giving to much detail about which specific wounds you had to deal with. I see my error. Thanks

Not sure what you mean above – what error of yours do you see?

Dear Peter,

yes, better to leave it because we do speak beside each other. You don’t want to talk about your personal experience, but about general concepts. I on the contrary tried to “interpret” your words and understand them in the context of what you might be experiencing emotionally, psychologically, in your life. But I respect that you don’t want to discuss your life, so I won’t be trying to interpret your words any more.

Dear Nar,

it’s very good to read from you again! You sound like you’ve been realizing so many things about your childhood, including the fact that you did experience abuse, even though you initially thought it was no big deal. It’s great you’re becoming aware of the ways you’ve been abused and controlled – it will make it easier for you to heal.

I too believe that change in your intrusive image could be a good sign – a sign that something has shifted in your subconscious, and from the way you speak about yourself, it’s a shift in the right direction. You’re now more aware of the fact that you were violated, that some of your mother’s behavior wasn’t loving, and probably this causes you to have images of being attacked and your life being threatened. But with therapy and further processing, there’s a high chance that this will shift again, once you realize you aren’t helpless anymore and can defend yourself. Just keep working on yourself, both on your own and in therapy.

It’s great you have support of your boyfriend as well, and that he’s someone who understands you and doesn’t judge you. That’s really important.

As for forgiveness, it’s said that by forgiving, we actually liberate ourselves, because we don’t keep blaming someone else for our misery. However, this doesn’t mean we’ll tolerate their abuse in the future. We put boundaries in place and protect ourselves, if we feel they might hurt us again.

I agree that anger can be a very useful emotion because it tells us when our integrity and well-being is violated. It’s a sign we need to protect ourselves, defend our interests, stand up for ourselves. It’s only destructive if we feel helpless to stand up for ourselves, and we keep blaming the other person, feeling trapped. Then it can happen that we overreact and say unwanted things, and even do things we wouldn’t like, in the heat of an argument. So my view is that anger can be destructive if we feel as a victim, if we feel trapped, and lash out in an unbalanced way. But otherwise, in can be healthy and useful.

Dear Felix,

I know it’s hard for you right now, and as you said, your greatest problem is loneliness. I’ve tried to suggest a way how to alleviate the pain of loneliness (via the inner child healing), but it seems you don’t resonate with that approach at the moment. That’s fine. But let me ask you a question: What makes you believe that you won’t be able to find a companion in the near future, specially after the covid restrictions are lifted? You sound like you’ll stay alone forever, and that there’s simply no solution. You sound desperate. In reality, it doesn’t have to be like that, there are many ways to meet women. But in your mind, it seems almost impossible.

“All my friends are enjoying their lives with their wives and children, spending time in the backyards and traveling the world, and I’ve lost everything.”

You’re focusing on what you’ve lost (and granted, you did lose a lot), but what about the hope for the future? The things you can gain in the future? It appears it’s very hard for you to trust that things can get better.

Dear Peter,

I am glad you don’t mind exploring some of these issues further.

Earlier I was talking about the temptation of going back, re-crossing the river, over and over again to make sure, make perfect, to recreate the ‘high’ and or peace of that moment of ‘knowing’ that is beyond knowing. A Temptation to to carry the raft after it has done its job and not trust the learning that took place in its building. I have gotten trapped in that cycle which has seldom been helpful.

Could you give an example of you going back and re-crossing the river, and carrying the raft after it’s no longer needed? What’s a raft for you – is it a tool, like a particular spiritual technique? You use a lot of metaphors, and I’d need to first understand the meaning, before I can try to give you an answer…

Dear Peter,

My 12 year old self would not have been able to understand that or articulate that tension of being disappointed and hurt by those that cared for him and suspecting he was also disappointing and hurting them.

So yes there was guilt and the dread of not being enough.

The child always blames themselves if they don’t receive love and appreciation from their parents. The child feels unlovable, and not being good enough. That’s the first wound and the first, unconscious conclusion that the child makes about themselves: “I am not good enough, something’s wrong with me.” Then later, as we’re getting a little older, we start blaming our parents for not giving us what we need. That’s why since you teens, it appears you were blaming both yourself and them: “Its hard to separate, this failing others and others failing us.”

That this is a realty of all relationships would not have been understood. My parents were wonderful providers for my physicals needs however we struggled with communicating and expressing our emotional needs. Not uncommon for many families.

Yes indeed. Quite a few of us on this forum have a similar experience of having been given everything materially, but the emotional part was lacking. Your parents weren’t worse than others, they were doing the best they could. And yet, what I am saying, is that each child has certain emotional needs, which if not met, cause problems in our adult life. It doesn’t mean we should keep blaming our parents for having been deprived, but it does mean we need to heal those emotional wounds, if we want to have a happy and fulfilling life.

I’m not sure why you assume the experiences hasn’t been processed?

Well, if you want my honest answer, it’s because of the way you express yourself. You’re expressing yourself in philosophical, lofty terms, which are sometimes hard to follow. I’ve checked your two threads from 4 years ago, and they sounded much more down to earth and easier to follow. At that time you felt disillusioned about people’s ability to change. But you sounded more present, expressing your honest resignation, or disappointment. Since then, it appears you’ve become more philosophical and “esoteric”,  and it’s usually a sign of going into the intellect to try to explain away one’s problems and soothe the pain. I believe that the pain is still there, but now you’re trying to rationalize it. But this is just my observation, it doesn’t mean I am right.

Dear Felix,

I am sorry about your childhood, you’ve been through a lot. It’s not easy to be ignored by your own father, and then to experience something similar by your step-father too. It seems you needed to “toughen up” pretty early, since you were on your own already at 16. Life has been throwing you curve balls already since that time… And although you say about your family that “Over the years, through ups and down, we stuck together“, I imagine that emotionally, you felt alone. Perhaps your parents helped you when things got really tough, but other than that, you were alone and scared, as you said.

Yes, title kid in me is scared, but just like Jordan Peterson asks in his book, we have to be our own parents sometimes and treat ourselves as if we’re our own parents.

The little boy just wants to be loved.

It’s good you realize it. And that you’re in touch with him. When you talk about being lonely to the point that it hurts (“I crave physical and emotional connection to the point where it makes me psychologically and physically ill, and “I crave intimacy and closeness like drug addicts and alcoholics crave their vices.”), the pain is so big exactly because of your wounded inner child. Those are his words, his pain and his craving. He’s telling you that the pain of loneliness is enormous, because it felt enormous to him as a child.

Now you’d need to be a loving parent to that boy, be there for him and soothe him. Make him feel that he belongs. Alleviate his pain. Once you do that, I am almost sure that you’ll start seeing your current loneliness differently too. It won’t feel like an impossible burden and almost a death sentence, but something that can be changed. It will become much more manageable and much less threatening.