Dear Helcat:

You are welcome and thank you for starting your own thread on this important topic. After my post to you yesterday, on my walk, I had more thoughts that I wanted to add on the topic of pain. I will add and develop them as I read your recent post:

“An emotional part of me does feel like pain from the past will last forever, simply because it has so far” – in my first post to you I was referring to emotional pain, and I still do (although as my former therapist said: everything is physical, emotions included). The pain I had, starting as a child, was intense, excruciating. I didn’t understand it then and wasn’t able to make the distinction until recently, a few years ago:

The pain I experienced as a child was about (1) how much my mother was suffering (intense empathy for her), and (2) how terrible of a daughter I was for causing her more pain/ for adding to her suffering (excruciating guilt).

My pain lessened significantly in the last few years when I became able to … peel off the second from the first.

I found out that almost every time I hurt over someone else’s pain, much of the pain was about my core belief that I am guilty of the other person’s pain. Since then, when I feel pain over another person’s pain, I asked myself, am I guilty for this person’s pain? And if the answer is No, I feel significantly better.

“The logical side of me differs. I do not focus on the pain. My attention comes and goes as I prefer to focus on my life” – when you experience intense physical pain, you can’t not focus on it, right? Same is with emotional pain. If it is intense, it is hard to focus on anything else, time has an eternity-feel to it, and you want the pain to stop any which way, whatever it takes.

But if the pain is less intense, if you peel off one part of the pain and it lessens as a result, it is easier to focus elsewhere.

“I am hopeful that one day those feelings will resolve. Perhaps this is a foolish hope, or a denial of the idea of living with it. Perhaps these feelings are something that I will need to accept” – don’t accept what is not yours. I reject my guilt in all instances where I am not guilty and I reject taking more guilt than is mine, in instances where I am part guilty.

I accept that hurt and anxiousness and other forms of emotional suffering are, unfortunately, the human condition in the world we are living in.

“It is comforting to learn that these thoughts might one day cease on their own accord” – not on their own accord, the thoughts of suicide have been almost non-existent to me because I feel significantly less pain.

anita