FEAR

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This topic has 15 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 9 years ago by Anonymous.

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December 5, 2015 at 7:25 am #88920

Anonymous
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I have been afraid from my earliest time that I will feel such pain (physical, emotional) that will be too painful, too impossible to endure, not worthy to endure, way too painful.

I learned recently that we, people, fear only what we already experienced. That memory of a past hurt is what is fueling the fears of what may happen in the future. In other words, what happened to us in the past, that pain that we already experienced is what is fueling the fear of what may happen.

And yet, in more… other words, I am still afraid to feel what I already felt. I am still afraid to be aware of what I already felt, the pain of past.

Then it came to me last night, the pain I am afraid to feel, the pain that is fueling my other fears. This is the pain I am afraid of being aware of, the pain I am afraid of re-experiencing, the greatest pain I have ever experienced:

As a child I loved my mother very much. I felt love for her and I expected nothing but love from her. It was a natural expectation. I felt love, that pure desire to please her, and in my innocent still child’s mind, I believed (without thinking about it) that she loved me too. That love I felt, I thought it was outside of me. I had no idea it was not so or could be not so. When I was hurt by her, it was a complete surprise and a devastating one. I was not prepared. That was the deepest, most terrible pain.

I repressed it the best I could, lead a very dysfunctional, sick life, all in efforts to be PREPARED for the next time it happens while all along that terrible pain was in me, significant, immense and there, in me to stay.

Last night I felt some of it, that pain of the innocent child. That pain that I feared my whole life, ever since it happened, fifty years ago (not a singular event, but the first time or times were most devastating!) Feeling THAT pain is so very scary!

anita

December 5, 2015 at 7:43 am #88921

Anonymous
Guest

Does it apply to your life? Do you see something like this operating in your mind? Do you remember that hurt of innocence I am talking about? I see it everywhere, in posts here, in people I have known, looking back. I see it here, there and everywhere. Do you?
anita

December 5, 2015 at 7:48 am #88923

Inky
Participant

Oh anita! ***hugs***

As we each have discussed to other people ~ some people should NOT be parents!!

I hope this idea helps: We expect love from parents because… WE’VE EXPERIENCED IT BEFORE!! Whether in many past lives, or in our DNA, we remember/”remember” feeling LOVED! We don’t miss what we’ve never experienced!!

The pain of your mother not being the mother she should be, or my pain of my father not being the father he should be ~ what we REALLY want is the love of the Archetypal Father, or the Great Mother. Of course, no one in physical form can be the Higher/Ideal/God/dess like Parent! We all fall short.

Maybe one day or one lifetime, on a spiritual level, your mother can visit you and communicate, “My dear, sweet child. I am so, so sorry I did that to you. That SHOULD NOT have happened to you! I love you and one day/lifetime, in some way, I will TRY to make it up to you!!”

You can have a Ritual where she says/”says” that. You can do things for yourself that a Mother SHOULD do for you! Make a list of things you can be, do and have if you were a child. Have your TRUE Mother give/”give” it to you.

May you have the best dream or a very real vision where you get healing.

Blessings,

Inky

December 5, 2015 at 7:59 am #88924

Anonymous
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Dear Inky:
Thank you, Inky. The habit of the mind is such that as I saw that I had a response on my thread my first thought was that I was going to be attacked for what I posted. Fear was my first reaction. Then I read and was relieved to read “hugs”- what a relief that was.

I am … afraid this is not only me, Inky. I think every child experiences this. The stories vary, the how and exactly when and such differ. But that innocence is hurt and when it hurts, it hurts badly.

As to the loving nature of a child, was the child loved first in some way before being loving, the point in your comment: I think it is genetic, an emotion we are born with as the social animals that we are, in particular a child is born with the genetic need to love the mother, the caretaker in order to survive.

anita

December 5, 2015 at 8:21 am #88926

Anonymous
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Dear Inky:

More of my response to your comment/ post here, my thoughts, whatever comes to my mind right now (for the purpose of further promoting my own healing):

My mother was my true mother. I am not going to pretend otherwise. I lied to myself my whole life and that prevented me from starting or staying on the healing path. That WAS my mother. There was no other. If there was a spiritual mother or father for me, I would have not been so sick for so long. Also, there is no other life, no reincarnation. There will be no other ME after me, no her with that other me.

In real life her last words to me, written they were, were “You are pure” I didn’t know at the time, and still do not know, if she was sincere when she wrote that. If she was, if she saw me as pure then, when I was a child, my goodness, how do you do what you do to what you think of as pure? Regarding empathy for her, I think she does deserve empathy because she was very hurt as a child and she lived a sick life. The thing is that of all the people in the world potentially empathetic to her, I am not the one to engage in empathy for her: it is my empathy for her, the empathy of the injured to the one doing the injuring, kept me from healing.

It is switching my empathy from being directed at her to being directed at me, shifting my focus from her to me that is NECESSARY the healing work. So empathy for the injured, not for the one doing the injury to me.

Back to the fear: anyone FEELS a bit of that fear of when your innocence was hurt? When you were not prepared??

anita

December 5, 2015 at 8:21 am #88927

jock
Participant

I can remember physical pain from childhood, like awful toothaches and visiting the dentist to have extractions. The sting on the hand from the teacher’s hard rubber strap or wooden cane. I used to get severe hives and also boils. Corked thighs from football and strained muscles.
But psychological pain from criticism would scar me more. Because I looked up to my brothers so much, if they laughed at my attempt at something or having a “mediocre” point of view, I really felt the blow. I can still remember my brother saying “how could you possibly like that stupid celebrity?” So I stopped liking that celebrity immediately.
So I do fear future physical pain of course as I age. My greatest psychological fear is that I might need my siblings for support, as I pride myself on independance.

December 5, 2015 at 8:32 am #88930

Inky
Participant

Hi Anita,

I think your mother wrote “You are pure” as a way of APOLOGIZING! On some level she HAD to have known what she did was wrong. And possibly had this deep, sick to your stomach GUILT ~ for hurting you and for NOT apologizing! But she kept doing it ~ a vicious cycle. “You are Pure” was written but “I am UN-pure” was not!

If God and reincarnation are not real, then it is clearly man making up little stories to feel better. You know what, give me the little stories any day LOL! It sure beats reality, and will help me go forward!

There was a great quote, something like, “Even if Aslan doesn’t exist, I will live and act as a Narnian.”

Just remember my own saying: “It’s better than a kick in the azz!” 🙂

December 5, 2015 at 8:33 am #88931

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Jack:

We posted at exactly the same time! Thank you for your comment. (Added after comment below: this may be emotional for you, I don’t wish you to feel pain…?):

I thought about Jack the child and your bullying brother myself last night! I saw you in my mind’s eye approaching your older brother with (maybe) something you made, something you believed he will be proud of you for, you had no doubt. You were pleased with yourself, and being pleased and sure all is well, you approached him (all this in my thoughts and images): “Look, look what I did! Look what I created!” Proud of yourself, smiling, glowing, totally expecting a matching response from him, a big smile, the same pleasure with yourself that you felt. There you were innocent and pure.

Then came his reaction: “That sucks” or “it’s okay” – said with no enthusiasm as he turned to something else. Or “this is wrong (about it), you should have done it this way…”

And there is the shock of that innocent young Jack, not having been prepared at all, not even considering this could have been a possible response.

And then, years later, still, you are prepared, anywhere you go, anything you say, even jumping ahead and putting yourself down first so to soften the blow.

And then I read your comment above: your brother mocking a feeling you had! That pain.

I am hoping that my getting in touch on a more direct level with my own pain, I HOPE it will reduce my otherwise fears throughout the day and night. I HOPE. I must trust the process…

anita

December 5, 2015 at 8:37 am #88932

Inky
Participant

Oh, yes, FEAR!

I have a palpable fear of Failure. My dad would always say, joking and NOT joking, “You can’t survive in the Real World.” or “You’ll never make it in the Real World.”

Well, my sister published a book! And my Dad threw a tantrum! She had proved him wrong!! (Not that she went “Nya nya nya, I can make it after all!” or anything.) He DISOWNED her for a year!! For succeeding. Living her life.

As for me, I feel like, “Well, I can’t compete with 100 people for the same job, so why bother?”

It’s like I have to know the odds and if they are in my favor for me to try!

December 5, 2015 at 8:43 am #88933

TriangleSun
Participant

@anita, you said you felt that fear last night. What prompted you to feel this way, if you don’t mind me asking?

December 5, 2015 at 9:17 am #88937

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Inky:

As I read you writing she was apologizing by writing I am pure (her last words to me)- I felt that heat all through, this uncomfortable heat wave, and got up to have breakfast, that sweet cocoa flavor, apple and banana, to feel better. And thought about it while I ate.

I did think she was apologizing when I first read it and it sounds very reasonable that she was. But maybe she was not. I do not trust her. The reason I was feeling that heat wave, i believe, it was fear. The thought that she loved me enough to apologize (and that she loved me enough to feed me and buy me things and take care of me when I had fever) scares the hell out of me because there was always all that HOPE there, in me, the hope that she will see me more than a physical body that needs to be fed and clothed and kept alive.

I went on and on and on WAITING for her for fifty years, trying so hard and in so many ways.

The white flag of surrender- should have waved that in my twenties.

I think it is a very good point you made, Inky, about her stating I was pure but not that she was un-pure. It is a compartmentalized apology: you were pure, she wrote and stopped there, not disturbing the I -may-be-unpure compartment.

anita

December 5, 2015 at 9:24 am #88938

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Inky, again: just read your last post. I wonder if your father was against your well being as much as he was against your sister’s, if there was a black sheep in the family or was it equal. But then I wonder a lot. Thank you for sharing. Considering the probabilities is a wise move though, in considering a job or anything. I am all for statistics.

Dear TriangleSun:
What prompted me was Jack’s posts of yesterday, about fear and my responses to his threads on the topic. It made me think. Overall, daily I am literally on the healing path, so I continuously think. This forum makes me think, these very writings. And no, I do not mind you asking. As one who was invisible for most of my life, being asked questions with no dark motive, is refreshing and desirable to me. So whatever you want to know, do ask.
anita

December 5, 2015 at 12:15 pm #88947
Inky
Participant
I think my Dad saw HIMSELF as a black sheep of the family. His own father was incredibly successful and very Victorian in that he was not a pal-sy Dad. My mom called Dad out on all his weaknesses and wouldn’t take his crap, basically. My sister and I are the issue from that failed marriage, so… When we (or our children) succeed, I notice he feels very uncomfortable. Or he’ll put down things like the Ivy League school (“I’d hire someone who got their degree ONLINE!”), getting the Eagle Badge (“I hated the Boy Scouts”) or Coast Guard Academy (“That doesn’t guarantee you a job”). He does give a grudging respect for athletic achievement, however!!

He wants his new family (all related through marriage only) to succeed over his original/”blood” family (Take that, Father and ex-wife!).

Very odd. “I can’t even!” as they now say.
- This reply was modified 9 years ago by Inky.
December 5, 2015 at 6:34 pm #88974

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Inky:

Very interesting. In another post a while ago you wrote that he doesn’t want to spend time with your family, your children. That is a blessing. Not a blessing in disguise but a clear cut blessing. Why he has ill will for his blood family but not for his non blood family… Maybe he is thinking that he is genetically faulty, inferior, doomed to fail. Therefore he figures his offspring are also doomed to fail. if his child or grandchild succeeds it is suggestive in his mind that maybe he doesn’t have the genetic justification for his failure. This is only a guess.

His behavior is odd for as long as one doesn’t know his motivation. Once that is known it becomes: oh, that’s what it is and was all along, oh I see…

anita

December 6, 2015 at 4:58 am #89000

Inky
Participant

OMG, Anita, I think you’re right!! About not having the genetic justification for his failure!!

Or, he sees himself in us, so if we succeed, that doesn’t fit his image and he freaks out…

YES, about the blessing. You can’t argue with crazy, why seek it out?

I just view him as one with a mental illness (narcissism, bi-polar).

I remember one day I read a description of bi-polar disorder, not the symptoms but the personality type and I cried. It was my dad. My dad is not my dad, he’s a friggin’ medical description.

Thank you for a light bulb moment!!
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