Hi Inky,

One thing I have learned from experience and counseling (that I really needed) was to never suppress my spontaneous reaction to people. You should always trust your instinct because it is a raw true unrefined compass of whether a situation is good or bad for you. The emotional mastery is to control the way you express that feeling. You have every right to feel anger toward such a destructive and offensive gesture, and are not wrong to start to be reserved about this community if such behavior is allowed especially if it comes from its leaders. A true spiritual leader should be able to communicate properly if there is something you need to improve, and in a respectful and considerate way. I don’t understand in the story if this woman told you what needs improving but nonetheless this gesture speaks of a very primitive person and I would not think she has mastered herself in the first place.

Your fear of going to community events I also understand because I tend to react like this. You are protecting the involved people and yourself from your own anger. This is what more refined people usually do as they are not beasts that just go and explode in anger. However it also means that you are so sensitive that you have not learned properly how to assert yourself. Maybe the fact that this is a spiritual community also plays a role in the sense that you perceive it as authority and it is more difficult to question authorities. Maybe this gesture that angered you at first has grown into feeling that your dignity as been destroyed in front of these people, do you get too worried about people’s opinions of you? Anyway, every person that respect themselves choose to be surrounded by people that treat them nicely and this is completely healthy.

So there are 2 things that I think you should focus on – your abilities to assert yourself, and maybe to decide whether you are choosing a healthy community.

Give yourself some time to relax and do things that bring you pleasure 🙂

Hi Irky,

Reading your second post I realize I may not be able to understand completely your relationship with this congregation and your background. But again you point out that these people are some type of authority and I am not sure how much freedome you have in choosing whether to participate in these events.

Of course that you are protecting yourself from that anger as this is a very powerful and destructive emotion. Thinks of it that it is better that way because you have the time to process it and decide how you want to react in this situation in a healthier and more effective way instead of saying or doing something blinded by anger.

Maybe if you start thinking that no matter what authority a person is, they are still people with flaws. We are often disappointed by people on whom we projected super qualities, like a father figure or spiritual guide. I also don;t know how young you are, I would assume you are a young person.

The way to protect yourself is to realize that these are only people with flaws like every human being. And they may not realize completely the effects of their actions or this may even not be something to be taken personally. It is hard to forgive a person on whom you project so great qualities and easier when you start seing them as normal human beings.

Why do you assume that if you go there you will have any reaction or they will react to you? It;s natural to be nervious at first when you start going there again given your latest experience but this will pass.

Do you want to go to these events, do you have to?

Aw, man! That is a sucky way to lose a community you enjoyed being part of.

OK, so you’ve tried to figure out just why this event had such a profound effect on you, and you’re not sure. Some time has passed, it seems, and you’re not over it. That takes the obvious advice out of the equation.

Maybe it would help to do some separation rather than dealing with the entire tangle at once. So, there was the feedback which was soul-destroying. And you dealt with that, I don’t want to say badly, but in a way that fell short of full resolution. That’s one thing.

Then there’s the next thing, which was the prospect of facing these people again. Your feelings were so strong that you decided to avoid that, and you left the community. This, too, is an unresolved situation because now you’re worried about going to this event even though they’re not likely to be at it. But I want to stress that your decision not to go, your decision not to face them was completely legitimate. We all do what we have to do to stay safe, emotionally. And sometimes we do things that, from the outside, might look silly, but at the time they were necessary or we wouldn’t have done things that way.

I think there might be a third layer in that if you now go back, you may feel pressure to explain your absence or just feel awkward because you left in such a sudden and strange way (and not because this congregation wasn’t right for you).

I think the key is going to be acceptance, and that may have to be a slow, creeping progress. That’s why I tried to tease the different strands apart, because what you’re writing feels a bit like this kind of shame-ball that sounds a bit like butwhatiftheyrethereIcantfacethemwhydidIevenIdontunderstandwhythiseffectsmesomuchImsodumbIshouldbeabletohandleitimagineseeinghimandhesallpoliteandshitbutwhatwouldhethinkbutwhydoIevencarewhathethinksaaaaaaaaah!

See if it becomes easier to digest once you tease some of the fibres apart.

Sounds good. I like that focus wheel exercise, that sounds helpful.

Maybe a little off topic but reading some articles I found this interesting and very true statement:
“When you give your power to outer sources you attract aggressors”.
Aggressor could not always be a violent or destructive person, it could be someone who wants to have any form of control over other people, they may even think that they are doing this for other person’s good. The need to control is the main distinction of neurotic personalities. And victim would be a dependent person, someone who has not learned to rely on their own inner power, who allows to be defined by outer judgement, either good or bad. Of course if someone is used to being defined by outer good affirmations it is less painful and less probable to wake up to the fact that they need to learn to define themselves. Think of Siddhartha who was a prince living an abundant and loving life. He left all this because he sensed the need to wake up his inner strength in order to become Buddha 🙂
Just continuing the discussion 🙂