Dear Mina:

Reads to me like you are doing all the right things in the process of your recovery from your breakup depression: focusing on a dream you neglected before, socializing, being aware of triggers and of the patience required for recovery over-time, with expected ups and downs.

Do stop torturing yourself, as you put it. Notice how you torture yourself, when you do, take a moment to calm down, clear your mind of the torturing thoughts and think instead what is true to reality and toward a better future.

anita

Hello Mina

I am like you now. Most days I am doing well. However emotions go up and down everyday. Some days are easy for me, some not. Whenever I feel down I tell myself “tomorrow is a different day and I will feel different.”

Do not blame yourself or spending too much time thinking about whatever does not work. People tend to trap themselves when they are thinking too much. As long as you have faith in getting better, you will.

There are some who might view the story of Cinderella as being about gender roles. However as though symbolic language we see that the story might be about a time a cinders, grief, depression and a guide as to how to work through such times.

Like a dream each of the characters within the story represents a attribute of the dreamer/person hearing the story.

The story starts with a a persons who’s psych – feeling and being state – is in a time of ashes. The inner mother attribute in stead of being nurturing has become the ‘step mother’ – negative self talk, your not good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, lovable… The sisters representing the creative impulses, things ones liked to do have turned against you, no longer enjoyable and unable to pull the psych out of this time sadness. Alas the inner father – ability to set and defend ones boundaries – is missing and there are no brothers. It is a dark night of the soul

Here the story shows its wisdom. When we first find ourselves in a time of ashes the feeling/being aspects of the psych is not equipped to fight or defend itself. The advice here is for the psych to focus is on daily tasks of life. Go to work, clean the house… In symbolic language the house is often a symbol of the self. To work through the time of ashes we must take care of ourselves, our basic needs. We create in small ways a environment where healing can take place.

Cinderella does not role up in a ball, hide in a corner or shake her first of the unfairness of all. The focus is on the tasks of ones daily routine but with eyes open. The story insures that a numinous moment will come when something happens that points to some other possibility, a ball (wholeness). A possibility where her rags are turned to a ball gown. Cloths often symbolize the ideals in which we dress are selves in. Cinderella (feeling/being) gets a glimpse of seeing herself different. This is not something Cinderella (feeling/being) forces to happen but allows to happen. She is going with the flow and doing so gets the help of a deeper nurturing archetype of the God Mother.

Of course the negative self talk will be right there telling you you can’t go, your not good enough, lovable… and here Cinderella does not confront the negativity but sneaks off with the help of the God mother and other smaller perhaps over looked attributes of the psych that ones hasn’t paid much attention to before.

The story has a warning, at midnight (time of transition) she must return home. We are not meant to stay in these time numinous moment. I think the danger is getting stuck always looking for that next numinous moment. The seeker who is always seeking the next numinous moment but never becoming the finder. Never taking what one learns and turning it into action/wisdom.

This moment awakens the Prince, the psych inner warrior. The story changes from one of passively taking care of daily needs to action, a search, and working to reconnect to ones feeling and being nature.

The shoe does not fit the step sisters, no mater how you might try to make them fit. The ways of coping in the past and that might have fed ones creativity in the past may not be the way out. This is a search that will lead to a new way of seeing things and finding the right fit. This is a finding and connection to ones authentic self.

In the end the stories promises that if one goes though these trials there will come a time when ones doing and thinking marries up with ones feeling and being becoming the King and Queen of the psysh. Once that connection is made new adventure await. Children attributes of the psych you have yet to discover will be born and require to be nurtured but that is another story.

So yes you are on the right track.  🙂