Mothers' Day is one of many occasions that offer us a chance to gather with multiple generations of family. If we are completely honest, there are positive and negative aspects to these occasions. The laughter, measuring the growth of youngsters, celebrating accomplishments and sharing favorite family foods are all tremendous. But, as most of us know and have experienced, from seemingly out of nowhere, can come a comment, a look, a memory, that triggers an unwanted and unwelcome emotional response. In the world of psychology or recovery from addiction, these events are called "triggers". Those recovering from addiction have to be particularly conscious of "emotional triggers" because "triggers" are at the top of the slippery slope that ends in substance abuse or other destructive forms of behavior.
So, is there a solution for dealing with these "emotional triggers" at family gatherings? Is there a way of gaining mastery over these age-old feelings of worthlessness or despair or anxiety or anger or disappointment or fear that are triggered in a look or a comment from another family member? Is there a way of stopping the unwanted words (or lack of words) that we speak after we have been triggered or of taking action (or inaction) that we later regret?
Good News! In a word the solution is FORGIVENESS.
I include a few paragraphs here from an excellent book I have been reading called The Magic of Forgiveness by Tian Dayton, Ph.D.:
"People who have deep, unresolved pain from their own childhoods carry that pain into their parenting and partnering. Along with it may be a need to hide their fears of feeling vulnerable or needy, or of being 'found out,' so they put on a false face, drive their fears downward and play them out in dysfunctional ways with their own children and spouses. The emotions we deny have even more power because they make those close to us feel crazy. They sense one thing, and we tell them something else. What comes out of our mouths doesn't match up with what they pick up on at a more intuitive level. Sometimes, our loved ones try to make sense of this split by discounting their own reality and joining in adopting a facade.
"Or maybe parents need to be needed a little too much. Since they haven't really self-defined themselves vis-a-vis their parents (that is, they live physical y apart, but emotionally they haven't' left home), they may have trouble fostering healthy autonomy in their own kids or allowing their partners to have a separate identity. The hot-and-cold emotional patterns from their childhoods can get lived out in their relationships with their own family members. They may connect, but not easily; or maintain rigid control to keep the chaos that they carry in their childhood hearts from erupting into their own homes. When the intimacy of partnership and parenthood makes their childhood feelings of sadness and loss vibrate beneath the thin membrane that separates their child from their adult selves, they may not know how to balance their emotions. They may withdraw, smother, explode, or all of the above. When parents don't make it a priority to resolve wounds from their own pasts so that they don't impact their ability to partner and parent well, they will inevitably seed their wound into the next generation, in one form or another. Closeness requires a secure sense of self. If significant pieces of our emotional world lie buried in silence, those zones of numbness will keep us from connecting fully with our partners and our children. Intimacy also offers us one of the most available passages toward personal and spiritual growth, if, when we get triggered, we're willing to back up and use our emotions as indicators of where our work might lie.
"So forgiveness can be explored as a way of staying connected in a manner that is ultimately self-preserving. Though we may feel like we're giving up a piece of ourselves--say our resentment, our wish for retribution or our anger--we may actually be preserving some more useful and valuable parts of self. Peace of mind, for one, or feeling good about ourselves as human beings. We give up the moral high ground that we feel we gain when we hold onto the anger we may feel toward someone we're constantly cutting down to size in our minds and, to our utter amazement, we're on a whole different kind of high ground. We gain solidity within our center. We no longer constantly feel torn up inside. Instead, we have a center that holds. We have, paradoxically, found a way to gain emotional space--through letting go.
"Forgiveness enables feelings to emerge to the surface and be felt and understood for what they are, rather than to be buried and emerge in countless toxic forms. It provides a way out of the many little sins that we all commit daily, within the privacy of our own hearts, so that we can work with rather than deny them.
"Forgiveness is an organizing principle that has the ability to transform the painful events of our lives into our own spiritual growth. The key words here are 'our own.' We have no control over people. We may wish we did, but it's a fantasy, really. People will do what they will do; they will live on their own schedule, not ours. But we do have control over our own choice to grow. In ways we hardly realize, the time we put toward growth affects our inner life, which becomes our outer life. We become more mindful, gain more mastery over our inner world, get in touch with our bodies, learn self-discipline and more about what makes us tick.
"One of the ways to beat the system, if you've been hurt, is to consider forgiveness as an option, not just to let the other guy off the hook, but to do right by our own selves. To free us from the endless repetition of the painful dynamics that inevitably entwine themselves around so many aspects of our lives when we can't process, metabolize and move on.
"But the truth is that if we can't in some way forgive and move on, the revenge we seek is enacted on our own lives. We doom ourselves to repeat the painful circumstances we've experienced in ways that only debilitate our happiness. The daughter with the cold, critical father who falls in love again and again with men who can't love her back or the girl who was distanced by the mother she wished to be close to and today either distances or smothers (two sides of the same coin) her own daughter, are people who could not find their way out of a painful past dynamic and move on. They are still reenacting the things that hurt them most in some form or another.
"Forgiveness offers us a way off the wheel of karma, out of a cycle of pain. Christ, on the cross, made this his last order of business. 'Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.'"
(Excerpts from The Magic of Forgiveness: Emotional Freedom and Transformation at Midlife by Tian Dayton, Ph.D., pp. 168-181, copyright 2003, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, Florida)
--Posted by Mama O.
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