Repeating Emotional Patterns

Being present in my feelings.
Acknowledging them and giving them proper expression.
Just being aware of them in the first place.

These are hard new applications I am learning.  I signed a book out from our public library recently about emotional intelligence.  A fascinating read for someone who is just learning to understand feelings and how they effect actions.  Turns out I am more emotionally intelligent then I have given myself credit for.  I am also coming to realize that my recent blog posts about never having been aware of my feelings before now, is inaccurate.

I have gotten really really good at suppressing and manipulating my feelings.  Turns out after some study that as a society we all have been taught to shut down overwhelming or unwanted feelings.  Even the new age books that teach of all things love and positive have just taken a new spin on the same control tactics.

Ram Das has been a huge influence these past few weeks for me on the development of my emotional intelligence.  Of course along with my amazing therapist who can help me personally clear out my mental distortion around all things feeling and perceptive.

Being present with my emotions is what I want to focus on here.  After a lifetime of mastering getting out of my feelings I now want to spend as much time on actually being present with my emotions in the hopes that I will eventually move into recognizing a feeling when it first emerges and dissipating it through my own management of relaxation and meditative responses as opposed to drugging them out.

I am using the words feeling and emotions interchangeably only to learn the proper uses of them.

From my research and budding understandings a feeling is the immediate gut reaction in the body. An emotion is a more blanket term and can last a long time and can be hidden and hard to define... like revenge.

A mood is something again all together different... we wake up sometimes on the wrong side of the bed for no apparent reason, thats a mood.  I think moods are appropriate to get out of as they seem to really serve no purpose, just like random negative thoughts.  Moods are where we can practice exercise and meditative tricks to get out of.

A feeling is a warning to me.  I am very focused on not shutting out my feelings anymore.  So for today its the feeling I am trying to stay present with because its the feeling to me that turns into an emotion that is the true cause of some damage in my life.

I remember when my ex husband took me out of my self secure life to a life of full dependence upon him.  Within four months of that life with him he decided he wanted a divorce.  I went into a rage.  Like broke every glass thing in my house kinda rage.  After much begging and pleading on my part he allowed me to stay with him.  Seven years later I took him out of his nice self secure life and moved him to a new city and within a month, proceeded to walk out on him.

That was revenge.

I had no idea how damaged I was because I did not honor my feelings at the time.  I hid how I truly felt, which was hurt and instead begged for him to relearn to love me.  I should have left then but instead I convinced myself I needed him and seven years later when I was self supporting again I inflicted that pent up hurt on him.

I had no idea until recently, five years after the fact, this is what I had done.  My poor children were damaged in the crossfire of my unresolved pain.

This is why today I feel the tremendous need to sit in my feelings and allow them to speak to me and not be too busy trying to ignore them or quiet them.  I need to hear what they are saying because I am tired of acting in ways that even I don't understand because an emotion has been lying dormant for years and pops out at the most inopportune time hurting the people I least want hurt.

I am in the process of letting another guy go from my obsessive mind clutch.  I have over analyzed this cycle in my past five years.  Why I get hooked up with the unavailable guy and then wonder why I am so devastated when he doesn't want me and why I hold on so tight.

This again goes back to an emotion I refuse to acknowledge.

Abandonment.

I have always felt abandoned.  I refuse to admit my childhood has effected me.  Hell, until recently I didn't even know just how far I have ran away from all things to do with my life pre adulthood.  I have always had the mindset of survivor and refuse to be a victim and another broken woman statistic.

Learning now how deep emotions run and how long they will stay trapped in our cells, has forced me to begin to deal with some of these recurring patterns in my life.

I am no fool, I knew my dad left when I was eight.  I have watched friends experience the same fates and create the same patterns of attaching to broken guy syndrome in their lives.  I knew that's what I was doing.  The difference for me was that I thought awareness was enough.

Self acceptance has been my lesson as of late.  Coming to accept that whether or not I like it, I am a broken female.  Abandonment is but one emotion that is wreaking havoc in my life.  But it is the one I am starting with because I am sick and tired of creating this same repulsive pattern with guys.  I have used sex and love addiction as my means of getting out of the real issue here.

I am struggling with abandonment.

My dad said a super heart wrenching sorry to me a couple years ago.  It has taken me this long to come to accept his apology.  To finally let go of my hurt and anger at being left with an emotionally unavailable mother and a family pedophile as her closest friend.  I blamed my father for not protecting me and today I am still seeking out the afflicted man to save me.

These I knew as truths I just didn't know how to get out of them.  I was always lead to forgiveness but know one showed me how to go in a touch the pain first.  To go in and accept it as my truth.  Being aware is not enough.  Learning to accept that I am seriously damaged brings about a whole shit tonne of feelings.  Feelings that until today I could get out of masterfully.  I never allowed myself to touch the core of my pain.

Today I am working overtime on being present with the pain of abandonment.  I started with the current manifestation of it.  A womanizer I got caught up with over the winter who seemed to find a way into my heart and left a home made pipe bomb behind.  Dealing with the immediate hurt, has triggered the hurt over what my ex husband did all those years ago.  Which was the first warning that abandonment was a smoldering emotion under the surface of my 250lb food suppression.

Now I am slowly moving back into the little eight year old girl that watched her daddy walk down the street on his birthday into one of her best friends houses where he proceeded to make a new family, Leaving her to pick up her mom and raise her brother all the while dealing with weekly sexual assault.  I say her because I still need to dissociate in order to even say it.  I am still not yet in full acceptance of that as my truth.

Its rough for me to even write that.  Acceptance is tough business.  I have learned my whole life to keep my secrets tucked away safely, its way better for everyone involved.

 Is it though?

I walked out on my own children to get revenge on my father.  How is that right?  I am done repeating the mistakes of my parents.  I have never talked about my pain before, maybe this is the path to finally heal it?  I dunno,  but I cant keep holding the emotion in any more.

Sharing our stories is what the anonymous program has taught me.  Writing has always been my way to express and heal.  I have just never been to the center of my pain before.... it seems harder to share this.  Who would want this?

I have no idea how to even end this post.  Not a pretty writing, not a positive one.  Messy process this self acceptance and business of feelings.   No wonder why I have gotten so good at suppressing them.
 Maybe its time I take up smoking again.......