Getting Worse

While we can remove our hand from the hot stove to stop the pain, we cannot alleviate inner pain unless we take our "hand" from "the hot stove."

Our "hand" is our current emotional inner landscape.

The "stove" is the "place" within us where we have hidden our pain.

We sometimes just do not even believe that such a "place" exists, but if we really get to the point where we are at our wits' end, if we are desperate enough to be well again, we may just summon the internal courage to go looking for that "place," just on the basis of the fact that someone -- probably many people, actually -- cares enough to spend the time to talk to us and explain that there is a solution and that the solution is not outside of ourselves but INSIDE US.

More? Of course, you know very well where I am going with this, right?

The fear you experience is your defense against experiencing the inner pain. You may have a huge amount of pain inside; I know that *I* do.

The fear is just another defense against experiencing the PAIN inside. But the pain inside is not so bad as to demand such a horrible defense. It really is painful, but it's far less scary than the fear.

Again, let me give you some encouragement: the pain that we are avoiding is but a tiny prick compared to the horribleness of the fear. I know the fear, peacedove, and I would take the pain any time you ask in place of the fear.

The pain is our true defender. What we could not or were not allowed to express in the past can come to our aid now and restore us to health. When you begin to experience your inner pain, you will feel better and more connected with yourself.

We are all the same, peacedove, we really are. We are all made of the same stuff and wired with the same basic design.

Repressed feelings seem so terrible to us that our unconscious mind has erected elaborate defenses to "protect" us from that pain, but it needn't bother and we don't have to listen to it.

So, go to a psychoanalytic therapist and cooperate with the therapist. Allow yourself to enter territory that scares you out of your mind. Do it and you can be restored to health.

Don't do it, and you face more fear.

Fear is the worst.

Pain is nature's way of healing and protecting.

Hand on hot stove = pain

Pain saves you from dying of burns.

Pain saves you from dying of fear and mental distress.

Pain is expressed in the body and then DEPARTS when it has done its job.

Let me say that again:

PAIN IS EXPRESSED

IN

THE

BODY

AND THEN

DEPARTS

WHEN IT HAS

DONE

ITS

JOB

peacedove said:

Thanks everyone for your replies. Sojourner... so do you think I should be hypnotized?? Cuz I've always thought something really bad must have happened to me when I was little and that's how I got this way... and your posts kinda reaffirmed this belief. I think that's the only way I can face the pain cuz I try digging for the source of this pain myself, but I can never get to it.

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No, I really don't mean that at all, peacedove. You *can* get to it with a good therapist. I am in the midst of doing it myself, and though it's hard, it's definitely possible. The pain is actually not all that buried, right? It manifests itself in how you feel today. You need someone that you like as a person and feel comfortable with to talk to about your feelings and whose training is primarily in helping people talk about how they feel.

peacedove said:

Phill... I wish I could look forward to being with God forever, but quite honestly he scares me. I'm not completely positive he exists and if he does exist I'm not sure if I like him very much. And now I feel guilty for writing that but he already knows what I'm thinking right? So I'm probably already damned to Hell.

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I know exactly how you feel, peacedove; but you neednt' worry -- God knows how you feel and it's okay to tell Him you don't understand and that you wonder if He's really there.

Do you have Christian friends? I don't know what denomination you are, but you could probably find a pastoral counselor who could help you sort through these things.

There are also lots good books dealing with these emotional issues we face from a Christian perspective.

Just some ideas -- but please know you are not damned to Hell by any means. It would really be a great help if you could find a Christian psychotherapist (there are a few out there).

Are you in therapy now?

Well my pain isn't buried, but the cause of it is... the cause of the DP is.

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I'm in the process of discovering the cause of my pain right now. It's not necessarily a "fact" or a "real event" -- it's turning out to be a feeling that I had growing up in my family. I find it hard to believe that they didn't "love" me, but I am discovering that the pain inside me is all about deep down inside, today, believing that I never really felt loved. Period. That's just some feeling I have had all my life. What it appears to be saying is not that my family *didn't* love me, but that *I* didn't *feel* it. There's no right or wrong here, just understanding. I have plenty of evidence that my parents and sisters loved me. That I didn't FEEL it says something about ME, not them. Sure, they obviously didn't deliver what I needed or wanted, but if I couldn't accept it then, I have to accept it NOW that they did the best they could. And I have to forgive myself for feeling all this time that I was just an afterthought, the fifth kid who just tagged along and didn't get listened to or paid enough attention.

That's MY pain. I know that's it, because it tears me up and I've just begun to recognize that the little girl in me is so sad and alone, even today. But I have no depression and no anxiety, peacedove. I have no symptoms of mental illness, which I had most of my life. None! But this pain is pretty bad at times. Yet the freedom it brings, little by little, is enough to make your heart soar.

Is your therapist using a psychodynamic or psychoanalytic approach? Are you talking about your feelings? Do you feel free enough to feel your feelings in the presence of your therapist? You are female, right? I urge you to get a female therapist; it's just so much simpler. Besides, your therapist shouldn't be doing the talking except to help YOU talk.

I'm in a similar situation as you with regard to friends; I don't have any right now. But *I* am my friend, and you are yours, and maybe we could be two friends.

I hope you don't feel you have to stay with one therapist. In fact, if you are not able to freely talk about how you feel with him, I would recommend finding someone with whom you feel more comfortable. But the male/female dynamic is unquestionably a factor in therapy, what with transference and so on. Anyway, I'm rambling.

Are you able to talk about your feelings in therapy openly and to access your feelings in the presence of your therapist? Does he encourage you to do so?

Yes, I am completely DP free. My DP was only part of my panic attacks. I started lorazepam in May when my panic began. We increased the Zoloft and my depression went through the roof.

On July 1 I stopped all drugs -- no anxiety, no depression. Pain? Yes, but I am seeing my therapist twice a week now. I find the experience of it to be healing, though, which is often the case in psychotherapy. It's why I said elsewhere that it's almost "magical" how just feeling a feeling can be healing. But it's true. Something shifts in us when we express emotion that has been penned up for years, hidden from our conscious awareness.

But it's not FAST, although one can feel better after the first session. Our personalities were not built in a day and they won't be understood in a day, either. But it's worth the time and the money, I think.