On psychic pain and saying no to the killer!

When it comes to mental and emotional pain it can have such a serious effects, something I am realising more and more, where other people are concerned we do need to tread carefully, that said how do we draw the line against hurtful and destructive behaviour? Its not something I have ever been good with and I know there are times people have needed to set boundaries with me and at the time it has hurt. However on reflection I have understood where it may be have been necessary and tried my best to take the lesson on board.

My therapist said yesterday to try not to beat myself up too much about recent mistakes, in her words ‘we can all transgress onto others sacred territory at times’ and often it is not intentional. We also are all very different with the degree of openness we have in discussing certain issues. For myself I suppose I have always been a heart on my sleeve person but this can cause problems because sometimes when you open your vulnerability to others in terms of telling them you struggle with anxiety, depression or sadness they can then accuse you of being ‘sick’. Its not a very kind way of labelling someone who is struggling to my mind, if people are genuinely open to growth anxiety and depression and sadness can all be used as stepping stones to an expansion of self awareness inter personal awareness and consciousness.

Hopefully in time the stigma of such things will be even less because trauma lays at the root of it all and who amongst us hasn’t in our lives been traumatised in some way. So why judge one another?

The recent problem I got into all involved boundaries. I shared something someone was not open to others knowing and sadly I just assumed that the person like many on here was open about her past abuse and trauma. I made an apology and then got some other things mixed up which I have tried to address. There is a saying that I think makes a lot of sense though, we are only as sick as our secrets. I come out here on WordPress and am open about some of the things from my past that hurt and even of which I am not so proud like alcoholism and terminations of pregnancy and over time I am learning to judge myself and others less, and seek to understand more. That means trying to look under the surface of events and defences to see what might be operating, its just the way I am and I don’t always get it right, how could I?

Surely we are all human and struggle in different ways. Where is the help in labelling others or making certain value judgements which often show a lack of deeper empathy or insight or true knowledge of what the person struggled with or suffered in their life anyway? It is something I try to speak for in my blog. And I don’t like when it happens to me. For sure I stuff up and sometimes get things confused (most especially when I am tired, anxious or stressed) but I don’t maliciously go about making judgements or try to take other people down or smear their ‘reputations’. Is it fair to be labelled sick?

I would probably be best to keep silent about this. Its okay anyway, its taken years but lately I am finally managing to get more free of others opinions of me. Only I know what goes on in my soul. No one else really does though some very wonderful people out there just seem to. I feel so very blessed though in so many ways. Its not always easy to count our blessings in the midst of pain or trauma but they are always there.

For me I am grateful for the friends who show empathy and try to understand. I am grateful for the fact of being able to look deeper. In my family it was hard because my older sister due to what was seen as a mental illness was exiled from contact for many years from certain members of our family. I saw the whole thing play out most painfully and the urge to keep connected (especially after I got sober in 1993 and the began to understand the deeper roots of family trauma and alcoholism) was so strong I put my own life on hold in the UK to come back and be here for her and my mother in their final years. It came at a cost (not only of my own dreams but of my marriage and a later relationship as well) : my last partner didn’t like me caring as much as I did for my sister and often said to me ‘you watch out you don’t turn out like her”. OUCH!!.

I always tried my best to understand my sister’s pain. At times she was like a wounded beast so trapped and in later years confined to bed or a wheelchair and often drugged. I would never be able to share in any blog or poem or post the depth of her suffering I witnessed nor the desire I had to try to make things easier, often alone or with my Mum. Many of you know my sister died in 2014 and that anniversary is in a months time. She died in the early hours of Easter Sunday after being taken off life support with all her four boys so long estranged finally by her bedside. The oldest flew in from overseas. I had three very special hours with her all alone on Saturday evening holding her hand and being by her side, if I was not sober that would never have been possible if my own fear and pain was still driving me to take distance.

Recent synchronicities are not lost on me and the fact that all of this later hullabalo has occurred with Mercury transiting retrograde through Pisces. My own Neptune in the third house of siblings square to the Sun and Venus relates to illness or suffering in siblings. Mercury is moving back to trine that Neptune in Scorpio over the next 10 days. And Venus was conjunct my natal Venus in Aquarius at 16 degrees square to Neptune when all the conflict happened over the weekend with someone also confined to a wheelchair and very ill.

I have been accused of cruelty in recent emails when I genuinely was trying to help. I don’t need vindication from anyone really, only I know the truth. My older sis was more of a Mum to me than my own Mum who never really got me at all and often just left me alone. She married and left at 3 and I went back and forward to be part of her family when they moved back to Sydney when I was about 8 and before her bleed in 1980 when I was 18. I cried to the depths of my being over the weekend but they were really cleansing freeing tears.

I also dreamt last night that I was happily preparing a meal when a Neo Nazi came into the room I was in and at first I worried what he might do to me but he just paced around the room a bit agitated smoking a cigarette, then a van turned up and when I came back to the room a lovely little curtain partition had been set up between the Neo Nazi meeting and me. I was safely ensconced on the other side of it preparing my meal.

This is a sign to me the killer energy coming at me telling me what a bad person I am and what a waste of space and better off dead does not have that power any more. People can project on me what they like but its up to me whether or not I take the projection. In this case I know I just need to say a firm ‘No’ to it. This is not my stuff. I have truly suffered enough. I want to live in peace and freedom and joy from now on I bloody well deserve that! Maybe that voice will never go away but at least now its on the other side of that curtain and is not interfering with my growing attempts to nurture myself.