Finding value in the endurance of pain

On the healing journey there comes a time when it's time to ask. Do you find your personal value is based in your endurance of pain? 

Because it would be so messed up to come to the conclusion that you didn't get ANYTHING for going through everything that you've been through, right? Like a heavy cinder block, the memory tied to it's victim pulling them down. The return again and again to feel what happened once more. To dissect, to analyze, run different scenarios of what should have happened. Perhaps to have someone care and tell you that you didn't deserve it, to validate that it wasn't supposed to happen, that you didn't deserve it, or to say that there is nothing that you could have done differently. To hear these words to set you free. The amount of time of that original event may have been minutes, hours, days. Yet the visitations have taken up years, decades, sometimes an entire lifetime. Because there was never a release a detachment from the pain. 

In my personal journey, I came to the conclusion that there was a part of me that wanted credit for having gone through it. That is what made me special my ability to endure the pain and since I wasn't winning at the game of life I began to change the game. She who endures the most pain wins! So more pain came into my life and I endured that too. Score! But of course it wasn't a score. It tore me down and tore me up. It destroyed my nervous system until one day I couldn't get up. I couldn't bounce back. I was in complete burn out. There is no value in enduring pain. Staying in a dead situation. Showing up to the blender of someone's emotional or physical abuse. To endure neglect or rejection of love over and over again.

There are no martyr points. 

It is up to us to create a life we enjoy living. That we create a home that is full of joy, laughter, and a regulated nervous system. Find like minded individuals to surround yourself with and experience supportive connections and exchanges. The same with our mind. If your mind is a battlefield then nothing new can grow. It may be difficult to release the past. Like a version of survivors' guilt to let go of it especially when certain events shaped us. But I invite you to jump into a new timeline of life and the past can't come with you for the same reason why you wouldn't bring in last year's garbage into a brand new home. Don't take what is dead and rotting from the past and bring it into your new space. That doesn't make sense. Neither does it make sense to hold on to that which should not come with you. Take the lessons, the good times, that made you who you are and move into the totally new. It will be ok. There is a good chance that things will get better. 

As a journal prompt really get into those "cinder block" moments that hold you in your pain.

Write down what comes up for you.

What is serving you by being there?

Are you visiting someone you loved and lost?

Is it to feel the pain again to beg someone to care about it?

To feel the injustice and the self-righteousness that springs from it?

Or something else?

There is no judgement we all go through these feelings. Then as you reread these thoughts one must make a decision and I can't make it for you, you must make it for yourself. Whether a new healthier experience means more to you than the value placed on enduring the feelings of the cinder block moments? The visits, the decisions made long ago. If you find that yes you are ready then let go. It may take some time for the release to take full effect. Some people notice a difference right away some a year or two later, and everything in between. It is an individual journey. It all depends on how deeply embedded the memory's effects are and the commitment to release. But you'll get there. Give yourself patience and grace. But also have the discipline to continue looking forward. Never look back again. Life is for the living, so get out there and live it well. 

Until next time.