Girls, I risk sounding like a broken record but I wanted to share with you a couple of things of what I am reading. I read the book a while ago. I find it priceless during piecing.
"It's often hard to "take the hit" of going thru your crucible (DS's theory)and moving on. That's why many of us have yet to get a life (we get a support group instaed). "Taking the hit" refers to the subjective experience of challenging your identity, your world view and your relationships.
Self soothing decreases marital mayhem by reducing your reactivity and the chance of emotional violence. Taking the hit develops your ability to modulate your own anxiety and tolerate the pain of growth (differentiation)(his basic theory, differentation Vs fusion)....
Oysters dont produce pearls because they want to make something beautiful, pearls are the byproduct of an attempt to reduce their irritation (a grain of sand). Likewise, self soothing turns marriages'irritations into useful and productive relationshp gems. The more partners regulate their own anxiety (hold on to them selves) the more stable the R becomes and the less need they have to control of each other.
When we expect our partner to shield and protect us from insecurity and anxiety, we are placing undue demand on the marital system (likewise for empathy and validation). We are more likely to exhaust the system:whenever anything goes wrong, we expect our partner to fix it or when angry, we take it out on them, when unhappy or scared, we demand reassurance. Eventually we drain our partner especially when he has his own issues to self sooth.
Self soothing is critical to developing a more accurate pic of yourself and your situation. You need to self soothe the embarassement that commonly accompanies a more accurate pic; the obviousness of it, in retrospect, makes you wonder how you managed to delude yourself for so long. Typically some chagrin accompanies every growth spurt.
Converesly, the accuracy of the picture affects yoru ability to self soothe because that accuracy determines whether you feel clean or dirty pain.
Clean pain comes from moving froward from an accurate self picture, accepting what has been, is and will be. That's not easy to do or often done which is why most of us know a lot more about dirty pain.
Dirty pain comes from defending, denying or deflecting to keep from seeing or doing something. The dirty feelings comes from dodging yourself. Dirty pain is what you feel before you take the hit. It is the pain of repeated mistakes promoted through self imposed blindness and offers no healing.
Clean pain is different. No shame or anxiety are involved. You stop struggling and relax. It is the HEALING pain of accepting the reality of your life and embarking on effective assessment, planning and implementation. It's hard to soothe clean pain. It's almost imporssible to soothe dirty pain.
If you are having trouble self soothing, reconsider what you are soothing yourself about. At times it's amazing how well we can handle clean pain, how much hurt we experience and still keep going. We function well -actually increasingly better- while our chest physically aches. It's not the same however with dirty pain. You cant really soothe yourself while you are dodging part of the truth...
Passionate Marriage did help me realise a lot of my issues druing my M. It was hard to accept my responsibility and as he says, in retrospect, I was amazed I let it get to the point it did (my actions). It is now helping me deal with my "clean pain". I have no shame but I am in deep sh$t trying to plan and implement changes that I cant postpone anymore. My H deals with his dirty pain. He knows his repeated actions that caused him misery, he still chooses to dodge himself.
I "am holding to myself" as Schnarch says by trying to keep the vision of who I am, what I need, how I want to b,e CLEAR and I love a phrase in the book that says, "when you are moving forward, growing, your partner's best choice is to be there with you as an equal partner which means, he is forced to change as well by your change without you ever requesting so. You are changing the rules of the game".
