Grace, Love, Compassion, and Faith

[aeolianchaos]

Wow, Val - do you bring this kind of insight and openness to your everyday life?

I'm touched by your awareness of your processes and I think it speaks to something very good and sensitive inside of you.

I think that a lot of what you are feeling is part of the grieving process - how is that for you? What is it like for you to grieve and experience that kind of pain?

Is it different for you, than the pain of being hurt by another person?

Also - have you thought about grieving the loss of the 'old val'?

What does it mean for 'old val' to die and 'new val' to more fully live? Would you like yourself more? Would you respect yourself more? Do you think that it would allow people to truly know you?

I'm definitely projecting here, but I think it has merit so I'll put it out there anyhow.. the idea that in order to grow, we need to let go of where we once were in terms of our 'self'. The ropes we once gripped to raise ourselves up.. they become the tethers that now hold us down.

This quote may be meaningful to you: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us...

I wonder if that is part of the process - you feel that you were in a Co-dependent relationship and I wonder if for you, part of that is the feeling of getting your identity from your W. Perhaps rather than seeing your experience through a window of pathology you might look at it in terms of how you and your W co-constructed your relationship to accommodate each other in avoiding self-confrontation in various ways.

Maybe at that time it was easier to receive your sense of self from her, and probably her from you. And this created a system where it only made sense that you would have the feelings you mention experiencing at this time -- the ones that you feel you would not experience if you were 'alright'.

Her response and behavior towards you, if it defined your sense of who you were, would only naturally be something that would make you feel unstable. It takes your ego and puts it in someone else's hands. So it makes a lot of sense you would respond in the ways you described. And yes, developing your 'self' does mean, to an extent choosing YOU. But only in a way that makes you more capable of fully loving another person.

A lot of what you describe are very fight/flight responses and those become entrained in you - there is an excellent article on Psychology Today's website called "Pet The Lizard" by Rick Hanson - he explains very clearly how this stuff works and what you can do to consciously address it. I know you're crazy busy, but it might be worth looking at. As real as your experiences and feelings are - much of it can also be habitual.

This would be my CHOICE. It would be retraining my thoughts. It would take away her importance in my life.. well actually it would just emphasize my importance in my life.

There is just this little voice in the back of my head. "If you let go.. be prepared to lose her for good."

I understand this so well, Val. And I know the fear you feel. After I hit rock bottom, when I learned to really relax, I feared that it meant I didn't care about my W anymore. Learning to relax made me anxious! My feelings and experience changed and I wasn't comfortable with 'what it meant' because it was new and a little unsettling.

The truth is - it means what we make it mean. And so if you want it to mean that you are 'taking away' her importance, it will. If you choose to think of it as 'taking the pressure off of her', it will. There are a lot of very valid ways to reframe it and look at it.

I wonder if you might think about the idea of how letting go is part of letting 'old val' die so 'new val' can thrive? What does it mean for you to do that, and what might it mean for your capacity to love and truly be known by another person?

How might this improve your relationship? Without digging into whether or not it means you may lose your W for good, what possibilities might it open up for you in terms of your personal experience in living and loving?