Post by Peter on Jan 23, 2012 7:08:42 GMT -5
So I was thinking of calling this post "Still All About Me", although I'm starting to move away from that. Or so I like to think. Having children is helping me with that process. I've been following a program which suggests targetting some thing in your life that you want to change and then writing down some aspiration that you read first thing in the morning. This week I'm waking up to:
"Today I will seek out opportunities to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my wife"
We're living in this mountain village and - after some really intense stuff we've been going through in the last few months - there's a feeling of stillness starting to settle. The village is very quiet and we've got our wood stove burning. Although we only need it once the sun falls below the hills, it's blue skies most days, clean and fresh.
It's a simple place to be, good fresh food, no traffic, no sounds of people fighting or vomiting in the street, no advertising, no TV. Except, we've got hold of Downton Abbey Season 2 that we're trying to limit ourselves to 1 episode per week after binging on Season 1 - watched the whole thing in 2 days.
It's good to know all the shop keepers by name, although it does take an hour to buy two baguettes and a pound of sausages. And the kids' French is pretty amazing.
We're both working from home and prioritising quality time with the children. Our youngest is just doing a half day and we get our eldest back for an hour and a half at lunchtime. Also French schools are off every Wednesday.
Something I've been working with (and touched on in a previous post today) is how I deal with negative emotions - by which I mean emotions that I'm not "enjoying". So like anger can be quite enjoyable when you've got some righteous indignation worked up and Right on your side, but guilt never is - in my experience. I think I even shut out the suffering of others to a large extent because I just "don't want to go there".
Something that really helped me - a couple of years ago now - was when I was dropping my son off at daycare and he was crying away and I felt really really low. And then I thought to myself - wait a minute, this is exactly how I want to be feeling just now! What sort of Dad would I be if my son was crying and I was feeling fine about it? So that was a painful emotion I was able to welcome.
But for the most part I've had a number of coping mechanisms I've used to avoid feeling, and because of that (and because of my cultural heritage) avoid talking about and therefore working through. Movies, Porn, Sex, Beer, Chocolate, Books, Computer Games, Facebook and then just plain old fashioned subconscious denial, just blocking out anything that didn't fit with how I wanted to see myself or experience myself to the point where I'd actually struggle to think about it - and this really came clear for me when I tried to create a lifetime timeline of people I'd hurt and I found it really really difficult. Memories just weren't coming up when I looked for them - a couple of weeks later I was still like "Oh my god, remember that girl in..." so that list didn't make for happy reading when it was done. I was thinking about contributing something to the atonement thread on that.... certainly I think "feeling bad", in my case at least, is something that's helpful to work through because I've been avoiding feeling bad about things that have hurt other people for so long, but I don't know that actually putting myself back into these people's lives would do anything for them - would it make them feel better, or would it just be an intrusion? Would it really be for their benefit or just mine? Or am I just asking that question because I don't want to do it?
You know, usually I break into more paragraphs that this. Eat your heart out Kerouac.
So NOW what I'm working with is that I've let all these coping mechanisms go and I find...tada!...I don't have any coping mechanisms. Which is a bit difficult really, hang on a minute, I needed those, that was How I Coped. I find that my wife finds it easier to move on - one minute she appears to be really upset about something, and the next she's talking about what we're having for lunch. My upset tends to stay with me for longer - an hour at least. But all things pass eventually, although it may not feel like that at the time. So what I mostly try and do is just sit with it (or stand with it, or wash the dishes with it) and Let It Be. There's a line between sitting with it and wallowing in it... and then if it gets to much then I try to breath into it, open myself up to the Universe and offer it up.
"Today I will seek out opportunities to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my wife"
We're living in this mountain village and - after some really intense stuff we've been going through in the last few months - there's a feeling of stillness starting to settle. The village is very quiet and we've got our wood stove burning. Although we only need it once the sun falls below the hills, it's blue skies most days, clean and fresh.
It's a simple place to be, good fresh food, no traffic, no sounds of people fighting or vomiting in the street, no advertising, no TV. Except, we've got hold of Downton Abbey Season 2 that we're trying to limit ourselves to 1 episode per week after binging on Season 1 - watched the whole thing in 2 days.
It's good to know all the shop keepers by name, although it does take an hour to buy two baguettes and a pound of sausages. And the kids' French is pretty amazing.We're both working from home and prioritising quality time with the children. Our youngest is just doing a half day and we get our eldest back for an hour and a half at lunchtime. Also French schools are off every Wednesday.
Something I've been working with (and touched on in a previous post today) is how I deal with negative emotions - by which I mean emotions that I'm not "enjoying". So like anger can be quite enjoyable when you've got some righteous indignation worked up and Right on your side, but guilt never is - in my experience. I think I even shut out the suffering of others to a large extent because I just "don't want to go there".
Something that really helped me - a couple of years ago now - was when I was dropping my son off at daycare and he was crying away and I felt really really low. And then I thought to myself - wait a minute, this is exactly how I want to be feeling just now! What sort of Dad would I be if my son was crying and I was feeling fine about it? So that was a painful emotion I was able to welcome.
But for the most part I've had a number of coping mechanisms I've used to avoid feeling, and because of that (and because of my cultural heritage) avoid talking about and therefore working through. Movies, Porn, Sex, Beer, Chocolate, Books, Computer Games, Facebook and then just plain old fashioned subconscious denial, just blocking out anything that didn't fit with how I wanted to see myself or experience myself to the point where I'd actually struggle to think about it - and this really came clear for me when I tried to create a lifetime timeline of people I'd hurt and I found it really really difficult. Memories just weren't coming up when I looked for them - a couple of weeks later I was still like "Oh my god, remember that girl in..." so that list didn't make for happy reading when it was done. I was thinking about contributing something to the atonement thread on that.... certainly I think "feeling bad", in my case at least, is something that's helpful to work through because I've been avoiding feeling bad about things that have hurt other people for so long, but I don't know that actually putting myself back into these people's lives would do anything for them - would it make them feel better, or would it just be an intrusion? Would it really be for their benefit or just mine? Or am I just asking that question because I don't want to do it?
You know, usually I break into more paragraphs that this. Eat your heart out Kerouac.
So NOW what I'm working with is that I've let all these coping mechanisms go and I find...tada!...I don't have any coping mechanisms. Which is a bit difficult really, hang on a minute, I needed those, that was How I Coped. I find that my wife finds it easier to move on - one minute she appears to be really upset about something, and the next she's talking about what we're having for lunch. My upset tends to stay with me for longer - an hour at least. But all things pass eventually, although it may not feel like that at the time. So what I mostly try and do is just sit with it (or stand with it, or wash the dishes with it) and Let It Be. There's a line between sitting with it and wallowing in it... and then if it gets to much then I try to breath into it, open myself up to the Universe and offer it up.
