Post
by Amanda Stracey » Sat Aug 27, 2016 10:11 am
Hi Thomas
Welcome. I'm going to start by saying my own condition is someone who doesn't have much personal, direct experience of God and whilst I've had a go at this processing emotions thing, it all feels a bit confusing still and I'm looking at my own resistances to wanting to feel emotions at all and also any that feel too big to handle. I do have a few suggestions though.
What would be interesting to investigate ( notice, become aware of (making lists)) is my everyday life and attitudes and beliefs around not feeling good enough:
Who, where, what causes this feeling to surface?
What do I do when it surfaces? Do I respond with anger or put downs or assert myself even more or something else?
What do I do in my life - who do I avoid, who do I feel I need, what do I feel I need to eat/drink/wear to avoid feeling not good enough every day?
I think this is all part of the process of awakening to our sin. So I have unreleased pain relating to not feeling good enough or whatever the real cause turns out to be and I could now release this pain as an adult but I don't choose to do that. Instead I'm actively avoiding it some way or another by projecting a false version of myself, say of competence or intellectual understanding when I have no real understanding or coolness when really I feel a complete shambles or always going out in a group in preference to being alone. My understanding is that I will need to realise that the defences I'm using harm myself, a child of God, harm others who God loves dearly and harm God's world/environment. Then I'm beginning to see what I'm choosing to do instead of feeling my locked up pain and start feeling that what I am doing to avoid that pain is a sin.
Another question I might ask is why do I want to jump ahead and have the answer now and not apply what Jesus and Mary are teaching to my life . By not allowing the whole process of coming out of denial, awakening to my sin, seeing it from Gods perspective for what it is and having compassion for myself at the same time, desiring change, having faith in my capacity for change and changing for the better (against the world's opinion that I've changed for the worst) - what am I trying to avoid there? I could be avoiding the pain of accepting that what I thought was absolutely fine to do all my life, what seems or seemed completely normal and fine might be a sin from God's viewpoint. In my family for example, being angry at other people and venting frustration at another person was seen as normal, fair game and not damaging to anyone at all - in fact it was seen as good and right for keeping kids particularly in check ( keep them behaving well and in their place). That's going to take some work before I can even desire to vent my anger safely rather than using it to attack others.
Hope that helps.
Amanda