“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” (Rumi)
As I sit down to write this blog, it is the afternoon of Election Day (Tuesday). There is an eerie calm; a dense energy in the air. I had voted earlier in the day and so far, I have kept the television off and will probably ‘engage’ as night comes.
When I feel out of sorts from energies and emotions that arise, I find the best antidote for me has been to connect with the energy of love. Or rather, allow my heart to care for my unease and disquiet. It is always seductive to explain the reason for certain energies or emotions arising, blaming unrest on another. I do that for a while without often even knowing I am doing it. I will cast a villain in the movie of my life for a certain time to help explain why I feel the way I feel. After I get bored or tired of my old ways of coping, I eventually let a deeper part of me take over, a part that has been on the sidelines waiting for me to ask for its help. Usually, when that happens, the villain in my story recedes – the person I have made responsible for making me feel the way I do. And I am left with the rawness and intensity of the emotions. Sometimes, I will use an Eidetic image to break my fixed perceptions about a person or situation. Other times, I just sit and allow myself to be taken care of by something that exists within. There is no one method or way. I do find I seem to thrash around internally (maybe out of habit?) before I realize the futility of blaming how I feel on another person. The nice thing is that I seem to have developed enough self-control to recognize my triggers and not act on them. I might ruminate and suffer inside for a while, but I now rarely lash out and blame another for how I feel.
I used to think that healing meant we didn’t get triggered by things anymore and that there was such a thing as being ‘done’. What I have learned is that healing happens in many cycles. I thought it might to be interesting to see healing in an Eidetic image -- In Eidetic Imagery therapy, every situation/problem can be turned into an image which is vivid and can then be interacted with for clarity, feelings generated and perhaps resolution or a healing response. So, I gave myself a prompt of “See an image of healing and triggers, what do you see?”
“I see myself as a blob, no core, amorphous body, no definition or boundaries. In the middle, I see little me in a cave just wanting to feel love, to feel my body, to feel vital, to feel strong, to feel alive. As I see this image, it animates me and I see the girl inside the cave come out of the cave and her light and power spread to the rest of the body, bringing definition and form to a once-amorphous blob. The body now looks vital and feels defined. As triggers now come, they no longer blend into a soup of goo with its own gravitational pull that is strong and difficult to comprehend. Now, with more definition and shape in the body, triggers are felt as impact and can cause a strong internal reaction. I feel strong in seeing the image, the ability now for the body to withstand the impact of triggers rather than succumb to them or get lost in them.”
As I see this image, it gives me clarity that as we heal, we actually can feel our triggers more fully and deeply because the internal environment is clearer, stronger and has more definition. This seems like a paradox to the idea that we get better as we heal. That depends on how we define better. I do believe as we continue to metabolize our inner experiences into wisdom and softness, we can feel things more intensely. Because that intensity is now coupled with greater wisdom and softness, I find myself defaulting to that place sooner than I used to before. Specifically, in the past, if I felt triggered, I might suffer with the victim-blaming dynamic for a long time and be very invested in the rightness of my perspective. Now, I can see that my triggered response has very little to do with the other person per se, but it is an energy or emotion that exists in me that needs my attention rather than play the blame game. Of course, once I realize the futility of blaming another, I am brought into my heart to feel the emotions that have been knocking within for me to attend to. It is not easy, but I have found the growth to be worth the vulnerability of doing this. The heart feels stronger, more loving, more vital, softer, more open, more alive. It’s like with each turning inwards with intense feelings and working through them, the heart stretches and tears at times and after the momentary shock that the heart can ‘tear’, healing flows and a balm releases to soothe and strengthen the heart. If the balm could speak, I would imagine it to say, “I’ve got you. Feel your feelings. It may hurt in the moment. But I am here to soothe any open tears while you go through a very important process of allowing your heart to open, expand and heal deeply. This is the work you do for yourself and others, allowing love to flow from the heart.”
As I type these words, I still feel warm from an impromptu visit our daughter made this Sunday from college. She is driving back today (Tuesday) and will gather with her friends as the election results come in. It was such a beautiful visit and some of my favorite moments were just lying and cuddling with her. My heart felt so vast and love poured freely. I know she felt it too. It was not always this way. I was flooded with a memory of a time when she was younger (she is 19 now) when she would plead with me to lie next to her in bed and I would find every excuse not to.
I feel so grateful that both of us have been able to get past the pain of our early experiences. For me, the guilt was crippling for years, the injuries I (unknowingly) caused with my guarded heart. For my daughter, I am grateful for her beautiful and forgiving heart and that we now get to share a true bond, true connection.
And the coolest part – for me and my daughter – is that I go from villain to hero and she gets to see what is possible!
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