I am sitting at my kitchen table crying. Not the crying of something sad. The type of crying that shatters your soul.
I reach out to you because you are anons. You don’t know me, and most likely never will.
The Great Awakening has not only opened my eyes to the utter evils that humankind has endured for thousands of generations, but it has also opened my eyes to the evil of SELF.
I am going through some serious self reflection. On the outside I appear like I should. On the inside….
Are my sins. My sins of thoughts, actions, lying, cheating. Always thinking I am a good person, but I’m not.
I stole 50 cent pieces from my dad’s dresser and rode my bike to the candy store when I was young. I stole a caramel from the grocery store when I was 4. I ripped tulips out of someone’s garden so I could give them to my mom. I rode on the back of a motorcycle at 15 going so fast I thought “what if I were to die right now?” Found out later the driver was drunk. My mom called the police when she found out I was on the bike. (They picked me up)
I lost my virginity at 18 to a narcissist and it has been downhill personally ever since. I gave myself to him because I thought we would be married. We weren’t.
I married a broken man because broken men made me feel better about myself. If I loved them enough, cooked beautiful meals for them, strive to be perfect, they would become whole.
I start something. I get excited and if I screw up or something else captures my attention, I quit. My intentions are always pure, but the self loathing I feel not fulfilling my intentions is gross.
I don’t even know who I really am. A full blown sinner I can tell you that much. I imagine Christ next to me. Sitting with me now. Forgiving me. Having mercy on me. I don’t feel it.
There is more I could tell you. My skeletons. I have too much shame to even say to you.
Maybe this is true repentance. The crumbling of ego.
I am sorry for everything I have done that wasn’t good and whole. So very sorry.
Deep feeling, CONNECTED to the actual events you're crying (or whatever) about, is actually healing.
Trauma -- feelings too painful to feel at the time, which get repressed (and you may or may not have access to memory about them) -- doesn't just fade away because by definition it's powerfully threatening, and continuously seeks to rise to full consciousness so the threat can be addressed -- even though the threat is now over.
Defenses work to prevent full consciousness, but the feeling and the defenses against the feeling leak out into actions, thoughts, physical symptoms, attitudes, and so on.
Smoking, drinking, buying stuff we don't need, sex with strangers, anger aimed at people who don't deserve it, panic attacks, depression, and a thousand other things are among the results and "strategies" of repressed feeling. In every case the engine powering it all is pain of one sort or another. Old trauma is something the system strongly wants to avoid but can't; it doesn't really matter what the details are (except to the person him/herself).
Deeply connecting to whatever experience is being repressed -- not just talking about it or "understanding" it -- defuses both the feeling and the problems it causes. Your system is no longer trying to repress a painful or threatening experience that desperately NEEDS to reach full consciousness, because you HAVE BECOME CONSCIOUS of it. Not just aware of it, but deeply, fully conscious of it. "Message delivered", at last. The four-alarm fire the system needed to respond to has been taken care of.
If you have someone you trust who you can talk to about your feelings, that can be a big help. They need to listen and do almost nothing else; they aren't there to give you advice or anything like that but to just be a supportive presence while you go through a difficult process.
Caveat: as with anything we do (or choose NOT to do), there are dangers in opening up to deep feeling. Of course, not opening up means you don't ever really get better, which has plenty of danger of its own.
Few people ever go through this process, and nearly all forms of therapy focus (whether they admit it or not) on improving the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying problem. Indeed, some things are far better, even far healthier, as defenses than others. Stop smoking (and maybe take up an exercise routine) for example. For some people, that works well enough to be worthwhile -- reducing lung cancer risk is not a bad thing! But there are people for whom swapping harmful symptoms for positive ones (or at least less-harmful ones) isn't enough.
You might be one of those people.
Either way, I wish you well on your journey through life.