Wednesday, February 2, 2011

a gold nugget for you..

okay, i think i may have just found my new favorite book.
i am flipping out over this thing.
i'm only on page 30 and i just bought two more copies.
'when fear meets love'

here's something i think a whole lotta women can relate to...

i was taught from the very beginning to always, always,
always think about others. this included when i was 'wronged.'
sometimes i think of some of that stuff and i just want to
spit. i can't believe how much of 'me' was set aside in the
name of understanding others.

i have known that, and have been workin' with that for a long
time.

but here's another angle to all that.

the author's talking about how we reacted to things that happened
when we were kids. how we may have lived in a place where we
had to repress things to get by. and that we then may have
'committed to the trick of minimizing the impact of events so
that you never do scream anything out, no matter how painful.'

and so now, we use subdued tidy thoughts like:
'aferall, my father worked hard so he could not really be present
in an emotional way....'

'the mind knows about those explanations but the body does not.
every cell in your body felt abandoned.'

'the scream still wants to happen and its repression makes
your body less flexible, less graceful, more tense.'

'so now, when things happen 'all i have to do is come up with
a story that explains it away: he really did not mean to
betray me.'

okay...so is this stuff hitting you guys? cause it sure hits me!

and here's the gold nugget....

'when something occurs, i can attend to the impact before
the intention in the mind of the other person.'

read that again.

and then this....
'when the other person makes an excuse about something that
he or she has done to explain it away, you might say,
'i want to hear what you have to say, but first i want
to tell you about the impact it had on me.'

i about fell out of my bed reading that.

'impact takes precedence over intention every time.'

to me, this is the stuff of healing.
and i couldn't wait to put it out here........

3 comments:

Terri Swain said...

I teach sexual harassment awareness and avoidance. One of my most powerful points in that training is that INTENT is NOT AS IMPORTANT as IMPACT to the other person. This confirmed.

Susan said...

Wow... good stuff. I think I'm going to have to get a copy.

sarah said...

LOVE this. I'm currently sifting through what's mine and what I'm feeling that belongs to another person, and man, it's tough. (Not sure how that relates to your post, but somehow fits in my mind.) Jamming out in my car is always a great substitute for screaming - it totally works too.