The Feeling Soul

The past few weeks have been particularly difficult leaving me feeling quite depressed. While at the bookstore to get gifts for my daughters birthday I happened along this book written by Mark Linden O'Meara, 'The Feeling Soul'. I bought it after reading the first paragraph in the introduction:

Quote: In our quest to heal from troubles many of us have heard that we should 'move on and let go.' Although the advice seems appropriate, many of us do not know how to let go. In some way we feel stuck, knowing what we want, but unsure how to proceed or what even the true problem might be. Although you may have an intuitive sense of yourself that is untouched by hurt, trauma and fear, you are unsure of how to achieve this sense on a daily basis. You somehow hope that you can rediscover a sense of childlike joy in adult living. Many of you have been hurt and are surviving yet there seems to be something missing in your life.

It's hard for me to express myself. While I've experienced hurt and trauma I think what I most need to 'get over' is that I inflicted hurt and trauma by some of the choices I made. I want to learn how to take and accept responsibility for the past and be mindful of it but to live in the present.

Another paragraph in the book was: There is an Irish proverb that says 'You don't plow a field by turning it over in your mind.' While some evaluation is necessary, too much rumination can lead you into a spiral of self-absorption rather than being able to see the world around you.' I live in the past and it keeps me from everything. To heal my relationships I have to heal myself.

Not Communicating Well

I feel like I'm not communicating well lately. Like everything in my mind is so thought out and well formed and yet, when I say it, the words come out shadowed with subtleties and implications, darkened by uncertainty, tainted. It's like my mouth is intentionally twisting things, leaving them open to interpretation, rather than directly saying what was intended. So, I find myself being misunderstood.

Those are not my words. I don't remember where I got them but I was amazed at how accurately they described how I often feel.

Regrets

I messed up. I made poor choices and it affected my kids. It was a long time ago but you know how sometimes you just can't seem to get beyond something and it goes round and round and you are hard on yourself but you keep trying to get past it but it has become a part of you and it affects your life and your relationships and you want to make it stop but you can't because it keeps popping up just when you think you can beat it and move on and intellectually you know it's up to you and no one else can do it for you and so you keep trying and just when you think you might be getting there you get slapped in the face and you come right back to where you always end up only now you start to feel sorry for yourself which is somehow better than the guilt because now there's nothing you can do and it's not your fault and you can just be sad which keeps you out of the game until you get mad and self righteous and end up doing and saying things that you don't mean and before you know it the guilt sets back in. 

That sounds like 'poor me' or so I've been told. I'm supposed to 'get over it'. How do you get beyond guilt and regret that becomes so much a part of you that you allow and even expect to be treated with disrespect and coldness. They say that you do the best you can with what you know and that when you know better you will do better. Intellectually I think I did the best I could with what I had to deal with at the time. Emotionally I have a deep sadness that creeps into every aspect of my life. There is no value in having someone forgive you if you can't forgive yourself. I know I have to do that. Intellectually.