Re: Response to Thoughts about Clearing

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CarolynG

Re: Response to Thoughts about Clearing

Post by CarolynG » Wed Jan 19, 2005 4:58 am

Hi Kerry, Thanks so much for your observations and encouragement. I am getting it! I would like to discuss with you a few thoughts that came to mind as I was reading your responses. n Re: it's the communication of [emotions] that releases the charge. I noticed that, for me, putting a particular emotions into words is the hardest part. n n I believe that the reason I put myself in the middle of animosity between my parents and my boyfriend is because I am angry at my parents for never having supported me trying to create positive relationships with boys, and ultimately, men. My parents have their own relationship issues, which I feel directly affected how I relate to other people. I read some of the Gabby's responses pages, the one in particular about the boy who was unsure if to ask the fathter for his girlfriend's hand in marriage. Gabbys response included an explanation about the dynamics of courtship and how parent-child relationships affect marital communications. I cried after reading this article because I realized how much it hurt to realize that I knew something was wrong with my relationship with my parents when I was young, and it has affected my ability to form relationships with men (with women, too) up to this day. I am so sad because I have always wanted a loving partner and children of my own, and I don't. I just didn't understand what was going on, and I fought with them so much as a child, trying to figure out what the problem was. I realize now that I was acting out the frustration that I felt in not knowing how to communicate openly. Now, in my family, I am the only one who "can't get along with everyone" and in talking with my parents, they tell me that I am their only child (out of four) that seems to have so many problems, who can't "forget the past." I think they are abusive, and this is where I learned the pattern of abuse. What I feel most angry about is that they think that I choose boyfriends that are not good enough for me. I feel I am just choosing men who are like my father, and men like my father are choosing me, and my job is to figure out how to stop the abusive pattern, and the abuse that is repeated in my relationships will end. Oh, I just realized that I keep "running back" to them for their approval whenever I am in a relationship. When they do not approve, I begin to take on an adversarial position, defiantly staying with my boyfriend despite how they feel about him. I notice that I do not allow myself the position of initial approval or disapproval, rather putting that decision in their hands, thus setting up the situation for a showdown. Upon reading your response, I remembered a situation when I went out one of my first dates with a boy. I think I was 14 or 15. I took my little brother and his friend with us to a fair. I think I was given a curfew of 10pm, but I ignored it. I think I told this boy that it would be ok if we were home later than expected. I don't remember if I even told him I had to be home at a certain time. I think I didn't, because I think I remember him asking if it was going to be okay that it was getting late. It took us so long to find the fair, that I wanted to at least enjoy some of the rides, so I said it would not be a problem if we stayed. When the evening ended, he drove us up to the curb of my house. As we arrived, my father flew out of the front door, and yelled with such anger at Mike sitting in the front seat of his VW van. I was so embarrassed by my father's behavior, and angry, too, that he yelled at Mike, when all of it was really my fault, and he didnt' give any of us a chance to explain ourselves. I was ashamed that I didn't have the courage to stop my father from yelling at him. I was also afraid of my father's anger, so I crept away from the situation into the house. I don't remember what happened after that. I remember that I avoided Mike anywhere I went, never having another conversation with him again. I am angry with my father because he had never even met Mike before this date, and was so quick to yell at him and put blame on him, and my father assumed the role of punisher without having established any sort of role as authoritarian. My mother was the only father and mother I knew. I think she was the one who said I could go on a date and gave me the curfew. I don't think she ever met Mike, either. I was just let out with boys without them first wanting to meet them. I am angry that they weren't more interested in who I wanted to date. I found out later that the father of the little boy who was with us that night called and yelled at my father because his son was out and my father didn't know where his son was. That's why my father yelled at Mike, not because he was angry about us not coming home, but because he looked like an uncaring father in front of another father who was more caring and watchful over his children. Ok, that's the showdown I try and recreate with each boyfriend. n n RE: "I write about my boyfriend, Johnny alot" Is this relatioship working for you? Succinctly, It is and it isn't. I was dating another person when I met Johnny at work. I felt trapped in my other relationship, and I liked Johnny, and I realized that Johnny might just be the person I needed to help me get away from this other relationship. I became intimate with Johnny right away. I knew that he was separated from his wife, and had a small child. I also knew that he had quit his job at our company to move to Florida. After spending a week of time together, Johnny told me that he decided that he was not going to move to Florida, that, with me in his life, he was going to stay in New York because now he had emotional support so that he could stay in his daughter's life. Reading that back to myself, I realize that was extrememly presumptuous from his end. At this point in my life, I did not have a good relationship with my parents, I wanted to get away from Kevin, my older boyfriend at the time, so I was desperate myself for a cause to put myself into. Johnny and I spent most of our free time together. Well, most of my fee time. I was working-he was not. I believed him until 3, 4, 5 months went by. I then believed he was depressed, and just needed some emotional support until he could find something. He was still separated, and I told him if he had any interest still in his wife, to let me know, and I would leave the relationship. This was a lie, because by being in the relationship was affecting his relationship with his wife in other ways. So time went on, and I helped Johnny foster a relationship with his daughter. We acted like a family, although I always wondered if I was just a substitute for his wife. We started having fights about Johnny not working, Johnny not getting a divorce. I felt jealous of his relationship with his wife, because I felt like I was second to her in importance. I still argued with my parents, and could not give up Johnny, because then I felt that they would be "right" yet again, and I couldn't let them feel this way, as it would only reinforce how "right" their negative opinion about Johnny was, and how all of their opinions regarding my life are "right" and by process of elimiation, all of my opinions that differ from theirs are "wrong." I couldn't have this happen, and so I have been trying to work things out with Johnny since, to see how I have contributed to our problems. We have been together for 5 years. I want to be with him, and I don't want to be with him.

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Kerry
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Re: Re: Response to Thoughts about Clearing

Post by Kerry » Wed Jan 19, 2005 8:13 am

Hi CeCe: n n Re: “I noticed that, for me, putting a particular emotions into words is the hardest part.“ Yes, we are not taught to communicate from our experience so we’ve become addicted to communicating from our mind. For example: Someone says, “You’re stupid.” We reply with our mind, “No I’m not” or, “You are.” Little do we know that that remains an incomplete for life because we didn’t know enough to tell the truth. The truth is, my experience is, “That’s doesn’t feel good” or, “I’m having an upset.” or “That sure is uncomfortable” or “I’m confused,” or “That hurts.” Consequently we don’t experience life, we spend our time in our mind trying to survive life. We simply aren’t home (in the now, present) most of the time.n n Re: “I believe that the reason I put myself in the middle of animosity between my parents and my boyfriend is because I am angry at my parents for never having supported me trying to create positive relationships with boys, and ultimately, men.” Nope that not it. For one, you can’t get to the truth by lumping them together. And, what you’re looking for is an incident, a specific conversation with your mom, and another one with your dad, that did not end in mutual satisfaction. It would be the first time you got angry with each. What you’ve stated is your mind’s reason. Reasons hide the truth. Your mind doesn’t want you to know the truth (it has a lot invested in remembering what happened as a lie) so it invents very reasonable reasons to keep you from blowing your mind. As long as you have this same story, this drama, each morning you give the mind something to do, it gets to reconstruct the world as you left it last night. Once you know the truth, that you are the cause, you’ll have to give up blaming them. n n Re: “Gabbys response … I cried after reading this …” I got it. Thank you. “I realize now that I was acting out the frustration that I felt in not knowing how to communicate openly.” If you have cable TV you’d love “The Dog Whisperer.” 99% of dog behavior problems are a dog’s communication that there’s something wrong. It manifests itself as frustration. In lay terms it simply drive the dog crazy. Most dog owners discover that they’ve been treating their dog as a child/human instead of leading the dog, as would a pack leader. n n Re: “Ok, that's the showdown I try and recreate with each boyfriend.” While your father’s anger was, as “Elizabeth Kubler Ross, On Death and Dying, said, genuine and appropriate anger lasts about 10 seconds but here it is still being dramatized today. That incident is certainly a number one but it’s not the number one we are looking for with each parent. We’re looking for is what must have happened between you and you mother for you to choose to hurt her feelings knowing she let you go on the date. You set her up to get caught for something else. A child who is whole and complete has respect for his/her parents. We know that it was irresponsible of your mother, and father to trust you to keep a curfew. Goodness knows you were dramatizing your disrespect and anger in many ways with other irresponsibile behaviors. You simply were not ready for dating, you did not deserve to date yet. You enrolled a date in thwarting your parents. That boy has yet to recover from the incident. You are right about it being unconscionable for your parent to not insist on meeting your friends/dates. My step daughter was so embarrassed to invite her boyfriend to the house to meet me, knowing I would have my “pregnant/college talk” with both of them that she (in her universe, from her point of view) masterminded her mother’s divorce (a model of an amicable divorce). She had been damaged prior to the marriage.n n Re: “and was so quick to yell at him and put blame on him,” It’s possible that you live from the decision that spontaneous anger is wrong, based upon a decision to not be like your father, based upon that incident. In other words, the mind, to survive, adopts the behavior of the perceived winner in an incomplete incident. In this case you were the moral winner. He was wrong and you knew it. It, the mind, either wants to be like or not be like the other. I suspect you don’t ever want to look like, be like, or act like, your dad that evening. Where he blew it was he didn’t sit you down before going to bed and say, “I get I was abusive. And. …. And …, huggy hug.” An enlightened father would have gotten to source of the disrespect.n n Re: “I was ashamed that I didn't have the courage to stop my father from yelling at him.” Yes, I get this. My sense is that this incomplete surfaces in opportunities for you to step forward and prevent abuse or an injustice. You’ll notice yourself opting for survival, running away, until you press through the uncomfortableness and communicate appropriately in support of what’s right. n n Re: “I was dating another person when I met Johnny at work. I felt trapped in my other relationship, and I liked Johnny, and I realized that Johnny might just be the person I needed to help me get away from this other relationship. I became intimate with Johnny right away.” I’m confused. Did you tell your other boyfriend that you had met Johnny and found him to be attractive? Were you intimate with Johnny while you were still dating the other and without him knowing it? I ask because it’s possible that you enrolled Johnny in thwarting (hurting) a brother (h’mm, a replay of Mike hurting your parents). Relationships in which one unethically steals another (before the relationship is mutually agreed upon to be complete) are ultimately doomed. From your perspective you are ripe for another woman stealing, if not Johnny, then the next, from you so that you get to feel what it must have been like. The same goes for Johnny.n n That you can’t see that your relationship with Johnny is detrimental to your aliveness, that it thwarts and disappoints, and invalidates your parents, indicates that you have too many other unacknowledged withholds, perps, lies, and abuses in your mind. If I were your parent I’d schedule a weekend-long clearing with you. Underneath all your thoughts is a bright intelligent woman who knows that Johnny needs a tremendous amount of therapy. It’s just that you can’t see if for the trees. What you call love is not it and for every 24 hours you hold on to him you keep him stuck. He hasn’t even begun to address his abuse to his first wife. He’ll have no choice but to treat you the same way.n n Please do another set of clearings before posting here again. Once you're clear things will simply clear up. n n BTW: Your clearings have been excellent. You have an excellent grasp of the process. Keep up the good work.n n With aloha, and much appreciation,n n Kerryn n PS. It might be of value for you to ask how your parents met.

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