sasha_feather | (no subject)

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a different past." --Jack Kornfield

Last week we talked about the healing power of forgiveness and words and feelings that we associated with forgiveness, and we thought about a grievance that we had. This week we talked about ways we can try to let go of our grievance.

*Don't blame others for our feelings. We can choose to feel differently than we do. This is hard and it takes practice! "Practice the experience of happiness despite all that is going on." --the Dalai Lama

*Change our "grievance channel" to more positive channels. We tend to get stuck in repetitive thoughts and feelings, and the goal is to break out of those pathways and patterns. Try focusing on gratitude, beauty, or what you have learned from the situation.

*Don't be angry at yourself. Be compassionate towards yourself and do what you can to lower your feelings of being upset when you are thinking about the grievance.

*Become a Hero of your own story. (I love this one!!) It's not good to feel out of control.

Here is a mantra:
May I be at peace
May I be at peace
May [person X]* be at peace
May everyone be at peace.

*The person responsible for the grievance. Or the universe, or God.

My grievance was my boss and my work situation. I found it hard to wish peace upon my boss because I'm still in the blame and anger stage. But we also did an exercise where we wrote thoughts and feelings associated with the grievance and one of mine was bizarre. She really did act bizarrely towards my illness, as in, not even consistently. Sometimes she would be quite compassionate and other times, completely mean, like sniping about me having the lights lowered in the lab or missing work. Other times she would overshare or say weird things: "Oh, I used to get headaches, but they went away when I got pregnant." She told me and Revis that she'd never been hospitalized, as if it were some point of pride. Instead of saying hello, how are you, she would say meanly, "Is your headache gone?" As if my headache was some great nuisance to her. I think the worst was when she illegally asked me what doctors I saw for what problems, and suggested I go to University Health Services. Uh, yeah, I'll go there if I need A FLU SHOT, thank you! And when she requested 2 weeks advance notice of all my doctor appointments. (Several of my friends suggested I reply requesting 2 weeks advance notice of her being a heinous bitch.) It makes me pretty pissed off now thinking about it, which means, yeah, this is a fairly big grievance that I am hanging onto. And it is all tied up with working and illness which is a pretty big problem.

Something my counselor said was, perhaps your boss was reacting to someone or some experience in her past that she had not dealt with [eta HER GAY SON omg]. And so, suddenly I can become more compassionate to my boss. Maybe she was having some kind of unprocessed emotional shit, maybe her mom was chronically ill, or she had a sister die in childhood, or who knows, and it came up in weird ways when I came into her life. (She has a fear/discomfort about illness... even though I'm a really high-functioning and "normal" looking ill person.) Which sucks for me, but it makes me less angry, it makes it less personal, and it helps me to let it go.

I've blogged about acceptance, directly and indirectly, for a while, so this is a topic that I both like and struggle with.

The instructor said that generally we're not taught to accept our lives "As Is." We tend to focus on problems. Acceptance does not mean that you don't take action, but it does mean that you are living in the moment and shifting your focus so that you are not focusing so much on your problems. I like to think that ideally, when you do take action to change, change is not coming from a place of fear or self-hatred or other negative emotion. It's easier to change when one is motivated by positive emotion.

To me acceptance means not constantly fighting with myself. Not being continually discontent with my life. That's hard when I have the constant wrongness of chronic pain, in addition to other things I'm not satisfied with.

There are two wings to acceptance: Mindfulness and Compassion
Mindfulness--seeing the situation
Compassion--being kind to ourselves and others
Out of Compassion, our best choices appear

Why is acceptance hard? Because we are afraid that acceptance means giving up, or that things will get worse. In reality, acceptance is the gateway to freedom.

We were asked, what has been easy to accept about chronic pain, and what has been more challenging?

At first I could think of nothing that was easy to accept about chronic pain. Everything was hard: talking about it (failing to talk about it). Understanding what was happening to me. Navigating the medical system. Understanding that there was no cure, that it would never go away. Dealing with the massive emotional consequences. Coping with a changing identity-- lately I've been comparing myself to the person I used to be "before I got sick". Dealing with workplace issues. Trying, and rejecting, various treatments, both mainstream and alternative. Failing to get a diagnosis. Failing to talk about it some more.

But, some things have been easy, and valuable-- surprising connections with other people. A greater understanding for other people's situations. Learning about disability theory. Writing about my struggles. Accepting that I needed to do some emotional work, which getting sick forced me to do, but which would have been there anyway. Getting my priorities straight, and re-evaluating my life. Forming deeper and more meaningful friendships.

Some things that other people mentioned as either easy or hard to accept: other people "not getting it," having to take medications, dealing with the constant unknown factors involved with being ill, dealing with new limitations, and living more simply.

I think the identity one has been hardest for me because I largely defined myself through academics and work, and those things have been challenged and limited by my pain (and also by the abusive job). So instead I've been concentrating lately on relationships and hobbies. And even then, I've lost some of my hobbies (Fucking READING). So it's been hard. I still have fandom, thank all that is good and holy-- a major source of joy when at times there is little to be found. And I still have my LJ and analog friends whom I love.

"Accept your life, and you might survive it." -- Robin Hobb, The Liveship
Traders

I'm checking out my acceptance tag and re-reading this article by a chronic migraineur and her acceptance of her condition. HIGHLY recommended reading.

1) I really need sunglasses.

2) Lots of people at class like John Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness and meditation teacher. You can apparently watch some of his presentations on You Tube, and he has lots of books.

3) Anger, sadness, and all emotions are normal. We might demonize these things, but they are just emotions. This gets at not being judgmental/hard on yourself, and focusing on how you react to how your are feeling, what you do with your feelings.

Forgiveness continued

"Unenforceable Rules" create more suffering. They are what we hoped or wanted for, and didn't get. It's not bad to want things, but if you aren't getting those things, then something is not working! And you should loosen your grip on that wanting, a little, because the difference between what you wish for and what is actually happening (or happened) is what is creating the suffering. The instructor said, we live in a John Wayne society: "I WANT IT, I'M GONNA GET IT!" But you don't see John Wayne riding off into the sunset with a TENS unit strapped to his back because of his severe back pain.

So things to remember about forgiveness:
1) It's a process
2) Take responsibility for our own feelings
3) Become the hero of our own story
4) Remember the impersonal nature of suffering-- you may think that something is directed personally at you, even when it isn't; bad things happen in the world
5) Intervene to reduce your state of upset
6) Change to a more positive channel

The "channel" thing confused me (and others) some; we were instructed to write things down under Gratitude, Beauty, Forgiveness, and Love Channels. I took it as a free-association assignment. The instructor said you can do exercises like this to "water the seeds" of forgiveness, love, and gratitude-- they are things to cultivate in your life. I like that metaphor a lot. You can water the seeds of negative things or you can water the seeds of positive things. Of course we all do both every day, mindfulness will help us notice and re-direct.

Gratitude:
LiveJournal, Fandom, Wiscon, Books
Beauty:
Horses, Trees, Flickr
Forgiveness:
Compassion, Letting Go, Receiving forgiveness as well as giving it
Love:
Family, Friends, horses, stories, books, ideas

Some things came up in small groups: an older guy in my group was surprised by my gratitude towards the internet, and how it helps me feel connected to people when I'm alone. All three of us in the group mentioned pets.
One woman who is on disability talked about how hard it is socially when someone asks, "So what do you do?" She floundered. I admit I flounder a bit these days when someone asks me this question, but I don't really care-- I'm self-assured enough to say "nothing" even if it reflects badly on me--I say it with a laugh. And I can employ joking sarcasm. The thing is-- people don't necessarily care what you do, if you work or not. They are just looking for a conversational opener. But! Everyone asks it.