Our emotional suffering on past events will end when we decide we don’t want the struggle anymore.
Until then, our unconscious thoughts will continue to play out the same negative patterns that create the initial panic when we think of past events, particularly the ones we have had no control over.
I’ve come to believe that it is often the deceit of the event that holds us back, not the event itself. When we come to understand that, our perceptions and attitude should change for good, particularly when we know it's not something we could have changed.
As for carrying other people’s baggage and getting ill through the process, well that isn’t worth the stress. Our life is worth more than owning and carrying someone else's guilt.
You are absolutely right about carrying other people's baggage.
In my own experience this can make us ill and this is especially wrong when the person involved doesn't care about addressing the issue themselves; but is happy to let someone else take the resultant stress instead of them.
Our baggage is ours to own.
Your last paragraph sums up your response beautifully. Yes 'our baggage is ours to own.'
Most of my life has been spent carrying other people's baggage! It has taken me a long time to finally begin to sort through a lot of it, to figure out what is their's and what is mine. I also feel like the baggage has been compounded over generations and I'm probably one of the first ones who decided to do something about it.
My daughter has wanted to know more about the family history, which I have been hesitant to dig too much for obvious reasons. She has already had enough to deal with in her life with her CP, but knowing where she comes from seems to be helping her to figure out where it is she would like to be going.
I'm searching for the right word to describe what my position was in my family and my life but it escapes me right now! All I do know is that carrying so much guilt, shame and remorse has been torturous, to say the least. People wonder why I'm not very social but it's due to the fact that I tend to take on their baggage whether I want to or not.
When it is forced upon you as a child and made to be your role in life, it becomes almost second nature. What kind of parents do this to their own child? I would have rather been physically beaten because those wounds heal, but emotional and spiritual ones never do.
It's no wonder I feel like I was a priest in a past life! People tend to talk openly to me and share their life stories even when I try not to give the impression that I really care. This has happened most of my life, even when I was a child, which a lot of people don't believe, but I was there, so I should know.
Eventually you don't know what your feelings really are and what everyone else's are. I have had to learn how to dissociate, which means you feel nothing at all and that isn't a very good thing.
My focus now has been to learn how to feel and become a human being!
I couldn't agree more Randy. What parent does that to a child?
I would say a parent who already comes from a dysfunctional background, who doesn't know how to parent any differently. We tend to parent what we know. Dysfunctional behaviour can make us stronger because we have to be to get through it.
You have learned through your parents' mismanagement of you how to do things differently now for your daughter. I have learned from my own upbringing how to change things in my life for my own family and although it's hard to often remove the baggage, being determined to make a difference helps.
The stronger we become, the more at peace we are with our past, the more all of this becomes a thing of the past. I was determined not to let history repeat itself and that's what we need to do.
We cannot change our past or our families, but we can change so that we get to live in the present without us feeling too badly about the past.