Healing: Balancing the Old with the New.
It’s a strange thing, to reach back into the past of your mind, and try to bring forward those things that should have matured and changed, but didn’t because they were “trauma-locked” by events beyond your control and understanding.
One part of your mind, the part that feels ancient and weary, is trying to control the other side of your brain, wherein lives an angry 15 year-old teenager, or a frustrated 5 year old, desperate to scream in pain and despair.
To tell you the truth, it’s tiring, being on this emotional rollercoaster.
And while I can see that it’s vitally important that the process go forward, I must admit to having days where I’m so weary of trying to find a balance between these two very disparate aspects of my soul.
Because in truth, I need the child inside of me to grow up, and to do so soon, because some of the skills that I need are locked away in there with him.
Which makes functioning as an adult a little tricky sometimes.
The child portions of my soul control some very important parts of growing up, like facing responsibilities, maintaining good boundaries, self discipline and proper self care. Do you ever find yourself struggling with those aspects – I know I do, and I know what a drain it can be on my life and my family. Of the many facets of my soul that I question, these are some of the hardest.
Because these weaknesses, born of wounds from so long ago, create more wounds going forward, making it harder to heal. One of the greatest truths I ever discovered was that it’s really hard to heal on an emotional battlefield.
Healing takes time, peace, kindness, and a significant absence of judgment, especially when that judgment is coming from yourself.
Which means you have to learn to think about yourself outside of your failings.
To some of us, that’s a real challenge. Trained from childhood by the voices that we heard outside us, that eventually became real inside of us, we judge ourselves with a lack of mercy that we would apply to no-one else.
Yet while we hold ourselves in the stricture of shame, and the restriction of hatred, we are never going to be able to stand the pains that growth and progress exacts from our souls.
And so we become unbalanced, as the old and the new conflict in their desire for growth against the fear of change.
Sometimes it feels like I am being torn apart, as I face my weaknesses day after day. Trying to find the balance of forgiveness for that which I am not, against that which I desire to be.
I think all of us have these juxtapositions in our souls to some degree, yet I cannot find rest within my heart, as much as I crave and require it.
For although I feel that there is progress, it is painfully slow, and I don’t have that much time to spare anymore.
Have you ever felt this way, like you are trying to both mature the parts that were held back while meeting the demands of the aged weary soul that hungers for peace and quiet in a time of neither. If so, I’m curious as to how you achieved it, and still managed to live with yourself.
Because it’s even harder than I thought it would be.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings