not responsible for your own pain.

Meaning: Not responsible that the feeling occurs. How you *deal* with it? Yes, of course - *that* you’re responsible for. But the fact that the feeling happened? No. That would be like blaming the check engine lights on your dashboard for your engine failing. Feelings are just information.

I’ll try to explain my thinking here.

For example:
If someone steps on your toe, hard, and you scream, “OWWWwwwwww!!!!” in pain, and glare at them angrily,

who’s responsible for the pain and anger

This is an interesting question, because, as *I* understand, *our* culture says:

Thou shalt not ‘blame’ others for anything that happens to you, for that makes you a

weak, pathetic,victim,

which is, of course (in *this* culture) and outcome to be avoided at *all* costs, because, if you don’t? You’ll be dealing with the shame and ignominy of having failed to

suck it up

on top of everything else. So in addition to whatever *else* you may have al*ready* been feeling – pain, fear, anger – you’re expected to swallow this as well, this – punishment? for having

dared to have feelings in front of other people.

***
I find I’m feeling angry as I type this – not rage, exactly, but more like outrage – that insulted feeling that somebody’s *pulled* something on you – a trick, a shenanigan, a ruse. And that I fucking fell for it, all those years ago, as a child, and once that die has been cast? Pretty tough, it seems, to persuade people that you’re no longer interested in playing that role, and that you want to be treated like an actual human being now.

But here goes.

***
So I’m going to posit, that when you feel that stab of pain and anger, the fierce reaction to having been hurt, that you *use* those feelings exactly the way they were designed to be used: To protect yourself from further injury.

So, ideally, you yell, “Ow!” at a volume level and intensity n direct proportion to the level of pain you’re feeling, which, one *hopes*, is actually in proportion to how hard the person stepped on you – I mention this because, in *my* experience, if I’ve got *other* ‘unexpressed’ pain that needs to come out, it will sometimes ‘piggyback’ or sort of opportunistically ‘latch on’ to something less – complicated? such as having your toe stepped on. Kind of like, how you might be mad about 27 *other* things that happened that day, but it’s the guy who cuts you off in traffic who gets the business end of all that rage, and you chase him down the road shaking your fist and screaming at the top of your lungs, cursing him – effectively venting all the rage, shame, anger and frustration that may have accumulated from earlier events.

So that’s obvious, right?

But what’s *not* so obvious to *me* is, why do we hold the rage and pain in in the first place? I mean, I *know* there are ‘social rules’ about all this stuff, but isn’t ‘don’t rock other people’s boat’ kind of a stupid way to solve problems?

Because what you end *up* with, in this so-called ‘civilization’, is a bunch of edgy, cranky folks who are ready to go off half-cocked at a moment’s notice like a hair-triggered landmine. How is *that* a good situation? I’m not seein’ it, myself.

So here’s my proposal: That when you *feel* pain or anger, you *express* it, to the best of your ability, right at the moment it happens, doing your *best* to only express as much anger and pain as is actually *proportionate* to the ‘cause’.

***
The reason I bring all this up is because, after *all* this work – all these years of digging and searching and seeking, volume upon volume of written correspondence and internal whatsit and what have you, there’s *still* this sort of – lump? of unexpressed something, some combination of fear and pain, that I can’t quite get hold of, coax out into the light where I can help it.

And maybe? Maybe, I just have to let it *sit* there, in the darkness of my gut, and *fester* for a while longer, let it feel *safe*, ok to just be.

Maybe that’s the problem? Is that I keep trying to get *rid* of it, like it’s something bad and dark and shameful, something horrible, rotten and detestable?

And maybe that echoes all the reasons why it got stuck there in the first place, because nobody would allow it to just *be*, including *me*?

The other part is where I simply *recognize* that, hey, *I* didn’t do the things that cause the pain, shame, fear and anger in the first place – they’re things that *happened* to me, or that somebody *did* to me, either intentionally or unintentionally.

When one of those ‘old pieces of business’ comes up these days, I have a *better* shot of knowing a) How much is old, and how much new, and b) What to do about it.

So I’ve come a loooong way, and what remains is to be

patient
kind
compassionate

with this frightened infant part of myself who still huddles in my gut, at the core of my being, still waiting, patiently, for someone to pick her up and care for her, offer her comfort, encouragement and tender concern for her happiness and well-being. I guess, for *now*, that person’s gotta be *me*, doing the best I can, with a little help now and then from any friends who are willing and able to help me with such things.

The point about ‘not being responsible for my own pain?’ It’s like the hug thing – theses are relational issues, and thus, in *my* opinion, need to be *dealt* with ‘relationally’. In other words, the pain doesn’t just go away by itself – it *needs* to be expressed and comforted.

And if you *have* to do it by yourself, because you have no other choice?

Then so be it, *everybody* does what they gotta do.

But, *ideally*? There’d be someone there to *help* you with it, just as there should have been someone helping you with it when you were little.

So there, that’s my theory, Needs some work, pretty rough, but it’s a starting place.