Confused, Kudos! Changing the meaning you attach to past events is a great strategy! Danielle, Bilingual Health Educator

hi confused, I was talking to a friend yesterday who has a generalized anxiety thing. And she was so discouraged that she hated the notion of letting go... she thought it to mean let go of any and all emotional attachements. What I explained to her is that right now she is holding on to the apron strings with every quamtum of energy to be absolutly sure her son and teen-daughter make NO mistakes. He has to contine to love and worry about he children.. that will never stop; not when they are 18, 21,45, nor 60! But she has to let go of the controle she wants. Her daughter is battling her mom every millimetre of the way to adulthood and it is making both sick! My friend has to find the confidence in herself that she did her absolute very best to raise her children... if tomorrow she were hit by a bus and died... he daughter would have the basic training to "make-it" in life. So I am d'accord with the notion that the past makes us, there are all sorts for lessons that the past can still give us. But perhaps, the use of the past to reason and prove ou current negativity has an error in logic there. (Danielle, Brenda, moderators, do you see what thinking error might be closest?) We are not the same person that we were. We change with each challenge! And it why I NEVER look at myself as returning to square one. I can not return to that helpless, hopeless ignornant moment. -and thank goddess that we cannot- You know when we want a new habit to stick we need to repete the new pattern 21 times for it to become a habit... so after hearing the "let-go" phrase different ways you have finally hit that MAGIC! number B I N G O !! Of the group gave you the support and security for you to look inside yourself for a place that was ready to accept the notion....

So, I've been thinking about this concept of letting go. For me, sometimes concepts have to be presented from a variety of perspectives or with different wording before I cotton on, and I was presented just the other day with the clicking perspective, I think, about letting go. I thought I would share, since we'd been talking about it. I truly think that I remember every single mistake or gaffe that I've ever made. And then there's the whole abusive marriage bit, and still having to interact with this man because he's father to my daughters. And the shame of divorce and wanting my family's validation for my decision there (as if there was really any other decision, but we're talking emotions here, not rationalities). Oh, and that nasty boss I had when I finally went over the edge. I know, and people keep telling me, that I need to let go of all this stuff... but how? Forgiving myself and forgiving them has never resonated with me -- perhaps because some part of me believes that I deserve/d it all. I've tried mental and physical burden boxes (feels too much like a box full of unfinished business), tried visualizing giving this crap back to the person who gave it to me, tried various exercises in releasing my anger... Accepting it felt too much like resigning myself to it... I tried to focus on the lessons I'd learned, and I tried ignoring it and just focusing on me and my future, but I still feel it there (it's actually a heavy sphere, located in the upper back of the right side of my head -- weird, eh?) Anyway, at this Mindful CBT course I've just started, the facilitator was talking about overall agenda and said something about the importance of looking at our histories -- you can't just make them go away, he said, as they are an integral part of who we are. And I realized that was what I'd been trying to do: push it all away so that it wasn't in me anymore. But I am who I am not [i]despite [/i] these things, but, in part, [i]because[/i] of these things. And even though I may not be in the best space at this point in my life, the parts of me that got me into or out of those situations or made those mistakes or gaffes are parts, mostly, that I actually like and am proud of. I think that what I need to do is to apply CBT to change the way I think about these things, so that I can absorb them into myself... into my multitude of other experiences that have shaped me as a person. Hmmm... I want to say honour them as key life experiences, but I'm not there yet. As I said at the beginning, I do realize that this is probably what people have been trying to tell me all along, but I obviously needed a rare and specific combination of words in order for it to get through. :confuse: Thanks for being there and allowing me to express myself.