Spit it out!
Whether you purge or vomit involuntarily, things don’t usually taste good the second time around. At best they leave a sour taste in your mouth. At worst your world momentarily morphs into an acid burn site. There’s an old saying “better out than in” — not so applicable to purging but often to the upchuck that happens with illness or food your body rejects because it’s too strong or just wrong for you. But what about the negative emotions we rechew? Some of us try not to go there because we want to avoid their accompanying burn. We don’t want to retaste the sourness of rejection or other emotional pains.
I used to tell my students that most people who are taken against their will end up dead. Studies show that if you stay passive you usually die. You have to try to escape. You also have to accept that you will very likely be harmed as you flee. The trick is to do your best to control how and where you get injured. Vital organs? No. Your head? No. Legs? No, you need those to run away. Hands are also handy but you can sacrifice one arm. You can do a lot with two legs and an arm. You can patch that arm up later, especially if you are hurt in the meaty upper portion of your arm. The point here is that there is a cost to changing the horrible situation you find yourself in.
We can also be captives of the anger, sorrow, and resentment we feel about past hurts. They can feel as impossible to escape as a very scary, ski-masked human who has taken us against our will. We need to revisit what happened to us in the past in order to escape the loop of underlying negative emotions we carry from those experiences. These negative emotions not only weigh us down, even if we attempt to hide them on a high shelf in our hall closet, but they also invite us to see our current world experiences through their distorted lens.
It can feel unpleasant to review what happened to us in the past. It’s easy to begin to drown in the pit of belief that things will always turn out the way they did before. I like to swim around in that pit, pull myself out, and then lie down beside it to catch my breath. Once I’ve calmed myself I begin to notice what’s clinging to me from my swim. I turn myself into something between a scientist and an archeologist. I look at each thing I choose to focus on — sometimes there’s a lot sticking to me and I have to get picky — and give it a chance to provide useful data. Why did this thing that happened in the past hurt me so much? What did I believe at the time that I now know or at least suspect is not true? What do I know about the person who hurt me that I didn’t know or didn’t acknowledge at the time? How am I already stronger or better informed in my life now than I was then? How can I use this information to not repeat history, to make different choices? A good therapist can help us do this. I find it can also be a very fruitful DIY project.
Cinse Bonino
2023
