Brave Enough To Be Bliss

So, no matter what I “wanted” to do to control my behavior, I was ultimately going to fail because my brain was stuck in the experiences from the past that were not safe. My brain, still believing I was unsafe, then operated my body in a protection mode from those unsafe experiences. (And keep in mind, there are a variety of “unsafe” physical and emotional experiences we have in life at any age and conceptually this would apply to any of them.) Until I was willing to embrace fear and bravely forge ahead, verbally discussing and feeling all the feelings and impact of those past experiences, my brain would remain trapped in the past operating my body in the past, and there was nothing I was going to be able to do to override the brain’s primary function to keep me safe. This is the part I’m referencing at the end of Section I, Chapter I when I say: But even with these endlessly available resources, until I was willing to confront my past, take responsibility for my present and learn all I could about myself, these resources and the tools they taught didn’t make the desired lasting impact. It’s a natu ral tendency for humans to avoid pain, want quick fixes and blame others for their problems, but I found the most genuine and enduring solution was and always had been within me. I really, really didn’t like that part. There were too many things within me that were hard and painful, and I had been avoiding it my whole life. As much as I wanted to disbelieve the experts when it was something I feared, didn’t want to face, or thought I was some sort of exception to, there truly was no one outside of myself who could ever make me feel fully loved, whole and purposeful enough if I did not feel that way about myself. And most everything I did searching outside myself for someone or something to give me the answer was generally wasted time and oftentimes led me to even more pain. Searching anywhere but within did not ultimately bring me what I was seeking. It sucked, as you will learn in the following pages, and I fought it for years. Nothing else was going to ease the ultimate pain I experienced in my relationships until I was willing to fully walk into the pain of my past experiences because only then was my brain going to be convinced I was no longer in danger and be able to release my body from its confinement. With where I was in my complete and utter self- hatred, I sure as hell wasn’t going to go to those places for myself. I hadn’t for 50 years so nothing was going to change that…until I thought it was the only way to save my daughter. At the time, I thought maybe if I could show her I wasn’t a hypocrite by going to talk with someone and work through my stuff, she might be able to work through hers and that would be enough to keep her alive. That’s how I could protect her from suicide, from death. That motivating force isn’t really very noble at all though because when I peel back all the layers, the motivating force behind all of that I just said, was actually for me to avoid pain. I was scared she was going to kill herself, which was an unbearable thought for me, so I was desperate enough to control her situation that I was willing to finally do my own work on myself. My biggest fear truly was losing her, but right behind it was facing my own past. The bottom line, though, was whatever it took to get me to go there didn’t matter, all that mattered was that I did. When I could look at the brain as simply an organ within my human body, like any other organ, I was able to view my behaviors as something separate from my identity which I refer to as my heart and soul. In my dumbed down way of thinking about it, if my unhealed brain is the heartbeat of my central nervous system then it only makes sense that some of my behaviors are really messed up. But that is very different than intentionally passing along or intentionally behaving in ways to hurt another individual. Knowingly and unknowingly, life and people did terrible things to me, and it was up to me to reverse the damage. It’s not fair, it’s just life. And I’m being honest here, and life…is…hard.

So now going back to the nervous system quote that started the chapter, I was always very offended when I heard terms like generational trauma. First of all, I clearly didn’t understand it, but I wasn’t even open to

252