quote:

My core hurt would be feeling as if I am not good enough. Along with that I feel unappreciated

Melissa..

that is the core hurt. Or as we would call it.. the feeling of unloveableness. The rest of it is how your H is tapping it.

quote:

so is that what I was supposed to do? I still feel angry, maybe even more so now becuase I have thought about how much it hurts me.

yes.. I'm sure you do.

Now do the meditation part...this takes a little time to understand and incorporate into ones' thinking.

Trust me.. there's a method to our madness..

Loui

Okay, maybe I didn't do it right, but all I could think the whole time I was listening to the meditation was "what does this have to do with feeling less angry with H?" I have never been very good at meditation though, so it is probably my own issue. I can't seem to shut my mind off enough for meditation to work. Is there any other information on dealing with anger that doesn't involve meditation?

BTW Penny you do have an exceedingly soothing voice, even if I didn't do the meditation right.

Melissa sweety
meditating takes practice
and lots of it

after a while you will find yourself doing mini-meditations in the grocery store


well
not quite like that


keep at it and be gentle on yourself
patience young grasshopper

and not only does Penny have a soothing voice
but eveything about her is soothing

she is a great great person

Hey Melissa..

The first thing I believe Penny is trying to have you do is concentrate and focus on you.

This has nothing to do with your H or the situation at this particular moment in time. This is all about YOU! It will however be very important for you in dealing with these things in awhile..

This is an exercise in grounding yourself. Getting to a place that doesn't hurt so much or isn't so angry when dealing with your H & your situation.

And meditation takes awhile to get used to doing.

And yes.. Penny is very soothing

Loui

I understand the need to become grounded, and I can do that for a little while. For a couple of hours at a time I can quit focusing on our situation and just focus on something important to me. Like my son's birthday. I am excited about it as long as I quit thinking about how awkward it will be with both of our families there and all the issues we are dealing with. I love to entertain and put on a dinner for people. I love to plan things like this and I am enjoying it especially this time becuase of the reason for the cook-out.

I am also working on making myself feel better about me, through trying to make time to work out and I am trying to lose weight. I am doing these things becuase I want to and because they are important to me. I have spent so much time reading, just for the sake of reading, becuase I enjoy it, since I moved out. I am doing things for me, and trying to ground myself in me without the angry feelings. The problem is that every time I turn around they are there. It's like they come out of nowhere. I am so tired of feeling ambushed by my own angry thoughts.

I'm no expert, but I, too, am in the early stages of working on myself through protection phase and dealing with anger, etc. One thing that I say to myself that helps me to feel better is "this is as bad as it's going to be". I try to observe the painful feelings and think about them like a bruise or something that (although it is painful) will inevitably and slowly fade over time. What I think can be so frightening is the feeling that one's pain might not ever go away. The one thing I really believe in is that no matter what, my situation today will NOT be the same in a month, or two, or three. Things will change. So far, my belief has already been born out.

Strength and healing,
rlana

rlana,
Thank you for your kind words. My fear I guess is that I will never stop feeling this anger and hurt and fear. And I am not sure that this is as bad as it will ever be. I don't know that I have gotten through the worst part of it, becuase I don't know that it isn't going to happen all over again. But maybe remembering to say that phrase when it gets bad will help me deal with it, until that bout of anger is over. It is definitely worth a try. Thanks again for the help.

Hi Melissa! This isn't an icky-gooey-sticky meditation. It's a straightforward way of retraining your brain away from ingrained responses that aren't as useful as you need your brain to be. It's about as magical as practicing the piano (and follows exactly the same principles -- repetition trains you!).

So, I can see how you would wonder about stopping being angry being related. Here's a simple outline of what we're getting at. When you get angry, it's important to:

1. Recognize the anger, and name it for what it is.
2. Recognize the underlying emotions (not good enough, powerless, unlovable, etc).
3. Remind yourself that you are a human capable of loving, of caring for a lost child, of appreciating beauty, of being a member of a community, of being a child of God/the Universe/Whatever.
4. Recognize that the person who made you angry is also a human capable of these wonderful things -- and who sometimes feels pretty rotten about him or herself as well.
5. Take one small tiny step toward making the situation better, or transforming how you feel about the situation from this new perspective.

Anger is one of those emotions that feels everlasting. So does grief. The more that you can recognize and hear your anger -- and comfort your anger the way you would comfort a child who is sobbing hysterically (gentleness works, yelling back makes it worse) -- the more easily your strong emotions will start to transform themselves.

It is not easy work. It's hard, sometimes heartbreaking work. It's really good work to do, though.

Let's back up for a bit to core hurts. I'm not sure we're clear on that yet.

And .... while I'm thinking of it .... let's make it a bit more generic ... paint the bigger picture. So core hurts in general and not so much about your H. K?

Every human being has core hurts

Core hurts are the way our emotional body (as opposed to physical body) tells us something's not quite right and needs attention

What is not quite right is that we have become disconnected from our most essential Self (the Self at the core that is calm and grounded, ethical, rational, and compassionate without compromising our values)

What needs attention is that we need to reconnect to our most essential Self

Triggered core hurts, then, are not bad things ... quite the contrary .... they are very very good things because they let us know when we've gotten out of whack. (You can compare this to nerve endings that get triggered when we hurt ourselves. If we didn't have them we'd cut and burn and bruise ourselves constantly - we wouldn't survive very long at all.)

Now - why is this important to understand?

Because the way we instintually react to core hurts is by first blaming someone else for how we feel and then by being angry. Neither of which can solve anything.

So in slow motion here's what happens instinctually:

Hubby says something (it can be anything from the sky is blue to I hate your cooking)

You experience what is called a sudden drop in self worth. This tends to feel like a punch to the gut - painful and fluttery. This is where the disconnect from your most essential Self occurs. You're no longer calm and connected and grounded and solid .... you're buzzy.

Instantaneously (approx 4000x faster than you can think) you shift the focus to him -- you blame: "I feel bad and it's your fault because you did/said [fill in the blank]"

You become angry (frustrated, exasperated, irritated, impatient ....)

Because this happens waaaay faster than conscious thought it's virtually impossible to change at the conscious level. It has to occur at the subconscious level -- basically rewiring your brain.

As we saw above core hurts are good things and we have them for a reason. So we don't want to get rid of those (that would make us psychopaths). What we want to do is what core hurts are there to remind us about -- reconnect to our most essential Self. And we want to do that at the subconscious level -- skipping the anger part.

In slow motion that looks like:

Hubby (or anyone for that matter) does/says something that triggers our CH's.

You experience the sudden drop in self worth.

BUT instead of going instantaneously to blame and anger you have now trained your brain to reconnect to your Self.

You remain calm, grounded, rational, clear, ethical, and compassionate - able to make decisions based on your values -- EVEN UNDER THE MOST EXTREME STRESS.

There are lots of ways to accomplish this rewiring. Human beings have been pursuing personal growth and transformastion for as long as we've been here. The quickest way I've found to jump start this processs Steven Stosny's work. So - to that end I've created the visualizaiton with the foremost areas of connection (I think J gave you the link to it) and then when you've done that an adaptation of his process for rewiring your brain.

So -

First - understand what core hurts are
Two - Be able to feel what it's like when you are deeply connected to Self (this is what the meditation/visualizatin is all about)
Three - use the worksheet or some other method to remind yourself of what that feeling is like
Three - use the PEACE practice technique to jump start the rewiring of your brain.

Questions?

P