I often notice when a certain theme seems to be prevalent in the world around me. For example, I spent the past weekend with my daughter and her family. My grandson, Adam, just graduated from high school and is about two weeks away from leaving for a three-month culinary work-study experience in Italy. Whether it is a delayed case of “senioritis” or something else going on, the two of them are going through a challenging time of relating right now.
The adult daughter of a friend had a triggering event with her husband over a glass of wine she drank (she is nursing her new baby daughter). That triggering event led to a huff up the stairs and some silent-treatment and tense atmosphere for everyone (including my friend and her husband).
My sister got triggered when her former daughter-in-law was upset about some demands with regards to visitation time with grandson, Tony. It only took a few moments for her to realize she was reliving some past pain with a former husband around her own young son.
Like pimples on the oily face of a teenager, this theme of past pain seems to be popping out at me from everywhere.
In Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha,Tara Brach makes a key point about it: ”Because we are responding to an accumulation of past pain, our reactions are out of proportion to what is happening in the moment. When someone criticizes us or disapproves of us, we get thrown back in time and have no access to our adult understanding.” (p. 170-171)
“Your ultimate victory is in taking back the power to dictate your own emotions and to use your free will to make choices that enhance your life and bring you inner peace.” (The Secret of Overcoming Verbal Abuse Getting Off the Emotional Roller Coaster and Regaining Control of Your Life, by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. and Marcia Grad Powers, p. 124.)
As I was with another person, also slogging through the depth of interpersonal stress, I had the message pop into my mind to tell her that right now, the only expression of Jesus in her life was this other person. It seemed too harsh, and I tried to avoid the necessity of sharing the idea. When I did share it, she and I both cried.
I cried recalling the day I had felt the unjustness of judging Jesus based on what others said he said.
Terrence Real writes with great wisdom about relationships in How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women. Chapter 13 is about “Relational Esteem.” Real defines self-esteem as “one’s capacity to hold oneself in warm regard in the face of one’s own imperfections and limitations, one’s capacity to cherish oneself as a flawed, flesh-and-blood, human being.” (p. 207)
Relational esteem, accordingly, is the capacity to hold the relationship in warm regard in the face of its imperfections and limitations.
Perhaps we can come to value past pain in a similar way. As Real shares with readers, the only instrument for change we possess, our only tool, is ourselves…
As I sit here writing, I remember these tender interactions between people who want to express lovingly with one another and I let emotion course through me. I feel my heart soften toward myself and all these “others” who are each only doing the best we can. I am reminded simply of the truth about past pain: Sometimes it takes generations to heal.
