Day 8 Dear Self, I feel like...

I feel like Im trapped. I feel like all the decisions I made in my life, to get married, to hire shitty attorneys, to be too trusting, to have a child, to prioritize everyone over myself, to choose kindness and karma, and on and on have led me to a life where I am absolutely trapped with no way out. I have to coparent my wonderful child ith an absolute monster, a lying, cheating, manipulating, evil demon of a human being. It doesnt matter that we are divorced, she kept most of the money, and Im the best father in the world, she cant see past her own love of conflict and hatred of me (I have no idea why as I was the kindest husband to her). So she makes my life MISERABLE every chance she gets. She 100% has narcissistic personality disorder and I think that drives her insane decisions. I dont even think shes aware of what shes doing and how it hurts our daughter.

I feel full of regret. I wish I could go back in time and stand up to her when it mattered. I wish I woudl have divorced her earlier. I wish other things too. If i wasnt in so much pain from what she did to me, I would have been ready for the next step with my most recent GF, who was a great woman, but I was still wounded, healing, and so I let her go. Another regret of mine (its too late now, she is with another man and they are getting married). I regret neglecting my body and now I am 46 and in constant pain. I cant even sleep because every turn of the body hurts.

I cant jog, move well, play sports, even have sex without a ton of pain. I feel like I fucked up in so many ways and I am havign trouble forgiving myself. I didnt do a single thing "wrong" meaning malicious, hurtful, etc. But I feel like I was too trusting, naive, kind, when sometimes I should have stood up to my bully. I feel like a failure in a lot of ways. So yea, Im hard on myself.



Are you having success at recognizing the emotions connected to your pain? If you have, how do these emotions make you feel? If not, what do you think is preventing you from doing this?

Im not sure. I guess my strongest emotions is one of regret and failure. I feel like I failed myself. Everytime I feel pain I feel that failure and regret and it eats away at my psyche.

 

"regret and failure" are feelings and thoughts. I would thinking the emotion they might evoke is anger and rage. Being hard on yourself usually means you are turning your anger inward on yourself.

I had to learn how to feel emotions, I had no idea I was not - and couldn't really even identify them in myself. Emotions are different than thoughts (although you can think when you have them). They are physical sensations in the body and are often very, very subtle. Think about the changes you go through when you know you are angry. It might be a hot face, clenched hands, a feeling in the abdomen or the chest. That sensation of energy where you might want to lash or maybe it's more clenching your teeth and holding it all in. Some people feel bursts of energy that want to propel outward (like striking out at someone) and others feel a heavy tightness holding it all in.
Now think about when you felt joyful. That feeling like your chest might burst open, you can't stop smiling, and there is a lightness and almost a freedom in the physical body.
Each emotion has it's own set of sensations in your body. Just let them happen. A great way to begin feeling them is to do your journaling in the SEP and then sit for a few minutes afterwards and just focus on what is happening in your body.
Here's a printable table that will help you translate your feelings into emotions. https://uca.edu/bewell/files/2020/11/Feelings-Wheel-Learn-How-to-Label-Your-Feelings.pdf
Here's an illustration of some of the emotions we feel in the body (not all, and not all sensations) https://www.npr.org/sections/health...tions-on-the-body-love-makes-us-warm-all-over

We were often not taught these important lessons in our life. You've got a great opportunity to learn them and pass the knowledge on to your daughter.

 

thank you - based on that wheel im definitely feeling more sad than anger. truth is i rarely feel anger at all. im not sure, its just not in my disposition. im a pretty calm person and anger always felt like a pointless emotion to me. but of course there are times when i feel angry, particularly toward my ex. Sometimes to myself I suppose. but its more melancholy, sadness than anything.

but even still, lets say I allow myself to "feel" my feelings more. then what?

 

sdiddy,
Have you read a book by Dr. Sarno?
There are the feelings you have and are conscious of right now and then there are the subconscious feelings you don't know are there. Of course you'll never EXACTLY find them but Sarno talks about the subconscious rage. It's very Freudian.
The people who don't feel anger are the ones who most often either suppress it "because it always felt pointless" (or wrong) are often taught as children it's not acceptable to be angry. You learn pretty quickly that when those sensations of rage come on, to shut them down pretty quickly because you've been taught they are unacceptable. This one way we learn to people please.
It all rolls up into our identity. You've been great at telling us how you identify: as a kind person and the best father. These are ultimately good things, but what else are you also? You've said you identify as "fucked up", feeling like a failure and are regretful. These seem to be fairly easy (am I wrong) to admit, you admit these readily.
But what about the things that are hard to admit. Perhaps that is the internal rage that you simply don't or haven't identified with. Yet all humans have it. That's the tantruming inner two year old that wants what it wants and wants it now. Like I mentioned, this is subconcious but what helps is admitting its there. Admitting that some things in our life are just OUTRAGING. In myself, I find that a lot of my external anger is definitely cause by people pleasing habits. I did not identify as being angry, but perhaps I am. What if I have the buried raging, irrational 2 year old inside of me that wants to kick every shin and scream out loud. Does it really make me bad? Wrong? A horrible person? NO of course not because I don't act on it. But acknowledging it's there means I acknowledge I am not perfect. The fact it's there and I function means I don't even need to be perfect, and that I am OK as I am warts and all. So what if sometimes I fuck up? Does that mean I'm unloveable? Of course not, and it doesn't mean you are a bad person.
That's kind of the point of the SEP.
Now think about all the emotions that are surrounding that feeling of being a fuck up (I'm just using this as an example). You mention you feel sad, or melancholy. Do you get a tickle in the throat perhaps? Or a sensation behind the eyes. A feeling of heaviness? Or maybe even numb?
You just feel them.
You let them flow through the body because emotions are the chemical process of our thoughts. The physiology is that the emotional sensations or the chemicals of emotions (same thing) dissipate in 1-2 minutes if we allow them. We know we are shutting them down if we a) don't feel them, or b) feel them for eg. 5 seconds and then mentally push them away.
Often we interpret these sensations as undesirable. With TMS our brains protect us from these sensations, because we've interpreted them as "bad" or "unwanted".
So when we let the emotions flow within us they leave us. Sure of course emotions return, and leave and return and leave but in between these is life.
If you don't feel emotions, keep small, don't express yourself and do all the things the TMS brain tries to keep us from doing you become an automaton. You can't be emotionally available to others because you can't be emotionally available to yourself.
Now, like I mention above.. NONE of this is your fault. This is all learned behavior. TMS work is sometimes called "brain retraining" because basically you are going to re-parent yourself. You are going to give yourself all the things you give to your lovely little daughter. You're going to find a way to teach yourself the stuff you didn't learn, give yourself grace, look for peace, and eventually learn the skills you seem to desire like finding a way to deal with your X that is more satisfactory to you.
It takes time and patience, and we are right here with you. But we don't have to be your only resource which is why I mentioned finding father support groups doing a google search on single Dad's support groups in your area will provide a lot of resources. It might be a good way to find others in your similar situation who have found solutions.