plafield
New Member
The person in my life who I know I'm not expressing my emotion to is my brother-in-law. I'm angry and it runs deep. This bout of TMS (coccydynia) started just after my sister died; my brother-in-law has been a source of pain for everyone for their whole marriage (30 years!) He was terribly difficult to deal with while she was dying and afterwards. He is a sick man, a complete narcissist, and a bully and 7 months later he is still holding all of her things hostage, including family heirlooms that she fully intended to have passed to me. No woner I developed a pain in my ass!!
Besides knowing that expressing feelings to someone like him is useless, I'm hoping to, at some point, have access to those things so I've been holding those feelings. I have been journaling about it and I've written him an "unsent letter" as well as done a big release of the anger in therapy and it's helped a lot. I can feel some compassion for him and I have been able to let go of the attachment to getting any of my family heirlooms or any of her personal effects and it's helped a lot.
I also realized that my sister's death had triggered some very old un-remembered feelings from my early childhood. I had another sister who died when I was 4 and while I've known about it all my life, because I have no real memories of that time while I knew it must have affected me, I was able to actually access some feelings about it and that has helped too. I'm happy to say that my pain is 95% gone!
Besides knowing that expressing feelings to someone like him is useless, I'm hoping to, at some point, have access to those things so I've been holding those feelings. I have been journaling about it and I've written him an "unsent letter" as well as done a big release of the anger in therapy and it's helped a lot. I can feel some compassion for him and I have been able to let go of the attachment to getting any of my family heirlooms or any of her personal effects and it's helped a lot.
I also realized that my sister's death had triggered some very old un-remembered feelings from my early childhood. I had another sister who died when I was 4 and while I've known about it all my life, because I have no real memories of that time while I knew it must have affected me, I was able to actually access some feelings about it and that has helped too. I'm happy to say that my pain is 95% gone!