Taking the Stairs

You walk into a dark stairwell and the door slams shut behind you. You panic! You stand there with no way out; frozen to the spot…numb. It’s pitch black, you can’t see anything. You can’t hear anything, except the loud fearful thoughts in your head. “What do I do now? Where am I? Where am I going? I am lost. I am scared. How did I get here? I can’t do this. Why did this happen to me? Who is going to rescue me?” And after screaming and fighting and denying that it is really happening, you realize no one is coming to save you.

So you finally start moving forward and up the stairs. The stairs are steep, some are very unstable and you feel like you could fall through them at any time and back down to the bottom. And sometimes you do trip and fall on them, especially when you start going too fast and try to miss some steps in order to get to the top sooner.

You still can’t see where that is though, you still don’t know where you are going and your thoughts get louder and your imagination more wild with images of creatures that could come out and hurt you at any time. So loud are the voices in your head and so vivid the images, that they have now become your reality…they are real. You panic more from this false reality you have created with your thoughts and imagination.

The stairs seem to go on forever. You have become so weak and you resign yourself to believing that you are stuck here forever in this dark, scary stairwell, with no way out. So much energy wasted on your fear-filled, delusional thoughts. You are so caught up in your own delusions and fears, in fact, that you can’t hear the laughter that is coming from the top of the stairs.

Finally as you sit down, exhausted from all your fighting and denying of what is, your mind starts to quiet down and you begin to hear faint voices, perhaps familiar voices of friends, coming from above you. You find some hope and you get back up and start climbing the stairs again. Yes, you continue to meet more fears along the way, but you keep going towards the voices above you. It feels like an eternity, and then you finally reach your destination.

A door is opened. There is a party going on with people you know.

They toast you – the Guest of Honour! Still shaken and confused by your journey, you walk up to a friend and she puts her arms around you and smiles. She knows what you know – the way to the light isn’t easy.

Then, you are given gifts: Clarity. Truth. Authenticity.



Something I read: You have been given a gift of seeing clearly while others around you may not. Allow others their reality, even if it differs from yours. If they are in denial, this is a time to honor that.

Allowing others their process is the best gift you can give someone.

Do we hide in our pain?

If so why? Is it so we don’t really have to look at our own life and do something different about it? Is it a way of filling a void inside, an emptiness? A way of numbing the real pain?

I think it may be, but filling this void with pain and suffering is certainly a dysfunctional way. It could also be a way of distracting ourselves from the real pain as well, one that is buried so deep. Perhaps just as an alcoholic or drug addict fills their emptiness with their substance of choice or to numb their deep-seated pain. It’s a way of coping. A dysfunctional way of coping. A learned way of coping without even knowing it is being used as a coping mechanism. Or, rather the lack of coping skills…

But, these conditioned reactions/coping mechanisms end up doing just the opposite of what you intended. So rather than filling a void, soothing your feelings, they end up increasing the feeling of emptiness and disconnecting you from your feelings and your soul.

However these coping mechanism, put in place likely a long time ago as a child as a way to keep you feeling safe in the situation/circumstance you were in, a role you played to fit into the family or society structures, are now just hindering your growth as an adult.

My obsessions and my addiction (which may be to pain) do this to me. I feel a painful emotion and instead of just coping with it in a healthy way (whatever that may be, I obviously do not know), I intensify it. I dissect it, analyze it and definitely the person who triggered it. I dive into my pain and stay. I realize when I feel a intense and painful emotion as a reaction to something,(which right away is usually a sign that it is something from the past) I make it more intense – maybe akin to a temper tantrum – and the intensity of it no longer really fits the situation, so then I intensify the situation to make it match this, thus intensifying the feeling more.

Does that make sense? I blow the situation out of proportion in my mind, make it mean sooo much more than, not only what it really meant, but than what it really meant to me. When I broke up with him, I wasn’t crying, when I heard the news (the last straw in a string of hurtful behaviours:  his ex-wife sleeping over, who just lives down the street and has tons of friends of her own, so he can take care of her after cosmetic plastic surgery (can't imagine why I felt like a third party in our relationship)) I was not devastated, in fact I was just in waiting for something to prove to me AGAIN that my perceptions were correct (oh I wish I was wrong, perhaps why I held on and ignored that inner voice for so long) that they have an unhealthy attachment and likely a codependent relationship happening, thus this isn't the place for me or the place to have a healthy relationship. So it wasn't a HUGE shocker, because, as I said, I was just waiting to see what else was coming. But here I am enmeshed in these painful emotions 1.5 years later!!

It seems when my “rejection” button is triggered, I go into these ways of reacting and behaving. And because most of us do not recognize these automatic ways of being, I believe it’s real. It’s real that I am so pained, devastated, powerless and have been victimized because that is what this feeling is telling me. This feeling that I am actually feeding and that feeds the situation, morphing it into something barely recognizable now and then that just fuels and intensifies the feeling more, thus having me believe the situation was that painful …and round and round it goes. Are you dizzy yet? Certainly confused.

Just as an aside: Not that I think feelings are false at all, in fact it is more the stories that have been attached to the feelings that are a misperception. I note this because I grappled with this question. Aren’t feelings real? Can’t I trust my feelings? If not, then what can I trust? I believe feelings are our faithful guide, guiding us to inquire into what is going on and that is what will bring us to what our conditioned beliefs are and give us a glimpse of what thoughts we are telling ourselves.

So in order to heal this, I must first unravel this riddle of pain and confusion that I have created JUST to get back to the truth of the original experience: “the Break Up”, which, yes, was hurtful and disappointing BUT not all this other stuff, I’m sure. Then from there I need to heal the ORIGINAL wound and break the automatic, self-defeating patterns. Although I think I am going through that process at the same time as the unraveling.

Perhaps that’s why it is taking so long to do. Awareness, healing new and old wounds, breaking old patterns and transformation all at the same time.

Slowly coming out of hiding in the pain.

Are safety nets safe?

The next series of postings will be loose transcribed excerpts from my journal on things I have already or am still working through as I continue on my journey of healing. Thoughts and feelings that seem to cycle around and hopefully taking me deeper into myself.

I know I have to let go of this break up story. I know it is useless and tormenting but for some reason I am still holding on.  Holding on to what though? He is gone, the past happened waaaay in the past and it can’t be changed anyway. And furthermore, I really didn’t want to be with him…well the him he was or rather in that type of relationship where I felt like a third party.

So then why do I hold on to the story? I guess this is a safety net for me. By “reminding” me of what his character flaws are, of why I believe he did the things he did (insecurity, codependency issues with ex, fear of abandonment, emotional immaturity) I don’t have to believe my demons. Those painful beliefs that I am not good enough, loveable enough,special enough... I keep needing to retell the story to myself and go over his “issues” over and over again so I don’t fall down into the devil’s lair. 

I need to keep analyzing  his personality and his behaviours as a way to convince (maybe that’s the wrong word) myself that my initial perceptions of his “bizarre” behaviours and this ex relationship were correct. I need to keep convincing myself, perhaps like a good parent or friend would, that my thoughts and feelings were “right” – not that I am trying to go for right and wrong, I am just trying to get to a place where I can BELIEVE and TRUST my own thoughts and feelings about things. 

And therein lies the real problem. My inability to believe in my own thoughts and feelings, thus this story stays with me. I need to use his “stuff” to convince myself that I am ok, that I am not wrong about this, that I did not perceive this incorrectly because if I did that means that I CAN’T trust my own thoughts and feelings.  It really is an internal war and he is being used as the … I dunno… scapegoat (again maybe the wrong word).  

An internal war between my self-defeating beliefs: self-doubt, self-pity, inferiority, and my inability to know my self-worth to trust myself and my wiser self that does believe in my own thoughts and feelings.

I know a lot of spiritual texts say just LET GO, but perhaps this holding on has served a purpose: a way to keep myself afloat and not drown in these old and painful beliefs. A way to keep disputing these beliefs, until they dissolve. Yet, I do know, this is still a form of codependency or being outwardly focused by needing others to validate me, validate my own thoughts and feelings. 

I do at least know this experience is pushing me to look within and to learn to believe in myself, to look to me for answers and to trust what’s inside. But I keep looking outside of me -  to others … anyone and checking out his website to see how his life is going, especially to see if he is still with his girlfriend that he found soon after me(which to my defeating self means that I wasn’t good enough, special enough , so it actually defeats the purpose and creates the opposite effect) -  to validate my thoughts and feelings.

Perhaps this story won’t go away until I become strong enough in myself to just fully TRUST and BELIEVE in my own perceptions, thoughts, and feelings.  Then I can leave this false safety net behind. Actually, these are the same words I said to him. He holds on to his ex-wife, keeps a close, platonic marriage type of relationship with her because it saves him from having to face his painful feelings (just as alcohol and drugs once did for him) and feelings of abandonment (his childhood wound) after she told him she wanted a separation 6 years ago. She left him, but she didn’t really leave him. Works well for a recovering alcoholic and a codependent, I guess. But it didn’t work for me. 

I don’t want to have this false safety net, which I can soooo clearly see with him (yes, more proof that, that is what is going on with me too because our relationships hold a mirror up to ourselves), because I know that ultimately it is not safe at all; it just becomes a way to get tied up, stuck in the past and caught up in the net...so to speak.

But again … if I don’t have the story of him and his stuff, I will believe my own demons…more so than I already do. I can’t let them win. I suppose I know I won’t really drown if I let go of the story/safety net. I really believe it’s all about our own sense of self, our own security within…I have always known that, as I said it about him a looooong time ago. 

BUT how does one become strong and secure within themselves, learn to trust in themselves – whether in their own abilites or in their own thoughts and feelings – without using other people, relationships and experiences to help validate that for us?

The Unveiling

Halloween is the time of year when we put on masks and go out and be something, someone different than we are.

Yet this annual event of becoming someone else by putting on a costume or mask, is something we subconsciously do every day of the year and perhaps a different mask many times a day depending on where we are, who we are with, the role we have assumed, etc. We often choose the mask that matches the mask of the person we’re trying to please. The masks we have chosen to wear in our varied experiences are a way to keep us safe, but hides our true self from others and ourselves.

And that is exactly what the Celts were doing on Hollows Eve … trying to hide their identity to keep themselves safe. Celts who lived 2000 years ago, celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1. This marked the end of the Summer and harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold Winter. The Celts believed that transitions, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties.

They, thus, believed the night before New Years was a powerful time in which the veils between the two realms was thinned , allowing one to move between the two worlds with ease. October 31st they celebrated Samhain or Hallow’s Eve, when the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. Afraid the undead would harm them and cause trouble, the Celts left out food on their door steps to keep their homes safe from these ghosts.

And if the Celts people needed to venture out on this eve, they would dress up in costume and don masks in hopes of being mistaken for one of the ghosts' fellow spirits. Just as we do with the masks we wear every day. To hide our true identity, to keep ourselves safe, to fit in, and pretend to be something we are not.

Indeed October 31st - Halloween – is a magical and powerful time. A transitional time. A time to get in touch with our inner spirit, to observe ourselves more clearly as the veil of illusion is thinned. As the lines of our two worlds, our inner self and our outer selves (our own ghosts), are blurred. Opening up the realms so we can move with ease into deeper regions of ourselves and begin to remove the masks.

This Halloween I am going to be someone totally different than I, or anyone has ever been...

I am going to be me!

Happy Halloween!