[OffRoad]

I wanted to comment on this, because depending on each person's situation, it it important.

I can cross the street, but unlike when I used to be able to just look both ways and then simply walk across, I have to time every single step perfectly to avoid oncoming trouble/danger/impediments, otherwise I'll end up splattered on the pavement.

It's like being in the chomping machine in Galaxy Quest. And I will tell you that patience is not only forefront and required, but tested. You not only have to time it correctly, but must also plan for the timing. In general, this happens as you get older anyway; reactions aren't as quick, more things to juggle in your mind, sometimes your body betrays you (raises my hand). The you you have always been HAS to change, there is no choice because we cannot go back to what was.

The trick, imo, is not to fight it but accept that this is what is NOW. Tomorrow can be something different. If our core values remain, whatever we are now is ground zero and anything we want to change and improve on is not based in comparing ourselves to what we once were, but to who we want to be given what we have now. As in "This is my life, what am I going to do with what I have right now moving forward?"

Now, if your core values are missing, that is a problem.

I sure as heck don't measure up to what I was. But that doesn't mean that what I am right now isn't just fine given my circumstances.

[Nas]

https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-cope-with-shame-by-understanding-where-it-comes-from

[HeavenlyFocus]

New article from national bureau of economic research about evidence to support midlife crises.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30442/w30442.pdf

[Nas]

This looks really interesting, HF. I'm looking forward to reading it over coffee, hopefully soon - thanks for sharing!

[Nas]

This resonated with me so I thought I would share. These are four things you might see in yourself or might recognize in your MLCer (particularly the looking for outside validation).

https://embodiedspirituality.medium.com/the-4-setbacks-you-may-experience-on-your-healing-journey-42d00fa4c628

It’s definitely helpful to see a setback as just that, a setback. I’m trying to balance what is a setback in healing from the entirety of the past with what is just harsh reality about the present and future - some things that may look to the outside world like setbacks are actually utterly unfixable (which is quite frankly terrifying).

The freeze response has been discussed in several thread discussions over the time I’ve been here.
I’ve certainly read a lot about it, but this statement really struck me. I could write pages on the interpretation of every tense of the word “fail”…

“…if flight is not a viable option, or it is attempted but is unsuccessful in gaining safety, the brain automatically shifts to freeze….
When fight and flight are activated but do not lead to safety, it is either because they were attempted and failed or because there was no possible chance of them being attempted…”

[Nas]

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-training/in-depth/resilience/art-20046311

“ Resilience won't make your problems go away — but resilience can give you the ability to see past them, find enjoyment in life and better handle stress. If you aren't as resilient as you'd like to be, you can develop and learn skills to become more resilient.”

[MadLuv]

Interesting read !

 I read this article a while ago and thought I would share it here in the hopes that it may help those of you who are trying to understand not only remorse looks like, but what a genuinely contrite should look like.

IMHO, remorse is great, but contrition is what you really should be looking for if you are considering Reconciliation.

"How to Recognize True (and false) Contrition" — by Dr. George Simon, Jr.

A person’s character deficiencies inevitably spawn a host of irresponsible behavior patterns – bad habits that can become easily ingrained and, once rooted, extremely hard to break.  Often, these dysfunctional patterns involve forms of mental, emotional, and even physical abuse within relationships.  And while many of the character-impaired individuals I’ve worked with experienced periods of profound unhappiness and even a degree of regret over their actions, only a handful made truly significant changes in their once destructive behaviors. But those who truly did address their behaviors and succeeded in changing their lives for the better displayed a rare quality that seemed to make all the difference: genuine contrition.

By definition, personality patterns are deeply ingrained and hard to modify.  But that doesn’t mean a person can’t change.  People can and do change every day.  That is, genuinely contrite people do.  This begs the question about what contrition really is and how to know when someone is really experiencing it.

The word contrition comes from the Latin contritus (the same root for the word contrite), and literally means “crushed to pieces.” The contrite person has had their once haughty and prideful ego completely crushed under the tremendous weight of guilt and shame. Such a person has “hit bottom”, not only because they can no longer bear the thought of how badly their actions hurt others but also because of their deep realization of how their usual way of doing things has resulted in abject personal failure.  That’s why the contrite person is first and foremost a broken person.  And, by definition, only by acknowledging personal defeat can a person become potentially open to reconstructing their life on very different terms.  It’s been said many times, but it’s profoundly psychologically true.  One cannot begin a new life without laying to rest one’s old self.

A regretful person is not necessarily a contrite one.  Regret often precedes contrition but is definitely not synonymous with it.  And when it comes to making meaningful changes in one’s character and turning around an irresponsible life, regret is simply not sufficient.  The word regret comes from the Old French, meaning “to bewail.” It’s a person’s intellectual and emotional response to an unpleasant or unfortunate circumstance (originally used to characterize a person’s loss of a loved one through death).  Anyone can regret something they have done and for a variety of reasons, some of which can be quite ignoble.  Even some of the most hardened criminals had certain regrets. They regretted the loss of their freedom. They lamented the fact that a judge was able to exercise power over them and subject them to various unpleasant consequences.  Many “bewailed” that the sentence they received was greater than they anticipated or longer than someone else’s who committed a similar crime.  A few even regretted their actual actions, but most of the time even that kind of regret had to do with practical considerations (e.g., they didn’t plan their crime carefully enough to avoid detection, or they misjudged the character of their partner in crime who later “ratted [them] out” to authorities).  And when expressing their regrets, some were even moved to tears. But tears do not a contrite person make. And mere regret has never been sufficient to prompt a person to change their ways.

Remorse is a prerequisite for contrition, but it’s also not sufficient for it. Remorse is a genuine empathy-based expression of one’s regret over hurting someone else.  By definition, psychopaths (alt: sociopaths) cannot really experience any meaningful degree of it, although they are quite capable of feigning it.  Fortunately, most people are capable of it to some degree, and having remorse for the injury caused to another is a necessary first step toward real contrition.  But true contrition goes even beyond remorse.  Genuinely contrite people – their prideful egos crushed and torn asunder by the weight of their guilt and shame – not only hate their “sins” and the pain they inflicted on others as a result of their sins, but also are deeply unnerved about the person they allowed themselves to become that permitted their travesties in the first place.  And they necessarily resolve not only to make amends but also to make of better persons of themselves and their lives in a better fashion in the future.

Contrition is that very rare but absolutely essential feature of changing one’s life for the better.  It requires a true metanoia or “change of heart.” And even more importantly, it requires work – a lot of very hard, humble, committed work.  Reforming one’s character is the most challenging of human enterprises.  You have to put a lot of energy into doing it, and you have to feel a deep sense of obligation about doing it in order to maintain the energy to get the job done.  And contrition wears a very distinctive face.  Truly contrite people behave very differently, even from regretful and remorseful people.  And when you know what to look for, you can readily tell the difference.

One of the more reliable outward signs that someone has really experienced a change of heart is their willingness and commitment to make amends.  The contrite person is not only “sorry” for what he/she has done but is willing to repair the damage inflicted on the lives of others. Many irresponsible characters will challenge their understandably hesitant to trust again victims with retorts like: “I’ve said I’m sorry a million times now – what else do you want from me?!,” attempting all the while to throw the other party on the defensive for doubting their sincerity.  Or they will cite some small efforts they have made over a relatively short period of time and then chide their victims for not immediately accepting those small gestures as concrete evidence of meaningful, sincere, permanent change.  Contrite individuals understand that the burden of proof rests with them and that they owe those they have hurt a justifiable basis upon which to resume some degree of trust.  A contrite person is willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to regain good standing within a relationship.

It’s one thing to say you’re sorry.  But it’s quite another to prove it by how hard you work to change. Behavior is the best indicator that a person is truly contrite and working to really change.  Living and dealing with persons of deficient character is always difficult, but many people increase the level of pain they experience in their relationships with problem characters by buying into the notion that if a person says they’re sorry, sheds a tear, or looks unhappy, and appears to mean well, things will necessarily be different. They give too much regard to a person’s regret and sorrow and don’t look hard enough for evidence of true contrition.

A person’s genuine willingness and commitment to make amends is always accompanied by plan of action to accomplish precisely those ends. In short, a person’s actions always speak louder than their words or even their emotional expressions.  And I’m not talking about demonstrative gestures that make good impressions on others like going back to church or getting religion once again.  The contrite person conducts themselves in a fundamentally different manner than they historically have. They might not do so perfectly or every time. But they evidence a constant effort toward reforming their conduct, and when they fall short they readily admit it and do their best to get back on course.

All too many times therapists as well as the victims of irresponsible characters make the assumption that things are moving in the right direction because the bad actor shed a tear or two about something horrible they did or said they were sorry.  But even when sorrow is genuine, it’s certainly not enough to make a difference.  Sorrow is an emotional response usually connected to the loss of something. And while it is always painful to lose – especially when losing something of great value – that kind of pain is not in and of itself a reliable predictor of change. Individuals who have been in abusive relationships and who give a lot of weight or credence to expressions of regret and sorrow are most often doomed to an escalating level of personal pain and hardship. And in proper cognitive-behavioral therapy for abusers, where the principal focus is on behavior and fostering fundamental attitudinal and behavioral change, the therapist has to be much less interested in what a person has to say and much more concerned about what he/she is doing to truly correct problematic thinking and behavior patterns and repairing damage they have done.  Talk, as they say, is infinitely cheap.  And therapy that just focuses on getting someone to express their feelings or communicate their regrets is likely doomed to be ineffective in fostering meaningful change.

Having some regret simply isn’t enough to make a person mend their ways. It takes a lot of concerted effort to overcome our shortcomings.The truly contrite individual works to make amends, to do better, and above all, to be better.  That always involves demonstrable, consistent behavior – behavior that can be observed, monitored, encouraged, rewarded, and measured by both the therapist and other parties to a relationship with the troubled character.

Edited in Aug 2018 to add:

In summary, someone who is genuinely remorseful and contrite will:

1. Admit that their behaviour was wrong.

2. Continuously take full responsibility for their actions.

3. Accept and understand that their choices and actions brought them to where they are.

4. Make NO attempt to blame anyone else

5. Have humility (are receptive to and actively seek constructive criticism because they know it leads to self-improvement, they display a willingness to learn and become better, they quiet emotional responses so they can actively listen, they are eager to understand others and show a genuine interest in them and put them first in their thoughts)

6. Engage in openness and honesty in ALL aspects of their life

7. Do everything in their power to make things right with the person(s) they have harmed

8. Have patience and recognize that trust is rebuilt over a long period of time with consistent good choices and actions

9. Focus on the person(s) the have harmed - recognizing and acknowledging the impacts of the harm in both heart and mind

10. Understand the emotions of the person(s) they have harmed and have empathy and compassion for their pain

11. Validate the pain of the person(s) they have harmed and have a deep understanding of how their actions caused that pain

12. Put 100% effort into making real changes in themselves and not try to take shortcuts

13. Deliberately choose to making lasting changes and psychologically transform themselves, and are intrinsically motivated to do so

[Nas]

https://www.straighttalkcounseling.org/post/why-do-we-catastrophize-how-to-end-worst-case-scenario-thinking

And a few questions it’s helpful to ask yourself:
How likely is this to occur?
What is the worst outcome that can happen?
If this happened, what would I do?

[Biscuit]

Great article Nas. Thanks

[Nas]

More digging (and some rambling)… hopefully these are helpful for someone else. It helps me to have somewhere to share it…

A few weeks ago I said to my therapist “I need so much help, it’s shameful.”

We often talk about how anger can be a secondary emotions. Same with shame.
“Any feeling can be a primary or secondary emotion, the key thing to remember: are secondary emotions push someone away or are protecting a more profound emotion that might be too difficult to share.”
https://richerlifecounseling.com/primary-and-secondary-emotions/

I would add to that, they might also be a stand in emotion for a deeper emotion that is difficult to immediately name or identify.

I’ve been grappling with extremely hard things to untangle. In the midst of everything else going on, last night I stumbled upon something I wish I hadn’t. In all my years of having an iPhone, I never knew that when you block a phone number, if that person you blocked calls you and leaves a message, that message does actually get saved in a folder called blocked messages.

Very brief backstory: As a child, my father left and promised to come back for me but disappeared instead and there was a period of many, many I didn’t see him or know anything about his life.

He reappeared in my life when I was in my 30s and, having done lots of therapy in my 20s, I quickly recognized the situation was not good for me and I removed myself and blocked him. Fast forward to 2019. I had cancer progression, I was so weak I could barely walk, had nowhere to live, and my father told me he’d help me. I was desperate to believe him and I’ll never know if he would’ve followed through because he died just two weeks later.

Which brings us back to the blocked messages folder because last night I discovered that there were 20 messages from him between 2012 and 2015. I wish I was smart enough to just delete them. They’re hideous, deflecting and projecting like an MLC monster on steroids.

So many emotions to sort through, and I remember doing the same right after BD, even if I wasn’t connecting the dots to all the life events that brought me/bring me to similar emotional places. Everything is so connected. I guess that’s a part of why I’m posting, because all of the emotional turmoil that is happening after a BD, it’s more than likely not just because of what is happening *right now* and it was so useful for me to try to untangle how it’s all connected. Even the baby steps I made with that early on were so key to my ability to move forward.

Every little bit of work helps. I cannot imagine surviving the multiple life changing situations of the past few years if I hadn’t worked through any of the complicated emotions from the end of my marriage, if I hadn’t made the connections about why his betrayals cut so deep. To be fair, what he did was so hideous, I could have led a completely idyllic life up until then where I knew what it was like to be safe and loved and cared for, and I still would have been completely shaken to my core. But the understanding of how it all ties together with the totality of my life experiences has been so important for understanding myself.

Sometimes I read about things someone’s MLCer is doing and I feel like I have an understanding of why, like I can see they are reacting to something they can’t identify, being driven by secondary emotions because it’s easier than delving into the what and the why of how they really feel, what they’ve been through and how it’s shaped them. Those secondary emotions drive all the running from themselves, often drive them to push people away.

At times when it’s too difficult or painful to name what’s really going on, it’s awfully easy to hand over it the keys and let the secondary emotions drive.

https://georgetownpsychology.com/2021/02/secondary-emotions-a-key-to-compassionate-conversations/

“Secondary emotions are created by thoughts we have about our primary emotions. Oftentimes, these are the feelings that brew while we try to make sense of why we experienced the initial, primary feeling. You might feel the trickling in of shame as you think about why you “shouldn’t” feel angry. Or you might develop anxiety while you try to make sense of your fear. Secondary emotions are really good at taking the wheel and driving our reactions.”

🎶  https://youtu.be/snILjFUkk_A 🎶