The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame

by Pete Walker

My ideas about family dysfunctionality concur with a number of modern books whose titles alone vividly capture the collapse of the institution of parenting in our culture: Prisoners of Childhood, Betrayal of Innocence, The Secret Everyone Knows, Hearts That We Broke Long Ago, Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family, After The Tears: Reclaiming the Personal Losses of Childhood, Getting Divorced From Mom And Dad , Healing The Shame That Binds You, and My Name Is Chellis, I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization

We cannot be healthy human beings without accepting and experiencing the full range of human feelings.

“The only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid unavoidable pain.”

I continually marvel at how allowing myself to feel bad resolves that feeling and restores me to feeling good much more quickly than resisting it ever did.

When we do not attend to our feelings, they accumulate inside us and create

a mounting anxiety that we commonly dismiss as stress.

Stress is also the painful internal pressure of accumulated emotional energy.

Those who are only there for others during the good times are fair-weather friends who are strangers to loyalty and trust.

Blame is a fundamental part of saying no, setting limits, protesting unfairness, and defending our boundaries. We will never feel safe if we cannot make blaming statements like: “Stop it, you’re hurting me!” “Don’t call me names!” and “No, you cannot take that – it belongs to me!” Such reflexive blame is a vital contribution from the feeling nature to the instinct of self-protection.

blame becomes shame when it is turned against the self, and many of us suffer unending bouts of toxic shame because our inverted blame continuously generates self-loathing.

Children who are not allowed to blame their parents’ bad behavior often become adults who do not protect themselves from abuse.

Adult children benefit greatly from challenging and overthrowing false, destructive beliefs about forgiveness, blame, and emotionality.

Many of us still suffer unnecessarily from abdicating such basic rights as the right to say no, the right to be treated with respect, and the right to have our own feelings, opinions, and preferences. Our health and future growth depends on us claiming and exercising these rights.