The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame

by Pete Walker

The term inner child refers to the part of the self that is developmentally arrested because important kinds of nurturing were missing in childhood.

(We) have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can only experience his feelings when there is somebody there who accepts him fully, understands and supports him.

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

The willingness to fully feel bestows a liberating emotional flexibility on us.

When we do not attend to our feelings, they accumulate inside us and create a mounting anxiety that we commonly dismiss as stress.

Some of the most beautiful things of life – sex, food, exercise, conversation, learning, and work – lose their quality because our frenzied pace makes it impossible to savor them. Rarely do we slow down long enough to digest the full pleasure of these activities.

We can be transformed from “human doings,” a term coined by John Bradshaw, back into human beings.

We do not have to let other people’s irresponsible emotional expression alienate us from our feelings.

Without our darker emotions, there is little depth and dimensionality in our connection with others.

When we surrender and soften to our feelings, we reconnect with the invaluable instincts and intuition they naturally carry.

When we grieve them now, we discover our phoenix-like ability to be fully reborn out of these losses.

Unremembered and ungrieved traumas block the tender feelings that are the matrix for feeling forgiveness.

Pain without memory is replaced by memory without pain. – Anne Hart

Denial protects abused children from the overwhelming, undigestible reality that their parents are not their allies.

Premature forgiveness is false forgiveness because it is unsubstantiated by the recovery work that must take place for forgiveness to be emotionally genuine.

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.

Many dysfunctional families are like mini-cults. The parents inculcate the children with their beliefs and values when they are completely impressionable. Thereafter they harshly punish any deviation in thinking or behaving.

Children of dysfunctional families are commonly born into terrible loneliness.

The intimacy born out of honest sharing makes us feel good about ourselves and in turn encourages us to be increasingly forthright.

Until we learn to love ourselves during the less-than-perfect times, our love for others is superficial and over-conditional. States of being that we hate in ourselves are hard to accept in others.

How tragic that so many of us are convinced we only deserve to be loved when we are happy or excelling.

False love, based on mirages of perfection, often dissolves suddenly and dramatically.

As expeditiously as I could, I jettisoned my unrewarding song-and-dance and set my intention to become more authentic. As I feared, many of my old friends slipped away; but beyond my greatest hope, a few friends remained and enthusiastically welcomed my new authenticity. Before long, I felt cared for for the first time in my life.

Water says, “Live here. Don’t carry me around in buckets and pans.” False duties! Rest and be quiet.

The cart of the psyche cannot be filled with pleasant emotions while the unpleasant ones are left on the shelf.

In fact, it is virtually impossible to maintain a long-term intimate relationship without occasionally experiencing disconcerting combinations of affection and estrangement.

We are so ruled by black-and-white thinking that we judge ambivalence as evidence of stupidity or defectiveness.

Splitting occurs when feelings of disappointment are repressed (split off) via the tacit agreement that partners will only express appreciative feelings.

When their disparate feelings are not experienced directly, they leak into consciousness as unfocused worry and confusion, paralyzing them from making choices and taking actions that would benefit them. This is not healthy ambivalating.

The most common disruption of self-esteem that I witness occurs when disowned feelings suddenly erupt into consciousness splitting the individual off into overwhelming toxic shame. The more fully feeling we become, the less likely we are to split off completely from our feelings of self-worth.

Feelings that are banished as unholy manifest unconsciously in infernal ways.

Experiences of pure ambivalence sometimes open our awareness to the transcendental “Oneness” that unites all polarities.

I have been graced several times with glimpses of a deeper, all-pervading Unity in settings of great natural beauty.

What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain – not a link left out – everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended into one harmonious whole.

When an emotional experience has shifted, we best support ourselves by accepting its loss as shamelessly as possible and by making a commitment to love and accept ourselves no matter what we feel – no matter what storms come with our emotional weather.

I have never seen anyone who did not feel better after becoming willing to feel something they had been holding back. – Gay Hendricks, Learning To Love Yourself

Sometimes the weight of our old unprocessed pain feels like the weight of the earth caving in on us. Fortunately, the processes of grieving can sluice away this heavy residue of pain.

Every toddler eagerly seeks the development of new abilities, no matter how painstaking they are to acquire, until his spirited inquisitiveness is dampened by shaming or excessive punishment.

To reach out for another is – to risk involvement. To expose feelings is – to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams before the crowd is – to risk their loss. To love is – to risk not being loved in return.

Many codependents still believe they don’t deserve a fair share of life’s normal blessings. But, just as every human being deserves a fair share of the basic good experiences of life, so do you.

want my relationships to be based on love, respect, fairness, and mutual support.

I want to expand into full, uninhibited self-expression.

If we fully acknowledge our pain, it would be difficult not to be swept with a care and compassion for our own well-being. – Stephen Levine

When the accumulation of repressed emotion gets too great for containment, the pain may begin to erupt as emotional flashbacks.

Somatization is a process of the psyche that transforms accumulated emotional pain into physical symptoms and disease.

Muscular contraction against feeling is a physiological form of self-hatred. It is a vicious way of saying no to healthy aspects of the self.

And the golden bees were making white combs of sweet honey from all my old failures . . . – Antonio Machado

Inner peace enhances our ability to enjoy solitude, leisure, and the company of others. Our sleeping improves and dreaming becomes a time of fun and enrichment, rather than a restless and disturbed thrashing-about in symbolic reenactments of childhood trauma.

Vulnerability and authenticity are two of the golden pathways to intimacy. When two people are deeply and mutually self-disclosive, profound channels of emotionally substantive love open between them.

In fact, many of us remain in unhealthy relationships – relationships based on an illusion of love – because we don’t know what it feels like to be loved.