The Tao of Fully Feeling: Harvesting Forgiveness out of Blame

by Pete Walker

Since no one instantly achieves moderation, we need to be patient about our inevitable slips back into excess. Self-hatred about backsliding is usually counterproductive. Self-forgiveness and recommitment to moderation is typically much more effective.

And the day came When the risk to remain Closed tightly in a bud Became more painful Than the risk it took to blossom. – Author unknown

I absolutely refuse to let the wounds of my childhood stop me any longer from championing and protecting myself.

Without the response of no, the child is vulnerable to exploitation. Studies of child molesters show that they can recognize the body language of a child who has been stripped of her right to say no.

Many emotionally abused children engage in a lifelong drive for the approval (which they translate as “love”) of others. So eager are they for love – and so convinced they don’t deserve it – that they are prime candidates for abuse within intimate relationships. – Andrew Vachss

Rare instances of positive attention were relished tidbits for which I was very grateful. These crumbs kept me emotionally alive but malnourished, even though they seemed sustaining in contrast to the emotional starvation of my childhood.

When I exhausted my rage, I was astounded to suddenly experience an overflowing abundance of love and self-compassion.

Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. Returning to the source is serenity . . .

Functional parents love their children in a similar way. Although they do not always feel love for them, they return to loving feelings frequently enough to trust that love is their “bottom line.”

When you are contemptible to yourself, you are no longer you.

FROM NOW ON I GET TO DECIDE WHICH THOUGHTS AND IDEAS ABOUT MYSELF ARE WORTH HONORING!

Our only recourse then is to learn to love ourselves and our inner children when we are temporarily trapped in shame. Unresisting acceptance can gradually dissolve shame. We need to be as tender with ourselves as possible at such times.

The most profound apprehensions of the full effect of childhood trauma cannot form until we are psychologically strong enough to fully remember and fully feel all our pain.

Functional parents liberally and patiently greet their children’s eagerness to participate and help regardless of the fact that this usually makes tasks take longer. Functional parents also “child-proof” their homes during the toddler stage (by moving all dangerous and breakable items out of reach) instead of systematically punishing and extinguishing their children’s healthy curiosity and adventurousness.

Emotional incest also occurs when a parent transforms his child into a confidant and uses her as a sounding board for all his concerns and problems.

Tone of voice is often the vehicle by which emotions are delivered. Tone of voice alone can be very abusive.

Fully feeling people enjoy a rich, fluid balance of crying, angering, and laughing in the release of pain and hurt.

Our authenticity withers and dies, and is replaced by a soulless rhetoric of trivia, cliches, and all that has been proven to be safe and socially acceptable.

Cold words kill and kind words kindle By words withheld a dream may dwindle. – Joan Walsh Anglund

If we remain unconscious about the hurtfulness of our teasing, we may become habituated to using sarcastic humor to disguise and release our aggression.

Males in our culture are routinely indoctrinated in the isolating process of sarcastic shaming as soon as they begin to walk and talk.

Many boys grow up to be men who never know real intimacy because they alienate everyone around them with sarcastic dumping. Others are afraid to come too close to them because of the hurtfulness of their cold, prickly style of communicating.

If the child is not frequently and enthusiastically engaged in conversation, how will he build the confidence to risk sharing his inner world with anyone else?

Life loses its glow when we are stranded in relationships that are as verbally and emotionally impoverished as the ones we had with our parents. When disinterest passes for love, we fail to realize that much of our depression and hunger comes from being so deprived. Ongoing lack of attention to a partner is a cruel and insidious form of neglect!

If a child’s confidence and self-esteem are to solidify, he needs to experience his parents as readily available to hear what he has to say.

Parents enhance the growth of a child’s verbal skills by eliciting her speech. Elicitation is the art of encouraging a child to speak fully and uninhibitedly about her experience. Elicitation allows the child’s self-expression to blossom and enhances his capacity to find the joy and love that comes so naturally out of shame-free communication.

There is so much important practical information that parents can share with their children about the world. Children need open discussion about the many complex tasks and processes necessary for developing into healthy adults. They need their parents’ guidance around issues of time, money, values, morality, sex, and self-discipline.

Once the child is past the helpless stage, parents need to have their own undisturbed private time. This matches the child’s ongoing need to be able to do the same – to gradually learn more and more self-soothing and self-nurturing behaviors.

It sometimes takes years to develop enough trust to talk unashamedly about all aspects of personal experience.

The equal exchange of welcoming, nonjudgmental listening is an essential, irreplaceable process in building intimacy and love.

Many of us do not discover our yearning for the manna of intimacy until we open to our grieving or are graced with at least one truly loving friend or ally.

In our culture so many of us are raised on famine-like rations of love that few of us thrive spiritually or emotionally.

Developing a loving, heart-centered connection with one’s self is an essential process of recovery.

Most people report a powerful inner experience of being supported and cared for by something much greater than the self or another human being. Transpersonal therapists use the term numinous to describe profound, uplifting emotional experiences that seem to emanate from a divine source. Numinous experiences are transformative.

Many people have their first numinous experience through a spiritual practice based on prayer or meditation. Others, like myself, experience numinous openings through grieving. Grieving can stimulate a profoundly moving opening to an authentic inner connection with the divine.

Along with love and peace and beauty, God made pain and loss and suffering.

And grieving has invariably healed me from the despair of feeling brokenhearted by a friend or lover’s momentary betrayal or abandonment, and restored me once again to the most precious gift of all: full, authentic, loving connection with another.

When we recover a bodily-based spirituality, we gain all the grace, strength, and guidance that we need to have an enduring love affair with life.

The spirituality that unfolds from grieving naturally enhances the process of rediscovering and reparenting the inner child.

Self-compassionate reparenting is a term I have coined to describe my approach to remothering and refathering the inner child.

Many survivors are uncomfortable with the concept of the inner child because they were forced at an early age to become miniature adults and to hate their childlike characteristics as much as their parents did.

Various combinations of shame, punishment, and abandonment forced us to forfeit childhood and to act like grown-ups even before we were ready for school.

Self-compassionate reparenting begins with the decision to love our inner children and protect them from self-abuse.

Forgiving our inner children is a powerful avenue into self-forgiveness.

When we give our inner children love, understanding, and protection consistently over time, they begin to shed their horrible burdens of fear, shame, and emptiness.

Normal qualities of human existence like joy, peacefulness, friendliness, spontaneity, and playfulness naturally begin to reemerge as we master the practice of reparenting.

The demon of perfectionism loses its grip on our psyches, and we begin to cherish our differences and imperfections as the unique treasures of character and being they are.

What I used to disparage as “my moodiness” now strikes me as emotional richness and flexibility.

I have also noticed that since my inner critic lost its job as boss of my consciousness, I am far less critical and perfectionistically expectant of others. I believe this has made me safer and more comfortable to be around.

Self-mothering is the practice of actively and passively loving the inner child in all his mental, emotional, and energetic states.