Watching the Pain Body

#1 -  I have seen how with time and distance there is more space in me, less triggering.  I have felt much less of a need to defend myself or explain myself, or even to be understood.  As Terry Real says, "Who is right or wrong - who cares?"

There is one thing that triggered me today though, "I do not feel that Tammy has the right to this grief."  Wow that one got the anger rising in me.  I wanted to make an instant phone call and state the boundary that no one has the right to tell me what I have the right to feel.

But I took a few breaths, and I know that I have the right to my grief

and that's all that matters.

#2 -  And in fact I'm so grateful for it.  As a child how I learned to respond to turmoil around me was freezing, shutting down.  And that has happened to me as an adult too.  Sometimes I become numb to life, numb to beauty, numb to pain.

I don't feel numb now and I'm not only grateful about that, I'm happy about it.

#3 - And I am feeling energized just being a feeling advocate.  Everyone has a right to their grief, and a right to their anger. (Believe me there have been plenty of times I've tried to tell people they don't have a right to be angry.  They don't have a right to take out anger on other people.  And anger is often a secondary emotion but still that is my issue.  That is my work, putting up enough boundaries that people can have their anger around me.)

Anyway, all this prompted me to order a book I've thought about owning for years.

The Book of Qualities by J Ruth Gendler 

Most books I'd prefer not to own, because once I read them I am not going to return to them.  But this is a book I could continually return to.  The characters are emotions and it is written with such whimsy and depth.  Here is a quote I pulled from the description on the Hennepin County Library web page

"Excitement wears orange socks, Faith lives in the same apartment building as Doubt, and Worry makes lists of everything that could go wrong while she is waiting for the train."

https://hclib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S109C3872299

#4 - This made me look up the author and request her other book the library has.

Notes on the Need for Beauty

#5 - And I've really been practicing recently - when I feel conflict - as seeing it as an opportunity, as training a muscle.  Sometimes I/we don't have energy for it,

but sometimes (today) I do.