No Instant Fixes For Childhood Sexual Abuse

With the pain of childhood sexual abuse, no instant fixes exist, that I know of. You and your inner children are worth every bit of time and effort that it takes to heal. Just like you went from victim to survivor, you can now go from survivor to thriver and experience joy, peace and happiness in your life. These emotions take time to find as they have been buried under the pain and memories of your sexual abuse.  As you heal, they will return to your life. I know this is possible because over the past few years, I have moved from survivor to thriver.

Becoming a thriver doesn't mean that I will never again feel the pain of my childhood of abuse in the form of incest and my dad's alcholism. I do still have issues come up, sometimes suddenly and without warning. I still hurt and sometimes feel anger and sadness. The difference is that those feelings don't weigh me down and take me into depression like they once did. They visit for shorter lengths of time and the intensity isn't as strong. I recognise them as issues and work on healing and releasing them. I didn't used to recognise my own feelings for what they were. I just knew I was always tired and always carried a deep sadness within my heart and mind. Today I don't.

As a thriver, I really do love myself. Those aren't just meaningless, wishful words. They are true. I know that you can transition from survivor to thriver too. I am not the only one capable of doing this work. It is work. I don't know of any instant fixes. If the fixes were instant, the value of the whole healing experience would not be the same. Through the experince of healing, I learned to love and value myself and you can do the same. Healing from childhood sexual abuse is a process that you are worth starting and continuing with in your life. I am just one example of how this process does work. I know many more survivors that have done the work of healing.

Life is for more than just surviving. We are not meant to be victims of life and mean spirited abusers. We are meant to be thrivers. I wish for you a glorious day and many blessings. You deserve both.
Patricia 

Anger, Fear, Sadness And Hurt - How They Interact - Part 2

If you are visiting here for the first time you might want to go and read my previous post which is Part 1 of this series.  My article will take you to the blog  Emerging From Broken  post where I left my comments.  Without any more introduction, here is Comment #3 that I wrote in response to Darlene's post and other comments.   Any words in brackets [ ] are my thoughts that I have added as I wrote this post.  They were not in the original comment.

Comment #3
"Darlene, I got what you meant in the first comment rather than reading it as only being all in your mind.  Ever since I started this recovery journey, I have been aware of the battle with the part of me that resists change.  It doesn't matter that recovery brings about good change.  Change of any kind was always terrifying to me as a child and still can be as an adult if it is sudden.  [Change in my family of origin was often sudden and sometimes quite dramatic because my dad was very unstable usually with his drinking and/or rage so change became frightening to me as a child.  This is a thought pattern that I still struggle with today but to a lessening degree.]  My husband will gladly agree with me when I say that the child inside of me when she gets scared will still argue and get angry sometimes, not all the time, before the adult part of me steps in and thinks about the change and sees that it is reasonable and good to make the change.  Sometimes the battle between inner child and adult just goes on briefly inside my mind.  Sometimes she is quicker than the adult me and voices her fears as anger.  Then the adult me has to step in and discuss what was just said rationally, with my husband usually.  He is more adventurous and more spontaneous than I am so he is usually the one to stir up the fear and anger.

Anger is an emotion that I know well.  It was allowed in our house when I was a child, but the only one who was allowed to feel and voice his anger was my dad.  His anger came out as rage.  His rage always came out with a threat of violence, especially if he was drunk.

For may years, I could go from calm to anger to full blown rage in a matter of seconds.  [Just like I saw my dad do when I was a child.  I didn't realize for many years how I was copying him.  I would have hated it if I had.  I didn't want to be like my mom or my dad.  Neither was healthy but I didn't know any other way to be.  I saw my mom as weak and helpless so it was better to be like the parent who was strong and in control.]  It sounds strange even to me to say that anger was a safer emotion to me than fear was.  I think maybe, in my mind, that I felt I could control the anger better than I could control the fear.  Anger was also a powerful thing of strength.  Fear was not.  Fear showed weakness.  Anger showed control and strength.  I didn't want to be afraid and weak.  I wanted to be strong and powerful so that I could feel protected.  (This is a very big ah-ha moment for me in typing that - Something that I have never made the connection to before.  I will have to share my 2 [actually 3] comments in a blog post of my own.  This is really big for me.)

I have known for many years that my anger was almost always a cover-up for my fear but I never realized the powerful/safety - weak/not safe thing before.  I felt powerless and very frightened when my dad was doing the anger/rageful episodes in my childhood.  He was so controlling that as an adult, I always think of him as a dictator.  He was in total control of each of our family members.  I wasn't allowed to participate in sports or any after school clubs or activities.  Neither were my brother or sister because it would give us something that was out of his control.  Isolation was the only way that his control would work. . . . "

There was a little more to my comment but it doesn't really apply to my topic here so I didn't copy it.  Again you can go to Emerging From Broken to read the rest of my comment if you haven't already.



Something else that I realized while typing the above comment was how much all of this came from my desire to not be like my mother.  Safety was a really big part of this too.  If I was in control then I could pretend I wasn't afraid.  If I wasn't afraid, I could feel safe.  The bigger part though has to do with my mother and what she taught me.  I have always known that my mother was the one that my real issues would be with.  I have done very little work on my mother issues.  I always told myself that since my dad was the abuser that my major issues were with him.  That is and isn't true.  My dad was the violently abusive person.  Rape, even when it doesn't appear physically violent as in beating you up violent is still violent because of the physical pain that penetration causes and the emotional lines that it crosses when the person raping you is your parent or some other close relative or someone who has authority over you as a child.  Throw in boundary violations and you have another big area of emotional rape.  Signs of physical violence heal much quicker and easier than those of emotional rape caused by crossing of boundaries.  Okay, I just distracted myself from the mother issues again.  The above needed to be said and I may continue it at another time.  Back to my mother.

Anger/rage represents my dad and what he taught me about feelings and myself.  I saw him as the stronger, more in control of my two parents.  As a child, I had no control.  As an adult, I swore to myself that no one would ever have that kind of control over me again.  I became like him because I saw him as strong.  Strong meant powerful instead of powerless/helpless like my mom was. 

The fear came from my mom - fear of feeling, fear of really being alive, fear of dreaming about a better life, fear of being a powerful human being, fear of being a woman in all of her glory.  These are the things that I learned from my mother.  I learned how to be a woman and mother from watching my mother.  All of the things that she taught me, I didn't want to be.  I saw her as weak, as helpless, as controlled by others, as afraid of her own self.  Because in being a woman, I was like her, I hated myself.  I couldn't hate her.  I could hate my dad but I couldn't hate her.  She was weak and helpless.  I learned at an early age to protect her.  You can't hate someone that you have to protect, someone who is weaker than you.  Wow!!!  This is intense for me.  My solar plexus is full of churning emotions right now.  That is where I feel all of this.  It may be a different place for you. 

I have never equated my fear with my mom before.  I didn't realize that I didn't want to be afraid because I saw fear as weak and powerless.  I can even take it to the next level in that fear covers my hurt which I feel as heavy, heavy sadness.  I can barely remember a time when I didn't feel this great sadness.  The fear of feeling the hurt has to do with my very existence.  My fear of feeling the hurt was that if I let it all out and felt it that it would just be too much and I would cease to exist.  I would either kill myself, lay down and never get up again until I died (I did this in a past life which you can read about in the very first post that I wrote here back in June 2007.)  or I would go stark raving mad and just totally lose myself.  I was always afraid that if I felt the hurt that I would start screaming and never stop.  The silent screams would have a voice and become my reality.  How does a child feel that much pain and survive it without disconnecting in some way.  As bad as the physical pain was in the beginning, that isn't the pain that I am talking about.  I am talking about the emotional pain of being betrayed by your parents, your parents who are in charge of your very existence.  I was always afraid that if pushed too much my dad could cross the line and kill all of us.  I was always afraid that if I told my mom about the incest, she would get a gun and shoot my dad and go to jail which were have left me parentless.  I was always afraid that my mom would cross the line and go into limbo somewhere that I couldn't reach her even on a physical level.  If she was ever there for me emotionally, I don't remember it.  I know she was gone emotionally by the time that I was three years old.  There are more ways than just physically to commit suicide and I was afraid that she would fine a way.   You can shut down so much that only an empty shell is left behind.  I couldn't take the chance that my mom would do that.  She had to be there so that I could continue to lie to myself when I told myself that my mom loved me.  I couldn't let go of that or her for many years.

What frightens me the most is that I know that I have all of those things that my mom and dad taught me inside of me.  I fight so strongly against being like either one of them because I know that I could be just like them if I just gave in and gave up.  I refuse to give in to the helplessness or the hopelessness that my mother taught me.  I am stronger than that.  There is a balance - a middle ground which is healthy - which is somewhere in the middle of the extremes that I learned as a child.  Let me know what you think about my ramblings.
Patricia

Anger, Fear, Sadness And Hurt - How They Interact - Part 1

This post comes to you from my comments on Emerging From Broken's post "Coping Methods ~ Trying to Escape Myself" which you will find at the following link:  http://emergingfrombroken.com/coping-methods-trying-to-escape-myself/ .  My comments brought me a very big ah-ha moment that is still making more connections in my mind.  Those connections are what I want to share with you here.  I hope that it doesn't sound like a crazy person just rambling as you follow my thoughts here.  My words inside of brackets were not shared in the comment.  I have added them as I write this post.  This is Part 1.  Comment #3 deserves a post all its own which I will write and post in a few days.

Comment #1:
"I survived my childhood by shutting down my emotions like my mom taught me and by taking care of others.  [As an adult, my taking care of others became a way to control the people around me as my dad controlled me as a child.  It was years before I realized what I was doing and why.]  As an adult, I did the two extremes that my parents taught me with feelings.  My mom was always emotionally unavailable so I learned to not feel. [Stuffing down my feelings with food has become my method for not feeling as an adult.  This is one coping method that I still catch myself doing today.]  I stuffed the feelings deep inside of me hiding the hurt even from myself as long as I could.  When the pressure would become too intense then I would explode in rage like my dad taught me to do.  Neither extremes were the real me.  They were the coping mechanisms that my parents taught me.  I continued them into adulthood and added controlling as another coping skill.  In not wanting to be like my mother who portrayed helplessness very well, I became like my dad who was the dictator of our family.  He controlled all of us to the point that I wasn't allowed to have needs or an opinion different than his. [I also wasn't allowed to have wants or dreams of a future that he wasn't in control of.]  In order to not allow anyone to control me, as an adult, I became the controller.  If you came anywhere near me, I tried to fix you.  If I could fix your problems then I had some value as a person and I could feel good about myself.  You would like me if I could fix your problems.  I don't know if I ever knew the 'real' me until I, like Darlene, [the person who writes Emerging From Broken] learned to love and respect myself and learned that I had needs and worth.  I was always 'good enough' and so much more.  I just didn't know it until I started working on my incest issues and started loving me."


Comment #2
"Darlene, I too found that the control was just an illusion.  [Today I quickly recognize other controlling people when I meet them.  I see, in them, all of the things that I used to do to feel safe.  The more controlling a person is, the more afraid they are.]  The more that I was into controlling, the more out of control I really was.  I didn't try to fix you because you needed fixing.  I did it so that I wouldn't have to see my own issues that needed fixing.  If I could concentrate on you and your problems, I didn't have time to look at my own.  I didn't have to feel about my own issues if I was focused on your issues.  It was my method of escaping my own pain and anger.  It seemed to work for awhile (or at least that is what I told myself at the time).  The reality was that I was disconnecting from the terrible rage and under the rage all of the fear and hurt that I was carrying around inside of me.

When I got into 12-Step programs, I discovered that, for me, (I don't know if this is true for anybody else or not but it was true for me.) the emotion that I could see and feel was rage.  The rage meant that I was in control (like my dad when I was a child).  The rage covered over my fear which was this big, big monster.  The fear covered up the terrible sadness and hurt that was overwhelming if I allowed myself to feel it.  I felt like if I acknowledged the hurt that I would cease to exist as a person or I would lose my mind.  It just felt so big and endless [and uncontrollable if I felt it].  I didn't know that grieving would release all of that sadness.  The sadness was so much a part of me from a very early age.  [Even today, some of the sadness is still there.  It is such an old part of me that I am not sure who I would be without it. I only have one memory of me without the sadness.  I was younger than three years old.]

I once told a group that my fear would fill the entire space of the room that we were sitting in.  That fear was weighing down on my body all the time until I started chipping away at it a little at a time. . . ."

[There was a little more to this comment that doesn't pertain to my topic here so you can read it on Emerging From Broken.]


I will tell you that Darlene's blog Emerging From Broken has been bringing up feelings for me for awhile that the inner child in me doesn't want to look at so I haven't read all of her posts over the past few months.  I intend to start reading more of those posts that I missed in the coming month.  I thank Darlene for her blog.  It is helping me and so many others.  We have some pretty intense conversations in the comment section of many of her posts.  I am going to stop this post and make Comment #3 into it's own blog post sometime in the next few days.  I am still processing the information that is coming in for me.  It is okay if you have already read Comment #3 on Emerging From Broken.  I am going to be expanding on Comment #3 in my next post.  Feel free to leave a comment here and on Emerging From Broken. 

If you aren't a subsciber here or at Emerging From Broken, I invite you to do so.  As a subscriber, my posts will automatically come to either your email address or in the reader of your choice when they are posted.  You will find subscribe buttons on the right column of my blog page.  I know that I haven't been posting very often since I got sick with pneumonia in November.  I have needed the private time to recover from the illness and to process other things that have come up. 

Just as I was in the final stages of recovering from the pneumonia, an aunt died and a few days later it was Christmas with all of the family activities and traveling that Christmas brings with it.  Five weeks after my aunt died, her husband, who was one of my dad's younger brothers, followed his wife in death.  They were both good people.  They have hosted our Caldwell Family Reunions for many years.  Their daughter is a very strong, caring person who has been taking care of them for the past few years.  They were both diabetics and are a reminder for me to take better care of myself with my own blood sugar issues.  My cousin said, at my uncle's funeral last week, that she is going to continue the family reunions in honor of her dad who enjoyed them so much.  Funerals always bring up any unresolved grief issues that I may have so I have been feeling some of that sadness that I have carried for so many years.  Feeling the sadness is so different from all of the many years that I stuffed it instead.

One last topic before I close this post, have you ever seen weather like we have had this Winter?  We have our third snow of the Winter melting outside right now.  We have another chance of freezing rain and snow tomorrow and then again on Wednesday.  It is rare for Arkansas to get more than one snow over several years time.  We got three inches of snow yesterday and three and a fourth inches of the snow on January 9 which we kept on the ground until the following Saturday (1/15) before it all melted.  Our temperatures have been below normal too down in the teens and 20's for the lows at night over much of the past month.  We usually have a week of these cold temperatures in February.  I am glad that I don't live in Chicago or Boston or Maine.  They have gotten every snow storm that we have with a lot more snow and ice.  Ice is what can be so damaging here and Thank God we haven't gotten any this year.  I hope that all of you where ever you live are staying warm and dry.
Patricia

Your Parents Did The Best They Could

When I first heard someone say that my parents did the best they could in raising me, I would automatically, in my mind, say, "No, they didn't!"  I would feel so angry at my parents and at the person who said that statement.  I was usually in a 12-Step meeting when someone said it.  I just knew that they were wrong.  My parents did not do the best that they could.  They abused me physically, emotionally and sexually.  How could that be the best that they could do?

Then people started saying, "Your parents did the best they could with the tools that they had."  Well, wherever they got the tools, they were pretty poor tools.  That calmed my angry a little bit but not much.  It still didn't feel right to me but since I was just beginning to feel, I wasn't sure why it didn't feel right.

Then one day a friend said, "Your parents did the best they could with the tools they had and it wasn't good enough."  Finally someone else was saying what I was thinking.  I could wholeheartedly agree with that statement even after I had worked through a ton of anger.

This week I was reading from the Dennis Wholey book Becoming Your Own Parent, The Solution for Adult Children of Alcoholic and Other Dysfunctional Families.  On page 237-238, Robert Subby, M. A. talks about this very subject.

Robert Subby says, " 'Well, Mom and Dad did the best they could at the time they did it with the skills and tools they had.' "
"That's all well and good, and who's going to argue with that logic, except that it invalidates all the facts about things they didn't do right.  'With that kind of thinking,' I tell them, 'you don't have any right to feel sad or angry because 'they did the best they could.' That way you end up minimizing your own reality and invalidating yourself.  What I want to hear from you is what you feel and that what happened to you back there really happened.  I want to hear you say that you have a right to those feelings and that those mistakes were not your fault.  Don't sit here and pay me good money and defend your mom and dad.  They don't need you to defend them.' 'But I feel guilty,' the adult child says.  And I tell that adult child, 'That's an issue you're going to have to accept.  Some part of you makes you feel guilty for having real feelings, and that's not Mom and Dad anymore---that's you.' "

Thank you Mr. Subby for saying it so well.  He says we have a right to feel angry, sad and hurt.  Those feelings validate the reality that we lived through as children.  He goes on to teach another valuable lesson when he says, " 'Now enough about them [your parents].  Who's been responsible for your life since you were twenty?' Ultimately, for adult children, that's the bigger issue."
"You must come to embrace personal responsibility.  As adults, you have rejected yourself.  You have abandoned yourself.  Given your history, it's understandable why.  That's what you were trained to do.  That's what feels comfortable."

True recovery starts when you realize what you are responsible for in your adult life and you forgive yourself for all of those times that you abused yourself by rejection, abandonment and disconnection from feelings or body.  You did the best you could with the tools you had and it wasn't good enough.  You deserve better.  You can't change the past but you can choose a better future.  Is it time to forgive yourself?
Patricia

The Movie "Precious" And Incest

Here is a recent comment that I left on the website Bossip.com . You can find the article that I commented to at the following link: [Warning: the language of the comments may be offensive to some. The video could also be a trigger for some incest survivors.]

http://bossip.com/224627/damn-gabourey-sidibes-precious-audition-tape-is-powerful-video/ .

"Incest is a very big problem in our society. I have never heard Oprah or anyone else say that it only happens in the black community. Believe me, it doesn't.

Those of us who are incest survivors know just how big this problem is. I am an incest survivor and my skin color is white. Black or white, skin color doesn't matter if you are an incest survivor.

This problem has been hidden for so very long. I think we are blessed that Oprah and other celebrities are bringing the secret of incest out into the open. As long as it is hidden, we will never stop it from happening to our children. The children are important. They are our future.

If you don't like Oprah's choice of movies or her topics on her show, don't watch them. Tell [should have been "turn"] the TV off. Don't buy tickets to the movie. You have a simple choice not to go there.

As an incest survivor, I can't turn off my life. My past has molded me into who I am today. Today I am a survivor. "Get over it" as some other commenter said isn't as easy as you would like to believe. Today incest doesn't rule my life like it once did.

If "getting over it" was an easy option, don't you think we would do that. It isn't easy. Incest affects every area of my life. Shame, low-self worth, self-hatred, rage, a hurt so deep that it seems like you will never recover from it---I have dealt with all of these. People who tell you to just "get over it" don't know what the hell they are talking about and I hope that they never learn about incest first hand. Don't let your ignorance make you heartless.

What you want is for me to go back into denial of my incest issues. That isn't healthy and helps no one, lest of all me. Pretending that I am not affected by incest just makes me more of a victim which I refuse to ever be again. How about you stop pretending that incest isn't a part of our world?"

In the video audition, Miss Sidibe say two things that jumped out at me. She said, "I'm tired." and she said, "I've had enough of love."

For most of my life since I was a very small child, I have lived with a bone weary tiredness that never seemed to leave. I think that I still carry some of that feeling in my body. I learned to live with that tiredness a long time ago if I wanted to achieve anything in my life. I have been reading about doing body work on several other blogs over the past few months. Maybe it is time for me to find out if I can trust enough to do body work.

I think that many incest survivors have decided that they have had enough of love. Love to an incest survivor often has the sexual abuse so tied up in the concept of love that it is hard to trust anyone else to be intimate enough to give healthy love a chance to grow. Trust is so much involved with loving another person, letting that person get close enough for love to grow. Some of us have been so abused that trust in another person is almost impossible to even imagine. Having someone abuse you sexually while they are saying that they love you really messes up your concept of trust and love. Having someone tell you, like my dad did, that if you love me you will let me do this makes you not even trust yourself, much less someone else. Only by the grace of God did I take a chance and let myself learn to love my husband when he came into my life back in 1972. He is worth loving and so am I. I don't know where I got the courage to even try. Some incest survivors don't.

Incest and violence neither one are confined to just one race. Neither cares about the color of your skin or what language you speak or if you are even old enough to speak. Sometimes they don't even care if you are male or female. They don't care how much money your family has and they don't care what educational level your family comes from. They don't discriminate like some people would like you to believe.
Patricia

How Will People Remember You?

Craig Harper from "Motivational Speaker" asks the question what would the people at your funeral say if you died today? That may not be Craig's exact words. That's my interpretation of what he said. Go to http://craigharper.com.au/2008/02/just-another-life.html to read what Craig says. My thoughts afterwards are the reason for this article.


In my comment on Craig's site, I told how my dad's funeral was the saddest day of my life. As a friend of mine said when her mom died, she felt like an orphan on that day. Her dad had died years before.

I can truthfully say that I had no regrets where my dad is concerned. A year and a half before he died, my sister and I visited him in his hospital room when he was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. The surgery removed as much of the tumor as the doctors could safely remove. They gave him six months to live. He fooled them and lived a year and a half. When we visited my dad that day in his hospital room, I spoke to his higher self and told him that I forgave him for the incest.


Did my dad use that year and a half to make changes in his life? No, the older my dad got, the meaner he got. He died alone living in a bus sitting on the side of the road. The bus had been converted into a camper trailer. He and a friend (the only friend who came to his funeral) both had a bus sitting end to end next to each other on the property of the friend's brother. My dad's death certificate says he died from alcohol and cigarette abuse. I assume that means that his heart just stopped beating. My dad was 68 years old. He looked like he was 80-90 years old. It took his friend a week to find any family to notify of my dad's death.


Why was my dad's funeral the saddest day of my life? When I gave everybody the opportunity to say something about my dad at his funeral, nobody said a word. I was too numb to think of anything to say. I was shocked that none of his ten brothers and sisters or his mom said a word. It is sad to me that none of the good things about my dad came to mind for anybody to speak about at his funeral. There must have been some good memories from the years before he became an alcoholic.


His friend was angered and was openly critical of me for the way that I handled things that day. I didn't react to his criticism. My thought was that he apparently knew a different person than I did.



I want to share some of Craig's words from his article with you because they are important to me:
"In the context of 'time' we're only on this planet for a moment, and in the overall scheme of things we are but tiny specks on the face of humanity. In a way we're insignificant, but at the same time we're giants, if we choose to be. Of course I'm not talking about our physical size, but rather the size of the contribution we make to others; our brothers and sisters here on the big blue ball. The legacy we leave behind. That contribution may be on a 'family and friends' level, a community level, a national level or it might be something we do, which in some way has global implications. If we operate from the premise that life is ultimately about what we can give, (as opposed what we can get - the opposite of what 'modern culture' teaches), then we begin to move from selfishness to significance. And on focusing on the giving we become richer (on every level) then we ever would have by focusing on the getting. Clever that. Selfish people rarely become rich. Generous poeple - often. And don't assume that people with loads of money are necessarily rich. Many of them are paupers; spiritually, emotionally and mentally bankrupt. Not all of course, but some."


So, my question to you is, "Do you want to live life like my dad where nobody has anything good to say about you at your funeral or do you want to be remembered for your contributions and good will? Do you want to be a real person who is loved and remembered by all because of who you are?

Journey Within Coaching Session With Paula Kawal

First of all, I want you to be aware of a teleclass that Andrea Hess is doing on Saturday, December 29 at 9:00 a.m. PST/Noon EST called Setting Your Intentions For 2008. Andrea says you will "Learn how to make New Year's Resolutions that actually stick!" I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say. You need to visit her site at http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?1=GTHya&m=1a06Jq4HPAarnP&b=yb3JTogckkgbrS_pq3zMyA
to register for the teleclass.


Yesterday at 1:00 p.m. CST, I was blessed with a free session with Paula Kawal which I won by leaving a comment on her article Celebrate the Wellspring and Win a Free Coaching Session found on her website http://www.paulakawal.com . If you aren't aware or haven't visited in awhile, visit Paula at her site. You will be glad that you did. The writing and the coaching sessions that she does are fantastic.

The session that I was gifted with is called a Focus Session. The session required that I have total concentration on our phone call for 1 1/2 - 2 hours on the date that we set for me to call Paula. After I set up the time for the session with Paula, I became terrified. I struggled with the terror for days with the thought of changing the date until after the holidays. The rational side of me knew that I needed the session right now so I didn't change the date. When Paula answered her phone and asked how I was, in my usual honest manner, I said, "I am terrified." We both laughed. I told her that I had been overeating all week partly because of the terror of doing this session.

Early last week, Paula sent me a Welcome package through an email that had pages of information for me to read and fill out and fax back to her before the session. She emailed me on Saturday because I hadn't sent it to her yet. I emailed back and told her that part of me was resisting filling out the forms. I made myself sit down that night and finish the pages. I didn't completely fill out the answers. I did the best that I could and decided to leave it at that. My husband went and faxed the pages to Paula on Sunday afternoon for me.

All day on Tuesday, before time for the session, I looked at what I was thinking and feeling. Finally an hour before the session, I got an answer about my fears. Albert, part of this is thanks to an email that you sent me last week too. I realized that the anger and sadness have been a part of me for such a long time that I was afraid of who I might be without them. I didn't know who I would be without those parts of me. I shared this with Paula before we started the session.

In the session, with Paula's guidance, I was able to embrace the sadness and the rage that are inside of me. As Andrea pointed out in a comment to my Feelings article found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/feelings.html , I am not the rage and sadness. They are not who I am. Sometimes, I think, most of us lose sight of that and do believe that our feelings are us. They are not who we really are. They are tools that help us to be aware, but that is all they are.

At one pivotal point in the session, I found myself embracing the part of me that holds my rage in my arms. I held her with love and compassion and she started to cry and talk to me. Before I held her, she was yelling at me with all of her pentup rage. I could see her, in my mind's eye, but I couldn't hear the words that she was screaming. I told Paula that I had done a painting years ago where she was surrounded by clouds of red and black which represented her rage and despair. In the painting she had no mouth because no one could hear her screams of pain and rage.

As I held Rage in my arms, she started to cry and she told me that she just wanted to be acknowledged. She wanted to be heard. A different voice said to bring her into the Light. She has been in the darkness for so long. I envisioned her and I both standing in the most brilliant, loving light that you can imagine. She started to smile. Then the voice said to bring in Sadness also. I did. The three of us were there standing in the Light, smiling and holding each other. This was the biggest instance of healing for me in the entire session. We all three felt such love and joy. Love, joy and peace were the three things that Rage and Sadness both said that they wanted. Now we all have it.

Rage and Sadness are no longer Shadow parts of me living in the darkness. They are in the Light of my love and compassion. Thank you so very much for the gift of the session Paula. If I need any more help, I will definitely be contacting you. Paula, last night, I started straightening up in the living room to have room to put up Christmas decorations. I haven't decided yet if I want to put up the tree at this late date but I am going to put out some Christmas decorations which, up to this point, I couldn't make myself exert the effort to feel any passion for doing so.

Paula works with NLP in her sessions. For more information on Paula's work go to http://www.journeyinwardcoaching.com/index-5.html .

For prices for working with Paula with her Journey Inward Coaching go to http://www.journeyinwardcoaching.com/index-2.html .

I strongly recommend Paula and her work. The session has made a difference in how I feel. Thank you, Paula.