On the Permanence of Damage

by Charity

[Someone on a forum suggested that we could heal the pain from the past by creating something new in the present.]

It's the "creating something new" that we have trouble with. A number of us believe that once we have painful experiences, particularly formative ones, that the effect of those painful experiences is permanent and cannot be changed, because history can't be rewritten. Those painful experiences are like painful scars that no medical treatment can remove. Nothing positive can make up for the damage.

Our beliefs won't change until the pain stops. Our T sometimes says that if we change our thoughts, we can change our feelings. Feelings are our foundation, and for us, the feelings have to change before the thoughts change. And when we don't want to let go of the feelings, it's even harder.

Foundation.  It's all about having a foundation and an anchor.  We don't swim; we had some terrifying experiences with water as a child and resolved never to learn to swim, ever.  In adulthood came the realization that life is like swimming, and that not only are we ill-equipped to handle it, we refuse to learn.

We can't get through life without at least a flotation device.  And we definitely can't get through life without a safe port to come home to.

Our port, our foundation, is severely damaged.  The foundation is a separate structure from the port and is our permanent home.  The port is secondary and is our way of accessing the outside and of returning safely home.  As we see it, there's no way to repair the foundation.  As long as any of its material is there, it remains toxic and dangerous, a danger that can only be resolved if the entire foundation is completely destroyed.

How do we eradicate the toxic foundation without having our entire life crumble to the ground?  Rip it to the studs as we do when we examine ourselves in therapy?  Even if we take down every stud that's there and destroy the toxic foundation, what of the soil on which the toxic foundation existed?  Has that been poisoned as well?  And if so, does that poison spread throughout the rest of the universe, mixing in with the poison of seven billion other lives?

If that doesn't show people why we feel stuck, we don't know what will.