This experiencing emotions in real time is sooooo overrated. I am so bored with myself but I'm hanging in there and still doing it - after 40 years of a pattern of suppression. I'm putting all those deepest feelings on the table. Regardless of whether they are related to the issue at hand, I am accepting them. Last night I had hysterics. I felt sick in the stomach. I wrote down my feelings "I feel used, deceived, exploited, betrayed, treated like a cheap whore, powerless". I let myself feel those feelings and I let myself cry, even though they felt like an overreaction to the situation at hand. Usually I would suppress them because they didn't match the logic. Only this morning did I realise that I wasn't grieving the situation at hand, I was actually grieving my sexual abuse as a child. The current situation merely triggered those emotions. So this situation can actually be used to cleanse and heal an old wound. I think it has taken 40 years for me to get in a place where I can manage the intensity of those feelings. Even though I had hysterics, hysterics IS within keeping with that kind of wounding - and I was able to apply my own first aid and take care of myself. The love triangle I have recently experienced triggering the "Mum-Stepdad-Me" triangle. The dynamics were different but the recent situation was obviously similar enough to activate the old wounds. But not all of my emotions are because of my previous experiences. Some of them are legitimate feelings that most people would feel if they were treated the way I was by my ex-bf. I don't like the victim role... it feels so powerless... and I hate feeling powerless.

Oh, LW, I am proud, proud, PROUD of you!!! Recognizing that you have to, at some point, let it all out and feel the yuk totally STINKS... BUT, the fact that you allowed yourself, in a safe environment to feel it and cry and just experience it flowing out is SO GOOD. HUGE progress... hysterics in the safety of your own 4 walls is not a bad thing. Pretty healthy, if you ask me!

I can see why you were triggered. I guess if we take a trigger and let it catapult us into spewing out the feelings, the trigger served a positive purpose.

You keep going! You're taking that feeling of powerlessness and transforming it into the power of healthily coping. And you're breaking out of your pattern of suppression...gawd, I admire you beyond words!

Hug hug hug!!!
-Koshka