Why 'bad' things happen to 'nice' people!
While talking to a friend today who is really going through a traumatic situation with her children I heard her cry out "tell me why bad things always happen to the people who are trying so hard to live a good life"?
Like my sweet friend, each of us experience situations where we really feel the sting of circumstances beyond our control, for instance like death in the family, divorce or illness. For many of us it can be the pain inflicted when someone spreads harmful gossip, abuses us, betrays us or simply jerks us around or our children.
The circumstances may cause us to lose jobs, lose custody of our children, lose a lover, or a business deal. The pain is there no matter what the circumstances are at the time. It is very real, very deep and sometimes very private. Most people around us don't feel how badly it is affecting us when "it" happens and do not understand the scope or the depth of pain we carry as a result of the emotional wounding.
There are some key steps to dealing with the pain of grief and crisis in our life.
1. We need to privately admit to ourselves that we have been wounded deeply, admit you have been hurt and are hurting, and own it!
Recognize that whenever we experience a change in life that results in a loss, no matter how big or small, we will go through a grieving process. It's important to start at a place of honesty, recognizing your pain for what it is. Grieving is a process that flows like a river over us. It sometimes is overwhelming but when we understand that it is a process then we can get control of how we allow it to affect us.
2. This step is not easy for sometimes it goes against our nature. If the cause of our pain is an offense then we need to forgive. By forgiving you are not letting the offender off the hook as far as consequences are concerned. By forgiving, we're letting our self off the hook. We are giving up any motivation or thought of revenge. When a person refuses to forgive, they choose to carry the pain, the anger, the bitterness, of the situation around them every minute of the day and night. The situation becomes an emotional wound that festers like an emotional infection. Until we forgive our offender, our offender ends up owning our emotions.
3. The third step in the process of responding to life's deep hurts is to find a "safe" friend and share our pain with them. We all have friends in our lives, but what do I mean by the term "safe friend"? Safe friends are friends who listen to you, are empathetic with you, can advise you, but the most important quality in a safe friend, and are the person's ability to respect confidentiality. Not all friends are "safe friends". "Safe friends" are often few and far between. "Safe friends" can be a current friend, a counselor, a priest, a therapist, a law enforcement officer, someone who's been through a similar situation, or a person recommended to you by a friend who feels they simply can't help you but know of a better person who could.
In summation, we finally need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and face the grieving process straight on. If we don't carry on in life, then we're choosing to let our offender win, and we're choosing to be our offender's victim.
While this can be difficult to hear when we're in the depths of a painful experience, being a "victim" is a choice, it's a mental state, and it can be terribly crippling. For those caught in a victim mentality, they are in the position of strength, for they can choose to no longer be a victim by removing themselves from the situation. If we are being abused or bullied by a person, and we remove our self from that situation, then our abuser or bully has no more power over us.
When life really hurts, there are positive solutions that will empower us to take charge of our pain. We have the power to bounce back, we can smile again, we can laugh and we can rise above the hurt we carry deep inside.
I pray for blessed healing energy to surround and protect all of us in our community through the day and into this night.
Rosie
Tags: Metaphysical Counseling Relationship
