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Dr. Zafirides
189 Posts |
 Posted - 10/25/2012 : 18:36:59
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Hi Everyone,
The topic for my podcast this week is the healing power of Forgiveness:
http://www.thehealthymind.com/2012/10/24/forgiveness-the-key-to-healing-our-pain/
I believe forgiveness (of ourselves and others) is perhaps the most important way we can improve our health and well-being. In TMS treatment, it is absolutely crucial.
To be able to forgive is to triumph over anger.
Forgiveness represents the very essence of our strength and true potential.
This is why forgiveness is so healing.
I hope you find the information beneficial and worthwhile.
- Dr. Zafirides
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eric watson
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 10/25/2012 : 21:47:30
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| Forgivness is a great subject to talk about,ive always heard people say ill forgive but not forget-their really not forgiving if there not forgetting ,maybe they should say ill forgive but im going to be as shrewd as a snake-ya know the proverb be as loving as a dove but as shrewd as a snake-now i have battled with this issue for about 2 yrs now-i have a deep christian back ground so i know true forgivness, but this got stole 50,000 dollars from my company and put me bankrupt-it always intriges me how i handle this -i didnt kill anyone,it was a contract signed and work done that caused the fall out- because of all the lawers involed i didnt win a penny and lost about 5000 more dollars on shabby litigation,heres the point -i was in the right-i have never done any body wrong since ive started my business in 2007,now 5 yrs later i have a bigger contractor to hire me for an applebees roof job-when were done i lost all my material money and laBOR MONEY AND GET THIS they even won a million dollars on the lotto that weekend and come monday, they stole all my capitol so yes it hurts-im dealing with it in different ways but i still dont know how to just forget about it-2 yrs time has helped but when i look at THE shape i was put in and now i have to start all baCK OVER IF I CAN-.....ill win this battle-still learning-thanks for your response |
Edited by - eric watson on 10/26/2012 10:40:12 |
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tennis tom
USA
4749 Posts |
Posted - 10/25/2012 : 22:53:57
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EW, sounds like you got burned. Giving legal advice over the internet is about as practical and accurate as giving TMS advice over the internet. A couple of thoughts:
*Can you file a mechanics lien?
*Can you sue your ex-lawyer for legal malpractice? Maybe contact the State Bar and file a complaint for his file that he did not represent your interests properly. Maybe the State Bar can recommend an attorney specializing in legal malpractice and if you have a strong enough case will take it on contingency.
*Was Applebees the one who screwed you or was it the construction company they hired? Maybe you can talk to Applebees and tell them how you got screwed on their job, maybe they aren't aware of how you got screwed. Maybe you can find someone there, who out of human kindness, will help rectify the situation and get you paid. Trying to do something will help your TMS/pain lessen or go away. At least you'll know you tried and gave it your best shot.
Just some ideas off the top of my head without knowing any other facts of your case.
G'luck
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Edited by - tennis tom on 10/26/2012 07:37:29 |
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eric watson
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 10/25/2012 : 23:57:41
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| Thanks tt it was the construction company that i subed for-i got it on the backburner,but you have some great ideas-thanks tennis tom,your a great friend-god bless |
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LuvtoSew
USA
327 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 08:39:57
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Eric, I'm Christian too and forgiveness is a must for us, but not to forget. I got hurt pretty bad by a body worker, and well theres not much one can do about it, harder than heck to sue a body worker.
My husband is a sub and he has been burnt and I see you did a union job they are the hardest as we have to do draws. Its not like with housing we can make them pay for materials on delivery. My husband has worked for the same commercial sub for several years now and we don't get paid till he does. Its very hard.
the best thing is to file a lien, yes we forgive but they must make restitution, while we forgive. |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 09:26:06
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I think that forgiveness is a powerful antidote to many of life's stress, but many time it is seem impossible to forgive. The next best thing to do is to forget. Your health is much more important than anything. With good health you can pretty much re-make anything you've lost, without it you don't have a chance.
So if you can forgive, try to forget and move on. Just think of it as you've lost some money at the casino. Or think of it as you've hiding some money in a brown lunch bag in the oven and your wife went home and bake some cake without knowing about it. Think of it like a lesson you have learned. think of it like a test you've took, you can rise above it and move on to better things.
Got to move on, life is so prescious to focus on the negative.
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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 09:30:12
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| From my very subjective vantage point, one's body NEVER forgets. Yes, we may consciously forget things that happened to us and tell ourselves that it is all in the past, but somehow the body stores all of these emotions and eventually they catch up with us if they are not properly dealt with. |
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eric watson
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 09:30:24
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thanks luv2sew....thanks balto....thanks shawnsmith.....-i was really thinking about just giving up but when i get some capital built up im going to persue my money-it wasnt right but i have adjusted,its been two yrs and i dont know the statue of limitation but ill live either way-it wasnt long after this happened that my back went out so if it was something dramatic and financial that brought it on -this would have to be the culprit-its hard when youve been stripped of all your fighting money-but with the help and knowledge ive learned from here ive came a long way on healing my back-i did say i was stabbed in the back-and metaphorically i was but now through affirmations im accepting but i cant give up on this endeavor,and i can think about it now without hurting -so again thanks for your responses-there r psycological things that can bring on pain and i know finances is one of them but through peace and acceptance ive came a long way-i still have a side that wants to strangle someone,and thats the reason i wrote this post-forgiveness of your enemys in my book is the hardest
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Edited by - eric watson on 10/26/2012 09:34:50 |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
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eric watson
USA
601 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 10:52:41
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| thanks shawnsmith-will do,just had to get it off my chest-this was really a conscious repression and i believe by coming here and talking to friends about it that ive really had a tension release in my back.i now know conscious repression can cause pain....ive heard it said here before that tms is what you think about all day....balto did you say that? |
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Peregrinus
250 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 16:06:57
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| Here is a riddle for all you mind-body experts. What are we really doing when we forgive someone? |
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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 17:04:23
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| We're downregulating our HPA axis and sympathetic nervous system, transitioning from a phenomenological concept into a biochemical one as we alleviate one more stressor to ponder, rendering us less internally sensitized because there is less to be sensitive about. Hardly a riddle. |
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Peregrinus
250 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 17:09:28
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| "Downregulating...(an} axis"!? This is the type of nonsense we usually hear from the Federal Reserve. |
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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 17:28:09
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| Your use of "nonsense" hurt, so thank you for the opportunity to forgive! |
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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 10/26/2012 : 17:33:01
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| "Angry through us" versus "Angry at us." Excellent concept, Dr. Z! Thank you for your illuminating and new perspective. |
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shawnsmith
Czech Republic
2048 Posts |
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Dr. Zafirides
189 Posts |
Posted - 10/27/2012 : 19:05:52
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quote:
Originally posted by jegol71
"Angry through us" versus "Angry at us." Excellent concept, Dr. Z! Thank you for your illuminating and new perspective.
I use the "angry through us" example almost every day in my practice.
It is such an important point. Once you truly understand this concept - and see it in action in your life - it can really prevent you from owning someone else's negative emotions.
I'll talk more about it in the future if all of you would like. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast!
-Dr. Z
Kindly,
Peter Zafirides, MD
http://www.thehealthymind.com |
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Bugbear
United Kingdom
152 Posts |
Posted - 10/28/2012 : 08:20:38
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quote:
[i]Originally posted by Dr. Zafirides
I use the "angry through us" example almost every day in my practice.
I actually found myself explaining this concept with a family I was working with professionally where a child was lashing out continually at her parent, as children, young and old, are prone to do. I am not sure if they really did 'get' it though. I think I even mentioned your website. However once you say the word 'psychiatrist' people tend to freak. Will try a different approach next time.  |
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Dr. Zafirides
189 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2012 : 08:20:52
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[/quote]
However once you say the word 'psychiatrist' people tend to freak. Will try a different approach next time.
[/quote]
Bugbear,
Not only am I a psychiatrist, but I also do TMS treatment!
That is a DOUBLE freak-out!!
((((sigh))))
Don't ever get discouraged. Keep spreading the message of TMS. If we set enough brushfires, people will no longer be able to turn a blind eye to the inconsistencies and errors of today's medical approach to pain.
Look what one man - John Sarno - was able to do. All of us are so critical.
I always remember the quote: "One person can't change the world, but you can change the world for one person."
So that is what we'll do.
Onward!!!!!
-Dr. Z
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Dr. Zafirides
189 Posts |
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balto
839 Posts |
Posted - 12/04/2012 : 18:29:14
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Reading this I thought about Dr. Z's post, just want to share it. Hope you enjoy reading it.
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Forgiving Our Parents
by Mark Epstein, an article appears in the Summer 2009 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Epstein is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of many books including Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart and a new revised edition of Going on Being.
I was driving in the car one morning after dropping my kids off at school, flipping impatiently through the stations programmed into the radio's memory, when I suddenly heard a familiar voice speaking in what seemed to be an unfamiliar context. It was a deep male voice that I recognized but could not place: a workingman's gruff but casual cadence tackling a subject that seemed so sensitive as to be almost obscene. He was talking about how hard it is to raise children when one's own childhood was less than perfect. "We take what is good from our parents and leave the rest.
That's how we honor them," the voice was saying. I quickly turned up the volume, trying to figure out who he was. Parenting is a common subject, but the speaker did not sound like the usual authority to be heard on Public Radio. He sounded more like a soldier talking about fallen comrades, and his sub ject was as much mourning as childrearing. It did not take much longer for me to identify the voice as that of Bruce Springsteen and to realize that he was giving the interview in anticipation of the release of an album. But the subject matter having children in middle age and reflecting on how one's own difficulties growing up affected one's ability to raise children-was not the usual material of a star's publicity machine.
I was struck by the wisdom of Springsteen's comment that we honor our parents by taking what is good and leaving the rest. There was a Buddhist flavor to it, although I would be hard pressed to identify what it was exactly that sounded Buddhist. In meditation, we are trained to not push away the unpleasant and to not cling to the pleasant-this was a little different.
This was talking about not rejecting one's parents because they were imperfect, not trying to force them to acknowledge their shortcomings, not rejecting becoming a parent because of what was done to us, not dwelling on the scars one's parents created, not forcing oneself to pretend that one's parents were fine when they were not, but simply being able to take what was good while leaving behind what was not. There was no blame in Springsteen's words or in his tone-that was what caught my attention. After years of listening to Springsteen's music, with its claustrophobic evocation of growing up in a small mill town in New Jersey, I found his comments now to be all the more poignant. Here was a man who was able to honor his parents by refusing to replicate what they had messed up, a man who understood that in his very rejection of them was an appreciation of their efforts. In trying to do a better job, he was never¬theless able to keep his heart open to them, imperfections and all.
Where had this wisdom come from? There was little in the interview to indicate its source. When forgiveness is taught in most spiritual contexts, the emphasis is usually on sending loving feelings even to those who have hurt us most deeply. While many people find this approach helpful, it struck me that Springsteen was pointing to a different way. The forgiveness he was modeling continued to recognize the hurt that he felt. In taking what was good and leaving the rest, he was clearly implying that all had not gone well. Rather than cultivating a mind of compassion that could then forgive the most egregious abuse, he seemed to be finding forgiveness in the recognition of having simply survived. Emerging from his stark early years, undoubtedly aided by devotion to his music, he discovered that he was not destroyed. His own generative capacity, his own desire for a family, and his own ability to love were all reasonably intact. It seems to me that this recognition of his own intactness must have relieved him of the need to blame and permitted him to forgive in a natural rather than a contrived way.
The source of forgiveness, Springsteen seemed to imply, lies in the realization that we are not solely products of what was done to us, the realization that there is something essential within us that is not necessarily tarnished by calamitous experience. While this contradicts many of the assumptions that a hundred years of psychotherapy have helped create in our culture, it is a notion that finds much support in the spiritual traditions of the East. In Buddhist cultures, there is a more willing acceptance of a capacity for joy or love that is not dependent on external circumstances, not compromised by trauma or mistreat¬ment, and capable of surviving destruction. While the classic Eastern route to accessing this inherent joy is meditation, Springsteen's comments suggest that, at least for him, the making of music may have been just as redemptive.
The discovery that one's capacity for joy is inherent and not dependent on external events is the antidote to the all too common predicament of the abused child who assumes too much responsibility for that which he or she had no control over. Springsteen's ability to leave behind what he did not respect of his parents' behavior flies in the face of how most people respond to such trauma. More commonly, those who are trespassed against in child¬hood have a terrible time seeing the truth clearly. They are much more likely, for instance, to feel as if they are somehow to blame for whatever damage was done to them. Or they may so demonize the perpetrators that they lose sight of the perpetrators' essential humanity. In one scenario, they cleave too tightly to the abuse; in the other, they reject the abuser totally, but never escape from their identification as a victim. A vignette provided by one of my patients may shine some light on this.
Joe, a forty-year-old married man, remembered himself at age ten, answering the door when his estranged mother unexpectedly paid his family a visit. She had left when he was five, abandoning her husband and four children and precipitating an unrelenting depression in Joe's father. Upon seeing his mother in the doorway, Joe ran immediately to find his father, shouting, "Daddy, Daddy, this is what you've been waiting for!" Rousing him from his study and taking him by the hand back to the vestibule, Joe discovered that his mother had left as suddenly as she had arrived. "I felt so guilty," he told me, as if it had somehow been his fault that his mother had disappeared again.
Years later, Joe had a major revelation when he realized that his wife's drinking was her problem and not his fault. Until that revelation, he had been in the all too familiar habit of trying to get her to stop so that he would feel better. He had made his well-being completely dependent on how his wife behaved. Her drinking blighted their love, made it impossible for him to take refuge in the closeness and comfort of their relationship, and made him furious and unhappy. He took his wife's drinking personally, as if it were directed at him, as if it were a reflection of her lack of love for him or his own unworthiness. The same over-responsibility that led him to feel guilty over his mother's departure when he was ten also colored his relationship to his wife. Only after attending a series of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings did he begin to accept that her drinking had little to do with him. This left him in a new predicament. Taking what was good and leaving the rest, not rushing to the assumption that it was all his fault, and separating his own capacity for well-being from the circumstances that surrounded him permitted Joe to begin a process of separation that extended back to his mother and into the present to his wife. Joe made new boundaries that eventually caused his wife to seek help. He found a capacity for forgiveness that was not a whitewash of how he had been, or was being, mistreated: it emerged when Joe could acknowledge the hurt he was subjected to while not entwining himself more than was necessary with the trauma.
Joe's example points to a new and unusual way of thinking, one that the psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin has called "beyond doer and done to." To Benjamin, the most common reaction to the power¬lessness of trauma or abuse is to simply reverse the scenario: to try to assume some power by becoming a perpetrator oneself, by blaming or hurting the other person or by blaming or hurting oneself. She has called this a "seesaw" mentality: one person is up while the other is down. The primary way out of trauma in this mentality is to seek vengeance or revenge, to lower the other while raising up one's self. In the mode of "beyond doer and done to," something shifts. People, even those who have hurt us, are no longer experienced one-dimensionally, as either all good or all bad.
Self-esteem is no longer dependent on being the winner, or on being right. Up and down are no longer the only criteria by which life is measured. The seesaw gives way to a merry-go-round, known in Buddhist culture as the wheel of life. In this model, it is clear that we cycle through all the manifestations of what it means to be human. We move from state to state, sometimes causing each other pain and sometimes bringing each other joy. As the seesaw gives way to the merry-go-round, an appreciation is gained of the difficulties and complexities involved in being human. Not only are we all completely capable of hurting one another but we are also capable of a profound empathy, even for those who have hurt us or for those we disdain.
In Springsteen's few short comments on the radio that morning, I heard a voice of wisdom calling out across the generations, one that seemed to be reaching for a new way of relating. A master of the adolescent love song, Springsteen has a catchy tune that I found myself humming that day, one of those simple songs with an infectious hook that I often repeat like an unconscious mantra: All I'm Thinkin' About Is You. As much as I love that song, his words that morning went even deeper. We honor our parents by taking what was good and leaving the rest, he said. I could feel that old seesaw implode.
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No, I don't know everything. I'm just here to share my experience. |
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Forgiveness: The Key To Healing Our Pain
