“I don’t remember what it feels like to experience feeling desperation, deep sorrow and pain”  is the thought that runs through my head. This is in response to the emotional pain and processing a person shared with me.

I have spent years healing the pain of my past and now I cannot remember what it felt like. It is hardly even a memory, if I can recollect it at all. Not because I buried or suppressed the emotions and memories. It is because of the healing that has taken place and the time that has passed.

I know you can find your way through and heal your desperation and pain and one day you will find you cannot remember what it was like. 

A situation occurs that triggers residue grief, pain, desperation and memories that want my attention, want my acceptance so I can heal and release them. Then the incredible integration process of me healing and reclaiming who I truly am, presents me with opportunity for remembering. For seeing, hearing and feeling the echoes of what has been.

All at once I feel my body beginning to slow down and slump. I feel my attention, thoughts and being, sinking downwards within my body. As the pain and disappear of the past, begin their journey upwards from my solar plexus. They weave their way through my chest and pierce my eyes with tears. They begin to roll down my cheeks.

I now remember the pain I used to feel. The feelings consume me, they pour through every cell of my being, screaming at me. Screaming “I cannot handle this anymore”. Screaming “I am so alone” and “I am so useless”. I can hardly breathe between the sobbing and writhing as I struggle to contain the pain within me. I so desperately want it to stop. Not stop so that I can face the outside world and what I felt let down by, rejected by, and so useless about. Stop, by me not wanting to be here anymore.

Oh, these feelings, thoughts and physiological reactions are so so familiar to me. They are so powerful and overwhelming

I fully immerse myself in what I am feeling, as I want to remember, I want to feel this pain. Through my mind flashes all the ages and instances in my life when I have sat in a space on the floor rocking back and forth, crying, howling, sobbing and aching all over. And I remembered how often I have felt this and been here. The layers within the layers of times when I was so desperate for things to be different. Yet I felt so so powerless to make them different.

For the first time, I see with clarity that previously, I knew talking to someone did not make a difference to where I was at. Nothing could penetrate the hurricane I was internally in. The process absorbed and entangled me. No hugs would comfort the pain; they only restricted my physical expression of it. A person being present was enough for me to know I was cared about.

What I did was to find my way through this process. Find the belief in me that I would and could find the light on the other side of this darkness. And to know that my internal storm would pass.

There is a difference this time. I KNOW this will pass, I know it is OK to remember and feel this way as I know it is not permanent, but it is important. 

It is important I feel this so that I connect to me. Important so that I accept this pain and grief is residue still within me. Also important for me to see how far I have come and how much I have grieved and healed. Important that I see that the amount of time I spent in this place compared to previously, is shorter. And the most important part of this process—it is important so that I heal this pain and clear more space for my connection to the true me.

I know I can get through these times and it will be different because I have done so previously.

In the early days of this pain, there was no evidence that I could get through. I struggled to believe things would change, so I had to find that place within me where I do trust who I am, I do trust that things are OK and it took conscious work to remind myself of this.

If you struggle with moments, days, weeks or longer periods of time, where you are giving up on you, then finding tools you can use to work with you, is the key to making this process different. When you have the ‘know-how’ you are no longer powerless. 

Working with tools and processes to heal your pain supports you to see the difference you can make to yourself. Apply the tools at times when you are not consumed by the pain. You will then have evidence of the difference you experience within you and outside of you. The evidence helps strengthen your belief and confidence. 

Then if you do fall into the black hole of bottomless nothing where you feel yourself give in, you can remind yourself that this is the place of no-thingness – the place of all possibilities, this is the point for your change and where you can heal and reconnect more to you.

The I Make a Difference book has the tools and processes I created to help me through this.