Priscilla,

I hope you get as much out of the meditation as I did!I tried other kinds and although they were beneficial, I didn’t look forward to them and they were a chore. Someone I look up to on these forums recommended that one and I’ve been hooked since.

Before I go into the rest of your post, I just want to say that it’s not pathetic that you aren’t over this. The fact of the matter is, there is a reason why they say to err is human and to forgive is divine. It’s not natural to forgive! Lol! But hoenstly, it takes a spiritual understanding to make peace with your past. It’s part of the human experience to hurt people, and it’s also part of the human experience to be hurt. When hurtful events impact us more than the norm, it takes something beyond our normal skill set to handle and our brain doesn’t compute. It takes new internal growth to overcome them. Perhaps the internal growth is to recognize people’s nature’s faster or more accurately, or enhance your coping skills. (I’m speaking generally, not concerning your childhood incident.) If you didn’t push back the push back, you wouldn’t be growing. So you aren’t pathetic, there’s just something that is sitting with you and you haven’t found a solution that makes sense or really resonates with you as the right answer. I hope some of my experiences and thoughts help you make your own peace that can put this to rest for you.

Excellent about the twitter account! Personally I wear a pair of scissor jewelry I found on etsy to remind me to forgive. I also sent flowers to myself and pretended it was from someone else to really let something go. ( I went through a public humiliation and when I decided to really extract any trace of hate I had, I decided I would do whatever it takes. It satisfieid a part of me that wanted to be publically validated.) Find as many anchors as possible!

Some ideas about the other things you mentioned…

Just because Lisa is rich doen’t mean she’s happy. Look at Hollywood: It doesn’t matter if people are rich, gorgeous, talented and can date rich, gorgeous and talented counterparts. They still end up with divorces and addiction issues. Unfortunately no amount of money can fix a bad childhood, or buy real friends, solve family dysfunction, or give you self esteem or inner peace. I’m glad that you dropped that case on your own anyway, but it’s still something to consider.

KUDOS to you for being honest to break free! I can relate more than I would like to admit.

Concerning your hate, I would keep working on accepting that you can be happy no matter what happens to her. I get that it rocks your sense of justice, but keep in mind that you have no idea what caused her to be that way nor do you have any idea what the future holds. I don’t believe in karma, but what I can tell you is that it’s probable that if she is like this to everyone, at some point the odds won’t be in her favor. I can’t prove it or explain it, but I can honestly tell you that I always put my dignity and integrity first and for whatever reason things always work out for me when I’m in a bad space. Maybe I just have a clear conscious so I can accept things freely. I know others who make compromises and rationalize things, and even when they take shortcuts and have the odds stacked in their favor, things don’t go their way. It’s uncanny, but it only seems to work if you are true to your integrity. Don’t focus on results, just focus on the seeds you’re sowing.

Also, consider that we all have limited understanding, and limited capabilities and that hurt people hurt people. Maybe the mom had no one to protect her as a child and now she is over protective. Maybe the daughter has a rare disease that no one knows about. Who knows. I’ve come to understand that I’m not all knowing as to what their circumstances, capabilites, motives, and thoughts are. I can only judge if someone is good for me or not. Iin my opinion it’s not my place to label someone good or bad is probably inaccurate and unproductive.

Again with the humiliation, accept that you have no control over who learns what lessons when. You might be vindicated tomorrow. Great! But what if it doesn’t happen for ten years? Do you really want to wait ten years before you are able to let yourself be happy? *Marks date on calender 2023* NOW I feel peace knowing that they suffered. How much worse if it never happens! Lol The Buddhist idea that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional teaches us that life is going to happen, but if you dwell then that’s a choice you are making to relive it. Unfortunately, it’s so much easier to see this unproductive state in other people than to change in ourselves. For this reason, offer to help as many people as possible. For whatever reason, it helps unlock things naturally.

I have an uber logcial friend who told me that as long as the person is out of my life, it doesn’t matter if they hit the lotto, died, found the love of their life, or got an std. As long as they are out of your life, they aren’t real hurdles, just ones you create for yourself. For a long time, I asked myself when I got up what I would be doing and thinking if I had amnesia and my past didn’t matter. (Because it doesn’t 😉 ) Wake up each day with what you have as your given and your only goal is to figure out how to move forward. Try to be so busy that you have no time to even think about her, so that eventually you are so proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished that she will be nothing more than a vanishing point.

About Lisa, you have no way of knowing if Lisa is happy. Maybe she feels unbearable guilt and doesn’t like herself.Maybe she’ll have no life skills and no friends when her mom passes away. Or maybe she simply doesn’t have the lfie experience to relate to understand how it affected you. You don’t know, and you may never know.

About all the key people, people are people. We are all trying the best that we can at any given point in time. In my experience, the majority of people you meet are not going to be strong and wise. Even the ones you do meet usually have a tainted past with lost of hard earned lessons and casualites. Sometimes life has bumps and sometimes a lot comes on at once. Unfortunately it sounds like you encountered a lot of people who were young on their journey. They still have potential as human beings, but unfortunately you were a casulty. Also, keep this memory in mind for when you are in a complicated situation or feel intimidated or feel like compromsiing.

Lastly, here is a writing exercises that helped me. One, ask yourself why someone would choose to go through that situation. Pretend that you are an author and that you are purposely choosing these events and characters for your protagonist to overcome. What possible good could happen or how could they grow? Dream big! Maybe you will become a voice for kids, or become better prepared for a position that deals with entitled people.

Whoever you hate in your life has power over you. I hope you get this lesson faster than I did. I wasted a lot of time and energy on people who weren’t worth it.

Priscilla,

I could relate a lot to the injustice you described. First of all, I recommend Sharon Salzberg’s Metta meditation on Youtube. (That’s also what the poster above suggested, but I like this one in particular.) It’s helped me immensely with circumstances I could only go through the motions when it came to forcing forgiveness.

Here are some things about forgiveness it took me a long time to get:

1. Feel the feelings. Go some place where you can be uncensored and not hold back. I don’t care if it’s writing it out, screaming it out, singing it out, sobbing, whatever it takes to not stuff validated emotions.

2. Figure out what really irks you about the situation. Is it that the adults were weak? Or that life is unfair? Or that you were wrongly blamed in the first place?
Whatever it is, just insert it in the following, “I can be happy today even if adults can be weak. I can be happy today even if life is unfair at times. I can be happy even if I am misunderstood and blamed at times. I can be happy in this moment even if they are not sorry.”

The fact is, that’s just stating that you can accept the past the way it was. Oprah defines forgiveness as accepting that you cannot change the past. Not that what happened was okay or fair, only that you cannot change it.

To live otherwise is essentially to say (and unconsciously believe) “I cannot be happy unless adults are always strong, I cannot be happy in today unless life is always fair, or I cannot be happy until I am validated by everyone involved. I cannot be happy until they are sorry.”

Logically, the former helped me see that it’s up to me to learn how to be happy, even if I cant change all of the undeserved things about the past.
My favorite is I can be happy even if I can’t understand where they are coming from or what causes them to be that way.

Maybe you just need to hear from someone that you didn’t deserve that. No kid deserves to be outted and humiliated. Period. You didn’t deserve that and should have been treated with fairness and understanding and protection. Unfortunately a lot of adults aren’t the pillars of strength and wisdom that we think they are as kids. Usually they have their own pressures, agendas and weaknesses that make them suseptible to making hurtful choices. That is not a reflection on your worth, just their understanding. Adopting the philosophy that everyone is doing the best that they can at any given time makes more and more sense to me the more people I get to konw in depth. I hope that you heal from this so that you can be a voice to others.

Lastly, I read somewhere that forgiveness is not a gavel that pronounces someone innocent, but a pair of scissors that cuts away at the bond of hurt that binds you.

Kudos to you to getting this out of your system all these years later. That takes courage.

Elodie (sorry about the typo before)

I second what Dax said about labels not being helpful and wanted to comment on that. (I don’t want internet argurments, so please don’t take it like that, Dax.) Slapping labels so you can remain blameless and make someone else out to be a villian is not productive. My point about bringing up those words was to consider something that you might not be aware of. Let’s say that someone lies, and you try to fix it by assuring them that you will not judge them, or that you won’t get mad, etc. You can keep guessing at people’s different reasons for lying, and try to reassure them that it is not neccessary. Sometimes you can see what keeps them from being honest and you can address that need. Now let’s say that you try this with someone who is a compulsive liar, but you’ve never met one before and you didn’t even know that they existed. Sometimes people’s personalities can rock your paradigm and you don’t know how to compute becuase it doesn’t register with anything else that you’ve experienced. Now if you tell people about all the ways you’ve tried to reassure the compulsive liar and people just keep saying, “Well, tell them that they don’t have to lie to you becuase xyz” then it’s a futile battle. Sometimes you’ve done everything you can and people just are who they are. It doesn’t make you perfect and them awful, it just means that maybe they aren’t good for you in some capacity and a different strategy is needed. Maybe you are keep trying over and over to fix something with a wrench when what you really need is a hammer.

In the case of your sister, I hope for your sake that I’m wrong. I hope no one else on this forum can relate to dealing with people with narcissitic or sociopathic tendencies. In the end we are all just strangers interpretting stranger’s stories and offering our own experiences with our own natural human distortions. I just suggest those thoughts so that if you read up on it and it does resonate with you, perhaps it will give words to an experience or gut feeling that is hard to express. I believe that narcissists and sociopaths deserve love and forgiveness, but I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t do it at my own expense.

Best of luck and I hope you find answers that resonate with you.

Eloise,
Wow, it sounds like you have had your share of life experiences! Your confusion and grief sounds understandable.

A few things came to mind as I read your words. First of all, it sounds as though your sister may have narcissistic and/or sociopathic characteristics. Not to villanize her, but some people are just not born with a sense of empathy that comes naturally to many people. It doesn’t sound as though she is trying to go out of her way to hurt you, she just has a vastly different way of perceiving things. Her insensitivity is just who she is, it’s not because she doesn’t love you or want good things for you.

Personally, I’ve learned the hard way just to keep a lot of distance with people like that because I was constantly felt sucker punched, even when I tried to do the kind and right thing. There is a saying “Don’t go to the hardware store looking for bread.” It’s sad that even though she is your sister, looking for understanding or support for her will probably only be setting yourself up for disappointment. In the same way, trying to talk things out with her will also only end up with little positive results.

I’ll share something personal in hopes that you can spare yourself: I had a close friend who had similar characteristics who did similar things. I tried do to everything possible to understand her side, meet her half way, be there for her, etc. In the end, she was still oblivous and looking out for herself and I was bitter and humiliated. I let it consume me and ended up spending the last year of my dad’s life telling him all the ways I kept trying to give her another chance only to be kicked in the teeth again. For your own sake, just detach and meet your needs through people who know how to be caring and empathetic. Spinning your wheels and trying to make it work with people who hurt you deeply is usually pretty draining. Unfortunatley you can’t change other people, even if you are “right” and even if you are related.

I highly recommend Al Anon to anyone with dysfucntional and/or destructive family members. Also, if you are unfamiliar with sociopathic behavior, I found the book The Sociopath Next Door to be informative. Lastly. I’ve recently started Metta Meditation and found that to be a tremendous help. I like Sharon Salzberg’s Guided Meditation on Youtube. I hope something I said resonated.

Good luck and congratulations on your pregnancy!!!

• This reply was modified 11 years ago by Kinny.

Hi Anna,

From my experience Al Anon has helped me undo a lot of damaging beliefs I had for a long time. I would highly recommend it. It is supposed to be for people who are friends and family of alcoholics, but honestly anyone with a dysfunctional and hostile upbringing could probably relate and glean something from it.

SSS,

I read somewhere that you can tell how long a couple can last, not by how well they get along, but by how well they disagree. That made a lot of sense to me. I will give you some input I received from a friend I respect. He suggested basic ground rules while disagreeing.
1. State your point without attacking
2. Listen without getting defensive.
3. Try to be rational. Start with objective facts and then once you can agree on those, you can relay how you interpret them or how it impacts him.
4. Work with “I” statements. Stating what happened and then how it made you feel seems to benefit people more than most strategies. For example, saying “You are confusing” is probably more problem causing than saying “I am confused by your reasoning. How does X and Y fit together?”
5. Say what you mean, mean what you say, don’t say it mean.

You might find that different ground rules will work better for you, but I establish early on in my relationships that we have to fight fair. I’m not sure what that will mean for you.

Best of luck.