What do you think would happen if you changed your "pain" stories into "pleasure" stories, and your "trauma dramas" into "adventures"? What if you dropped your "baggage" off somewhere and never went back to pick it up? What would happen if the things you said about yourself were always good? Who would you be then?
4 Comments:
I think at first you would go through an identity crisis. I also think you'd lose a lot of friends and find that many of your even formerly close relatives know longer have much time for you. People like others to be miserable. It is the rare individuals who truely wish good for there friends and love ones. Why do you think we only have support groups for traumas and dramas not for celebratory things. But as far as yourself personally I think you'd be happier with your new and more reliable friends. Your whole world would change as you became such a force for positive change in your own life and in the lives of those around you.
Okay, I've already been accused of being "too perky", so if I didn't have a little drama to converse about, I can't imagine anyone would be able to stand me! LOL
I think they would start calling me "Pollyanna" or "Miss Mary Sunshine" and not in a good way!
But seriously, I do try to keep my dramas to a minimum already. I have to be fair to myself living in this human world and share what events are going on in my life - that's how we bear witness to one another's lives. If I'm in a painful place now, how else am I going to get support and comfort unless I'm truthful about that? If I'm not telling the truth about what's going on with me, then I'm not being authentic and genuine, and how would the universe smack me around then??
I do try to keep stories about the past IN the past. I try not to bring them up because there's no sense in dusting off those old stories and reliving their pain and torment - that doesn't move me forward at all. But being truthful about what's going on in my life today? That's a must.
There's a difference between sharing your story and WALLOWING in it for sympathy. Manipulating others with your well-rehearsed stories about how life gone and done you wrong is just plain wrong.
Sometimes painful stories are just that - and there's no way around it - and it's okay to share them if there's a need, as long as you're not trying to one-up the other person with "My pain is so much worse than yours" and as long as you're not trying to manipulate. Things have happened to me that haunt me even today, and granted, I don't usually share them with others, but in the rare instances where I do, I don't put a pretty red bow on them and say "I'm the person I am today because this happened, isn't it wonderful, I found the good in it." I think that's a bunch of crap. If those things hadn't happened, I would be a much happier person today and less neurotic. I'm not going to tell someone that their story of abuse should suddenly become an adventure story. That would be a lie.
It's a human ritual to tell our stories - it's how we bond and learn what it means to be human. And we need to be truthful about what happened and how it happened. But I agree that people who are wallowing in their "poor me" stories aren't moving forward in their lives and aren't positive people to be around, and I prefer not to be one of those people.
Melissa, I agree that it is important to tell the truth. And I agree that stories bind us together, and give us hope, and ideas, and reasons to help each other. And I agree that we do need to tell our stories - the true stories about our experiences, our hurts, our fears, our disappointments, as well as the happy stories of how it all came out ok in the end.
I read somewhere once that people don't love us for our perfections - they love us for our flaws and weaknesses. What makes us loveable is our humanness.. our naked vulnerabilities.
And I do think that we can turn our pain stories into pleasure stories without putting on a false front, and while still being honest and vulnerable.
I have been having a terrible time with a patch of dry itchy skin that keeps me awake at night. It just drives me crazy! I can't stand it! I am sick and tired of it. What is wrong with me??? Why can't I just fix it? Get the right stuff for it? Do something about it? I am so inadequate. And stupid! If other people have itchy skin, they take care of it. Why can't I? I can't even remember to go to a drug store and get some anti-itch cream... (it goes on and on... ad infinitum)... This is my "pain story" and I have been telling myself that same story every day for months.
Last night, I explored the possibility that it feels really really good to scratch an itch.. syaing instead... "oh yeah, that feels sooo good". Interestingly, the itching subsided rather quickly with this approach.
And this morning, I explored it as an "adventure story" about how "itch demons kept her awake at night, their red gleaming eyes shifting in the darkness, she rooted through her arsenal of defences.. hand grenades? no - too close.. might set off a chain reaction... hand gun? no.. itch demons are mostly smoke and mirrors.. ahhh.. here it is... the saber tooth rake... she descended upon the itch demons rake in hand fingernails sharpened.. they didn't have a chance"
LOL.. it was a lot more fun when I told it to myself that way. And more interesting too. I also like how it turned me into a warrior instead of a stupid inept victim.
And, yes, this is something rather trivial. Not cancer, not death in the family, not my house burned down and everything in it, not I'm penniless and living in my car in North Dakota in the dead of winter..
And my interpretation of "trauma drama" is that it is when we take something NOT earth shattering and make it into a drama.
True trauma is part of the often extremely painful adventure that is life on earth, and when the big things happen to us, we need to be able to talk about it, and cry over it, and fall apart with it. We need to be with friends who can hold our pain with us without discounting it, or pollyannaizing it, or fixing it.
It's our "poor me" stories our "petty annoyances", the little stories that sound alot like whining and complaining.. I think those stories are more interesting and maybe even more fun if they can be viewed as adventurous forays over the edge.
And that doesn't mean that we water them down, discount, or deny them.
This morning I was thinking how to rewrite my daily "trauma drama" of working at the job I don't want to have to work at anymore... and it occured to me that this one is "baggage" I have been telling the "i hate my job" story for 2 years now... time to let that one go. But that didn't mean that I suddenly am loving my job... it just means that I am done carrying that old tape around.. time to look for something new..
Like maybe turn it into an adventure... the job itself wasn't all that bad, but she was bored, and restless, ready for something interesting to happen, ready for something unexpected and pleasureable... more than ready for her million dollars to slide down the chimney... She doesn't know it, but today, something really interesting is going to happen....
or
If she had known just how interesting her day was going to be, she would not have dilly dallied at the dining room table for quite so long...
Ok.. I think I get an award for longest post ever!!! LOL
hmm, all of our experiences were replaced with good ones??
We would not fear people and our defenseses would not be up...it sure would be a happier world..or would it?
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