When we love to hurt

You won’t believe what he has done this time. I can’t stand the way he _________.

But nothing changes. Day after day, month after month, year after year. A lifetime of hurt and anger.

Therapy is a great place for this. It can be yet another place where nothing changes. You get poorer and older as you tell the same stories again and again as if your loved one will change. As if your friends will change. If you can just tell the story well enough. If you can cry loudly enough. They will see your worthiness and the error of their ways.

You put everything over ‘there’.

And what you often fail to see is that hurting, for you, is love. That you are attached to the hurt. Its excitement, its expression, is your kind of love.

You learned this early and you can’t seem to shake it.

You are furious but you will not change.

When this is the case, there is a good reason for it. This isn’t a case of mind over matter.

I think the wounds are in our matter, actually.

But in order to heal, in order to have the relationships that you pay lip service to wanting, you are going to have to work like hell.

It is going to feel like ripping off a body band-aid when you finally take a stand for yourself. When you decide that the problem is not over ‘there’. When you work, actively, on your own behalf it won’t feel natural or normal. It will most likely be awkward, painful, and weird.

One way I think we can heal is to continue to expose ourselves to people who do care for us. For many this starts with a therapist, as you can’t yet bear to find it anywhere else. And your therapist metes out care in very small doses - just as much as you can handle.

And she also metes out reality, "I hope you have made plans in case he isn’t home tonight." She doesn’t live entirely in your world.

And in so doing she hands you back to yourself. One sliver of a self at a time.  If you will take it.