Posted by Dinah on August 9, 2004, at 9:41:27
In reply to Bootstrap? Bootstrap Method?, posted by 64bowtie on August 9, 2004, at 2:49:17
Perhaps it's time for some reflective listening in case I have your message wrong. I haven't had time to look up the sources you so graciously gave me so that I can better understand your posts.
Let me know if I've heard anything wrong here.
You think this is an unstable environment with discussions that tend to placate and support pathology? As opposed to your result oriented technique that tries to change our pathology? And you want to add your contribution of *not* placating and supporting our pathology.
You think that our talk of inner children is one example of the pathology we placate here? And that adults don't have the illusion of inner children? So that if we were to truly embrace our adulthood, we wouldn't cling to this illusion? But you're ok with imagining yourself as a child and talking to yourself as a child.
You think that memories are things that can't cause pain because they aren't real in the sense of being tangible. Are you including flashbacks here? While you say "I did not say the memories can't hurt you." You also say "[Aside], how do memories hurt anyone? Why would anyone give that much power and energy to an abstraction, a story about what happened to you, that it, the abstraction has the ability to take action against your senses and physically cause pain?", two statements that might appear on the surface to be contradictory. So I'm making the leap to concluding you are saying that memories can hurt you, but only emotionally not physically, and only if you let them.
You say "I just choose to live in the here and now and time and tides take care of the past." But you also say that you don't deny what happened to you in the past or minimize it. You just choose not to dwell on it. And that anyone can choose to do what you did.
So my overall view of your message is that you think we choose to feel the way we do now, and we can choose to feel differently if we wish. That we are indulging our child selves and not choosing to live with the freedom an adult self would have. That we should quit indulging ourselves and each other and start making better choices about how to feel. To choose to leave the past in the past. To accept what happened to us, but to choose to leave it in the past where it belongs. To start thinking and behaving like adults.
Before I give any consideration to the actual label (which isn't that important to me - I'm willing to use a different shorthand if that one offends you), am I receiving the same message you are intending to send?
poster:Dinah
thread:375512
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040805/msgs/375576.html