The Only Thing That Works
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A student describes a painful, recurring dynamic with their father, exploring the frustration of still feeling rage and powerlessness despite intellectually understanding the situation. The teacher points toward full intimacy with difficult emotions rather than strategies to make them disappear.
The Only Thing That Works
A student describes a painful, recurring dynamic with their father, exploring the frustration of still feeling rage and powerlessness despite intellectually understanding the situation. The teacher points toward full intimacy with difficult emotions rather than strategies to make them disappear.
I have something quite current and live at the moment. I'm in a bit of a dance with my dad, where he has frozen out me and my sister over Christmas to a new level compared to previous years. It's a pattern of expectation and disappointment. I felt really angry today, really frustrated, almost frustrated that it can still hurt me so much. I can intellectually tell myself it's not personal, that he's just a sad, lonely old man making strange choices. I can see that intellectually, but then the experience is real rage, and then frustration that I'm still angry at this level, still in what feels like this old dynamic. And what you were saying about presence not being in service to avoidance: maybe the things I've been telling myself, the things I've learned over the years, are actually a way of not feeling it all. Even though I feel really angry, and it seems like I've felt everything, maybe there's more to feel, or something I'm avoiding.
All of this always depends on the moment, where one is at, the circumstance, the personal process, one's own personality. Sometimes having pointers of clarity, like "it's not personal," can help. But from what I'm hearing, at least how you're presenting it today, what you probably need is to go fully into the rage and fully into the pain. Just let that intensity of feeling move through you. Feel crazy with it if necessary. Let the child in you be in a complete emotional mess, and make room for that.
It's almost like anger needs to be resolved, or like it's not okay somehow. There's a story that it's a wrong emotion, that it needs to be soothed.
Anger as a valid emotion
Anger is not a wrong emotion. Anger is actually a very valid emotion. What can happen is that we get stuck for various reasons, but anger is a very important emotion.
One thing you can look at is this: is there anything you need to do or act on in your relationship with your father that you are not doing? This is usually called boundaries, meaning any form of change or action that needs to be taken. Maybe it's a one-time thing. The anger may simply be the energy to move in that direction. That's something we can explore, but it depends more on the context of the relationship and what has actually happened.
That aside, if there isn't anything that needs to be done, or if it's clear and you will do it, the intensity of the emotion can still get stuck because you're not allowing it.
Don't expect resolution to mean the feeling stops
Also, don't expect it to arrive at some resolution where it's no longer activated. The best image of a place to arrive at is one where, whenever it comes up, it's no longer a problem.
If I were to say, "I really hope all of this grief and frustration finally resolves so I don't have to feel it anymore," that is a sign of resistance to the experience. If instead I were to say, "If life brings fear and pain, I will be here for that and it's okay; I might not want it, I don't prefer it, but there isn't an energy around that not happening," then things do in a sense resolve, because the resistance to the experience starts to soften.
If I'm honest about my very intimate experience, that resistance pretty much disappears. Even the ability to resist disappears, because what is seen is that there is no such thing. That which resists is seen as a complete fabrication. It's like Santa Claus: you just can't believe in it again.
The trick is believing that there is something I can do in order to stop feeling this, that there's a strategy that will work. That belief is Santa Claus. The only thing believing in it does is create suffering.
It's like I don't want this dynamic to be like this. And then, that's resistance, isn't it?
Yes. So ask yourself: what is the problem with you feeling this rage and pain? Is there a belief or assumption that you shouldn't have to feel this, that you should be better than that? Some form of narrative that says it's not right or not okay in some way?
I think I feel like it would make things worse. If I got angry with my dad and said what I think, it would escalate into something even worse.
The challenge of speaking from a grounded place
If there is something you need to say, then it becomes the challenge of how to communicate. But that's something you need to look at seriously. It often happens that these things repeat because we're not acting from our deepest integrity. There are risks we must take, and there's always a fear: "If I say what I really think..." One thing is to explode with anger and speak from a toxic place. Another is to still feel anger and pain but speak from a grounded place and say what you really want to say. That might mean taking a risk we don't want to take, so we enter a kind of battle with ourselves. And one of the risks is the fear of it escalating, damaging the relationship, or being rejected. We're talking about your father, so that's going to be a very deep fear.
I think I already feel rejected, and I'm trying to hold on in a way, trying not to completely sever the whole thing. I've tried being direct, but because he's in a relationship with a narcissist, every time I've been direct it's come back at me worse. The only way I can have a relationship with him is not to say anything about that. We've burned the bridges when I was direct. The only way to have some kind of relationship with him seems to be to not speak up.
When there is nothing left to do externally
That is true, actually. It depends on the context. If you have already said your truth, then there's no point, and it becomes purely an internal matter. By internal, I mean only in relationship with what you experience, not with your actual father.
Please say more about that.
It doesn't sound like there is anything you need to do in that relationship explicitly. From what you're saying, you don't need to take action in your relationship with your father. All that is needed is the work with your own emotions.
The anger.
Anger and pain. Anger is always a form of managing pain.
This total powerlessness I feel is what I want to resist. I have no power there.
Intimacy with powerlessness
Powerlessness is a feeling, and it is actually very difficult to be present with. What happens is, when we feel powerless, we resort to forms of trying to gain power. Depending on the context, sometimes we need to do that. We need to find a way to gain power and act because there's something that needs to be acted on. But when there isn't, the work is to have intimacy with powerlessness itself. When powerlessness appears, we don't fight with it.
It's not that powerlessness will then never appear again. It's not that fear or pain will never appear again. It's that it won't be a problem if it does.
I'm inviting you to explore what happens if you let yourself fully feel the rage, the pain, the powerlessness, almost with a sense of: "If this is going to be like this for the rest of my life, how can I make peace with that?" Instead of: "How do I get this to go away and stop, finally, forever?"
It's not because we want it to keep appearing for the rest of your life. It's because it's a different way of relationship. It invites a relationship without strategy, without a sense of gain. It's a relationship of pure intimacy, and it's actually the only thing that works.
Two choices
Consider two options. The first: you will no longer have to experience pain, powerlessness, frustration, any of it. The second: you will no longer have a problem with feeling pain, frustration, rage, powerlessness, any of it, whenever it appears. Which do you prefer?
Being able to feel it.
Yes. Fully, one hundred percent of the energy of it. Completely welcomed, completely fine, completely okay. No problem with it whatsoever. Or: no feeling ever again. Because the strategy we actually have is "I don't want to feel this again. I don't want to feel fear." The fear of fear, the fear of pain, the fear of powerlessness: it's a pushing away of experience.
The other aspect of these two choices is that one of them is completely delusional. The sense that you can control and stop that experience is delusional. The only way I can think it might end is with the end of life.