The Antithesis to Empowerment

 People sit around complaining,  ranting, and raving, falling into a pity party of victimhood, as if it solves a problem. It is the antithesis to empowerment.  It is like a virus that takes hold of the psyche, dis-empowering and 'duping' the self into believing it is different, seperate, and alone. 

Erin Fall Heskell

Worried

I am sitting here full of different emotions and feelings, while a mess of thoughts and images run in my head.  My sister was transfered to the Regional Hospital where she will have a cardiac procedure done today...an angioplasty and stenting.  I worry about her because she has so much else going on and though this procedure is done so often and so successfully on many people...she is a high risk because of her history with pulmonary emboli.  Want nothing but good thoughts sent her way...yet my mind won't obey.  Sigh!  

From Snowball to Avalanche

Right now I am having a hard time taking myself away from thinking about my external world circumstances.  I feel like I keep getting pulled back into them. This snowball starts rolling down the hill of mind pulling so many memories from my past up with it until it becomes an avalanche I am smothering under.  Yuck!  This is what one would call being lost in thinking. The mind is something that can wreak havoc when we let it run the show.

Anyway...I am remembering my past with my sister...the struggles, the trauma as well as the laughter and beauty.  I am remembering her pain then and how it accumulated into this big avalanche for her too...how we all spent so many years trying to dig her out of it, feeling worried, terrified, judgmental, angry, resentful  and frustrated until finally most of us were too exhausted to do anything but love her where she was. Maybe that is the best thing we could have done.  I don't know.

Whining and Self Pity

When I am lost in thinking...the whiny little selfish me pops up too to add to the drama.  This whiny little selfish me  reminds me of my own situation...how I not only was not heard in my attempt to say, "There is something going on in my family!"  I was shamed, left without support and resources, lost so much and yet I had to stop seeking validation because I was so afraid it would hurt the others I was trying to protect. I stopped seeking help for the chest pain and other symptoms because I  was so sure it would set the family back if they got caught up in the assumption made about me and because I just couldn't endure the shaming anymore. I gave up.   So right now I have  fifty dollars in my account and I have no idea how I am going to survive...all because people didn't believe me when I said..."I am sick and I think I know what this is." 

Then I feel guilty. Maybe if I didn't stop pushing...maybe the others would not have had to have their heart attacks.  And what about my children? Will they be taken seriously if this shows up in them?  I don't know.

Guilty!

Then I feel so, so guilty about thinking about me in this situation rather than my sister.  I did have a lapse into selfishness  with every family member that had a cardiac issue.  When my sister died of a SCD at 45, and I got through the grief, I thought about me.  I presented first with the chest pain and crazy pulses.  She had the same. I made a connection then...this is familial!  Then when my brother had his issues and had to be emergency cardioverted one day...I thought about me.  It sounded like what I had been complaining about for years previously.  Then when my sister who is a year older than me had her infarct out of the blue, ..I thought about me.  And when the third  sister had her cardiac crisis requiring stenting two years later., I thought about me.  When my oldest brother had his MI, a year after that ...I thought about me...(ironically his MI was happening the very same time I was putting an end to my fight for my  truth , help and financial support....the very same time.  I was being texted with the news but unable to answer my phone because of the meeting I was in that was  required to put an end to my 24 year plea for "Help! Please hear me!" ).  Everytime I thought of me, I recalled the shaming I experienced and I shamed myself further into deep guilt  for including myself into this group who had the validation. A group, I knew, I couldn't be a part of. 

No Power in Victimhood

A million  tiny little violins are playing all over the world right now, aren't they?  My mind is taking me on one long self pity trip into nowhere, isn't it?  I am letting it. Infact, I am almost enjoying this "Self-pity" attack. 

Why do we think that professing our "victimhood" will  give us power?  It doesn't.  It does the opposite. It is the stripper  of power.  My power would never come from my seeking help as a victim to this condition that is so real to me, if not to others, nor will it come from expressing myself as a victim to the unfair opinions and judgments  from others.  

Power: It is what it is and that is that!

My power comes in me letting go of my need for external validation and support, my need to be a victim to others. Struggling against the assumption made about me and its consequences  only stripped me of power and made me smaller and smaller and smaller. Surrendering gave me something so much more important than external treatment for this condition, an income, or a longer life.  It gave me peace of mind and awareness of what is really important. I wouldn't trade that for anything! I really wouldn't.

I can't beat myself up for these lapses into "me" thinking and self pity, either.  There is still some trauma residue inside me that has to work itself out of me.  That will  take time and kind patience on my part.  If I can remove the story around them and just experience those old emotions and the newer feelings as they emerge...they will trickle right out of  my body and my mind. 

And I can then get back to redirecting my focus to sending good thoughts to those who need it the most.

All is well.