Note: it is almost impossible to get on the Ask Havi list. This person got in by a. being one of my clients or students, b. flattering the hell out of my duck, and c. making life easy on me by being clear about what the question was and what details I could use.
Turns out that the piece I wrote the other week about explosions and my own stuckified post-traumatic stress stuff brought up a lot of memories for people.
It becomes pretty clear as you read the comments that so many of us are coping with similar things.
And man, is there ever an enormous variety of traumatic experiences that can leave us with pain and fear.
Then Renmiri asked:
“How do you even begin to destuckify a bad hurt?”
And that seemed like such a hugely important question — really, it goes straight to the core of everything I teach here — that I had to sneak it into the Ask Havi line-up.
Of course there is way too much to say about this in one post.
So instead of trying to give any sort of complete answer to such a big question, I’m just going to say oh my sweet, I am sorry you have this hard.
And then I’m going to just put out a few thoughts/concepts to start with. Seven of them.
In order.
1. You give yourself permission to be hurt.
You just stop and acknowledge what a hard thing this is — and you remind yourself that it’s natural and normal that this would hurt so much.
This is the most important step. And it’s hard.
So if you can’t give this situation permission to just be awful, that’s completely understandable. If you’re not there yet, that’s okay.
Maybe you can start with trying to giving yourself permission to not be able to let it be awful, and see if that starts to loosen things up a little.
2. Acknowledge how big it is.
It’s really easy (and tempting) to go straight into “I should really be over this already” and “why is this still such a big issue?”
Not so helpful.
It is a big deal. It is your big hurt.
So remind yourself:
“Even though I really just want to be over this already, I’m taking a moment to notice how much pain and grief I have from this hurt. No wonder I’m having trouble with this. There is a lot here.”
3. Notice things.
You’re going for mindful, compassionate noticing as opposed to noticing-and-making-judgments or just observing. So …
It’s NOT like this:
Oh look, I’m noticing what a freaking mess I am. How can anyone stand to be around me?
And it’s more like this:
I’m noticing that when I am in a crowded space, I begin to feel anxious because part of me is being reminded of this experience of pain. I’m noticing that I feel more comfortable as soon as I find a quiet place to sit. I’m noticing that I’m talking to myself and people probably think I’m crazy, but hey, a woman with a duck told me to do it so it’s probably fine.
When you notice things about yourself, without judging yourself for being a real live human being who has stucknesses, you can make smart choices.
You can make decisions that serve you.
And if noticing things does trigger judgment, you go ahead and notice that too.
You make a note of it. You remind yourself that it’s a temporary pattern — you’re working on it and you’re allowed to have it — and you go back to the noticing.
4. Create safe spaces.
Part of the recovery process involves creating and re-creating experiences of safety, so your body and mind can relearn what it’s like to have sanctuary.
What “safe space” means is a pretty individual thing, so a lot of what this safety stuff looks like or feels like is going to depend on you.
So, for me … I find safe space through rituals.
I also practice reminding myself that I’m allowed to be terrified and I’m allowed to ask for help.
I give myself permission to (ack!) say no to things that involve me doing something that could challenge my sense of safety.
And I’ll also ask my gentleman friend or my brother to accompany me places when I’m having trouble accessing my sense of safety.
5. What does it need?
That’s one of my favorite questions. It doesn’t always work, but more often than not it’s really helpful.
” What does this situation need? What do I need? What would be helpful here?”
I’ll ask these questions before my ten-minute Shiva Nata practice. Or before I sit down to write. Or when I’m getting ready to talk to my stuck.
6. Allies and helper mice.
Even when it feels like you’re alone with this, you’re not.
You are cared for by so many people, including all of us.
Asking yourself if you can get better at receiving help and support… is pretty much the most helpful thing you can do for yourself.
7. Patience: still a virtue, even if being virtuous kind of sucks.
Yes, huge cliché, but it’s true. These things can take time.
Reminding yourself of the time thing (and how you need to allow more time to keep healing) is a really big deal.
“I’m allowed to take as much time as I need. Even though the situation now is reminding me of everything that is unresolved from then, I’m still in a better place than I was.
I’m engaging with my hurt and my stuck in a conscious, intentional way. (Look! I’m doing it right now! I’m talking to myself!) And that’s part of what makes now different from then.”
I know this is just a start.
And at the same time, starting is where it all happens.
So I’m going to wish you a good start, if you’re starting. And if you’ve been working on destuckifying a particular hard for what feels like forever …I get it. And I wish for you sanctuary and Useful Insights.
And can we send Renmiri the offer of a virtual-hug?
Renmiri, my wish for you is this: as much love and support and safety as you can comfortably handle, with the knowledge that there is always more available to you when you are ready for it.
Bonus destuckification resource.
I think I mentioned this last week. Tomorrow (Tuesday) Selma and I are teaching our happens-only-twice-a-year-class that doesn’t cost anything.
We call it the Habits Detective teleclass and it’s about making the whole “working on your stuff” thing a leeetle less sucky.
I don’t sell anything or promote anything. It’s just a place to learn. And you’re welcome to sign up if you’d like to hang out with us on the call or to listen to the recording later.
Today’s Comments Zen.
If you have kind thoughts for Renmiri, you are absolutely welcome to leave them here. I know we know this, but just a reminder that we don’t do shoulds here and we don’t throw shoes.
–> Sharing your own story or your thoughts about the practice and experience of destuckifying is cool too. Thanks!
Follow
Renmiri, I’m holding you and your bad hurt in my heart– in love and gentle kindness. May you find healing and wholeness in your own perfect timing.
Havi, I love the clarity and compassion of the steps you’ve outlined in this post.
Much love to both of you,
Hiro
Hiro Bogas last blog post..Playing With Time
Thank you for this post! I don’t really have anything to add other than that.
Hugs to Renmiri and a wish that you find a safe place in your heart and head to deal with your stuck.
Havi, you’ve taught me more clearly than anyone that giving yourself to be, just as you are, no pressure, no judgement is the clearest way to heal a hurt and it helps you to calm down in the situation, cos hey! you’re allowed to feel like this. No ifs, no buts.
It is immensely compassionate and I just want to say thank you, and thank you for the reminder today.
Wormys last blog post..You may now officially call me Aunty Wormy
Maybe I should create an auto-responder type of comment device that says “great timing!” It feels like I’m always saying “great timing!” to these kind-hearted posts. But maybe that just means that any time is a great time for gentle, kind-hearted reminders to be compassionate with ourselves. Thanks.
@emilylime “maybe that just means that any time is a great time for gentle, kind-hearted reminders to be compassionate with ourselves.”
YES.
Havi, you are teaching me self-compassion like nobody else ever has. It is a tremendous gift. I am deeply thankful.
Renmiri – I send you virtual hugs and good, positive, comforting vibes for when you are ready to receive them. I agree with Havi when she says that you are not alone in hurt. You never will be. Or us. What a gem of a reality. May comfort, love, and reassurance swathe you.
Virtual hugs to Renmiri, and to you, Havi, for this post.
Catherine Cantieri, Sorteds last blog post..Freeing up mental space
🙂
Thanks! Hugs help.
I think I’m up to #2, my bad hurt is recognized as a bad hurt – a drunken and physically abusive dad – so I managed to give up denying that it hurt me. For a while I was so determined to deny him the chance to ruin my entire life that I managed to “forget it” and do two entire years of analysis without ever mentioning my father beat me.
Getting to #3. #4 is really hard for me because in theory the whole world is safe, my dad passed away years ago. But out of the blue I find myself relieving the fears and coping strategies I developed long ago. On a completely unrelated situation. I wish I knew how to better avoid it.
Ya, a time with Selma and Havi is definitely something I want. Meanwhile I’ll keep reading stuff here 🙂
PS: Can’t make it tomorrow will be stuck working late :/
Wonderful question Renmiri. Huge *hugs* for your bravery in working through your stuckness.
I’ve noticed in myself that sometimes – even when I think the situation is not related – it kind of is. Sometimes the people in the situation remind me of people from the past, or they’re engaging in the same kind of tactics used on me in the past. #3 has gotten easier if I ask myself what aspects of the present situation are similar to aspects of the past situation – the situation where I needed to develop and use those coping mechanisms that are causing me pain now. Your subconscious is so smart. It helped you get through childhood. And it might not be helping now… but it thinks it is. It thinks it can – and tries to help in the only way it currently knows how, which is sometimes what the stuckness is.
I hope that this helps, and that it doesn’t come across as a “should.” Huge *hugs* again.
And thank you for the extremely helpful insights, Havi. I’m having a lot of difficulty with #7 right now. It’s not just the patience… but the gentleness with myself that’s hard to achieve – especially since the stuckness comes from a place where I was absolutely not treated gently. Your site has helped immensely. 🙂
These are the sorts of things that I need to hear right now. It’s amazing how you always seem to know how to say these things that I know are going to help me, as well as so many other people.
Renmiri, I wish for you all the love and safety in the world and I am sending healing vibes your way.
I’m getting ready to go through a big hurt myself. My boyfriend is moving to China for 11 months and I am not going to be going with him. Even though it is a great adventure, and I am so happy for him to go and have this great experience, I have no idea what will happen to us.
SuperCareos last blog post..Omigosh! It’s Thursday!
Dearest Renmiri,
Many hugs. Frequent and long hugs.
I made a choice which had some consequences I didn’t think about. I moved to a place where I knew no one after my third divorce was final.
This means that outside of my therapy group, still in therapy, yes; I don’t know how to say things about my childhood without entering denial.
Anyone I tell honestly about my childhood either doesn’t believe me or acknowledges that it was awful. In both cases, it is a real conversation stopper.
I am currently going slowly with friends not in my therapy group/community.
I found a therapist who believes that people with my diagnosis can be cured…CURED. I will follow her anywhere for as long as I can.
I also forgot (repressed memory) between the ages of 19 and 35. I have perhaps made some peace with the time of denial. Denial floats by now and again. I have long-distance friends who can haul me back to reality over the phone.
There are things that still trigger me. I am keeping fairly closely to my contract of not reading very many news articles about children being harmed. Mostly.
I send you blessings (or however you categorize good things/time/supportive people).
Everyone deals in her own way. I hope you can joyfully accept whatever ways work for you. I cannot tell you how many arguments in my therapy group I have had about reading Charlaine Harris and early Laurell K. Hamilton vampire novels. I have been in the group for 2 and a half years.
They can’t quite tolerate that, when I sink, I crawl into vampire books and reread them, over and over.
I am a little afraid to tell you that I have been in therapy for thirty years. Therapists have learned a lot during the past 30 years. I am 61 and started my therapy when I was 35. My father finally died when I was 19, thank the Universe.
I would share some things that work for me, if you would find it useful. I trust Havi to figure out how to do it and feel OK about it.
My father was ackowledged by everyone who knew him to be mentally ill, in a time period when there were no meds at all and not much idea of what to do.
Only one second cousin on my father’s side speaks to me. The family on my mother’s side still communicates with me.
There are plenty of us in varying degrees of remaining unhealed hurt. Many of us have had parts of our lives that have been positive. Me, for sure.
For many months I went to group meetings, early on, just to see that other hurt women were still walking around and breathing. For me, that meant that I could keep on keeping on.
Hugs and love and abundant blessings on you and yours,
Evy
I knew I was making progress when I started getting aggressive at my father when he showed up in dreams.
Havi may choose not to post this.
I have told and told and told about what happened to me. I have posted on the Internet in forums about abuse.
If this gets to you, I hope there is something or other that is useful to you.
So…much.
So much love and so much compassion to help us with so much hurt.
evy & renmiri & all with tears–
Trauma and hurt… for me turned to scared and alone. Then little superstitions to keep me safe. Then agoraphobia and panic so that in my more hypervigilant and paranoid states, I feel someone or something is going to come get me. My reluctance to recognize led to more trauma and hurt. A cycle I do not like.
I have been getting better at letting some compulsions go… but I remain attached to my flashlight I keep within arm’s reach under my bed. It is hand-powered because I had been obsessively changing batteries every week. It has a radio. I banged it accidentally last summer and found there is a hidden compartment for a fork and spoon in the side. I was overjoyed at the realizing I had a built in weapon and slept better for weeks.
I named it. Flashlight. Not very original.
I very much relate to visualizations to get me through anxiety issues and depressive episodes. So I keep Flashlight in my head as I visualize facing my deepest soul-basement fears. These fears have dirt floors, rotted wooden stairs, smell like the entrance to a mine shaft. I am not friends with these fears even though we spend an inordinate amount of time together.
So, my image of Flashlight accompanies me on these trips to visit my internal creepy basement with no windows where hurts and scariness hide in corners or under the stairs. I usually walk down into that basement, ready to do battle… to swing violently or stab with Flashlight’s fork…. More often than not, however, the light shines on a little child, dirty, and neglected who is scared of a loud noise….or the dark…. or being told I could never be loved….
Flashlight reminds me to see some of these larger fears sourced from wounds that I have not yet sat with, examined, held, and released.
Flashlight reminds me that I am not alone in the darkness. My flashlight with its radio, spoon, and fork…
I will share Flashlight with you if you need it.
melissas last blog post..What is a name?
Melissa,
Good for you! The Flashlight seems the perfect thing. I have one that I haven’t figured out the details of yet which can be cranked without a battery. I found it on the Internet. I intend to read the instructions…
soon.
I sleep with the light on most nights. Any week I get through four consecutive nights without the light is a big deal.
I know about the panic and the agoraphobia. I am getting better with the panic. Now and again I can go outside, by myself. Having people to talk to who have gone through similar things has helped me immeasurably. A lot of people with hurts get impatient with my agoraphobia. I have days when I get impatient, too.
When I have my therapy group with me, I can go outside and even sit in the evening outside, often. It has taken me a long time.
It has taken me so long to learn to be gentle and loving to the hurt child. No one showed me how when I was growing up. My therapists have helped show me. I work on kindness to myself every single day. It is one of main things for me to do now.
I am so very, very sorry that the bad things happened to you. The scared little girl deserved and deserves love and care and safety and kind people to support her and comfort her. I hope what we are doing here helps some.
I am so sorry that we have so many women with us. I wish it were not so.
Do what helps you feel better. Do it as often as you are able.
Many long frequent hugs, if you are up to hugs from strangers. Many blessings.
Havi and the things she offers and discusses help me a great deal.
The person across the country who hauls me back to reality when I need it got enthusiastic about Havi immediately. She tells me to go back and read again.
I do.
I am glad you can write about your pain. I hope that makes it less.
I send lots of love and peace and comfort to you.
Be as kind to yourself as possible.
Hugs and love and blessings,
Evy
I woke up this morning after pouring my heart out in these comments knowing that I need to add this.
In the interests of fairness and full disclosure…
The big hurts like mine? It isn’t just women. It is men,too. My older brother, sadly long dead, was abused with me. And therapists truly didn’t have it together about male survivors when he tried to get help.
Since I am fully disclosing, I am a curious and very nosy person, therefore, I know that my father, evil though he was to my brother, my mother and me, among others, belongs in the big hurt category.
That was hard to admit. It doesn’t remove any responsibility for what he did or lessen the destruction he caused. However, the big hurt was there. This is not an excuse, more like an explanation.
My brother and I made a conscious decision, I can remember the conversation, long ago though it was, that we would not pass the pain and the big hurt forward.
Having a long life has some advantages.
I have reams more to say. I am not sure this is the right place to say what I have to say, again.
I remember walking into the first meeting of my long-time therapists’ group of her clients. A
large group of women with one man. I looked at him with apparently a funny look on my face.
He said, “Yes, you are in the right place.”
That man, in my view was a hero because he confronted his demons and fears to protect his own little boy from being vulnerable to the his father, his abuser. And that man’s life fell apart.
I had to add that.
Also men are largely, though not the only ones who cause that kind of big hurt. Women, a few, can and do become the source of that, too.
There are national and local groups from which support and help are available. I got support and information from some of these groups.
All of this made me eventually open to what Havi has to share which is so very healing.
I wish with all my heart that my brother were alive to read what Havi has to say about self-kindness and destuckification.
I am tearing up. I’d better go.
Long hugs, comforting words, love, blessings that bring peace to all of you with big hurts.
I am staying tuned.
Evy
Anyone I tell honestly about my childhood either doesn’t believe me or acknowledges that it was awful.
Yup, happened to me too, though nowadays child abuse by parents is more well known so I have less of the non-believers.
#7 is just so hard !!! I know I should be patient and that what I went through breaks many people. I should be grateful for surviving what I did, somewhat sane. And for being able to not pass it on to my kids. But UGH!!! I don’t want to have this stuck hurt, I fought it for so long.
Thank you, Havi, for having a search function, so I can find this stuff when I need it.
(Also thanks for having awesome stuff like this in the first place, obviously.)
<3