Relaxation...

Taking a walk in the forest with a good companion, very cute... Nordic walking. A brother disappearing in the distance! He uses to ski very long races, as Vasaloppet and Marcia Longa. I was also walking with poles in fact. Many pine more lands here. Mixed with soft meadows with birches...

I have been writing on my other blog about our despotic, dictatorial politicians (especially our dictatorial government; the "alliance" - right oriented). People who have got our mandate, authorization - how do they use it??? Misusing it, for their own sake and benefits, silently and angrily...

Addition in the evening: On self-help therapy a reader to Miller writes:

“Today, I regard primal therapy in general as wrong and dangerous. The idea that we should make ourselves feel pain in a deliberate and systematic way reminds me of the pedagogic lie that one should deliberately create frustrations for children in order to 'prepare them to life.' Frustrations are inevitable, and similarly, pain stemming from childhood injuries is inevitable and reappears not only when we reenact our past, but also when we try to take good care of ourselves and to free ourselves from destructive relationships. There is absolutely no need to recreate this pain intentionally by failing to extricate ourselves from painful situation in the present./…/

The one thing that I do find helpful, just like you repeatedly point out, is talking my past over with enlightened witnesses.”

Yes, that about narrating with someone listening, if one has, and/or writing about those issues. But the latter method probably takes a lot more time, more than if you have an enlightened witness? But if you have no other choice...

Another reader reflected on different forms of abuse:

“I've experienced verbal abusiveness (including no response), physical abuse (corporal), and shunning (Awful). The most painful experiences for me were when I was simply ignored or shunned. It was as if my existence was instantly annihilated. The combination of corporal punishment and shunning or 'shutting-out' was a double-whammy, and I could feel the sadness creep through my very bones. Of all the punishments, the corporal may have done the least damage. You know what hits you, you feel present, you sense the pain, you know the reaction of the other party, you see the anger/rage, your outrage is instant and in reaction to something you can identify, there is "heat" and passion (emotion expressed), it is real. It hurts, and you know what/where/why (usually). You can even choose how to stand up to the blows, so there is an element of choice. It is in relationship to something and someone./…/

Much more difficult was the ongoing reflection by parents and siblings (they learn fast) of being wrong, useless, stupid, unneeded, ugly, inadequate, evil object. Yet this is still in relationship.

Completely devastating for me, as a child, was to be 'shut out' or shunned, sometimes for so long that it grows into a lifestyle (eventually I would do something to 'gain' corporal punishment, to regain a sense of self and relationship). As if I did not exist, was not there, was not. That is the pain that creeps blackly for me in soul diminishing horror. It defies logic and leaves one in the dark. It leads to such defensiveness, is so depleting, that life is diminished and toxic. I thought of suicide as a child, but realized I would not be missed, that I would simply be thought of as more defective. And all I wanted was to be accepted for being myself. To be real. I can understand violence that way. It is concrete.
It is madness, but there is method in it.”

Also read a (52-year old) daughter on her psychiatrist father, and another one on keeping in contact with ones parents.