The Angel of Space Clearing has shown up in your reading today to help you clear the negative thought patterns and feelings which have surfaced recently as a result of your dwelling on past mistakes and regrets. These unconstructive thoughts and feelings are the primary source of stress in your life at present. Not only are they causing you to feel confused, they are also preventing positive new energies from entering your life.A couple people commented that sometimes we aren't hanging onto the past, the past is hanging onto us.
I don't have a lot of Difficult Past Memories, but some of the friendships in my life have shown me that prying off the Past's fingers is easier-said-than-done. Negative experiences wire themselves into your brain, so the traditional talk therapy approaches used in the past aren't enough to deal with them (hence characters in Woody Allen movies who've been in therapy for 20 years.) In fact, traumatic memories are even experienced as though they're happening right now (flashbacks). It might require a mix of talk, talk with friends, cognitive behavior therapy, neuro-linguistic programming, and techniques that actually change your brain. In other words, dealing with a difficult and complex past can require hard work.
The discussion made me think of a song by, of all people, Jim Steinman. Steinman wrote Meat Loaf's best sillodramatic songs, and came up with a great metaphor for the way the past sometimes feels like it still has a grip on us: Objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are.
And though the nightmares should be over,
some of the terrors are still intact
I'll hear that ugly, coarse, and violent voice,
and then he grabs me from behind, and then he pulls me back
But it was long ago, and it was far away
Oh God, it seems so very far,
and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car
And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are...
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* Friend on a Blog!
6 comments:
How is it you know a song for every occasion, thought, feeling? That was beautiful and I love MeatLoaf.
I was in talk therapy for over 20 years for all the good it did me after the first few. I am currently experiencing several different kinds of therapy in a mixture that we hope will take me far less than over 20 years to get me better.
Sometimes the past is very present on an emotional level and can cause the same level of humiliation and shame that it did the first time around. Sometimes, if you are lucky, some bit of joy sticks around and does the same thing, but mostly it's trauma that sticks.
I've had several people tell me I hold onto the past too much. If I had the power and the choice, I would not be having the past still so close to my present. People who don't have this occur to them often just don't understand.
Now I have to ask: where did you get your writing progress gadget thing? I cannot seem to find any in Blogger.
Hello frog,
I echo Skye's comment about the music. I first encountered Meatloaf via The Rocky Horror Picture Show and was intrigued enough to listen to more of his music.
You've also introduced me to some great Canadian music that probably would've passed me by otherwise. Thanks for that too.
This is why I've decided that soundtracks don't work for me as discovery. Where you have the perfect song at your beck and call, I search forever and in the end I have a bunch of songs I don't really like on my ipod.
I admire this about you.
I do manage to make pandora work for me in distracting my internal editor, though.
OOOOO MeatLoaf is on of our all time faves around here. From WAY back in the original days. (Yes, Dan and I are ancient.)
Lol, I do so adore being a frog of yours, and you of mine.
Really? I mis-spelled ONE?! Fine, dyslexia, points to you.
What I WANTED to say was that we have had a long and passionate (from afar, and unbeknownst to him) love affair with MeatLoaf for decades, he is ONE of our favorites.
@SKye - It's from Writertopia. You take their code and put it into Blogger's "html" gadget.
@widders - Your welcome froggy!
@JJJ - Often I just start with the songs I'm loving at the moment, and they end up feeding into my book. And I don't always pick songs based on lyrics, it's often a feeling. Like... one book will be hiphop based, but another very Stones and Fleetwood Mac. No point having a soundtrack you don't even enjoy listening to. Bleh!
@Julie - I didn't notice the on/one. People's brains often skip over such things, cause our brains like to take shortcuts. - I grew up on Bat Out of Hell! SO good.
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