Feeling threatened/inciting growth: A "how to"

At the margins of growth–personal, emotional, vocational, spiritual, and otherwise–we feel discomfort. The natural feeling is to, in some way, feel threatened. Our stress increases. Our resistance lives at the edges of what we know. Pushing past the edges involves learning and experiencing-and too, conquering fear. It probably involves some sort of pain, process, or persistence.

Think of anything you ever became good at doing. It was threatening in the beginning, and after perseverance, it grew easier. Sports, music, or learning a language, it’s all the same.

Because most people shift to avoid pain/discomfort or associate it so quickly with negative aspects of human experience, we often fail to realize our opportunity for growth lies in the red flags that signal that we feel threatened. These feelings point to patches where we can learn something new about ourselves, our world, another person, a useful skill, or something else. This is how greater understanding comes about.

Like a root-bound potted plant, or a caged bird, we were meant emerge from our surroundings. We can use the native emotions (once seen as negative) that surface for our growth and benefit.

Share your stuff about feelings and growth….

And if you’ve ever used pain/discomfort to grow…feel free to share a blurb.

Grief = loss, separation anxiety

A few insightful excerpts from recent reading:

Grief is the (normal) human emotional response to loss. It is a common part of human experience and may produce growth. We can lose people, places, objects, relationships, and even ideas. Some losses may not be actual, but anticipated, or a perceived loss. (25) Acute grief looks remarkably similar to a classic anxiety attack (same physical symptoms). It is similar to the feelings felt in fear. In grief one fears the loss of self through separation, and experiences separation anxiety. (28)

It is a function of attachment. It can be understood also as our emotions catching up with our reality. (38) The more we can love the more we can grieve. Our abnormal attachments show up (caused by an improper process of  grieving) as permanent emotional detachment or heightened attachment. (30)

R. Scott Sullender, “Grief and Growth: Pastoral Resources for Emotional and Spiritual Growth” Paulist Press, 1985.


Have you lost or grieved anything lately?

Feel free to leave your thoughts or comments about grief or loss.

guilt good-shame bad?

From recent reading, James M. Bowler Shame: A Primary Root of Resistance to Movement in Direction, “Presense” (Vol 3, # 3, Sept. 1997)

“Guilt is associated specifically with an action–something one has said or done. Shame, on the other hand, refers to the feeling one has about one’s very self… believing one has a fundamental flaw.” (p. 26) (italics mine)

We need (a sense of) guilt to correct ourselves and change our ways, but shame is damaging, and hinders progress. Guilt is about our doing. Shame is about our being.

All people struggle with shame at some point in their process of growth. Feel free to comment.

Confession Booth- (fridays)

There is something about confessing  that renews us. It purges us. We really are suppose to do it. It’s not just because authorities or the Bible say so. I think it’s because (also) as a part of human nature we want and need to be rid of things that hurt us, and begin a process of recreation.

A new service allows for secret confessions. SecretTweet This may help people free their consciences a bit, and some leave very odd things. The trouble though with secret confessions is that there isn’t too much hope for healing and restoration in the support of community. We aren’t meant to go it alone.

If there’s anything you’d like to confess. I invite you to do it here. It can be ANYTHING. From the serious, to the silly. Feel free. And you can make up a name, if you’d like.

I’ll start.

I bawled my eyes out yesterday in spiritual direction (which was done in “real play” in front of classmates, yes awkward and nerve-wracking at times, and other times comforting). It was because I realized I felt that God had “hurt my feelings” and I was angry with “him”. It ended in the embrace of God. Strangely enough…In a visualization, (prayer with a visual imagination) he came and sat with me, and played jacks with me, of all things. It was so unexpected and kind. I told him my hurts, and he sweetly stroked my hair. I wanted to hug him, so I did, and he hugged me back. It was warm and big. And my hurts melted. He took out the ugly ball of hurt from my heart and tossed it over his shoulder, so it would not ruin me any more. It was a powerful experience, which I haven’t had before. I felt vulnerable, even silly, at times. But, in the end, I was glad I confessed these feelings, even as I am now doing now.

For a silly (non serious) confession-I worn my hair in pigtails today, in the privacy of my home.