Inch by inch

Are you someone who struggles with getting from A to Z? Do you have unfinished projects, unorganized files, unread books, outstanding bills, unsent cards? You may have some reparenting to do.

Difficulty completing tasks is a sign of being raised in a dysfunctional home. Some people know their home was dysfunctional: they grew up with an alcoholic parent or a physically abusive parent, some had extreme poverty, or maybe they were exposed to a parent’s excessive partying or serial dating. But many people have no awareness of the dysfunction they experienced daily. More subtle dysfunctional factors could be strict discipline, a travelling parent, divorced parents, constant financial stress, or possibly a sibling with bad behavior, or a disability, or even a talent.

The dysfunctional factor creates a tear in the fabric of a child’s reality and the parents’ response either repairs the tear or covers it up. If a parent acknowledges responsibility, makes amends, and improves, then the child develops a healthy awareness of process and of progress. But when a parent shies from responsibility, minimizes or denies the hurt, and makes the same mistakes over and over, the child learns that the hurt itself is the problem, not the thing doing the hurting.

This creates a pattern of avoiding the hurt. Ways of avoiding the hurt could be numbing with substances or pleasure, distracting with busyness, enjoying the high of the starting a new venture, or it could be giving up, giving in, hopelessness and despair. Another way of avoiding hurt is causing hurt, becoming angry and exploding, blaming and shaming and criticizing and judging. This externalizes the hurt and the anger feels productive and protective.

Learning to hurt can be the key to the cage that we sit in. Here are 5 ways to learn to hurt:

1. Feel drops not buckets. If you are wanting to exercise, make it 5 minutes not 30. If you are wanting to write, do 15 minutes not hours.
2. Work on a list from easy to hard. Write a list of things you avoid and rank them by difficulty. Start with the lowest and use affirming self talk.
3. Consistency. Show up every day in the small steps. Even if you have to cut 5 minutes down to 1, you are creating a habit.
4. Use rewards. If you reward your efforts, you hack into the natural chemicals that create habits. Give the reward immediately after the effort. Even a congratulatory high five can be a reward.
5. Acknowledge mistakes and make amends. Learning that mistakes do not make us unlovable allows us to face the possibility of failure and take necessary risks. Making amends creates feelings of connection and self worth.

Becoming the loving adult that you needed as a child repairs the fabric of reality and undoes stuckness. If you find that difficult feelings like sadness or anger come up as you make efforts to learn to hurt, you will want to work with a psychodynamic therapist to heal those feelings.