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From: moiram@tektronix.UUCP (Moira Mallison )
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: emotions and choice - a personal reflection (long)
Message-ID: <5603@tektronix.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 20:43:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: tektroni.5603
Posted: Sat Aug 17 20:43:38 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 23:43:38 EDT
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 104


Well, I thought I had enough sense to stay out of this one, but .... :-)

What convinced me to post was one article back a few days wanting
more about personal experience and that was the way my thoughts were
running anyway. Secondly, I find myself agreeing with some of what 
everyone has said, while not agreeing with all of what anyone has said.

The last couple years have been very emotional ones for me, relatively
speaking.  The focal point was my father's death in June, 1984.  What
I want to share is my experiences around his illness, his death, and the
mourning period, and how I used them to positive advantage in my own
life.

The cancer was diagnosed in May, 1983.  He was operated on, and "they
got it all".  Six weeks later, there was a recurrance.  The next 
several months were like an emotional roller coaster as we got prognoses
from "We'll just do this procedure, and the probability is he'll live
another 20 years" to "there's a 94% chance he won't last another eight
months".  Finally, not trusting the extreme "ups" and not wanting to 
feel the extreme "downs", I decided for myself, that They didn't really
know --- that the variables are too complex --- and that I would just 
accept each day as it came.  This is an example of choosing my reactions.
I didn't lose trust that the oncologist was doing the best he knew how; 
rather, I accepted his limitations in being able to foretell the future,
and thereby was able to stabilize within a more manageable range of 
emotions, for the most part.

In the several months before his death, I began the grieving process.
I felt sadness, I felt anger, I felt about to be abandoned, I felt
anguish at his pain, and weariness at the seemingly interminable time
it took.  I felt all those emotions, (while continuing to be effective
in my job :-), and I explored underneath some of them to find correlations
with earlier times in my life when I had felt the same things toward 
my father (specifically a spiritual/emotional abandonment as I entered
puberty).  I was able to use the reliving of those emotions to better
understand why I had developed reactions and beliefs around my rela-
tionships with men, and to choose to change them.   

There is a mourning process, and it lasts about a year.  And Pooh is
right when she says there isn't enough room in this society for that
experience.   There were several weeks when all I did was go to work,
and go home, shutting myself off, for the most part.  I ventured out
occasionally for doin's with close friends or family, but I didn't
initiate at all (a role I frequently take on).  While some people may
have been concerned, I was absolutely clear that what I needed was 
healing time.

It is curious to me that people see the human potentialists as cold,
selfish people because it was eventually to my friends in the Bay
Area that I had known when I was heavily involved in the HP movement
several years ago, that I turned to when I decided I was ready to 
venture out again.  Because there is a premise that I own my emotions,
they don't feel as if they have to do something about them.  They could
be there to hold me while I expressed what I was feeling.  Because they
knew that I didn't expect them to fix it, they were comfortable with my
feeling it.  They didn't feel the embarrassment of impotency in the
situation.  

With their support, I got through the withdrawal period, and started
to tackle some of the underlying issues for the feelings of abandonment,
and the fear of the despair - that which had been so deadly to my father.
This stuff is like an onion;  I can peel off the layers and find something
more underneath.  There were some very hard times - there was more 
sadness, more anger; there was terror; there was exhaustion; there was
lightness, brilliance, sweetness, love;  finally there is release and 
there is peace, and an acceptance of how I can continue to grow for
awhile without it taking *all* the energy I have to give.

Emotions?  They are mine; they are not yours.  Can you hurt me?  Of
course, you can....To the extent I trust you and open myself up to you, 
and allow you to have an effect on my life.   And don't think that that
comes easily.  Trust is not a right, it is a privilege which is earned.
(On the other hand, one who rudely turns down a request for a date --
that is where all this started, after all -- will have much less impact
on me than someone with whom I have spent a significant amount of time.
And the real question is: "how personal was it?"  I can feel unappreciated
by the way a person treats me, but if s/he treats me the same way as
s/he treats others, than it's rather silly of me to take his/her actions
personally.  AND it doesn't mean that he/she doesn't appreciate me, it
only means that he/she isn't showing me in the way I want to be shown).

Controlling them: why on earth would I want to do that?  Control the
reactions, yes, in some cases.  But if I do not feel the  
painful emotions, how can I delight in the joyous ones?  Besides, 
there is so much to be learned from them.  "No pain, no gain" applies 
to emotional and spiritual growth as much as to physical conditioning.  
But good heavens, if I'm going to feel them, I want to examine them 
and find what I can learn from them.

Lastly, the one thing I cannot stomach is self-pity.  I recently saw
a play:  _To Gillian, On Her 37th Birthday_  (time out for a quick
review - don't see it if you can avoid it :-).  The main character,
David, lost his beloved Gillian on her 35th birthday, and is still
moping about mourning his loss.  His life will never be anything 
without her.  Everyone else spends the two hours telling him he
needs to start living again, but he has gotten stuck in the withdrawal
stage of grief.  And it is totally BORING.  Even after having recently
been through the cycle myself, I could muster up only a modicum of
feeling for him, and that mostly the exasperation that the other
characters were expressing.

Moira Mallison
tektronix!moiram