Self-Creating Emotional Pain

Have you experienced feelings of emotional pain because of what you perceived in someone's reaction to you? Has this hurt surfaced again and again to monopolize your thoughts and clutch your heart in its tight grip? At a later point, have you realized that you created your own pain and that there was no intention of hurt by that person?

I have understood for a long time that I create my own experience. The objects and people within any situation are neutral. The quality of my experience of them arises from my own self-imposed filters. Just as a photographer uses different filters to create a range of visual effects on photos, I create different experiential effects with the emotional and belief filters that I superimpose over each moment of each day. If I come from an inner space of worth, love, and self-acceptance, whatever arises in my day is experienced in a positive light. If I come from an inner space of lack and feeling "less than," what I experience takes on a different hue or quality. Responses, actions, and events that are neutral in and of themselves become interpreted through a darker lens that reflect and seem to validate my inner feelings of lack.

As much as I know and understand all of this, I was reminded of the need for presence and awareness recently. I have talked repeatedly to my children and students about the dangers of misinterpretation when texting with others because of the loss of essential nonverbal components such as vocal and facial expression, tone, and body language. Because words lose essential layers of meaning in a texting exchange, it is easy to misread, and misinterpret, what someone else has texted. Words, neutral in and of themselves, can be misconstrued completely as we interpret them through our own meaning and belief filters.

I experienced repeated episodes of emotional pain over a period of several days as I thought about a texting exchange with my son. I didn't just think about it and remember his monosyllabic responses to my questions. I embellished his brief answers to my litany of questions with a complete range of lack-of-self-worth filters - I felt unappreciated, taken for granted, used, hurt, angry, frustrated, disappointed... the list went on. My ego even galloped in and carried the charge forward with thoughts of "I've given everything and it's still not enough," "I devoted my life to being everything he needed and none of it matters," and "I'm just a bother to him. If he wants to talk to me, he can text or call me." I was immersed in a pity party, and I was the only one in attendance.

A text from my son a few days later jolted me out of my self-imposed misery. As he shared that he had finally found a place to live, I realized that my earlier texts had been prodding him for answers he didn't have yet during a time when he was preoccupied with the stress and details of moving to a different city for a new job. When he actually had answers, he shared them with me.

I realized immediately what I had done. I had created my own emotional pain because of the filters I had chosen to superimpose over a neutral situation. My son was busy responding to new events in his life experience, and I had chosen to read all kinds of self-deprecating messages into his responses - none of which were meant to hurt me in any way. I chose to see a neutral situation through my lack-of-self-worth lenses and experienced exactly what those lenses have always created in my life - pain of my own making.

Note my repeated use of the words "I had chosen" and "I chose" in the preceding paragraph. Those word choices are deliberate and serve to remind me that I always have a choice. I can choose to bring feelings of lack and "being less than" into a situation, and I will experience what I expect - I will project my feelings of lack of worth onto the people and events of the situation, and I will experience my own feelings of lack and inferiority in what I perceive reflected back from others... and they will have no idea of all the drama in which they have unwittingly played a part.

Just as I can choose to bring my own need for validation and worth into any situation, I can choose to realize and practice acceptance of my own self-worth and to come from that perspective. What was perceived in a negative, hurtful way can be transformed by the realization that one's own inner pain created it, and I can choose again, and again, to practise awareness of all that I am within, and to experience each event that arises in my day through the lenses of self-worth and self-love.

I can choose to go even deeper and stand strong, still, and complete in the knowing of who I really am as a Child of God, always connected to His Love and glory. The point is that it is always my choice. I can self-create my own misery, or I can choose to remember who I am and rest in absolute peace and love.

My spiritual sisters and brothers, I pray that you are aware of the power of choice in your life and that you choose to be the presence in which your experiences arise and fall. As you practise this awareness, I pray that you consciously choose the filters through which you view every situation and event in your life. It is my prayer that you are able to view your experiences through lenses of love, self-worth, and self-acceptance, for you ARE loved and you ARE worth it! Namaste, and with great love, Linda.