Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus, but this one is hard, so hard. But it really does hold the key to releasing all the pain, anger. bitterness, hurt, disillusionment and whatever other agonising emotion you’re currently held tight in the grip of.
Although Acceptance is hard, there is a process that’s even harder and I hesitate to name it but I must because there are parallels to them both, the relief they offer you and the work you must do to access it.
The other process is Forgiveness, Yep, I went there and you damn well don’t want to forgive do you?
I think that’s why Forgiveness is so hard, because we’re involving other people in our story, people who contributed to the injustice that happened to us and its hard as hell to let go of our sense of betrayal and our condemnation of any immorality we see surrounding the event that caused us great and ongoing pain and suffering.
And to be honest, it feels good to blame someone else for the FURBAR BUNDY* you’re now living.
Let’s take a step back from the presently inconceivable quest that would be Forgiveness and work towards Acceptance.
As I said, Acceptance follows a similar process as Forgiveness, however its all about you and you being able to consider the event that caused you calamity to be something that simply happened to you. Just one of those things.
Its not personal, its not the end of the world and now you can pick yourself up and learn to live in your new circumstance.
I said it wasn’t easy! What it is is challenging and incredibly powerful.
It is possible and it will give you relief from physical, emotional, mental and spiritual pain. I did say it was powerful!
I was knocked down in January 2014 while I was walking my dogs. It was wholly the driver’s fault, she wasn’t looking where she was going and she was driving too fast. She almost killed me and one of my dogs.
To make matters worse, she lied to the police about what had happened and tried to blame the accident on one of my dogs. BITCH!
Yes, I still hold anger towards her. Not for the accident as much as for the shameless lying she did afterwards, as if she hadn’t hurt us enough.
Yet, I’m happy to say my anger has lost most of its heat.
Surprised? I am.
Just after the accident, when the police informed me she was claiming I was at fault and that I could face criminal proceedings, I was beyond furious. I was filled with a hate fuelled rage and righteous indignation. As far as I was concerned this woman was dispicable, dishonest and had no moral decency. I trapped myself into being her victim and a victim of my own sense of injustice and injury.
I pretty much ate, slept, breathed anger, hate and victimhood and I was constantly in pain which fuelled the anger, which fuelled the pain. I had myself trapped.
I had to pull myself out of that downward spiral otherwise I’d have forever been a victim of that careless driver and the story I told myself about the injustice and unfairness of it having happened to me.
The truth is accidents happen everyday, and many people are left in much worse shape than me. I was lucky and I refuse to give that woman any more power to hurt me further.
I needed a few months distance from the accident and for the worst of my physical injuries to have healed. Yet before I gained Acceptance, I was still in near constant pain; because the story I was telling was still all about the accident and how this woman had done me wrong.
When I started physiotherapy in June, I started to turn it around. Partly because I was taking active steps to aid myself in my recovery, but there was something else too.
At the start of my physiotherapy treatment, my therapist and I were talking about how soft tissue takes longer to heal than a broken bone. And then he said, ‘The body always heals itself, the problem is we hold onto the memory of our injuries and our pain, even in our very cells.’
This comment triggered some long forgotten knowledge in my mind, something I’d read years before about the mind-body connection and the incredible influence each one has over the other and how little Western medicine understands and acknowledges it.
I went back to my books and did more research into the mind-body connection and found many scientific studies and personal accounts that all verified the claim that stress creates pain in the body and we can feel real physical pain long after the body has healed the original injury.
Stress causes pain and my thinking caused my stress. My anger, my disgust for this woman’s lack of moral decency, my sense of injustice, my desire for vengeance all were contributing to keeping me in pain.
I spoke again to my physiotherapist about my research and what I was feeling and I admitted that I found the idea of forgiving this woman impossible; not for the accident itself, that was easy, after all accidents happen all day, every day.
What I found impossible to forgive was that she hadn’t even gotten out of the car to see if we were okay when she’d knocked us down, it was other passersby who stopped to help and offer their support; that she never expressed any remorse for hurting me and my dogs; that she’d nearly killed my beloved Reilly and then blamed the accident on him instead of accepting responsibility for her actions; that she lied and continued to do so as the legal process grinds on.
You can tell I feel very justified in holding onto my injured feelings, just as I’m sure you’re equally as justified in holding onto yours.
So, for me, forgiveness was out.
Martin, my lovely physiotherapist told me that if I found forgiveness too hard and he could understand why, then could I reach acceptance with what had happened and its aftermath?
Could I?
Could I look at this life shattering event and say to myself, ‘Shit happens!’ shrug and move on?
I’m here to say that I have and so can you.
First, I made a conscious effort to change my story. When I meet people now, I stop myself from introducing the story of the accident, how it was the driver’s fault and her dishonest, dishonourable actions. I’m still judging her 9 ways to Sunday but I have stopped speaking of it and that has actually lessened its hold on me.
I changed my story and now I say that yes, I’m recovering from an accident however I talk more about the great relief physiotherapy has given me and how much my recovery has progressed. I talk about how I’m getting better little by little, day by day.
Changing my story has made a massive difference to my recovery. I’ve been able to manage pain better and found that I was able to reduce the medication I was taking. I’m feeling strong enough to walk the dogs in the park and I enjoy my time with them instead of worrying about whether I’ll fall and hurt myself again.
The biggest change was the relief I eventually started to feel from the negative stew of emotions I’d been boiling in. The poisinous brew of anger, bitterness and sense of injustice waned as I stopped living as a victim of what had happened and instead opened myself up to fresh feelings of hope, peace, happiness.
Yes, I still hold anger towards the driver of the car but I don’t go looking for it anymore, repeating the story and working myself into an emotional wreck. After all, she could easily have killed us.My dogs and I are alive, we might be battered and scarred but we’re still here.
You are still here too. You can still change your story, you can stop being a victim of whatever and whomever inflicted wounds on you.
Something happened, it was awful, and yet you survived. Change the story you tell about what happened and you’ll change your life.
*FUBAR BUNDY
FUBAR BUNDY is an ambulance term meaning fucked up beyond all recognition but unfortunately not dead yet.