When We Can't Have Compassion For Others, It's Because We Disown It In Ourselves

Teal Swan spoke about exactly what I was thinking this week. Compassion (How To Cultivate Compassion) speaks about how compassion comes from recognizing the feeling another is going through in yourself, and when you cannot have it it is because you disowned it inside so you cannot have compassion for it in others.

I see this in how I relate to my world. When I feel bad for myself I can feel for others in that situation. But when something scares me and I cannot face it, and I see others going through it I shut down feeling for them. This is why the world cannot see certain things, and why society cannot accept certain pains. Such as adoption being a painful thing to go through, because they do not want to put themselves in the place of the adoptee and imagine the hurt they are going through. But them adoptees are forced to disown their own part of themselves- the abandoned child- and they get fragmented. And in turn cannot any feeling of emotional neglect in their children or others, so they disregard it and become cruel in the face of other's suffering. I saw this in my own life when I didn't "care" about hurting others because I didn't believe feelings of hurt and rejection were real, because I disowned my own feelings of them. So I had a high threshold for what I thought inflicted pain on others and feeling hurt. I could say it rendered me  capable of enduring anything, but truthfully it was because I was so numb inside that pain didn't affect me normally. But as I wake up to more of my shadow feelings, I become more sensitive to pain and can feel more for others.

I have never been able to see my own adoption as a tragedy. That is one area I am majorly blocked in in my life. I think that I was lucky, and my feelings of abandonment and rejection are false and only in my head, and my family reinforces this by not crediting any sorrow from my adoption. They don't pay too much attention to it, and if it is mentioned it is only to applaud themselves in how they "never considered us not part of the family and their children." It leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, unknowing why. But I discovered to my delight that to complete strangers, my situation is one to have sadness over. A man I knew of through family connection, when I mentioned my trip of having met my birth family, and he asked how they were to which I answered I would rather noy talk about, he said, "Yes it is a sad story." It touched me, and I felt appreciation for his acknowledgment. He also said, "We all have our stories." Which made me feel a part of humanity, and connected and normal. I was silent and nodded, because I didn't want to ruin the moment of truth with added words. I only hoped he would understand how much it meant to me.

It is important to be able to see our pains and acknowledge them, because they'll always affect us either subconsciously- when we push away from seeing their sources in others, or consciously- when we let ourselves feel and surrender to it's power and thereby help them in others as well. As Nancy Verrier says in The Primal Wound, page 160- We are all at the mercy of powerful feelings, which only those who have experienced similar events can truly know. Page 52 she says that perhaps talking about their adoption by adoptees is sometimes done to try to understand their child selves that are within and thereby get to know themselves and feel more complete.

It's funny, my sis-in-law called me "overly sensitive" when I complained about her father's emotional abuse, saying that they could handle it because they were not as sensitive, and then it felt like a put-down. But I am the stronger one because I can actually feel the pain he inflicted, and the fact that I felt it was a good thing. Because then I was more in touch with who I am and felt my fragmented self more than she could.

Sometimes, I block my feeling of tragic feelings because they make no sense to my hurt psyche. Such as my daughter's pain at being put down when she needs love. I don't understand her needs, because I did not get it as a baby so I cannot relate to the pain, and I disowned my feeling of receiving comfort from others. But only when I go into my infant-self and feel the neglect I experienced, can I have an outpouring of compassion for her. 

This is what makes people who were abused susceptible to abusing others, because they are numb to their own hurts and disown it inside. When we own our feelings, every one of them, can we own up to other's feelings too. And thus have better connection with them, in being able to understand their pain. That is what the world needs more of, instead of discredited or shutting an eye to the plight of more misfortuned people.