- So, are you happy that today's the last day?
- No.
- No?
- [Attendee] Another week.
- Are you sad that today's the last day?
- [Attendee] Yeah, angry even.
- Angry even. (laughs)
(audience laughing)
See, one of the things
that we like to understand is mixed feelings.
Happy, sad, loving, anger and love, anger and guilt.
The most common mixed feelings
that we find are anger and guilt.
So if you have, if you're working with someone, you know,
in relation to a traumatic event
and the situation only really requires realignment,
it doesn't require repair,
then when you're doing this work,
you're getting in touch with self-compassion,
and often anger or resentment or annoyance or rage or fury,
depending on what level you want to think about it
toward the person or the institution or the situation
or whatever it is.
And there's usually very little guilt.
There's very little mixed feelings.
Sometimes people feel guilty about being angry
just because I don't, shouldn't be angry.
It's not a good thing to be angry.
And then we're explaining that you don't need
to feel guilty about being angry 'cause anger is normal
and healthy and appropriate for the situation.
Violence is not appropriate for the situation,
but you're not doing that, so you don't need to feel guilty
'cause you didn't actually act in violent ways.
You were just imagining acting in violent ways.
Okay, you're with me?
So in that case, it's really about realignment.
But if you're talking about a traumatic event
related to a parent, related to a child,
related to a sibling, related to a good friend,
oftentimes there's mixed feelings.
Autonomy, power, assertion, needing realignment,
needing anger, needing fury, needing rage,
but also feeling guilty about that rage
because you care about the person, because there's caring.
And the question is, is there room for repair?
And we saw that a little bit in the video
from the young man with his brother.
You saw there was mainly realignment, mainly anger,
maybe assertion, but there was a little room for repair,
looking for some positive feelings toward his brother.
And as they go forward,
then there's a question of what action to take in real life.
What do you do, especially when you're in a relationship?
If it's only realignment, someone who harmed you,
someone who assaulted you,
you're not gonna repair with that person,
that they're not in your life.
They're not part of your life.
Your action is gonna be to walk away.
Your action is gonna be to let go.
Your action is gonna be to not allow that person
to take up space in your brain, right?
That's the action.
But in a situation yesterday with the guy and his brother,
the action may be some mixture of assertion
with his brother, talking to him,
saying, speaking openly and honestly,
with love and kindness that I love you and I care about you.
You're my big brother, but you can't treat me that way.
That's not working for me.
It's not healthy.
No one likes it, nobody's happy.
It's not good for you.
It's not good for me and it's not good for you.
So, is there room for action?
One of my favourite stories, which is in the book,
it was one of the scenarios from yesterday
that was optioned.
There was a man who had three daughters.
Two were perfect, and one was very wayward, (laughs)
very, in her teen years, she went way out of bounds
and was doing things which were horrible to him,
to herself, running away, using drugs, all sorts of things.
And he started getting back pain at that time.
When I saw him, it was about five years later
and his daughter was doing much better.
She was doing reasonably well,
not involved in all that kind of stuff,
but he still had back pain.
And I asked him if he could sit with his daughter
in the chair, the empty chair,
which would symbolise his daughter.
And if he could go back in time
to the time when she was doing all these things,
five years earlier when his back pain started,
and he was able to get in touch with his anger.
And he started speaking to her and he started saying,
why are you doing this?
What's wrong with you?
How can you do this?
How can you do this to me?
How can you do this to your mother?
I can't stand it.
It's hated.
It's horrible.
I hate it.
It's really horrible.
It's really bad.
I hate you.
I wish you were never born.
And as soon as he said that, he started to cry.
He just started to cry
because the guilt just poured out of him
'cause he loves his daughter.
And to feel hate,
to feel like you wish your daughter was never born
was such a powerful statement.
But the fact that he could access that anger
would allow him to take that anger to this higher level
and then release it.
And then he moved to this powerful guilt
and he was just crying.
And what was he saying to her as he was crying?
Again, she's not here, of course.
What was he saying to her empty chair, to her?
He was saying, I love you.
I care about you.
I'm so sorry.
I didn't know how to parent you.
I didn't know what to do.
I'm so sorry.
And then he went out and then he repaired his relationship
with her.
He started spending time with her
and spending time with her without the anger,
spending time with her, with love and with compassion.
And their relationship improved.
And they had really good times together.
And his back pain went away.
Good story, right?
Showing this, the three parts, okay?
- So the realignment and the repair is in the office.
- Yeah.
- Back in, the action part is outside.
- [Howard] Correct.
- Okay.
- In the world.
Exactly.
And the action can be, you know,
the action can be realignment.
Action doesn't have to be repair,
but it can only be repair, it can be both.
With this man and his daughter, his action was repair.
It wasn't realignment with someone who harmed you
and hurt you, who assaulted you or something.
The action is realignment.
There's no repair, right?
Action is walk away.
Like the woman I was saying, she was at her college reunion,
and this guy comes up to her and she says, hey, remember me?
And she says, no, I don't remember you at all.
Bye.
I don't have feelings for you.
I don't have anger for you anymore.
I don't care about you.
You're not important in my life.
What we're gonna look at now is this second part
of the Kat story.
The first part, you recall yesterday, which got cut off.
But the first part was her accessing primarily anger
toward her father for being hurtful, abusive, critical,
yelling, judgmental, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And she was able to access a lot of that anger and rage
and express that to him, and then let that go.
And as part of the relationship in the family,
she has a mom.
So I was thinking, well,
maybe we could explore your relationship with your mom.
Your mom was great.
Your mom was good.
Does that mean you might,
you would have absolutely no anger toward your mom?
No resentment at all?
Maybe, but maybe not.
Did your mom protect you?
Not really.
So a lot, we're helping people to explore the range
of emotions that might be there without prejudging,
not assuming that there are none,
not assuming that they're there,
but just exploring, saying, well,
let's look at your relationship with your mother.
Is there anger there for that little girl
for where you were?
Well, maybe there's some, but when,
but her relationship with her father
was much more realignment.
He was pretty harsh.
Her mother was really loving.
But if there's some anger and resentment toward her mother,
that's gonna bring up a lot of guilt.
And there's the opportunity for repair.
And in this case, in the guy with his daughter,
the opportunity for repair and action was great
because they have a relationship with each other.
In this case, with this person, the mom has passed away.
She's not around anymore.
It makes it hard.
It's like, oh, well, how can I repair?
I wanna repair my relationship with my mother.
I feel really guilty for being angry with her,
but she's not here.
So can she still have a conversation with her mother?
Of course.
Then as you'll see, I wanted to go back around and wonder,
gee, I wonder if there's room for repair
of her relationship with her father.
I wonder if there's room for that.
And then there's, you'll see there's a technique
that I've been using that has ways of doing that,
which I found to be very poignant, okay?
Any questions?
- What you've just said that the guy with his brother
has an opportunity to go to,
to repair the relationship with his brother.
And you said also that sometimes there is no room
for repair.
- Right.
- And you said there can be only realignment
when people have got hurt or whatever,
but this guy got hurt by his brother.
- He did.
He needed realignment.
- Yeah, yeah.
But I thought you said
that there might be room also for repair.
- Yeah, I think there is room for repair with his brother.
He cares about his brother.
He found some positive things in his relationship.
And if he can be assertive with his brother
and set boundaries with his brother, like,
you can't fucking hit me anymore, okay, bro? (laughs)
You can't do it.
It ain't happening.
Then maybe they can find ways of connecting,
watching sports together, hanging out.
Who knows?
You know, I don't know.
It's, sometimes you think you can repair a relationship
and you can't,
and you may find that out as you try to repair.
The repair is, this part of repair is in your mind,
is in the caring and compassion.
This part of the action can be repair,
but the woman that I showed you, the one who had to,
you remember the one who had gained a hundred pounds
and she was in an abusive marriage or second marriage,
remember that one?
Okay.
Anyway, she was in a very, very harsh situation.
Her whole family was harsh toward her,
husband was harsh toward her.
She left, her action was to leave.
She drove 700 miles to a totally another state.
And then she found ways to have some repair
of her relationship with her mom.
Her father, not, her brother, is not so much,
that didn't work.
Her father, a little bit, her mom, she could repair some.
Husband, no, right?
So, you know, I'm trying to figure that out,
what's possible.
So this is Kat too.
- Okay, Kat.
So, wow.
A lot of amazing work you did just in relation
to your father.
How does it feel to do that?
- It feels good.
It feels like that's been sitting with me for a long time.
And I feel a little bit lighter.
- Yeah.
A lot of anger stored up.
- Yeah.
- A lot of hurt stored up.
A lot of, you know, I don't know.
I'm kind of thinking compassion just pushed down, you know,
in relation to that younger person for yourself.
- Yeah.
- Can I ask you another question here?
Where was your mom in all of this?
Where was she?
What was she?
- Yeah.
- How was she reacting to all of this?
- Well, it depended.
Sometimes she was who was being yelled at,
sometimes she was running away, like hiding from him.
Sometimes she was telling me to leave the house.
It, yeah.
- Lot of hard stuff for her.
- Yeah, yeah, it was.
- Yeah.
And when you think about your feelings toward her,
as opposed to with your dad,
you identified a lot of anger toward him.
What are your feelings toward your mom?
Is it different?
- I kind of feel bad for her.
It was just, I mean, it was awful for her too.
Like, she was just overwhelmed all the time.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
Really hard for her.
- Yeah, it was really hard for her.
- So you, in addition to having compassion for yourself,
that younger Kat,
you also have a lot of compassion for her, is that correct?
- Yeah, it was awful.
- Yeah, right.
- Yeah.
I do feel compassion for her.
- Yeah.
And this may be hard to think about for a moment,
but do you feel any resentment toward her as well
underneath that compassion, would you say?
I mean, you know, she was supposed to, I mean,
she was your mom,
she wanted to protect you from your father,
but she couldn't, is that what happened?
She just couldn't.
- Yeah.
I feel really tight when you asked me that.
- Yeah.
- It feels bad, doesn't it?
- Yeah.
I mean, I don't think she did enough to protect me from it.
It was-
- Yeah.
I don't know.
I feel really mixed when you asked me this.
- Yeah.
And you have a lot of compassion and love for her.
She was the good parent, not like your dad in any way.
But, you know, underneath there's probably some resentment
toward her for not protecting you, even if she couldn't,
still, there's that kind of resentment.
But when you start to feel resentment toward her,
you get this tightness in your chest.
- Yeah.
- And what's that feeling?
What'd you say?
- I feel anxious and guilty just when you ask me.
I don't, I guess it feels so hard
because I feel like she was a victim too.
But yeah, she was the adult in the room.
She was my mom.
- Yeah.
- And yeah, she didn't protect me from,
she didn't shield me from it.
She didn't divorce him, you know?
- Yeah.
- And in your adult years,
were you able to develop a good relationship with her
or was there like,
stress and conflict or kind of what happened?
- I really distanced from them
and felt really bad when she died.
We weren't close at the time.
- Yeah.
- And yeah, I mean,
I'm kind of just putting this together now,
but yeah, it feels like I, yeah,
I wanted to distance from him, but I think I also-
- Right.
- Wanted to distance from her.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- And I bet that there's a little bit of, there's, you know,
a little bit of anger,
resentment toward her that maybe pushed you away from her.
Does that make sense?
That even though she, you know, you loved her to, you know,
I don't wanna say to death, sad, but you loved her and,
but yet there's probably some resentment toward her
for not protecting you.
Does that make sense?
Can you feel a little bit of that?
- Yeah, that feels right when you say it.
- Yeah.
- And what would,
if that resentment a little bit could speak to her
for just a second, for just a moment,
what do you think that resentment would say to her?
- I know you were hurt too,
but you were supposed to protect me.
- Yeah.
- You were supposed to not let me experience something
like that.
- Exactly.
Exactly.
- Yeah.
- And how does it feel to say that?
- Yeah.
- To her, or imagine saying that to her right now,
how does that feel to you?
- It feels really mixed.
I do feel some of that anger, but I also feel-
- Yeah.
- Just, I don't know.
I feel sad.
- Yeah.
- For her, I feel sad that she's gone.
I feel guilty because this happened to her too.
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
- If you could sit with that hurt for a moment,
if you could just put your hand over your heart for a second
and just sit with some of that hurt that you have,
feeling sad for her and feeling guilty about being,
having resentment toward her, right?
- Yeah.
- There's some hurt there.
- Yeah.
- And there's hurt for her too.
You can maybe even feel her hurt as well, can't you?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, for sure.
- Yeah.
- And what would you say to her out of that hurt
'cause hurt and sadness really is caring and compassion
underneath, if you can access the caring and compassion?
- Yeah.
- For her, what would you say to her right now
if you could speak to her?
- I'm so sorry that was your life.
- Yeah.
- I feel so sad for you.
I love you.
I know you didn't want anything bad to happen to me.
I know you were paralysed with your own fear.
- Yeah.
- So sorry.
- So sad.
- Yeah.
- It's so caring and loving.
What do you think she would say to you hearing this?
What do you think she would say to you knowing her?
- Sorry, I didn't do more.
I didn't know what the right thing was.
My own stuff got in the way of me getting a divorce sooner.
- Yeah.
And how does that make you feel toward her?
What would you say to her in response to that?
- I feel I get it and I'm also mad.
- Those are mixed feelings that is normal to have.
- Yeah.
- But you can understand her.
- I can, it makes sense to me.
- Yeah.
She was caught in a bind just as you were.
- Yeah.
You can just take some breaths,
breathing in compassion for yourself right now.
And when you breathe out,
maybe breathing out compassion for your mom.
Can you do that?
Just letting this compassion flow both ways.
- Yeah.
- And how does that feel?
- Feels good.
I feel.
- Yeah.
- Like I miss her.
- Yeah, right.
Maybe you can let go of the resentment toward her knowing
that she was in a tough spot as well.
- Yeah.
- She truly was caring.
- Yeah.
- Truly wanted to help and protect you.
- Yeah.
She's really, yeah, just really didn't know how.
- Yeah, she didn't have a way.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, exactly.
And how does that feel for you right now?
- Feel like a warmth.
I feel love.
Feels like a lot of warmth in my chest.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah.
- I wonder if we could do one more thing
before we finish, Kat.
- Okay.
- If you're okay with that.
- Yeah.
(Howard laughs)
- You expressed a lot of feelings toward your father,
a lot of feelings of anger and really rage,
which I think is really important for you
to be able to get in touch with.
And I wonder if you also, in addition to that,
have any other feelings toward him?
Maybe, I don't know, pity or understanding.
Did he have a difficult time in his life?
I'm just wondering 'cause why would someone act so wrongly,
so violently and horribly to their own family?
Why would someone do that?
I just wondered.
Do you know anything about his earlier years?
- I don't know a lot.
I did try to ask him once.
- Yeah.
- And I mean, I do know that his father was probably worse
than him.
- Really?
- Yeah, like rageaholic.
And yeah, I think I can understand how that-
- Yeah, yeah.
- Shaped him.
- Yeah.
I wonder if it would be,
if you'd be willing to just close your eyes for a second.
- Okay.
- And see if you could take another imaginary trip,
this time going not back to your own childhood,
but actually going back to his childhood,
your father's childhood.
In your imagination,
if you can just imagine seeing him as a young person,
as a young boy or teenager,
what comes to your mind if you kind of allow yourself
to take that kind of imaginary trip?
- I'm imagining the apartment he grew up in and trying to-
- Yeah.
- We'll call it like a photo I've seen of him.
- Yeah.
And how do you picture him?
Can you picture him as a young boy,
maybe in relation to his own father,
what he might be going through?
Can you picture that for a second?
Just observing, like, you're flying on the wall.
- I think he's eight.
- Yeah.
And what do you imagine he's going through or he's feeling?
- I bet he's scared.
I feel really sad.
- Yeah.
Almost kind of similar to what you went through, huh?
- Yeah.
- When you go back, it's almost similar.
Wow.
- Yeah, it is.
Yeah, I feel really sad for him.
- Yeah.
This kind of exercise is helpful in understanding,
it doesn't excuse the way he was.
- Yeah.
- Maybe he tried to do his best,
but he was under a lot of hurt.
- Yeah.
- Maybe acting out of a lot of hurt.
And if you can imagine-
- That's right.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
Do you think that's, yeah, it sounds like it.
- Yeah.
- Sounds like it.
We see this a lot.
- Yeah.
And I really feel those two things that you're saying, like,
I'm not like him and I went through what he went through,
so I don't excuse what he's done, but I-
- Right.
- I really do feel, I feel sad for him.
- Yeah, exactly.
- About the life that he had.
- Yeah.
And how do you feel toward him now in your adult years?
What's your relationship like?
- I have a hard time being around him.
- Yeah.
- I feel really frustrated with him easily.
- Yeah.
- He's not quite the way he was, but I still feel-
- Right.
- Frustrated in his presence.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah.
That might be something that we could work on in relation
to your feelings toward him, he may, like you said,
it sounds like he was actually not, it sounds horrible,
but not as bad as his father was.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Maybe he tried, you know, I don't know.
I wonder if it might even be possible for you
to have a conversation about that at some point.
That might be difficult,
but it might be healing in some ways.
He may be hurting a lot.
I don't, you know, I don't know.
You know, he may be hurting a lot from-
- Yeah.
- How he acted.
I've seen that happen.
- Yeah.
I feel a lot of anxiety when you bring it up.
- Yeah, that would be hard, right?
- It would be.
Yeah.
- Yeah, right.
But the key thing, and we'll leave that for a later time,
but the key thing here is for you to be okay with you,
is to see if you can allow yourself
to be okay with who you are now.
What you've been through is a lot, a lot of stuff,
but you were just able to express a lot
of different feelings that have been buried deep
inside and come through them into a lot of compassion
and caring for yourself, for your mom,
and even for your dad too.
- Yeah.
- How does that feel for you right now,
going through all this?
- I feel kind of warm.
I don't know.
I feel like a little bit of relief.
- Yeah.
- But yeah, but it kind of like a love.
- Yeah.
- Inside a little bit.
Yeah.
- Wow.
Yeah.
- Yeah.
How does your neck feel, by the way?
Just checking into that right now.
- Yeah.
It's been fluctuating as we've been talking,
but it really does.
It's hard.
It's hardly there actually.
- Yeah.
- And you've been on a computer screen now
for a little bit of time. (laughs)
- That's true. (laughs)
That's true.
- I think you're gonna be okay.
I really do.
- I think so too.
- Yeah.
Thanks for doing this.
It's really a gift that you're giving, you know,
a gift you're giving to yourself.
- Thanks for doing this with me.
- Yeah.
Great.