Here’s one way to think about the hurts and wounds in your life, and how to address them.
Gravity is a force we don’t understand. How can two objects exert an influence on each other at a great distance? There doesn’t appear to be any kind of invisible string connecting them! Einstein came up with an interesting theory, however. He proposed that space and time were warped – that rather than being spread evenly in all directions, there were dips and undulations. The best way to think about this is to imagine a cloth. If you place, say, two oranges on a table cloth they will just stay where you placed them. However if you stretch the cloth out and allow the first orange placed to make a dip in the middle, then the next orange will inevitably fall towards the first one. Here’s a drawing from wikipedia, to explain Einstein’s theory, which shows what I mean –
I think life is a bit like this too.
Events and experiences make an impression on us. Hurtful or painful ones leave dents in our psyche (or our bodies!) Death of a loved one is like this. It hits us, dents us, leaves a wound, changes our life forever. But, more than just a dent, this wound, or lesion, seems to have the power to draw life towards it. We find our minds constantly returning to it. The landscape of our life has changed. Things don’t look the same any more.
If we were like cars, we’d pop along to the body shop and have a panel beater knock the ding out making the surface nice and smooth again. He’d remove the dent for us. But we’re not like cars and there aren’t any panel beaters to take away a death.
One approach to deal with this is to try to remove the effects of the impact – drugs try to do this – antidepressants, sedatives to reduce anxiety or agitation, or to induce sleep for example. However, this approach doesn’t change the landscape. It doesn’t remove either the dent or its impact.
Another approach is the talking one. People are encouraged in counselling or psychotherapy to talk about the event or the experience and to in the process to try and change its impact on their present life. The difficulty inherent in this approach is that it can reinforce the strength of the dent. By focusing attention and energy on it, it can become all-consuming, increasing it’s pull and therefore its effect.
I think there’s another way.
Make more dents!
It’s not only negative experiences which make an impact. Positive ones can do it too. This is the approach used in positive psychology for example. By actively engaging in positive experiences we take an active role in fashioning the landscape of our lives. This is very different from the passive approach which can be utterly disempowering.
I know that when the impact of a negative event is large it’s effects are strong and long lasting, and the dent can be so deep it can be very difficult to climb out of it’s powerful influence. It acts like a black hole and draws everything to it. In such circumstances a combination of approaches might be needed covering all three of the main strategies I’ve written about above. There aren’t any right or wrong approaches here, but having a model to work with can help you understand what’s happening and find a way to change life when you feel totally trapped.
Heroes Not Zombies 
You have done a very good job drawing a pictuer of how we allow events to affect us and what that does from an energy perspective. One of the keys is to understand that all dents both what we percieve as positive and negative are there for a reason and it is our perspective which dictates the impact.
I like this idea. I also like the message that we probably ought to take more heed of the wonder and beauty and GOOD in our lives.
So many people are only interested in the negative. They have conditioned themselves to only take joy in the extraordinary – the vacations, the special events, the holidays. I try to take joy in everyday things; that I can twist a knob and get hot water! What a miracle! I can turn a key and go anywhere I want! I can pick up a phone and call someone I love! Children draw pictures and plaster them all over the fridge! There’s so much that’s GOOD in our lives, but so many of us have forgotten (or never learned) how to see it.
Thank you so much for posting your thoughts on this, Bob. Nothing has made so much sense to me in such a great deal of time while attempting to live with/overcome/co-exist with intense grief. No counselor, no medication(s), no proactive steps I’ve attempted have made me graduate beyond loss; and inevitably left me feeling more desperately lost, isolated, eternally damaged; and fearful that the better years were behind me. I simply can’t tell you how much these words of yours have helped me view things differently. Thank you. You’re exceptional.
Thank you all so much for this great feedback.
Your point about perspective is spot on tobeme
Mrschili, yes, we get so overwhelmed by our painful experiences it can be hard to see out over the top of the dent sometimes!
Damewiggy, thank you so, so much for this incredible feedback. You knocked me sideways with it. To know that these words can be of such value is truly wonderful. I write in the hope I can contribute to making the world a better place. To know that what I write can have this kind of value affirms me more than I can express
[…] Make better dents. […]
[…] ever had much appeal to me! Maybe we could call it a habit? (or what I’d tell patients about making better dents!) Conche says that what we need to encourage thoughts to come to us is a kind of ease (an absence […]
[…] When discussing how to get out of the same old ruts and loops, I used to talk to patients about “making better dents” – read about that here if you like. The idea though stems from the fact that it is much easier to create a new habit, which can then […]