Hi Chris
I'm glad you're safe. Do not discount giving yourself credit for every single trigger you work through Chris, every single one. Some will be obvious and some not so obvious. Your dad often produces the most obvious triggers, aiming straight for the heart, which is so incredibly cruel. Heartache is one of the hardest of all feelings to manage, in my opinion.
A strange thought Chris but sometimes I wonder whether it would be so much easier being a sociopath; not a sadistic one, just a basic one. By the way, it's never a serious thought. I simply wonder what it would be like to never feel the need to seek approval. I wonder what it would be like to be fully convinced I'm the best thing since sliced bread, without a single doubt in my mind. No matter how much people tried to convince me I was wrong or I was 'faulty', I just wouldn't have it in me to believe them. I wonder what always serving myself would feel like, while being free of working hard to please people who are hard to please.
Here we are Chris, nowhere near sociopath material. We're natural born feelers instead. We feel just about everything. We feel people's approval or disapproval. We feel their words and their actions. We feel the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows, the challenges (both joyful and depressing ones) and the list goes on. I wish someone had taught me, when I was younger, how to use and master my feelings - when to ramp them up, when to shut them down (consciously detach), when to channel them more, when to change channels (change focus so as to feel differently). I wish we all had the advantage of being an apprentice to a master of feelings. Being shown how to get a feel for the room we walk into, how to ramp up the volume when we need to get a better feel for a person, how to instantly alter a feeling when someone begins to bring us down etc. Without the luxury of having been raised my a master, I think we basically have to wing it, learning as we go.
I've discovered over time, while there will be people who lead us to get a feel for all the positive feelings, there are those who teach us what all the depressing ones feel like. It sounds like your dad has taught you what the depressing ones feel like. Incredibly tough yet now you know. I suppose you could say that to become a master of the feeling spectrum, we are to be familiar with the whole of the spectrum, not just the happy end.
The fact you are safe reflects your evolving degree of self mastery.
