“I recognize that we have evolved beyond the point where we turn away from everyone that triggers us. We have come to understand that, sometimes, the trigger points us back in the direction of unhealed material that seeks resolution. This willingness to hang in there with the dynamic, and to work through the revealed material, can be fundamental to our expansion. Unfortunately, this practice can be taken much too far and become a recipe for masochistic self-destruction. Not everything that feels hurtful in a relationship is a gift. Not every painful reflection is a helpful mirror. Not every wound is a welcome visitor. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s a reminder that you need better boundaries. Sometimes it means that you are simply not where you belong.
Working through our stuff doesn’t always mean that we hang in there and suffer. Sometimes it means that we take the next exit…”
Jeff Brown
Thanks to Tabitha on Facebook for this quotation. We hear a lot of unhelpful theoretical binary around this theme. Important to stay alive to ‘felt sense’ and our intuitive readings of the situation we are in. Stay in and learn? Or get the hell out?
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Counselling in Exeter since 1994
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