"Lock it Up Safe in a Casket"

Today is one of those days when my mind is taking me through a million memories, one at a time, over-and-over-and-over. Some of these memories are as recent as this past week, and some go as far back as my elementary school days. Unfortunately most of my memories do not bring about feelings of nostalgia and joy as memories should in my opinion. It is a very common human trait to remember hard times more than joyful times.

“This is a general tendency for everyone,” said Clifford Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford University. “Some people do have a more positive outlook, but almost everyone remembers negative things more strongly and in more detail.”

There are physiological as well as psychological reasons for this.

“The brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres,” said Professor Nass, who co-authored “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships” (Penguin 2010). Negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones, he said. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events — and use stronger words to describe them — than happy ones. (www.nytimes.com)

When I ponder memories that are reminders of difficult times I truly do think much deeper. The pain almost forces me to come up with as many possible alternatives that may have helped me to avoid the situation. The trouble for me is that I can ruminate on these terrible memories for years. Even a memory as simple as a comment made by myself or another, I will think about for years to come. As a result of this continuous, and seemingly endless, rumination I can live in a painful place internally; when life outside myself is going beautifully. Furthering this point, I will respond in anger, defiance, or sadness to a neutral experience happening in the present, that does not deserve this response whatsoever, because internally I am reliving a past battle.

My poor, sweet, innocent, husband gets the wrath of this behavior. I can honestly be such a mean girl to him. What my bulls-eye husband does not know is that daily I am brought back to abusive memories of my past relationships. On probably on an hourly basis (at least) certain things will trigger terrible memories for me.

My husband loves to wear a beard. This is a completely normal thing for many men. When I see a beard it triggers flashbacks of a scary, bearded, face screaming in my face. Screaming terrible obscenities and threats. When my husband is rightfully annoyed with me for something or another, and he speaks his truth to me, that darn beard, and the feelings of conflict I associate with bearded men, trigger such intense anger in me. I am such a terrible wife because I will yell to my angel husband the things I wished I yelled back then, to the actual "bearded villain". When I am yelling I am not really yelling at my husband, but rather my past.


"Love relationships are mirrors of the inner self. We learn how lovable we are and how valuable our love is to others only by interacting with the people we love. Young children never question the impressions of themselves reflected by caretakers and peers. They do not think that their critical, stressed-out mothers or their raging fathers are just having a bad time or trying to recover from their own difficult childhoods. Young children attribute negative reflections of themselves from significant others to their own inadequacy and unworthiness.

Suppose you had internalized your body image based on reflections from a fun house mirror, which made your hips look a mile wide. You would think you were in deep trouble and that no diet could help. Once you've internalized such a negative image, you distrust even accurate mirrors. People who are gaunt from eating disorders actually see themselves as fat when they look in a mirror that reflects little more than skin and bones. Even those who do not have eating disorders but who were told repeatedly as children that they were too thin are likely to see themselves as thin adults, despite mirror reflections that show a few extra pounds.

When it comes to physical appearance, at least we have lots of other mirrors to compare to the distorted funhouse reflection. But there are no reflections of love other than those we get from the people we love. If you judge how lovable you are based on reflections from someone who cannot love without hurt, you will have a necessarily distorted and inaccurate view of yourself.

The instinct to believe the information about the self that loved ones reflect weakens somewhat as we grow older, but it remains active throughout life. You would probably laugh—or at least not get angry—at a stranger who implied that you have green hair, but if your husband or wife says it, you're likely to run to a mirror. The default assumption is, if your partner is displeased, there must be something wrong with you, and you need anger or resentment for protection." (psychologytoday.com)

After reading this article it clicked inside me that I view my husband through a fun-house mirror. I view him, or more so his role in my life, through clouded distortions based on past experiences. I'm still not separating my husband from my past. He was not a part of those past memories, so why can I not see him clearly, for the committed, loving, Christian, protector of my heart that he is? Why am I boxing him into a category of my life he does not belong? The past. He is my present and my future. He is my now and for always. Why am I treating him as a has-been, and this generalization of a man who he simply is not?

C.S. Lewis speaks to my heart regarding these thoughts and questions:

“Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as ‘Careful! This might lead you to suffering.’

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

(From The Four Loves, as found in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis, 278-279.)

I love this interpretation of Lewis' piece from: www.purposefullyscarred.com

Once trust is lost, it has to be regained. Your trust in other people has been lost, or at least seriously damaged, and you have to patiently work on rebuilding that ability to trust. As Lewis wrote, there is no safe investment when it comes to loving the creatures of this world. People fail one another, hurt each other. Loved ones die. Pets are lost. Eventually, our hearts will break.

Allowing yourself to trust again may take years. And, frankly, there will be people who never earn or regain your trust and that’s okay. Rebuilding your ability to trust another person does not mean you drop all defenses. Real trust, particularly after abuse, is not allowed the luxury of assuming someone is what they appear. But, as Lewis cautioned, there is far more danger in an unbreakable heart than in vulnerability.

In a healthy relationship, vulnerability builds intimacy. That’s how marriage was designed to work: two people being totally open with each other, trusting that the other person will love them unconditionally and not based on any failures or inadequacies they might bring to the table. Long term, trust is absolutely necessary to building a healthy, lasting relationship.

I expect someday, if God leads a man into my life to stay, that man will understand this. We will be able to enjoy each other through mutual vulnerability and total trust. At the end of the day, no matter what a man might say or do to me, even my husband, I can trust that Jesus Christ is never going to betray me. Ever. No matter what I say, do, think, feel. He has claimed me as His own and that is permanent. God guarantees spiritual life and freedom for eternity through faith in Jesus Christ. His is the greatest love I will ever experience and it is never going to be removed. If the entire world around me were to turn against me, I would still have everything in Christ. I can trust Him.

I can trust Him with my relationships.

You can trust Him. His love is everlasting, His mercies are unending, and His faithfulness is unparalleled.

Jesus is the only safe investment of my love because His love is unconditional, unending, and unfaltering."

I have to be taught by my husband, through the proof within his daily actions that I can trust him. He has never given me a reason not to trust him, or believe he will physically or emotionally hurt me. The mean words and phrases I spew at him are a self-defense adapted through pain. An unhealthy adapted defense. A defense that builds walls up around me. The idea being, "If I say these mean things to you, or about you; maybe I will believe they are true, and I will shut you out before you even have a chance to harm me". Unfortunately this defense does exactly that. It shuts him out. 

How can I break this cycle? How can I break down my walls? How can I stop giving the abuse I am so afraid of receiving? 

I need ruminate on these 6 points:

1. Pain is a learned survival mechanism to protect myself.

2. Pain is an output from my brain, and usually not an input into my brain.

3. I often think my heart is in danger, when really it is not.

4. My pain breeds pain.

5. Pain can be triggered from unrelated factors.

6. I can change my sensitivity to pain.

When my pain continues for long periods of time without any real source of continuing harm or damage, there might be a problem with the pain processing system, not the person I am directing my pain towards.