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Danger: The Pain Of Being
Unconscious It was a chilly winter
morning early in December of 2003 in the beautiful town of Vancouver, BC,
Canada. We had a reservation on the first ferry to Victoria on Vancouver
Island, where we were going to spend the day with friends. I told Guy and
Jason, two friends who were going with me, that we needed to hurry so we
didn’t miss the ferry. I went out to turn on the motor to warm up the car and
started scraping the frost off the windshield. As I finished scraping the
windshield, Jason and Guy arrived, stowed their things in the trunk and we
all got into the car. As I reached back for my seatbelt, Guy, sitting behind
me, slammed his door shut. In the shock of the moment, at first, I didn’t
realize what had happened. I was in intense pain as I looked back to see that
my middle finger was caught in the hinge part of the door. “Oh my God, Oh my
God”, I screamed, “ Open the door, open the door.” Guy looked at me with a
questioning look on his face. “Open the door, open the door, my finger
is in the door.” I continued to scream, hysterically. Guy looked up,
horrified, finally realized what had happened, and did open the door. I cradled my left hand
in my right and tried to push my crushed and almost severed finger back
together. I was bleeding and sick to my stomach. The pain was so intense that
I was numb all over from the shock. Jason, sitting on my right in the
passenger seat, asked me, “Are you all right?” “No, I am not all
right,” I screamed, “my finger is almost cut off. I need to go to the
hospital.” Jason stared at me blankly. I repeated, “I need to go
to the hospital, my finger is smashed and almost severed.” Both Guy and
Jason didn’t seem to realize the severity of what had happened. I knew I needed
to do something, but I needed their help as my right hand was busy holding my
left hand together and I could use neither. I started to give them orders,
telling them step-by-step what to do. I had them open the car door and help
me into the passenger seat and I told Jason to get in the driver’s seat and
drive to the hospital. The drive in rush hour seemed to take forever but
after about 20 minutes we finally did arrive. I told Guy to come around
and open the door for me and then almost ran into the emergency entrance of
the hospital. Once inside, I went to
the front of the line of people checking into the emergency room for what I
found out later was daily routine visits for most of them. The
receiving nurse and the receptionist seemed unconcerned at my injury. I
knew that speed was of utmost importance if my finger was to be saved and I
couldn’t understand why they did not rush me into immediate care. The nurse
offered me a towel as my finger was still bleeding but I was not willing to
let go of holding my finger together in order to take the towel. After about
ten minutes, the receptionist finally checked me in and told me to go wait in
the waiting room. I still wondered why they did not hurry. For me this
was so important and they did not seem to care. I joined Jason and Guy in the
waiting area where they had sat down after parking the car. As I sat there,
they tried not to look at me or my finger and I tried not to think about the
pain and the possible consequences of the injury. Within a few minutes I
was called from the waiting area, directed to a gurney and given some gauze
for my still bleeding finger. By this time, it had been an hour since Guy had
slammed the door. But I was to wait another hour or more before anyone came
to see me and care for my finger. Eventually, the doctor came to sew up
my finger, sent me for an x-ray, gave me some pain-killers for when the
anesthetic would wear off and sent me on my way. It was almost five hours
later when I finally rejoined Jason and Guy in the waiting room. I held up my
hand with my largely wrapped middle finger extended to show them what the
doctor had done and told them I was ready to leave the hospital. In all the time that I
was waiting for treatment, despite my pain, I began to think about what had
happened. I am always so careful with my hands and fingers because I am
a professional cellist and a serious injury could mean the end of my ability
to play. And playing music is an essential part of my life. “Why did
this happen to me?” I kept asking myself while I was waiting for treatment
and for several weeks after the accident. As I went over and over
the details of the accident, I realized that in the first shock of the
incident that I had become numb to the pain, to both the physical pain and to
the emotional pain. Although I screamed at Guy to open the door so I could
get my finger out of it, and I screamed at Jason to take me to the hospital
so I could get treatment, I never really got angry that the incident
happened. Anger is the natural spontaneous response to pain and if I
had been in touch with my feelings I could have shouted and cussed at Guy for
not having been more careful when he shut the door. I realize that I could
have raged at him. “Guy, why did you not look before you closed the door? Why
were you not more careful? Don’t you realize that I might lose part of my
finger? Don’t you realize how much pain you are putting me through? Don’t you
realize that I might not play the cello again?” But I was silent. I said
nothing. I did not want to look at the horror of the possibility that I might
loose my finger and be maimed for life or that I might not be able to play
the cello again. I stuffed all my rage and my fears because I had been
conditioned to repress them. I could not allow myself to get angry because I
was afraid that they would abandon me if I did. I needed their help. I see this situation is
a mirror of my life. All my life I have stuffed my feelings. I learned
from my father to relate to people intellectually. I saw my father as very
smart and very wise. He knew all kinds of facts about history, science, art,
philosophy, and life in general. I could never get out more than half a
sentence without him knowing better or knowing more. I was scared to death
that I might say something wrong. I was scared to death that I did not know
enough to please him. I remember I was upset about this as a child and often
cried in frustration and anger. I was ridiculed by my father as well as my
brothers, when I cried. My brothers used to make the motions of playing the
violin and sing one particular melody because they knew they could get to me
that way. They seemed to delight in provoking my pain and making me
cry. I learned quickly that I needed to stuff my hurt feelings but at
the same time having to stuff them caused more rage and more pain. It was a
vicious circle. In time I learned to cry in private and to relate to people
by sharing bits of information that I collected. I went to school and I got
several degrees in different subjects just so I would have more knowledge to
share in hopes of being able to relate better to people. I learned and knew a
lot but somehow that didn’t seem to fulfill my needs nor did it ease my pain. I understand that by
stuffing my feelings, the anger is still with me. The anger needs to come out
in one way or another. Sometimes it may come out in an explosion as I have
described in my article “The Reality of
Expressing Emotions.” But often it will come out in a passive aggressive way. My father
was a master manipulator. Not only did I feel inadequate if I did not know
all the facts of whatever we were discussing, but he could talk me into
feeling guilty or ashamed for anything that I did or said. Through
observation and imitation, I learned the “art” getting back at others by
“innocently” causing them pain indirectly without having to own up to doing
so and I learned how to make people feel guilty without overtly having to
blame them for what they did. I was mostly unconscious that I was doing this.
Now, that I am aware, I see that I have done this and occasionally still do
this to express my anger. By being unconscious and in denial of my pain, I
become deadly in my expression of it. It means that I cannot be trusted by
others to know what I am feeling or to know when I will finally
explode. My pain and anger underlie my actions and thoughts and
come across passive aggressively or like a surprise stab in the back, with
neither myself, nor those with whom I interact being immediately aware of it.
It leaves an uncomfortable feeling of uneasiness and hurt in its wake. In reflecting on what
smashing my finger in the door means, I see it as a wake-up call to the fact
that I have been stuffing my feelings for so long or expressing them passive
aggressivelyand that I needed a very dramatic incident to get my
attention. This was a way for my Soul to tell me that I was not
payingattention to my Inner Child and to what my own needs are. It was
a way for her to tell me that I need to start expressing my angerand my pain
openly and therefore deal with them as they occur instead of stuffing
them. I also needed a way to release some of my pent-up anger without
the fear of being ridiculed. Having my middle finger on my left hand bandaged
with layers of gauzeand needing to hold it up to keep the swelling down, was
an acceptable way of telling the world to “f**k off.” For the first two
weeks after the incident happened, people remarked on my extended finger everywhere
that I went. It felt good to laugh and joke about it. Now that I am aware
that I have been unconscious about my feelings of pain and anger, I ask
myself, what is the next step? It took a traumatic event to wake me up and to
get me to look at how and why I had been unconscious. My incident is by no
means as devastating as it could have been. I am grateful that I did not need
to loose my whole finger or something worse such as an arm or an eye in order
to wake up. Imagining this wrenches my heart and fills me with compassion for
those who need such an extreme experience. I also appreciate that I
needed as much pain as I did to realize that I was unconscious. I believe that the key
to what is next is to stay aware of my pain, my anger, and all my emotions so
I keep from stuffing them and I keep current with what I am feeling. I now
have agreements with my Inner Child to check in with her when she is in fear
or in pain so that we can deal with it and so I can reassure her that I will
not abandon her. As each new situation comes up, I ask myself, what is
it that I feel? Am I angry, frustrated or resentful? Am I afraid of
what someone will think or do? Am I afraid of facing some issue that will
cause me emotional pain? Do I simply feel unsure or that there is something
not right? Once I ask these questions of myself, then I need to be sure
that I am honest with myself in answering them. When I know what I am
feeling, then I can decide how to express or handle the situation in an
appropriate manner. Sometimes I may express my feelings immediately and
state (or shout) that I am hurt or angry. Other times I may choose to wait
for more information or for a more appropriate time and place to express my
feelings. Sometimes I will need to yell and pound on pillows with a plastic
baseball bat so as to release the anger physically but without hurting or
damaging myself, others or items in my surroundings. Whatever choice I
make, it is a conscious choice and a choice that eventually leads to
expressing and releasing the emotions instead of stuffing them. I have agreed
with my Inner Child to take these steps help me to stay aware and assure both
my Inner Child and myself that I do not fall unconscious again. I kept thinking that I
should be angry with Guy and that it would be good to vent my anger directly
at him for slamming the door on my finger. When I shared that idea with him,
he told me that he had expected me to be angry with him when I came out of
the emergency roomat the hospital. In the weeks following the incident he
even encouraged me to express my feelings. But, I could not feel the anger,
even though, intellectually, I knew that it must be there, somewhere, as it
kept slipping out as little stabs of irritation. After several weeks, I tried
to yell and pound on some pillows I use for that purpose. For such a physical
injury and for the release of so much stored up emotional pain, I thought I
needed to allow myself, a physical release in a safe place. That
helped, but still, it wasn’t enough. Finally, one day, inan
early morning phone conversation, a friend pointed out that the discussion of
my anger and pain in this article was still intellectual and that although I
had stated I wished to express my anger, that I had not actually done so.
She reminded me that I had every right to feel angry at Guy for
slamming the door on my finger. It was not thatGuy was to blame, but it was a
matter of anger being the natural reaction to pain. At the moment of the
incident, I had let my Inner Child block my right to feel my anger. I had
stuffed the pain in order to get into my head and rationalize it enough to
make sure that I was not abandoned by Guy and Jason when I desperately needed
their help. As my friend and I talked, I became very quiet and I felt
like I wanted to run away and shrivel into nothing. Just talkingabout the
anger I should have had was more than my Inner Child wanted to hear. I
was so programmed to stuff my feelings that I even shut out the memory of
this conversation with my friend and needed her to remind me in order to
write this paragraph. I hung up the phone,
feeling sick to my stomach and feeling dread throughout my whole body. I
crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up over my head. I was
terrified at the idea that I would have to feel the anger I had stuffed so
well and so deep. Over and over, I assured my Inner Child that everything
would be ok and that I would not abandon her. I knew that I had to get
through this, to feel and express my pain and anger, so that I didn’t have to
go through a similar, possibly more painful situation again. I knew, because
of my multidimensional training, that despite my fear, I needed to have
courage to hold onto nothing and just do it. After an hour or so, I got
up and went to find Guy. Guyand I started by talking
about the details of the incident. We also talked about the weeks following
and how the stuffed anger influenced our interaction with each other as
irritation and petty arguments. In the course of our conversation, finally, I
vented my anger about the pain of getting my finger crushed in the car door,
as I needed to do for so long. I cussed and yelled and kicked some pillows
around as I let out my anger with dramatic expression. When I was done, I
felt a great release in my heart. Guy then told me that he didn’t
realize I had such a vocabulary. He also said that he felt much better as
well. Releasing my anger released him from the role he was playing of showing
me how I repressed by feelings and how I had been unconscious. He is no
longer the target of my passive aggressivenessand he said he now feels he can
trust me to express my feelings. Things worked out
differently with Jason. A few days after the incident, Jason informed me that
he no longer wanted to continue our friendship. My fear of being abandoned
was thus realized. Jason told me that spending the morning in the hospital
was not his idea of a fun time. He also said he saw “something in my eyes”
but he refused to say what it was or to talk about it. He still refuses to
talk about it. I can only guess that he could sense my repressed anger, which
brought out his own fears and need to get away. At the time that Jason
told me our friendship was over, I got angry and told him so in the
moment. Expressing my anger did not change the outcome, he still left,
but at least I did not add the anger of not speaking up to what I already had
stuffed, and expressing it has allowed me to move on. I would like to thank
Guy for the role he played for me by shutting my finger in the door. I am
most grateful that he stuck with me so I could work out the details of
expressing my anger over the incident and so that I could wake-up and see
this lesson that I had been unconscious for so long. I also thank Jason
for his role in helping me deal with expressing my anger over my fear of
abandonment. I was able to show my Inner Child that I would not abandon her
even when others abandon me. Hopefully you won’t
have to have such a traumatic experience as I have needed in order to
wake-up. Or, if you do have to have such an experience, hopefully my
experience will help you understand your own lesson. I see that it is
possible to work with the Inner Child, as I am doing now, to become and stay
aware of my feelings and needs. But, I see that I must be vigilant and always
listen to what she says. If I do not listen, she will make sure that she is
heard, even if it means trauma to the body she is here to
protect. I hope that by sharing my story that it will help you
wake-up from your own unconsciousness into a world of awareness. With Compassion, About the
Author Acknowledgements |
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