When she was describing that, I "bristled" inside. It's weird, I know, but it can only mean that there's some healing that needs to be done within myself. After all, this is what defensiveness is:
"Defensiveness, ultimately, is not about protecting ourselves from other people. People get defensive because they don’t want to experience uncomfortable feelings within themselves. Getting defensive will temporarily block the feelings that they don’t want to experience. The prescription for dealing with your own defensiveness is to let yourself experience those feelings, as uncomfortable as they may be."
You see, in the past after we found out we were infertiles, someone sort of insinuated that I should keep on visualising having the baby in my arms or something like that. I knew that person meant well, but now thinking back, I felt "blamed" for that and back then the conversation switched to other topics so I never got the chance to "defend myself". I realize now that I still have to deal with this "excess feelings" that've been haunting me every now and then.
Back then I think I was shocked into silence 'coz the person's belief made me feel like I "couldn't win either way". What slipped through my mind back then was that if I didn't end up with a baby, it was 'coz I hadn't visualised it enough and if I had ended up with a baby, that was 'coz the visualisation worked! Again I'm aware that she didn't mean it that way, but that was what I felt.
And here's what I had wanted to tell that person: "You know, I had already bought some pairs of loose pants in preparation for my bigger belly when I came back to Indo in the middle of those first year of TTC. Heck, I even bought a pair of bigger boots in preparation for that 'coz some people had told me that their shoe size had gone up during pregnancy. I had even bought a pregnancy and a few parenting books and I had even bought some used baby clothes - some of which I gave to my brother 'coz I bought them in a bulk. If you don't call that enough visualisation for the future, what do you call it then?"
I know it may be silly to write it all down here, but I feel that I want to leave these feelings here in the blogosphere so that I can move on in my healing process. Another blogger friend who's an IFer herself had recently reminded me of the layered healing process of this journey and I should just deal with it one at a time.
Image taken from here
And yes, as you can probably guess by the tone of this post, I'm still PMSing he he he...Mind you, I do believe in the power of positive thinking and visualisation technique, but I don't believe that "we always get what we want or strive for or visualise". But that's okay, because in turns we get to learn many more things about ourselves and we get to fight our own demons in ways that victories couldn't give us.
After all, if you had asked me when I was young if I thought I'd be living here right now and I'd be doing the kind of job that I've been doing for the past 3 years and that I'd be a Finnish citizen by now and that we'd be mostly OK with living without children, I probably wouldn't know if I should believe it or not. And if you had asked me when I was young that I would work as a book translator, I wouldn't have believed it either 'coz it wasn't the kind of job that I had planned for (my visualisation at that time was working for a garment factory and then being sent abroad as a marketing manager to deal with the clients). The translating job just sort of "clicked into place" and I did enjoy it at that time.
Sure, there are some other aspects of my life that I had visualised when I was young that have started coming true, but there are many more details and twists and turns aren't the same as what I had "visualised". And the baby dream was one thing that I have crossed out in my dream/visualisation list. The bottom line is I LOVE this life, I'm THANKFUL for this life and I intend to make the best of it. Here's to healing, one layer at a time!!!
Beautifully said. A friend gave me a book that was ultimately about "visualisation" when I was trying to conceive, implying that I needed to "heal" something in myself first. It's a popular theory - after all, "The Secret" is all about visualisation. It might be fine to get you emotionally in sync. But you're right - other than that it can be used as part of the blame game. "You didn't try hard enough." Or the old annoying mantra "you can achieve anything you want if you try hard enough." Which is all rubbish if you ask me! And I say that to people now. I don't let them away with these trite and often insulting comments.
ReplyDeleteTHANKS, Mali!
DeleteYeah, the "you can achieve anything you want if you try hard enough" is really not true.
I think next time when someone uses this visualisation technique on my life, I know better what to say - that is if I feel like saying it. If not, at least I've "resolved" one ghost in my past this way he he...