Tuning into the feeling itself, and to how it was moving in his body,
would help him stay with it until it passed or changed. He didn’t have
to cover, medicate, or run from his feelings. He could choose to feel
them. ey were only feelings. He could accept them, bear them, stay
with them—because they were temporary.
Once Jason was more adept at tuning in to his feelings, we
practiced how to respond to them, instead of reacting. Jason had
learned to live like he was in a pressure cooker. He kept himself under
tight control—until he burst. I helped him learn to be more like a
teapot, to vent off the steam. Sometimes he’d come to a session and I’d
ask him how he was feeling, and he’d say, “I feel like screaming.” And
I’d say, “Okay! Let’s scream. Let’s get it all out so it doesn’t make you
ill.”
As Jason learned to accept and face his feelings, he also began to
see that in many ways he was re-creating the fear, repression, and
violence of his childhood in his current family. e need to control his
feelings, learned at the hand of an abusive father, had translated into a
need to control his wife and his children.
Sometimes our healing helps us to repair our relationships with our
partners; sometimes our healing releases the other person to do his or
her own growth. Aer a few months of joining him for couples
counseling, Jason’s wife told him that she was ready to separate. Jason
was shocked and furious. I was concerned that his grief over the failed
marriage would govern how he treated his children. At ĕrst Jason was
vindictive and wanted to ĕght for full custody, but he was able to shi
his all-or-nothing mind-set, and he and his wife worked out an
agreement to share custody. He was able to mend and nurture his
relationships with the people who had inspired him to drop the gun:
his kids. He ended the legacy of violence.
* * *