Author: Kathy Marshack

Do you have trouble letting go of regrets? Is it tough to forgive those who have wronged you? Is it particularly painful to forgive yourself? Regrets, grief and self-recrimination are steps along the way to serenity, or peace of mind. But how on earth do we get there?

Freedom of Choice

The antidote, in my mind is to embrace Freedom of Choice. One reason we have troubles is that we face choices daily. We can

turn that process over to others, or we can claim it for ourselves. What this means is that you take responsibility for your choices, good, bad, and neutral. You may not always have much of a choice, or you can’t always see “around the river bend,” and we are at the mercy of the choices of others — but when you take responsibility for the outcome of your choices, serenity lies ahead.

 

Children Seem So Free

Have you ever noticed how free young children seem to be? Or the family dog? It’s as if they have no awareness of the consequences of their actions. They are blissfully ignorant, so to speak. It may last a lifetime for the dog, but not for the child. Soon enough the child learns that their choices don’t always work out blissfully. Year after year they experience plenty of success, some losses, and mostly neutral outcomes. After a lifetime of these lessons, peace of mind may feel far away, as the child grows into an adult with regret, grief and self-recrimination.

Guilt is a Survival Skill

Believe it or not, regret, guilt and self-recrimination are built in survival skills for human beings. (Another survival skill is blame, but I’ll leave that for later). The simple reason that we engage in guilt is that it makes us re-think our actions and to look for a better solution — for next time. In other words, you feel more powerful when you believe you can fix the problem that caused the grief (or regret) in the first place.

The problem with this working theory is that you can’t fix everything. You can’t always go back in time. Sometimes you didn’t actually cause the problem anyway. It may have been just one of those things that surprised you when you least expected it. Or perhaps another person outwitted you.

Self-Recrimination is a Survival Skill Too

Blaming yourself for an unpleasant outcome is another way to keep yourself feeling in control. Self-Recrimination is hard to shake when you really did cause the problem, or at least contributed to it. It’s especially painful when you’ve lost a friend or loved one over your actions.

I think we hang onto self-recrimination much longer.  It surpasses regrets and grief in how tough it is to shake. When you really made a huge mistake, that caused harm to yourself and/or others, and you are blamed by lots of people for the problem, and there’s really no way to fix it, or even prevent it since it is a once in a lifetime error — what do you do?

Self-Forgiveness Comes First, Not Last

It took me many years to understand that the key to happiness isn’t the right to have it (guaranteed by the US Constitution),  or to solve every dilemma set in front of me, but that the key to releasing myself from regrets, grief and self-recrimination came from forgiving myself first (self compassion).

I realized that I was darned lucky to have engaged all of my life in making choices. I made them freely, whether I was ignorant or not of the outcome. And each time I succeeded or failed, I had the right to choose again. Sure some of my choices led me to a place where options were minimal, but that only meant I had to reboot; accept the losses and move to another path.

Haven’t you had this experience too? When you look back on your life, does it ever occur to you that if you hadn’t failed, or hadn’t lost a loved one, you wouldn’t have grown into the wonderful  person you are today. In fact, these losses show us the way forward, if you accept that only you can make the choices in your life.

I explain this process of self-forgiveness and freedom to choose, more in my new book “WHEN EMPATHY FAILS: How to stop those hell-bent on destroying you.” Through many years of struggling to keep my head above water in a devastating situation, it finally occurred to me to let go of self-recrimination and seek answers outside of the problem, and outside of myself.

Radiant Empathy

I call this freedom of choice, Radiant Empathy. Radiant Empathy is a kind of wisdom that comes from realizing that the freedom to keep choosing your life is far more important than tallying your mistakes. I’m still sad over many of my losses (particularly my children), but now I view my losses as battle scars. They are just proof that I threw my whole self into life. Freedom to choose — yes that’s the antidote to Regrets, Grief and Self-Recrimination.

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Dedicated to the Ones I Love

Only a few days ago, I decided that I wanted to dedicate my new websites to people I love and who have inspired my work. The obvious choices are (1) my parents for my life’s work, and (2) my daughters for introducing me to Autism Spectrum Disorder. While countless others helped along the way, sometimes with gentle prodding, soaring speeches, probing discourse, deft editing, and at times painfully searing criticism — it just makes sense to dedicate these two new websites to those I hold dearest in my heart. Love is like that isn’t? It’s a guiding light that shows us the way to our authentic expression of Self.

When I presented this idea to a few friends for feedback, I was never so surprised when a close friend said, “I wouldn’t do that. It’s too personal. You want to remain professional, don’t you?”

I was taken aback until I realized that he may not understand the “Life of the Personal.” I first learned about this important developmental stage, after the events of Sept. 11, 2001 awakened me to the fact that I needed to take my life more personally — and I haven’t looked back since.

Below is an edited excerpt from my book, WHEN EMPATHY FAILS: How to stop those hell-bent on destroying you,  where I introduce you to my Empathy Dysfunction Scale (EmD Scale). The book and this blog post are personal and YES! I meant to write them this way. Please take your time to read and absorb all of this, because the bottom line is that if you want to take back your life, and to live it as fully as you can, then you have to take your life personally.

It’s about Waking Up.

“At first the awakening was just emotional, not personal. I knew that something wasn’t right in my world, but I didn’t fully understand what it was I needed to change.

“The catastrophe in New York frightened me and propelled me to take action, but it was action without a plan. Filing for divorce was my first action step. I finally had the courage to break out of a destructive marriage. But this still wasn’t personal; it was an action to move away from someone, a way of life that was not safe for me. There still was no proactive plan for my life.”

It’s about being Strong.

“I got an inkling of an idea about my life of the personal when I spent three days in the county jail, following my first false arrest. The obvious is that I recognized it was not going to be so easy to divorce a divorce attorney in a legal system where he held all of the cards. I needed to learn how to stand up for myself and quickly before I lost everything. Not so obvious was the lesson I learned from a tiny pamphlet left in my jail cell by volunteers from Catholic Charities.

“Desperate for something to distract me from my plight (and my migraine headache) I read the story of the suffering of Mother Mary as she watched her son Jesus carry his cross to Calvary where he would be crucified. I literally wept with Mary as she described her feelings of anguish, fear and anger. . .but held strong her resolve that the son she bore would die for something far greater for all of us.

“What does Mary’s story have to do with the personal? At that first “visit’ to jail, I could definitely relate to a mother’s suffering, but it would only occur to me later how much a mother may be called upon to sacrifice. As the years rolled by and I was sued and stalked and defamed and arrested again. . . as first one daughter left me, then the second, I learned more about the life of the personal. It is actually a source of strength.”

It’s about Radiant Empathy.

“Taking one’s life personally means to realize how incredibly important you are. You were born to be You in every way possible. You are an amazing, one of a kind Soul and with every step you take you walk on hallowed ground. There is no way any of us can truly understand the enormity of God’s plan, but to know you are loved is enough. Mother Mary knew this, which is why she could be strong for her son and all of the rest of us who weep at her feet.

“In other words, the action plan for taking your life personally is to relax and know that you are an instrument of God’s love for you. Throughout this book you will see me ignore this knowledge, struggle to control the outcome. . . and fail repeatedly, even though I had this lesson early on in my fight against injustice.

“I am still learning to take my life personally, to enjoy the beauty of life and to count even adversity as a blessing. (After all, adversities drove me to write this book).

“Regardless of what I said on the radio following 9/11—and with Mother Mary’s help—I think I finally understand the lesson of living the life of the personal. Because only YOU can do it. Living personally is to do everything you can as the God creation that you are . . . and then do a lot more. That’s what I call Radiant Empathy (EmD-5).”

These realizations led me to discover the connection between Empathy and Empathy Dysfunction (EmD). The only way to appreciate this discovery is to take it personally. It is in the Life of the Personal, that we find the resilience to solve the problems we encounter with those having EmD. And it is through that resilience that we can achieve Radiant Empathy.

TO MY PARENTS: Coming of Age in the “Greatest Generation”

TO MY DAUGHTERS: Love in the Chaos of Autism (coming soon)