More on Rotten Potato, in response to a comment

I know this is a very large problem in our society, and there are far too few solutions. All I can really comment on is my own experiences and those that I saw.

One thing that made a difference for me was the fact I had major responsibilities and had to continue as if I were still alive. When we pretend something is so for long enough, it becomes so and after quite a long while, I found myself coming to life again.

With that, I realized I did not want to pass on the pain and dysfunction to my children and began to attempt my own recovery.

The journey back begins with forgiveness, or at leas the attempt at it. We need to keep trying until we get it right. I did not find any benefit in self help groups because it felt more like a "complain and be vindicated" session. Recognition of the problem seemed to come with permission for any behavior I chose to exhibit. There was recognition but no road map to get back to normalcy.

Another thing that helps to recreate one's self is to be of service to others. When we try to help others, we are suddenly outside ourselves, able to move past the pain and numbness to offer simple human acceptance to another. The very act of helping others helps us as well. We are all teachers, we are all students. When we get outside ourselves we realize we are not the only one who feels a particular way, and seeing our emotions mirrored back to us allows us to begin working through them. I think this was the original purpose of self help groups, but few of them accomplish this goal.

I have previously written on forgiveness and will repost here. I would also like to post this response on the body of my blog as you raise real issues that are also experienced by many others.