BITTERNESS – THE CRITICALNESS
What is looks and sounds like:
“I don’t want to be like this, I want to be me, I am not mean I am really a nice person. But I hate everyone and everything. I want to be different, be the real me. I need to change, I want to change. It’s time to heal. But how?
“I am critical of everyone and everything. I judge, condemn and want to argue and fight with everyone. I fight for my time with God, beg people to pray for me so it think I am ok…. but I am still not aware of have become bitter……BUT I HAVE! Lord help me I am bitter, angry and want to destroy and hurt. I think I think it will help with the pain…..nothing helps with the pain….nothing.
“I fight each morning to get my brain under control, to get the darkness out of it, but the pain seeps back in and I want revenge again. I know I won’t do it but love planning it…it feels good. Thinking that, I hate me again. Life is lousy, lousy, no one likes me or wants me around…I don’t want me around!
“I begin to see life and people as mean and they are out to hurt me. It seems they are working to shun me. They have mean looks on their faces…no that is not true, I know I have a mean look on MY face and they are responding to it. I am desperately lonely, but I am so critical and afraid others will hurt me more.
“I view others out to get me, hurt me…I long to go home and hide. It is too hard in this world, too hard. I cry a lot, scream in the water, and try to keep going, giving and all I want to do is sleep and make all this pain go away. But I have to keep going pretending I am not bitter and hide it from everyone. Pretend to be nice when I don’t feel nice.
“I see and believe no one likes me. I am awful, horrible, mean, terrible person and no one wants me around. I know it is because of what I have gone through. I have a RIGHT to be bitter, look what happened to me! So I have a choice –bitter or better. Bitterness is like acid, inside of me. It’s like having ground up glass surging through me, hurting me over and over again. It cuts me and I am bleeding profusely all the time…. then I lash out to hurt others. Sometimes I can control it for a while and pretend I am okay, but then I have to run and hide so it doesn’t show. Trying to make the pain go away. It’s grinding me up, eating me away like acid. It is destroying my real self, the nice me, the one that loves people and wants to help them. I never heal. I’m never okay. It comes out in zaps, hurts, explosions, misunderstandings, jealousy, enviousness, looks…..” And the list goes on.
Bitterness crushes the soul. It is like a wound that never heals, never because the hurts and wounds form the world continue and the person does not know how to make it stop. So it devastates the spirit. The result is the hurt is so intense it feels like it is slicing through us—we keep bringing up the hurts over and over again, because they are inside of us physically until we heal—over and over again. The brain is brings it up because we are actually trying to get rid of it. But we can’t until we heal.
Until we feel, deal with and heal from the embedded deep wounds, we will be crushed and we can’t let go or go on. Our struggle to cope becomes habitual then it shapes and changes our internal frame of reference, how we see ourselves in the world, it becomes skewed. We then can begin and continue to see the world as hurtful, people as cons and out to get us, use us, liars, and manipulators. Or we can see us as being nice so we can get something back, even a little something. Thankfully, we can heal.
Becoming bitter takes time and comes from having been traumatized, wounded. It does not happen overnight. Wounds include disappointed, put down, abuse, violence, not valued, not respected, bullied….wounded in many ways. Sadly, when we lash out from our pain, we then feel bad having been so critical. We can then hate us for what we did; we devalue and judge us.
Healing also takes time, not as long as it did to be abused usually. It is hard, painful, wonderful and awesome. At the time of the trauma we don’t know how to get rid of it. It’s all one mess of glass and blood. It churns inside of us affecting every part of us –inside, outside…our entire life and all our relationships. But we can heal, we can forgive and when we do we gain wisdom and joy from the strength we earned and learned.
What to do about it:
In our world today there are many people who have become bitter and angry. Healing is possible, always possible. We have to feel the feeling fully and appropriately to heal. We have to forgive. (See my blog on forgiveness.) I will talk about this area more as we continue our journey together.