AboutEugenia Springer, Ph.D. Expertise I can answer your questions on how to stop being a victim, and/or how to stop being an abuser. My ability to help you, however, would depend on your willingness to assume full responsibility for helping yourself.
Experience From the 1970s to the present, my life has been a search after knowing my purpose, knowing myself, and knowing God. I talk about this search in my 2002 book, "Further Insights Into the Journey".
After years of teaching biology at university, I became a radio Family Life Counselor, and a newspaper columnist, responding to callers on radio, and replying to letters from the public, in the newspapers.
My book for the adolescent girl, "Girl, It's All About You"(Review & Herald Publishers 1980, and out of print) was my attempt to marry my field of training--biology, and my adoptive field--interpersonal relationships.
"Further Insights Into the Journey" is about my search for personal freedom--a search for freedom from external controls; for freedom from fear. Through very instructive experiences, many sorely trying, I uncovered that freedom within me, and found myself progressively experiencing increasingly greater measures of peace.
To get your copy of "Further Insights Into The Journey" email me at hftpproductions@tstt.net.tt.
Currently I am the host and producer of two weekly call-in radio programs. You can access our station online at www.power102fm.com. My programs are:
(1) "Life & Living/Soul to Soul", Wednesdays, 11:00 AM to 12:00 Noon; and
(2) DIALOGUE, Wednesdays 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. DIALOGUE connects our national radio audience with our Trinidad & Tobago/Caribbean Diaspora, and other listeners beyond our shores.
Access Dialogue by going to www.power102fm.com from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM local Trinidad and Tobago time on Wednesday nights. Communicate with callers and studio personnel through our message board; or call any of the four telephone numbers listed: Toronto, London, Miami, and New York. Call through the number nearest you.
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Question Reading the other questions has helped remind me of the hardship I put up with and how blind we can be during and after abuse. Thanks for your services on this site.
I do have a question that I was hoping you could awnser.
It has been two and a half years since the end of a two year relationship with a controlling and emotionally abusive man. I still think (maybe even obsess) about this man even though I have since moved on in my life. I have a great career, finished college, and even met a very significant man who nurtures and uplifts me that I plan on marrying.
I see a pattern in myself and many other women. It is an addiction; wondering where the ex is, is he happy with his new wife, does he treat her as he treated me, can't get him out of my head, etc.
It makes me feel foolish and stuck. I am very hard working, intelligant, and self aware and wonder if there are steps to moving on emotionally. I know it can probablly be done but all I see are women who are in denial or depressed. Do you know of any books that address this issue or do you know anyone who has overcome this problem? I am feeling almost desperate to resolve this as it is with me everyday.
Okay no more rambling. Thanks in advance for your consideration.
Answer Alissa,
The more intense the emotional interlocking of two souls, the deeper the sinking of memory's roots. And when those memories are of sweet, awesome joy, the soul remembers. Feelings of intense joy or intense sadness diffuse through our system, transforming our chemistry, and infusing every area of our being with their vibrations.
In a love affair are moments of intense passion; and when that affair has been soured there is a range of negative energies, all stemming from feelings of hurt over perceived rejection or perceived disappointment. But the feelings of having been at one with that person no matter for how brief a time, so affirmed our worth, that despite the eventual let down, those feelings of nirvana, as it were, linger like the aftertaste of a superbly fine beverage. And lost in the euphoria of such heavenly memories we ofttimes forget the pain that followed. Why? Because, for a brief episode we reached that place to our which our soul aspires, that mountain top, that epitome of total, complete, unconditional, acceptance. And we keep wanting to get back there. Perhaps this violence is just a blip on an otherwise clear screen, we tell ourselves. And we let ourselves in for a bumpy ride till we stop.
And you know, Alissa, we tend to look at the other person, when we stop because the pain became too much, or the threat to our lives became real.
But the person to examine is the one in the mirror. That is the one we cannot escape. The other one was not born to fill our needs. That is some mother's child, some man's child that is about working through his own, or her own, hellish memories so he or she could find their way through life. We are on the wrong course when we keep looking for that person to change. The person to be changed is self so we would stop creating the kind of interactions, the kind of relationships that litter our life with unhappiness.
Your mind will keep pulling you back there because for two years you sunk heart strings in each other's energy field. And you would continue feeling the tug until you lift your mind far off to a higher level; to a higher level of consciousness.
Ken Keyes, deceased now, said in an early edition of, "A Conscious Person's Guide To Relationships" --"as you become more aware of yourself, you increasingly take responsibility for creating your moment to moment experience of life; you stop accusing others of doing it to you".
Transcending the level of consciousness where you are vulnerable to the way things are, what people say and do, and what you say and do (as pointed out by Keyes in that same book) is the ONLY answer.
Women, and men also--we sometimes talk about men as though they are some other species, but they are your brothers, your nephews, your dad; they are our men with a huge weight of expectations thrust on to their mind, and a barrage of criticism waiting to be poured over them if they fail to live up to OUR prescription of a what a man ought to be--must recognize that the power to be who they know they should be, is within them. None of us need to be trapped where we find ourselves. We have within us the courage to transcend.
The kinds of problems people experience in abusive relationships are replete; they are repetitious; they are characteristic of a certain level of consciousness. Just look around. Same, or similar descriptions of behavior; same, or similar kinds of complaints of being victimized. What is the answer? People have to lift themselves up from this level of consciousness to free themselves from these kinds of experiences.
The answer for all of us is to pursue that potential within us for enlightenment--development of our awareness of ourselves as overcomers. Life is a spiritual journey taking us from where we are to where we ought to be. What most of us need help with is determining where we ought to be.
And the answers are here, right here within us. We would find answers if we would stop trying to quiet the voice within, and become alert to where intuition is guiding us.
Vibrations set in motion by another's strumming on your heart strings would keep on making waves long after the strumming is over. Set up strumming of a higher order and all former vibrations would be minimized; drowned out. You might remember the experiences but experience no desire to return to them, because they would have been drained of any emotive content. They would be housed in bland memory.
How is this accomplished? Through spiritual development--through raising your awareness that you have the power to live at a higher level, a level where those lower vibrations would not register interference.
That was the challenge I took on several years ago. On May 12 I will be 68. I do not feel this age, and people marvel when I tell them my chronological age. This is because I feel as though I started a new life in 1979, when from within organized religion I cried out for guidance. I desired to live this life in certainty. The journey has brought me out of organized religion, to a deeper understanding of the inner force, inner power I call God; a power perceived as the Ultimate, limited only by our limited perception of this universe, and our limited understanding of the wonders this power within us can accomplish in us.
Surrender to this power within brought me to this place of peace, this place where I feel at one with you.
How did I surrender? I myself have marvelled, at the astounding simplicity of the process. Simple soul desperation galvanized me into silently, desperately, screaming, over a period of drawn out months, "God, guide me, God, guide me. Guide me, God, guide me!"
And my mind was locked in by the desire to be guided. Desire is a powerful mind tool. Powerful. What you lock your mind onto materializes. And for me, guidance materialized. I had prayed a dangerous prayer; for guidance meant changing my consciousness, and that is a process of spiritual metamorphosis; a process of refining, chiseling, hammering, flaming, scrubbing, tearing apart and putting back together again. I am talking about being taken through the washtub and wringer of inner transformation; through the kinds of experiences that once evoked pain, and being subjected to the same or similar kinds of experiences repetitively till you could go through the same experience and feel no pain because you would have developed a higher level of consciousness, a different way of perceiving reality.
I have developed a God consciousness, which is a consciousness that allows no room for emotional dependency, blaming, worry, or distress. A book by Joel Goldsmith was instrumental in bringing me through the introduction to this transformational process. The transformation itself takes place in the lab of our daily living, as we become aware of our moment to moment living, the responses we bring to each moment, and the consequences of those responses. A major change is that we no longer emotionally latch on to another for our sense of stability; we no longer blame others for doing things to us. We take responsibility for our self every step of the way.
But did this new awareness come suddenly?
No. Looking back, I know that we all can make the transition from where we are to where we ought to be only as we blind our eyes to the evanescent--to that which would not, cannot last, and stay focussed on the Power that from somewhere deep within our soul quietly assures us that it is okay; that all that is required of us is that we let go all that stuff--the weeping, self-pitying, blaming-- and follow where the voice of intuition leads.
The book that helped me, was a huge volume, "Spiritual Living and Healing".
If you want to get a glimpse into what is involved in realizing a transformed consciousness, read my book, Further Insights Into The Journey. This is a book of one woman's search for Truth. It is the story of my own search. Yes, I share some personal details. But why hide when our experience is the human experience. As we share honestly, who knows, someone somewhere might be helped to find their way.
To order my book, Further Insights Into The Journey, send a Certified money order for US$20.00 to EugeniaSpringer Productions, Suite One, 98 Eastern Main Road, Tunapuna, TRINIDAD, T&T, West Indies. We will send out your package by return mail. If you want to arrange a telephone session with me, contact me at flinstitute@tstt.net.tt.
Blessings and peace. And know that your power is yours to manage. No one upsets you unless you give them your power.
