Healing also means, taking responsibility for the role you play in your own suffering.
The power of social media algorithms is astonishing. All it takes is something that drives you into opening every post that relates to your current state of emotion and before you know it, you have a feed that slaughters you with persistence. You’re better than that. You deserve better. It’s somebody else’s fault. You’re not to blame. Don’t be hard on yourself. Something is wrong with them. You deserve grace.
It is so easy to crowdsource empathy and assurance. It’s easy to find exactly what you want to convince yourself of. You can make yourself be ‘right’ one hundred percent of the time. The question is, are the people you will lose in your quest to be right worth the belief that you are right?
What if, instead of seeking the information that validates our excuses, we turn inwards?
What if we were more interested in pulling apart our own excuses?
This is my current work. I told you I intended to share my journey more completely, so here it goes. I am not proud to admit I often step away from some of my support tools when I don’t feel a desperate need for support. This is a failure to myself. It’s not what I coach others to do. Throughout these entries, I will share action points, there is no use in identifying problems if we aren’t actively engaging in solutions. These are for me, this is my journal, but I challenge you be open to learning more about your own behaviours and emotions.
Action 1, continue to journal, everyday. It’s such an easy way to hold myself accountable; to work through what feels chaotic in my mind, to be able to revisit lessons learned in hopes of breaking patterns that are damaging.
I have had a really heavy couple of years; I have survived and I am not here to punish myself by dissecting what I could have done better. I am still standing and I am proud of that. I am however, interested in learning how I can show up better for myself, and for others.
Today, I focused my mindfulness and meditation on how ‘hurt people, hurt people’. I had this said to me recently, and I don’t love how it made me feel. I don’t like that being labelled hurt made me feel weak. I dislike, even more, the notion of hurting others, especially those I love.
The sadness and grief I am carrying from the loss of my Dad, is making me very quick to react. The recovery from years of chronic pain hasn’t been easy and my nervous system is certainly in a fight or flight mode a lot of the time. I respect that I require an abundance of compassion as I learn how to navigate loss, but I don’t want to excuse my behaviours either.
When I am hurt, I often react with anger and bitterness. I feel strength in this, it feels powerful, in control. I feel safe. I use this to convince myself that I am not weak. When I feel betrayed, when I feel wounded, I embrace anger and bitterness because I feel shame in admitting I’ve been hurt, that feeling of weakness scares me. Communicating my hurt without the mask of anger leaves me feeling powerless, which it seems I associate with being weak.
The other choice in these moments is to trust in love so completely, that I choose to give up the protection of anger, and be honest about the moments that sometimes make me feel weak. To trust that the people in my life will accept my hurt, even if it’s been caused by them, and choose to work through it with me, as opposed to turning away from me. I need to trust that every version of me is worthy of love, not just what I perceive to be the strongest version of myself. I want to trust love with this level of vulnerability.
I want to learn how to communicate with intention and patience when I am not at my best. It is not weakness to admit hurt. If I stop reacting in anger, I will see that love is always more powerful. Forgiveness is more powerful. Getting to love and forgiveness in communication requires me to bypass the anger and bitterness. I cannot expect others to read my mind when I am hurt, in turn, being faced with my anger then becomes an attack on somebody else. That solves nothing, hence “hurt people, hurt people’.
It feels so unsafe to me, to leave myself unprotected, but nowhere near the discomfort of hurting others. Nowhere near the pain of hurting others, and ultimately the regret that follows.
Starting today, I will actively change my perspective of this with intention. My anger and bitterness don’t allow me to show up as the version of myself I want to be. Not as a parent, not as a partner, not as a daughter or a friend.
I will actively pause, and try to adopt a much deeper level of vulnerability in moments that make me doubt my worth. I will find my way back to trusting it’s ok to be open. I will learn that any relationship in my life that is built in love, will always come with the risk of being hurt, but I can survive that hurt from a place of love. Anger will never allow healing.
I don’t want to protect myself by hurting others. I don’t want others to doubt their worth because of my reactions.
Action 2, be conscious of never leaving a conversation in anger or bitterness. Intentionally ensure that your last words or actions are truthful and without pride. We cannot control how others will react to us, but only we, can control how we react to others. If your last actions and words are a true reflection of your thoughts, there will rarely be room for regret. If my reactions come from a place of love, the risk of regret is eliminated.
Side note, I don’t safe I feel sharing this. This feels very vulnerable to me. That being said, I am committed to showing up for myself and I have chosen this path for myself in life. For years, those closest to me have challenged me to also show my work beyond what makes me feel that I look stronger. It’s simple for me to share the incredible people I work with, the events I get invited to, the workouts and the life events.
This, this is the really hard part. This is truly what it takes to manage my mental health to a level that allows me to keep my best life, stay healthy, and keep the relationships that mean the most in my life.