Tag: wisdom
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Does Your Partner Often Get Angry and Shut Down Emotionally?
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung
Three years ago I was on top of the world after realizing I had fallen in love with my best friend. Relationships this rare are beautiful, until one vital piece of them breaks down: clear communication.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, when my ex and I came together as a couple, rather than being in love, we were both just mirroring each other’s deep unconscious pain; his mother had walked out on him at a young age, and my mother had unconsciously shut me down emotionally at a similar time in my life due to her pain and frustration with the reality she had created.
I was not my most wise when I was with my ex, and I certainly wasn’t connected to my highest self. Instead, I was living from my mother’s pain, which I had taken on as my own. And I was putting undue amounts of pressure on my partner to step up and be the man I was waiting for him to be instead of accepting and loving him for the one he already was.
So many of us do this, but it’s not our fault. If our parents only ever show us how to behave in childish or selfish ways, then that’s what we’re going to default to when we’re under pressure in our own relationships.
I watched my mother behave resentfully toward my father on a regular basis when he did something that in her eyes was inherently “wrong.”
I watched her shut him out for working late or not living up to her expectations, because she was struggling but unable to communicate how she was feeling.
Then, whenever my partner did the same thing to me and I also considered it unjust, I activated my mother’s pain and everything she had taught me as a child. Consequently, I did the exact same thing to him, toxically damaging the trust between us.
What I didn’t realize was that I needed to fully heal the wounds of my past. Without first doing my own healing work around my relationship with my mother and really understanding what she was going through, I could never fully love or trust a man, whether that man was my best friend of fifteen years or not.
It appears that most people are recovering from a broken heart caused by one or both of their parents.
I was broken hearted not from the so-called flaws in my partner and our relationship (although there were many issues), but from the deep, unconscious sadness that stemmed from never experiencing real love.
If our parents are never educated on how to show us love, how can we hope to give that to ourselves and then create a strong foundation on which to meet a partner?
It’s hard to show our true feelings to the person closest to us in our adult life if, as kids, we were repeatedly told to “shut up” every time we started crying.
My mother’s behavior, learned from her own mother, made me numb and often terrified. She taught me that I needed to be perfect, and I unconsciously expected that same perfection of my partner.
Because my mother had exhibited cruel behavior toward me when I was a child, I often didn’t feel safe to express myself around my partner and just be who I really was. So I often activated pain and anger that wasn’t mine, but was actually hers. I didn’t feel permission to ask for what I really wanted in my relationship, or anywhere else in my life.
My ex and I were products of loveless marriages full of fighting, anger, and emotional numbing. That’s the education that many of us receive on relationships as kids, and so that’s what many of us perceive as “normal.” Then we carry that education into our own adult relationships and interactions.
My ex’s stories and mine matched; neither of us had parents that showed us what it really meant to feel safe and secure.
If we could all learn how to tap into and release our subconscious pain and understand each other and our differences, our relationships would take on a completely different form.
I didn’t know how to communicate my feelings without my partner feeling judged or rejected because I had such a backlog of unprocessed emotion. In the same way, he didn’t know how to fully let me know he loved and supported me without feeling that he had to risk his masculinity and pride by being intimate and letting me into his heart.
If we misunderstand each other and make assumptions that our partners don’t want to support us, we continually shut them down emotionally.
So here’s what we need to understand and remember when our partner seems to be shutting down or struggling.
We’re not angry with you. Our hearts were broken at a young age, and we’re not always aware of how deep that pain goes or how to communicate that to you.
We don’t require you to troubleshoot for us when we’re struggling. We simply long for you just to listen to us talk about how we’re feeling and hold us in your arms when we’re not feeling good enough.
We don’t mean to take our frustration out on you. We’ve just forgotten how to really love and nurture ourselves because we were never shown how to connect to ourselves on a deeper level and put ourselves first; you can remind us that it’s more than okay to do that at the times you can see our strength wavering.
When we pull away, it’s not really the person you can see in front of you that’s doing this; it’s the terrified little child inside of us who has been frozen in time, and who’s still scared of getting their feelings hurt. Sometimes that child just needs a reassuring hug.
There’s no doubt that our parents can mess us up emotionally, but it’s up to us to change the stories we have been conditioned to believe are our reality.
Really, all that was playing out in my relationship was the result of what both of our parents had shown us. I denied the painful feelings of my parents’ divorce and played that story out unconsciously with my partner.
Most people exist in relationships unconsciously, but if we’re serious about creating real and healthy partnerships, we need to become conscious. It’s about finding the best in each other every single day and co-creating an epic and expansive life together that allows two people to grow as individuals, as well as together.
It’s time for us all to wake up and do the necessary work to understand each other so that we can coexist on this planet without pain, and learn to live only from love.
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Coping with Suicide Loss: 9 Lessons for Hope and Healing
“It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self-discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ~Marianne Williamson
“That boy is one in a million, Jill. He’s one in a million.”
These were my grandfather’s words to my mum about my brother, Mitch, when he was just a kid. He really was one in a million—a light that shone so bright as a child and early teen, only to then fade into shadows of desperation and defeat as he grew into adulthood.
No one really knows what’s going on in someone else’s mind, especially when a person refuses to let you in. Mitch never let anyone in. On October 1st, 2002 he decided to leave at the age of twenty-six. We were one short on our team now. Our family puzzle was missing a vital piece.
That night, I woke up around 1am to my mum sitting at my bedside in her robe. She sobbed and said, “He was such a troubled, troubled soul.” Right then I knew what had happened.
I held my mum in an embrace that never wanted to end. And as the tsunami of shock and fear crashed over me, I prayed that this was all some bad nightmare I’d wake up from.
At the time, I thought my world had ended. Little did I know, it had just begun.
In the beginning after Mitch took his life, I wanted to run and hide. I couldn’t shake the shame and guilt. The societal and cultural stigma attached to suicide as a horrible, selfish act stuck to me like glue.
I felt like our family had caught some bad disease and any one of us could be next. Like we had the suicide gene and it was only a matter of time another family member or I chose to go against the “normalcy” of a life lived.
Even though the past eight years of Mitch’s life were shrouded in depression, the guilt of not doing enough kept replaying in my mind.
I’d imagine saving the day and bursting into the hotel room where he spent his final hours and convincing him there was another way. Grief whispered to me, there had to be another way for him to be happy. I didn’t realize at the time that the only person that can heal you is you.
Then there was the anger. I couldn’t look myself in the mirror. The bathroom became a torture chamber.
However, in the midst of my grief something else happened. I felt a closer connection to my own energy at the core of my being. I believe this was due in part to the loss of the physical relationship with Mitch; organically, I switched gears to reconnect on a different level.
Feeling broken after such a loss, funnily enough, cracked open a channel within me that lay dormant and ignored.
It was an odd feeling, and one I didn’t welcome because of my inner resistance to change. At the time, I preferred to remain stuck in suffering, but the invitation was there.
The better part of my twenties was awfully confusing because I allowed myself to wallow in pain. As a result, I lacked intimacy in relationships, I was financially dependent, I lacked commitment to my career, and I lost my old zest for life.
However, the beauty of confusion is that it allowed me to seek the answers I was looking for. The key was to ask the right questions.
The right questions led me to lean into my pain head on, address it, and acknowledge the energetic essence within me rising to the surface. Asking the right questions led me to a shift in thinking and helped me learn some valuable lessons.
At the end of the day I had a choice to make: Was I willing to genuinely look inside? Did I wish to grow from the experience? Did Mitch want me to carry the weight of his loss upon my shoulders until my dying day? Did I want to swim in the continuity of life or sink in my own sorrow?
Along your own path to healing after suicide loss or personal crisis, these nine suggestions might help.
1. Be willing to change your concept of yourself.
This means changing what you believe to be true about your outer and inner self-concept. It means letting go of the old stories, beliefs, thoughts, and patterns that don’t serve you and keep you stuck in the past.
For me, the old stories, beliefs, and thoughts centered around suicide loss being my eternal crutch to bear, something that was going to forever limit my capacity to find joy in anything I did. I told myself I didn’t have the power to heal my life—that included being successful in whatever I placed my attention on.
When you redefine what you are capable of on the outside and when you reconnect to your higher power on the inside, you begin to unlock what is authentically you.
When you honor what is authentically you, void of all past luggage and conditioning, you unlock a greater love within. A connection that self-heals and plants you in the present with gratitude in your heart—that includes the life you have lost. By honoring you, you honor them. There is no separation.
2. Be willing to externalize your grief.
Your grief has intelligence. Let it tell you know it knows. Vomit it all up, don’t wretch. Open the latch and let the dam spill over. Sometimes when all the tears are cried there is no room for anything else except a smile and laughter. There is strength in vulnerability and healing in releasing. Talk, cry, write, shout, exercise, and help others.
3. Be willing to go within.
This lovely world of ours is a mirror. Your outer state is a reflection of your inner state. Self-healing and self-love start with connecting to your inner source, your higher power.
Meditate. Meditation will create a clear, open channel between the heart and the mind allowing for them to work in synchrony. Anxiety, addiction, and obsession over your loss will slowly melt away because you are grounded in the loop of life. Where there is grief, there is also relief.
You don’t have to be spiritual or religious. If you are a skeptic and don’t buy into what ancient traditions and great masters have known for thousands of years, and you rely on scientific fact, then look no further to what the world’s leading neuroscientists and physicists are saying.
There is an underlying intelligence that binds this whole place together. You are not separate from anything else that exists on this planet. You are made of the same stuff! To think you are any different is the height of arrogance. To tap into its power, sit with it in silence. Join with it.
In terms of healing after a loss, consistent meditation, day and night, is one of the most powerful practices, if not the most powerful, for self-healing and overall well-being. I have witnessed dramatic shifts in awareness within myself with consistent meditation after loss.
I have come to recognize that I am not the thoughts in my head. I have become more aware of my own thoughts, as opposed to becoming attached to them.
Thoughts are neither good nor bad, but the moment I place an emotional attachment to them, that’s when they become problematic. With practice, I’ve learned to step back behind the negative chatter and catch myself buying into thoughts that are rooted in the past. By no means am I master of this, but I am far better than I used to be.
4. Be willing to process and clear the pain.
Again, you have a choice. I’d suggest being brave and honest. A whole new world awaits you when you are willing to do the work.
That is, be willing to externalize your grief, to self-inquire, and feel to heal. To face your hurt head on instead of ignoring it for years. That, I can tell you now, will come back to bite you at some stage.
You can run, but you can’t hide; sooner or later your hurt will spill out into your relationships, finances, family, health, or career. The wiser choice is to work with it, not against it.
When you are willing to process the guilt, shame, blame, anger, depression, isolation, and loneliness, you begin to unlock your authentic self. You strip away the layers to your greatness.
The opportunity to view yourself and this world through a new lens is available to you. You will begin to see that with grief there is also relief. You may not witness it straight away, but life has a way of balancing itself out. It’s always the end of life that gives life a chance. This greatest loss of yours can become your greatest gift. My life is proof of that.
5. Be willing to see your life beyond your loss.
A question that needs to be asked after we have grieved our loss: Now that this has happened to us, what are we going to do about it?
Am I going to use this loss to grow, learn, share, give, create, and love more? It’s up to you. I’ve chosen not to do these things in the past and it led to a depressive state. Swim with life as it continues on and grows or sink in the past that doesn’t exist?
There is something great for you in the horizon. This loss is your trigger, your catalyst to peel back the layers and discover what music dances in your heart.
6. Be willing to accept the value of challenge.
What if life’s greatest challenges and voids were windows into living your most inspired, creative, and authentic self?
In the words of Dr. John Demartini, “Your greatest voids create your highest values. And your highest values lead you to feel grateful for the synchronous balance in life—both pain and pleasure, challenge and support—that brings you closer to fulfilling what is most meaningful.”
There is potential value in every situation. Grief is not exempt of this. Grief is a part of life, and to exclude the balance of death leaves us in this lop-sided view of the world.
Today we constantly seek pleasure, we seek support, and we desire acceptance. The trouble is that grief leaves us with deep pain and with a perceived greater challenge, and if you have experienced a suicide loss, the challenge cuts deep within a family context. In our case, a family of six becoming five felt like a gaping hole deeper than the Grand Canyon.
I now look at the sadness of losing my brother as the most instructive thing that has ever happened to me. His death didn’t have to remain in the way of my life, but more so, on the way to unlocking how I wanted to live my life and what I wanted to share and contribute.
Mitch taught me that my time here is limited and to go after what really makes me happy. To find my joy and share it with the world. His death was a reminder to have fun and not take it too seriously. No one knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, so you might as well enjoy the moment—all that we have! For this, I can’t thank him enough.
I have no doubts he is celebrating with me. I know this because for him to not want me to seek the benefits, opportunities, and inspiring lessons in his passing would be to deny the significance and meaning I have found through the life he lived, and in his passing.
7. Be willing to generate energy.
You have to generate it in order for you to have it!
That’s why in these times of challenge you need to remember to do the things that you love. For me, I needed to swim in the ocean daily, go on long bush walks, hang out with friends even when I didn’t feel like leaving the house, and set aside time to write whatever it was they wanted to spill onto the page.
You must endeavor to feed yourself joy. Things you love to do and things you loved to do with your loved one that’s passed.
Don’t become the stale water in the pond. Seek to sit in that rubber tube and flow with the current of the river.
8. Be willing to forgive yourself and your loved one.
Their death is not your fault. It’s very easy to blame yourself and others around you. We should have done more! How did I not see the signs? I can’t live with myself—what kind of mother/father am I?
Hold up! Drop it. Have some compassion for yourself. You did what you could with the awareness you had at the time. It was their choice to go—an end to their own pain and suffering they unfortunately could see no way out of.
As you forgive others, you begin to forgive yourself. When you stop focusing on their choice to go, you will stop punishing yourself for your own.
To quote Marianne Williamson, “Forgiveness releases the past to divine correction and the future to new possibilities. Whatever it was that happened to you, it is over. It happened in the past; in the present, it does not exist unless you bring it with you. Nothing anyone has ever done to you has permanent effects, unless you hold on to it permanently.”
9. Be willing to surrender.
Here’s a simple equation: Open mind = open heart = living authentically you.
When you absorb and take action on the other eight lessons, you will become more open to something much bigger than you could have imagined for your life after your loss. You must be willing to give up your attachments to the outcome of your life after suicide loss.
I does get better. There is light at the end of the tunnel. You will be okay. In fact you will be better than okay. But you must keep moving. This loss has left a giant scar, but scars tell stories. Make this scar the catalyst for you to know and love yourself more than you have ever have before. In the words of Anita Moorjani, “Love yourself like your life depends on it, because it does!”
There is hope and there is happiness. Life isn’t the same without them, but that’s okay. You’re here now and it’s up to you what you want to do with the precious time you have been gifted.
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What Really Makes Us Happy, and Why
“Whatever you do, make sure it makes you happy.” ~Unknown
Like many of us, I live paycheck to paycheck. Which is okay. We aren’t alone. CNN reported nearly 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
I want to give a quick shout out to all the hardworking folks out there who budget every week to see how much they can spend on groceries. We got this.
So back to that 76% number, for the sake of simple math that means that three out of every four people are living paycheck to paycheck, which sounds about right in my experience.
I guess I have rich friends, though, because they all have big savings accounts, houses, and nice cars.
Am I a little jealous? You bet. I am sitting over here hoping my car makes it another six months.
I drive a 2002 Acura RSX, with over 150,000 miles on it.
Some people might be thinking, there’s plenty of life left in that car; what are you talking about? This might be true, but it’s starting to give me problems, and not being a car guy, I’m left trying to figure out what is worth fixing and what can be put off and paid for at a later time. Not the most reassuring thoughts when commuting.
You might be thinking, oh great, another one of these “woe is me” posts. But bear with me; you might be surprised what I learned by the end of this.
More to the point, I have always wanted a truck, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into right now.
So my plan was to start saving for one.
I started reading about ways to save money and put together a plan. Here are the quick highlights of what I did to save up enough for the down payment.
- I called Comcast and cancelled my cable (saved $80/month)
- I refinanced one of my credit cards (saved $20/month)
- I opened a ROTH IRA and put $35 a month in there because I can make better returns than it sitting in savings, and it helps me not spend it frivolously ($35/month)
- I started tracking my beer consumption and cut it way back ($30ish/month)
- I cancelled my Audible subscription ($15/month)
- I priced out my grocery budget and realized I could save money by ordering from a meal service ($20/month)
- I started saving everything I could from each paycheck ($100+/month)
Total savings: $300/month
It took a while, but I was able to finally save up enough.
I was so pumped to start shopping for my new truck. (I had my heart set on a Toyota Tacoma 4×4.)
I started looking on AutoTrader, Craigslist, and Cars.com, and would Google every dealership I drove by.
I even test drove one and had a huge smile on my face the entire time.
Dealers were calling and emailing me every day (which was annoying, but I secretly liked the attention). They were out there looking for the perfect truck, with my requirements and in my price range, just for me.
Then it happened. I got punched in the face with buyer’s remorse.
I started thinking, am I really going to spend $25,000+ on a truck just to fit in and be like my friends? Is this really the best purchase for me? Will buying this really make me happy in the long run?
I started getting nervous thinking about the downside of taking on more debt.
I started to calculate the difference in insurance, gas, etc., and got frustrated with my lack of thoughtfulness up until then.
To make sure I wasn’t just beating myself, I consulted with my dad on the topic. He gave me some great advice.
He said, “Son, there are going to be things in life that you just want but can’t really afford. If it makes you happy, go for it, because working hard your whole life and being unhappy isn’t worth it.”
That made me feel a little better. But my dad said something that really got me thinking. If you read between the lines, what he really said was “find what makes you happy and do that.”
So I sat down and started thinking about what would make me happy.
I thought about it for a couple of days and came to a big realization: The truck wasn’t going to bring me the happiness I ultimately wanted.
Saving money is what really made me happy.
Saving money is a powerful habit to create for yourself.
The reason why saving the money felt so good to me was because I proved to myself that I had the discipline, persistence, and knowledge to do what was necessary to save.
This may sound weird, but I was proud of myself for saving the money, not for being able to impress my friends with a new purchase, but for having the self-control and introspection to question what I really wanted.
I knew that saving money for my future would make me happier over the long run, so I decided to put off purchasing the Toyota Tacoma (sorry, dealership dude who is still calling me).
I thought about it long and hard and decided to fund my ROTH IRA with the truck down payment.
The big realization for me was that buying expensive items to fit in, in an attempt to buy happiness in the short term, wasn’t nearly as rewarding as saving for my future.
Maybe one day I will buy a truck, but that will only happen when I can take on the payment and everything else that goes with car ownership and be comfortable enough to keep saving money as well.
After reading some basic personal finance books and learning about how you can make money work for you, it seems like a no-brainer to put off big-ticket items in favor of a healthy savings account. Already, my decision to invest in myself was paying off.
Ask Yourself, Is the Outcome of Your Goal Really What You Want?
If you are thinking about a big change in your life, or thinking about splurging on a big-ticket item, ask yourself:
- Are you pursuing this goal because you think you should, or because you’re comparing yourself to your friends?
- Does your goal align with your top values in life (the few things that are most important to you)?
- Will this goal affect your ability to reach other more important goals?
- If your goal involves buying something, could you use the money you’ve saved in a way that would be more meaningful to you?
- Raise the price. Would you still pay for your goal if it costs five times what you want to pay for it?
- How will you grow as a person by achieving this goal?
- How will the ones you love benefit from your goal?
- Will you be proud of yourself for what you have accomplished with this goal in ten years?
If you found it difficult to answer some of those questions, you may want to think about what you really want and if your goal is leading you to the best version of yourself.
I learned that when you are looking for happiness, it’s worth it to sit down and question if what you want will really provide it.
For me, working toward a goal and reaching it was what made me happy. Having extra money to contribute to my future made me excited and helped have a more positive outlook on where I was going in life.
Hopefully you have a goal in mind for the near future. I would challenge you to question yourself about your true motivations and what will really make you happy.
You got this.
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How to Deal with Painful Emotional Triggers in Your Relationships
“A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” ~Unknown
I’ve been looking for a new job, so I recently decided to update my resume.
“Hun, can you please help me with that?”
“Of course, my love.”
“Thanks, babe.”
Not only did my wife help me revamp my resume, she drafted me a killer cover letter as well.
“You’re the best, babe!”
“Happy to help, sweetie.”
I opened the cover letter the other day and found a discrepancy, something that immediately touched my deepest core wound.
There, at the bottom of the page, where my name, email address, and phone number are supposed to go, was someone else’s phone number, not mine. It wasn’t even remotely close to being mine.
Within a matter of seconds my panic alarm went off. Abandonment alert! Abandonment alert!
Is my wife is cheating on me? Where did she meet this guy, and how long have they been talking to each other?
No exaggeration. That’s right where my irrational thoughts went.
I Googled the number and found that it belonged to a John Smith from Los Angeles. (That’s not his real name.) It was like pouring gasoline on an already burning fire. Who the heck is John Smith?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, I went to Google images and saw that John Smith is a tall, slender, good-looking guy. WTF?! She’s sleeping with this guy. I just know it!
Stop, Zach! Stop!
I couldn’t. The part of me that’s afraid of being abandoned was in charge and driving the bus straight down to crazy town. What should have been contained (my fear of abandonment) leaked into our relationship.
I text my wife to ask if she was available for a quick phone call.
“As long as it’s quick,” she replied.
I had no intention of actually accusing my wife. I just wanted to ask if she knew whose number was at the bottom of my cover letter. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” she said.
“I don’t know who John Smith is, nor have I ever seen that number before.”
“I was just using a template that a friend gave me.”
A template? Yeah right. Who the heck is this guy?
I kept telling her that I wasn’t accusing her of anything, which was a complete joke. News flash, Zach: Anyone could’ve seen that I was accusing her even if I didn’t say the actual words. It was total covert manipulation on my part.
And it gets worse.
Talking to my wife wasn’t enough to ease my panicked mind, so I picked up my phone, blocked my number, and called John Smith. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this!
Ladies and gentleman, we have a full blown blazing inferno.
Turns out his name isn’t John Smith. It’s Bob Smith. (Again, not his real name.) After getting his voicemail I did one more Google search and found out that he works at the same company that my wife’s friend works at. The same friend that gave my wife the cover letter template that she used for me.
I let out a deep sigh of relief because it finally all made sense. There was no other guy. It was just a larger than life story that I made up in my head.
With the fire finally out, I took the steering wheel away from the part of me that lives in fear, called a friend, and told him what I did. In hindsight, it’s something I should’ve done right from the get go, but we have to make mistakes to learn and grow.
Look, I get it, I was freaking out that day. Not because of something my wife did but because I was emotionally triggered and in a fearful place. I assumed she was cheating on me—“assumed” being the keyword—and then I reacted by blaming her for how I was feeling.
But why?
Emotional triggers stem from our past, and they can be very painful. When touched upon, we become hypersensitive and we make up stories like I did. We react and blame someone else because we don’t want to re-experience a painful childhood feeling.
It’s a way for us to remain in control rather than feeling out of control like we felt when we were little. It’s a coping mechanism. An unhealthy one, but one nonetheless.
When I was little, my mom died of cancer. It was painful and scary, and deep down that little boy, me, is positive that someone will leave him again. When that part of me gets triggered, it’s the scariest feeling in the world.
Containing something that scary is difficult to do, but I believe necessary for our personal growth.
I’ve put together a list of what I believe are healthy alternatives for dealing with thought patterns that can sabotage relationships in all areas of our lives. Remember, it’s not the fear destroys relationships; it’s how we handle them.
Practice Healthy Boundaries
My therapist and I talk a lot about healthy boundaries. A good boundary acts as a block for all that wants to come out, and it also acts as a filter for all incoming and outgoing information.
For example, a healthy emotional boundary for me would’ve been to see the incoming information—the wrong number at the bottom of the cover letter—for what it really was: just a random wrong number.
My wife has never given me a single reason to doubt her, ever, and this is where my fears should have come to an end, but instead I allowed the false information to seep in and affect me. That’s me having a bad personal boundary.
Next, a healthy boundary would have prevented me from blaming my wife because boundaries help to regulate how reactive we are. They help us contain everything that so desperately wants to come out.
When executed correctly, boundaries help us develop a better sense of self because we learn to hold ourselves accountable for our feelings and our behavior.
Share Our Fears with a Close Friend/Mentor
I called a trusted friend later that day, and he reminded me that I was reacting to a past experience. “Zach, the death of your mother was completely out of your control. She didn’t want to leave you. You’re not a bad person. She loved you.”
Tears streamed down my face as he reminded me of this. I was finally feeling my feelings. The tension that consumed my body earlier in the day was gone.
My friend encouraged me to write down all of the fearful thoughts that I had around this specific event. He reminded me that I’m powerless over a negative thought entering my mind but not over what I do with it.
Writing helps with this because the longer we stay in our heads with our fearful thoughts, the worse the problem usually gets.
Feel Our Feelings
I’ll never get over the loss of my mother if I don’t learn to sit through my painful feelings every time they come up, and I can’t sit through the painful feelings if I’m reacting and blaming someone else for how I feel. That’s not me living my truth, and that’s not me developing a sense of self.
Truth is, it’s scary when my abandonment wound gets triggered, but I’ll never get over the pain if I don’t learn to sit with it.
What I should’ve done that day was allow myself to feel the emotional pain that was coming up for me and let it pass. That’s me leaning into and working through the feeling rather than reacting to it. Remember, it’s not someone else’s job to take care of us emotionally; it’s our job.
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I called my wife after talking to my friend and told her I was sorry. I told her that in the future I would do a better job containing the part of me that’s afraid of abandonment. She didn’t deserve to be blamed for a wrong number; that was all me.
Bottom line, blaming someone else for how we feel doesn’t solve our problems. Honesty, feeling our feelings, and ownership does. We miss an opportunity for personal growth when we react and blame other people for how we’re feeling.
It’s about progress, not perfection. Personal growth is a daily practice, and we’re all worth it. Even me. Namaste.
