This Monday Musings series is a really interesting practice for me.
In a way it is like a journal I am releasing for public viewing. It is a practice in not keeping my struggles and trials to myself - only to reveal the triumphs and finished products of my journeys, as is so often the case in the self help/personal development/spirituality worlds.
There is a tendency towards only sharing the mountain top experiences. At least in my life there is a tendency for me to only share my mountain top experiences. To hide away when I am in the 'thick' of things - so to speak - only to emerge when I have reached some sort of magical conclusion. When I can wrap my experience up in a bow, and present it to the world as a finished product.
I Refuse To Share The Mess
I believe my resistance to sharing my messes stems from several places:
- I often find it very painful to sit and watch when other people are pouring their pain out there for the world to see - at least I did in the past. Thus, I want to avoid causing that kind of pain in someone else by sharing my stuff.
- I used to feel that there could not possibly be any benefit for others in reading my unfinished journey - how could my pain and struggle without an answer ever really help anyone?
- I was embarrassed of my pain. I often times have felt totally betrayed by my struggles - as though I was letting myself down in some huge way and I felt that I needed to hide that from others.
- I feared I would lose credibility. I felt that if I shared my struggle in my struggle, that people would start to see me as a failure, as not as great as they thought I was, as less than awesome. Basically I feared rejection.
How This Fear Of My Struggle Made My Life A Living Hell
I spent a large portion of my life being SO afraid to show any kind of weakness due to these fears. I was so scared that I would regularly push through emotional and physical pain without letting any one know I was hurting. I would allow people to take advantage of me over and over again not wanting to seem needy or to put them out in any way.
On the flip side, if for some reason I was particularly overwhelmed with my suppressed emotions one day and some true vulnerability were to sneak out of me - I would be horrified with myself. I would be terrified while it was happening, then I would become excessively apologetic to whomever had been there to bare witness to this shameful side of myself. This would often times lead me to either a) feeling like I was now a never ending well of sadness and grief when I was around this person - like once they had taken the lid off of the can, all the worms needed to get free, or b) I would find a way to sabotage my relationship with the person that I had accidentally been open with as a way of preventing a situation where I over shared from ever occurring again.
Because heaven for freaking bid I ever accept that sometimes people have 'stuff' and that is OK.
This got so bad that I essentially wound up with a heart so closed, so shut down that I was not really even a person any more. I was a fragment of my former self in a lot of ways.
Where there used to be sensitivity, now was a fear of pain so great I ran from it with all my might - inevitably creating more and more of it, like being caught in a spiders web where the harder you struggle the more ensnared you become.
Where there used to be a huge capacity for compassion and connection, now was an ever present inner critic who turned everyones pain in on me.
Where there once was an ability to see into anyones soul, now was a blindness so intense I could not even see myself.
All of this turned me into a person I did not recognize. It turned me into someone with anorexia. Then it turned me into someone who was fighting with my anorexia. Then it turned me into a kind of zombie with a huge wall up around my entire being. No one could really get in. I could not really get out. I truly felt like I had no idea who I was.
How Did I Turn It Around?
Now, as I have walked this journey back to self love, two things have become apparent to me.
1. I now know that vulnerability and authenticity are one and the same thing - and in this there is the ever present threat of rejection. This is made worse when I am rejecting MYSELF inside of my vulnerability and authenticity. This massive fear I had of being thought of as less than and being abandoned due to my openness with my current struggle was a HUGE reflection of how I was abandoning and rejecting me inside of my struggle. I was perceiving my own 'weakness' with this kind of judgement, and thus I was projecting it out into my world. Sometimes my fears were realized by others, sometimes they weren't - but the bottom line was they were ALWAYS realized by me.
2. For me to be open, for me to live with my heart on my sleeve meant a whole lot of getting my heart broken. This seems to be a part of my design. When I am open I am all at once the best kind of sensitive - I can tune into what is going on with anyone at any time, which often lends me the ability to hold the right kind of space for that persons healing - but it also lends itself perfectly to my getting my heart trampled on when I see that people choose to stay in their pain. When I see people choose not to live up to their potential. I suffer when those around me suffer in a way that I may as well be the one doing the suffering.
When I am open, when I am authentic, I am at continual risk of rejection, and at continual risk of heartbreak.
No wonder I shut myself down, no?
How This Relates To You
Now, as someone who has been attracted to this work, who has stumbled upon this blog, I am going to take a shot in the dark and say you are most likely feeling a sense of recognition with what I am describing here. Maybe you are feeling like I am describing you. Describing your life. Your thought processes. Maybe you do not feel that you match up with what I am detailing here completely, but perhaps you feel enough of a familiarity with it that you want to keep reading.
So, you may be wondering, what is my answer to all of this? How does one get to a place where they are fully able to be vulnerable, fully able to be present with people who are in pain, fully able to live with an open heart and not be crushed?
Well, here is my first act of vulnerability - I don't have a complete answer for you.
I am still on this journey myself. I am still squeamish about sharing my struggle when I am in it. I still reflectively try to protect my heart. But I have a few preliminary jumping off points that you may find helpful.
1. Learn to embrace your own struggle. More importantly, learn to embrace YOURSELF inside your own struggle: Learn how to stop abandoning yourself in the middle of your stuff. This is something I needed to do for myself big time. I expected perfection from myself so whole heartedly, that I was completely unable to be with myself inside of my pain. This lead me to being a prime candidate for feeling rejected by those around me when I was open and honest about where I was at. Everything is a reflection of how I am treating myself. So it is for you. Learning to stick by my side when I am sad, mad, angry, struggling or any other 'negative' emotion has open the door for me to be more vulnerable with other people, without being so vulnerable to their attack and judgment. When I am loving me, the sting of the fear from another is far, far less than when their fear is reflecting my own.
2. When you let you heart get broken, but do not wallow in that place, you heart grows back stronger. The point is not to avoid heartbreak. The harder I push against getting my heart broken by the pain I see in others, the less able I am to hold space for their healing. The less I am able to see through their pain to their hearts. The less I am able to be a compassionate witness. When I release and surrender to the fact that my sensitivity is going to lead to heartbreak - the more I surrender the fear of this and lean into love - the more effective I am as a healing space. The more my heart grows, the more my heart becomes strong, the more I am able to facilitate others learning to love themselves inside their stuff. Those who are hurting do not need me to reflect fear back at them - they have enough. I let them break my heart as a show of solidarity that they are worthy of breaking my heart. That their pain is real, and I see it, but that I also see the other side where they remember their wholeness. It is your job to let your heart get broken, to see through to the light, and to know that your heart is made to break and re-grow.
Now, are either of these two things easy? Nope.
Do I have them both nailed down as lifestyle practices? Hell - to - the - nah.
Am I moving in that direction though? Yes.
And that is good enough for me right now.
Being On The Path Is Good Enough
I do not have it all figured out, but I know I am on the right path. Authenticity is a journey - first to recognizing that you must learn to accept all the things about you that you have previously rejected, and then to embracing those things and walking around with them in the world for others to judge and reject. The way to not allow it to crush you, is to be open to being crushed. In this, you are able to see what is really going on - you are picking up on the fears residing in those around you. When you can do that, you can create healing simply by holding space and sending love back.
It is a practice.
I am still practicing.
I assume I still have much to learn and expand into.
I am ok with that.
Now I am curious. What does authenticity mean to you? What does living with an open heart mean to you?
I would love to hear your experiences and feedback 🙂
<3
