Through some pretty passionate and frustrated conversations with my husband this month, I've come to discover that the source of most of the conflict in my life arises during times when I attempt to change reality by denying it.
It's the swirling winds of a twister -- the meeting of hot and cold fronts that creates a tornado on the plains of my most important earthly relationship (with my husband). The collision of of what is really happening in my mind and body physiologically and what I want my thoughts and feelings to be. When my brain knows the rationale response but my pulse is already quickening and my face flushing with irritation, my own disgust with myself that I am not physiologically calm compounds my frustration to the point that I cannot disguise that I am unhappy with the situation.
Inevitably, the person in the dialogue with me, not being privilege to my inner conflict and ensuing self-shaming monologue, feels as though the emotion written all over my face and body language is directed to them. This understandable misinterpretation subsequently exacerbates the frustration I feel with myself and the frustration I already felt with the initial trigger. And to think that ALL of this could have been avoided had I not expectations of myself to respond a different way than I ended up responding; or had I had grace for myself upon failing to meet my own expectations; or had I simply had the capacity to withdraw expectation and simply allow responses to come and be dealt with as they arose.
Lacking these abilities does, ironically, drive additional self-loathing inner talk. It seems new-agey and hoaky to say things like, "The only person keeping you from success is yourself", though I suppose being new-agey does not mean it is necessarily thusly untrue or irrelevant.
Growing up in the Christian church, I have read Paul's letter to the Romans innumerable times. Shall we sin more that grace may abound more? The obvious answer is no. With that context, I grew up believing that to simply allow negative feelings to come was a form of enabling bad behaviors. I did not think it helpful to acknowledge that people may be prone to certain responses which -- helpful or unhelpful, positive or negative, good or bad -- were an inherent part of their personality and should be dealt with rather than suppressed or denied. Pretending a response did not exist so as to avoid the shame or difficulty of dealing with it is far more damaging than the potentially negative response could ever be on its own.
So how does one honestly acknowledge responses one loathes seeing in oneself? And then what does it look like to "deal" with them in a healthy way?
It's the swirling winds of a twister -- the meeting of hot and cold fronts that creates a tornado on the plains of my most important earthly relationship (with my husband). The collision of of what is really happening in my mind and body physiologically and what I want my thoughts and feelings to be. When my brain knows the rationale response but my pulse is already quickening and my face flushing with irritation, my own disgust with myself that I am not physiologically calm compounds my frustration to the point that I cannot disguise that I am unhappy with the situation.
Inevitably, the person in the dialogue with me, not being privilege to my inner conflict and ensuing self-shaming monologue, feels as though the emotion written all over my face and body language is directed to them. This understandable misinterpretation subsequently exacerbates the frustration I feel with myself and the frustration I already felt with the initial trigger. And to think that ALL of this could have been avoided had I not expectations of myself to respond a different way than I ended up responding; or had I had grace for myself upon failing to meet my own expectations; or had I simply had the capacity to withdraw expectation and simply allow responses to come and be dealt with as they arose.
Lacking these abilities does, ironically, drive additional self-loathing inner talk. It seems new-agey and hoaky to say things like, "The only person keeping you from success is yourself", though I suppose being new-agey does not mean it is necessarily thusly untrue or irrelevant.
Growing up in the Christian church, I have read Paul's letter to the Romans innumerable times. Shall we sin more that grace may abound more? The obvious answer is no. With that context, I grew up believing that to simply allow negative feelings to come was a form of enabling bad behaviors. I did not think it helpful to acknowledge that people may be prone to certain responses which -- helpful or unhelpful, positive or negative, good or bad -- were an inherent part of their personality and should be dealt with rather than suppressed or denied. Pretending a response did not exist so as to avoid the shame or difficulty of dealing with it is far more damaging than the potentially negative response could ever be on its own.
So how does one honestly acknowledge responses one loathes seeing in oneself? And then what does it look like to "deal" with them in a healthy way?
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