How do you want to be remembered?
In the end no one
will remember you for;
How intelligent you were,
How hard you worked,
How great you were at sports,
How many followers you had on instagram,
Or how nice your car was.
They will instead remember you for how you made them feel;
When you listened without judgement,
How you accepted them despite their flaws,
When you saw them in a dark place and held space for them to grieve in their own way without judgement.
When you gave them space and safety to grow and change when they needed it,
And when you reminded them of their strengths in a time of weakness.
You can lift people up or you can bring them down with you. Hurt people hurt people. We’ve been wounded by wounded people and when we choose to ignore our pain we become them too, wounding our loved ones even when we don’t intend to. It’s easier to deny our pain and hurt others subconsciously than it is to acknowledge it and process it as our own suffering.
It’s not your fault. When you were young you may have been given mixed messages like “Grow up and be a man” or “If you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about.” To a child those messages are received as “It’s weak to show emotion, you are only loveable when you are happy, your suffering doesn’t matter and you don’t matter when you are sad.” We learn to adapt and suppress anger and sadness to be accepted and loved. Maybe we overcompensated in school or sports or we act out with aggression. It’s no wonder we struggle to feel and express emotion easily. Thankfully as adults we can learn these skills.
When we don’t learn how to feel and process pain directly it looks like;
- Blaming others for how we feel
- Criticizing ourselves and others
- Chronic exhaustion
- Focusing on other people’s problems instead of your own
- Pretending things are okay when they’re not
- Constantly feeling triggered
- Chronic negativity
- Not being fully present
- Workaholism
- Lack of boundaries
- Overeating
- Using manipulation to get what you what
- Feeling stuck
- Emotional numbness
- Codependency
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Addiction
- Seeking external validation
- Withdrawing from others
- Ignoring how you feel
- Poor emotional regulation
- Disconnect from self
We don’t choose our suffering but we do choose how long we will continue to suffer by avoiding, surrendering and overcompensating for the ways we’ve been wounded. In order to sooth our pain temporarily; we will suffer regardless.
Instead of being vulnerable and authentic we wear masks to protect ourselves. These masks we learned to wear in our youth protect us from fully be known by ourselves or others.
These masks look like;
- Stoicism
- Sarcastic humor
- Martyrdom
- Invincibility
- Hypersexuality
- Victim mindset
- Positivity
- Perfectionism
And while these masks aren’t negative traits on their own, they are when we use them to hide ourselves from fully being known. They prevent us from living an authentic life, loving authentically, healing and allowing ourselves to be seen.
In order to heal you will find your own unique path. It might consist of therapy, meditation, yoga, going to the gym, gratitude, reading, volunteering, finding forgiveness, gardening, learning a new hobby, hiking, journaling, adopting a pet, prayer or affirmations. It doesn’t matter what you do, it only matters that you start somewhere and practice every day. In order to do those things you have to accept yourself first exactly where you are, love yourself anyway and forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made in the past because you didn’t have the tools or knowledge to behave better at that time.
In the words of Brene Brown “Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
Slowly we replace old negative coping skills with healthy ones. Learn how to grieve properly. Much of the pain we carry is actually grief. You may be grieving where you wanted to be in life right now, the absence of an ideal childhood, a loved ones illness, the perfect marriage, a relationship that no longer serves us or a better career etc.
The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The goal is to find acceptance for how things are, not how we wish they were.
