Word of The Week’s sixth chapter is titled “Accept”. It starts off by saying: “Accept it. It happened… That’s happened with an –ED… Past tense. Our suffering persists when we confuse –ED for –ING and keep past pain alive as present suffering… As a recurring nightmare… Accept it. Because it’s holding you back. It’s keeping you stuck where you never intended to be.” There are a few nightmares that I am keeping alive for myself because I have not accepted the past and allow the suffering to continue. But knowing exactly how to get to the point of acceptance eludes me.
Especially if I take something as big as my brother’s death. While it happened in the past, I have no idea how to not feel the pain in the present especially when it pops up at the most random moments. If I knew the answer to that, I would already be doing it because going through grief is hell and I’d love to avoid this pain and sadness. The fact that he is no longer in my physical world is the biggest recurring nightmare that I have currently! Unfortunately, I know new nightmares will eventually be added as more people I love leave this earth before me. After speaking to others who also have to deal with grief over losing a loved one, they seem to have the same perspective as me, that the pain never goes away and that it is always there in some way shape or form. This is one thing I’m not sure I will be able to accept as something in the past without feeling the pain in my present.
But let me try to take something smaller to see if there is a way that I can change that perspective from present to past. Years ago, someone I loved said something along the lines of, “You don’t love me. You never did anything for me.” That hurt me so profoundly that it made me bring out my Scorpio stinger causing me to lash out right back at them. Because in my mind, my past actions of buying them food, taking them shopping, going to run errands and helping them with random requests were all tangible expressions of my love for that person, but all the things I had done over the years was dismissed and disregarded by that one simple statement.
Since then, I still feel the resentment of my past actions not being acknowledged as if it was said to me only moments ago. I know every interaction I’ve had with this person is influenced by my negative reaction to those words said years ago. I begrudgingly will still help that person here and there while still carrying bitterness, thinking, “Why do I bother doing anything at all when this person will not appreciate anything I do?” This is despite the fact that this person has since said thank you to me when I have done things for them many times over. I realize I dismiss their verbal appreciation completely and that has kept our relationship stuck, not allowing it to grow and improve.
So how do I keep that statement from causing a negative response when those words ring in my ears from this point forward? If I think of it as something that was said in the past, has not been said or even eluded to since, and in fact have only received words of appreciation for the things I have done recently, can I release the suffering I put myself through every single time this person asks for my help with something? I guess only after I actively have that thought process when interacting with this person, will I be able to tell if I can put all that suffering in the past.
The next quote I want to share is: “Accept yourself. There is nothing more comforting to your soul than this. Your true self. The self you are when no one is looking. The self you are when you stop judging yourself as incomplete. The self that shouts hooray to realign yourself to your purpose and innermost desires.” and closely tied to this is “Accept love… Especially from yourself.”
Who am I when no one is looking, when I’m not judging myself and am pursuing my innermost desires? That is the person I’ve slowly been seeking through writing in my blog. I’ve already mentioned that I struggle with knowing myself so that I can achieve both acceptance and love of myself and that continues to be an ongoing process to reach that goal. I shared a story of one side of myself that I let out when no one was looking in the WOTW: 1. Focus post.
If I stopped judging myself as incomplete, I wonder if I would find a confident version of me. I am not sure because I have ALWAYS judged myself as not being enough, which from my perspective is basically seeing myself as incomplete. What do I mean when I say I don’t think I am enough? Here are a few areas that I judge myself as incomplete:
1) Physical appearance, especially my lack of curves: It is because other people have judged me verbally around this that I have imposed this judgement on myself. I have had several men I dated complain about this, which has been a recurring blow to my self-confidence. There are others who have made the comment that from behind I look like a man because my figure is so straight, without curvaceous hips. I have gone through most of my life thinking I am not woman enough.
2) Communication Skills: Getting the thoughts out of my head through my mouth has always been a real struggle for me. I don’t know why it is so much easier to bring them out through writing, but it is. I am self-conscious and get filled with anxiety most times I have to speak out, like during a business meeting and the host of the meeting says, “Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves.” I break out in a sweat every time! I feel living in a predominantly extroverted world, my inability to express myself in a way that aligns with how I think of it in my head when speaking to others is a big downfall. I have gone through life thinking I am not good at communicating verbally.
3) Intelligence: While I know that I am fairly smart, I don’t consider myself intelligent because I feel like I have to work harder than most people to get the knowledge that I do have. I remember in school getting the sense that other students were understanding things that I didn’t when the teacher was speaking. I would go home, read my school books a few times over and work on my homework for hours trying to make sense of things. It didn’t help that my brother was a genius and never really spent any time studying! I have gone through life that I am incomplete in my brain somehow because I don’t pick things up as easily as others.
Chapter 6 also says, “Accept an offer for help… You are not meant to struggle alone or sacrifice your well-being.” Growing up, I heard the following phrase a lot, “I don’t want to be a burden….” It is likely that my predisposition to do everything myself was engrained in me through my upbringing. I generally avoided asking for help in anything always priding myself for being self sufficient and very independent, able to do things even most other women may not do for themselves. It was not until I started dating my current boyfriend that I began to really accept offers for help and more importantly without feeling bad or guilty about it. Before, I would ask for and receive help, but would feel like I should not have asked or received the help, and that I was making the other person waste their time on me, which made me feel terrible. It made a world of a difference to have someone else offer to help me such as cooking me a meal so that I could spend that time finishing work. And as a relatively new manager, I also recognized that if I didn’t ask my team for help, that I would potentially miss deadlines which would not be good for my team or company and likely dig myself into an early grave trying to do it all myself!
“Accept the freedom to move, think, and feel for yourself without the coloring of other people’s perspectives or past experiences.” This quote brought to mind a past experience that has limited my freedom decades later. I had a crush on a boy in junior high and somehow I was convinced by someone else to write him a note expressing that to him. I still remember watching the note being passed from one classmate to another until it reached his desk. I looked away before it got to his desk and did not see him read it, but what came next is something that I have carried with me for most of my life since that moment. Because this happened long ago, I can’t be certain my recollection of what he said is accurate word for word, but I remember it as “Ewww, there is no way I would like her!” loud enough for the entire class to hear knowing he purposefully said it so that I would hear him. He made some comment about me being flat chested also, as if what he already said wasn’t enough to drive his point home. The person who convinced me to write the note shrugged their shoulders and said sorry to me.
My reaction to hearing his response to my note is forever engrained in my memory and the public humiliation and pain of rejection I felt caused me to draw inward even further, especially when it came to my emotions. I have no doubt that this specific past experience is one reason why I bury my feelings even within myself. And for me to write and disclose this memory from my past makes me shake my head at myself. I can’t believe I have allowed this boy from my past to have such a huge negative influence on me. I have hated admitting my feelings to myself because of fear of being rejected and humiliated for them. What a disservice I have been doing to myself by pushing my emotions down in so many different situations, not only not allowing myself to feel them, but so many times I have not shared my emotions with others. This is one thing I hope to change from this point moving forward, because I should be free to feel my emotions exactly as they are and move and think as I want!
The last quote in this chapter that I want to go over is: “Accept people for who they are… Not who you would like them to be… And navigate accordingly!” This immediately brought to mind romantic relationships. I’ve always wanted to be with men who are very physically affectionate, who don’t shy away from public displays of affection. However, I’ve dated several men who were uncomfortable with or did not like being affectionate. When I was younger, I had the mindset of hoping that they would change, which looking back, was immature of me. But I have long since accepted that no one can change another person. I had knowingly and willingly participated and stayed in relationships as a wiser adult, well aware that all my wants and needs were not being met, but not expecting the other person to change for me either. I settled being with these people for many other reasons, but there eventually came a point where I decided to navigate away from them. I have a long standing history of ending things with the other person because I no longer wanted to continue the relationship. In my mind it didn’t make sense to stay with them since we were not truly compatible, a few of which who did not meet my physically affectionate desires or needs. I have been criticized for these actions in the past, but can’t say I have any real regrets, aside from not doing it much sooner or in a gentler way, because I knew I was finally accepting that what I want is much more important than accepting who they are and still staying with them even if they weren’t in alignment of what I wanted to begin with!
This chapter felt like quite a doozy because there are so many things in here that I am aware of yet am not clear on how to improve upon them. I have many things that came up for me that I want to heal from, but know that writing about them is only the tip of the iceberg. It will be interesting to see how I progress with some of these as I know they will be quite the journey.
GGibberish 