Exponential personal growth has been a massive feature in my life over the last 2 years. Over the last few weeks I have been witnessing my programming change. That for the last few years I am becoming increasingly savvy at figuring out what is my stuff and what is other people stuff. Creating clear boundaries and operating from a space of compassion without enabling. Which is can be very easy with clients. Yet increasingly difficult within the personal relationships and friendships that I’ve been growing within over the last few years. All of a sudden I’ve been finding glitches in the system and I have felt for the last few days that I have been merging old and new files of myself within relationships. Who I am and who I was, who I can be and how everyone benefits. That the programmes of the past no longer serve me in my future.
It many ways it might appear that I am becoming what would classically be described as more selfish. That word alone makes me begin to understand how quickly and how early we are trained out of fulfilling our own needs. That somehow me buying myself flowers could be a whole host of things from uppity to attention-seeking or even doing it to make someone else feel bad. Not today, not in this home but you can feel where this is coming from, can’t you? That if nobody loves you enough to buy your flowers then why should you buy yourself flowers? Creating a cycle of depreciating personal value in your life.
What is more, other words than selfish are creeping into my insight of the shadow. I witnessed more and more how poorly the words manipulative and complaining are being banded around in response to emotion. If woman or children cry for example it is often classed and manipulative, in order for them to get her way. Or even when someone says how they feel “I don’t feel you are listening to me” “Stop complaining”. These words as defence weapons largely by people that have no connection with there own emotional landscape. It’s kind of like watching someone who’s been jagged by a thorn lashing out a thorn tree without removing the thorn. Painful very very painful to watch. As we see so many online videos of how to negotiate emotions with children it becomes clearer to me that who is doing this for the adults out there running the world and in need of so much more support than a paid therapist or councillor. Even who is looking after me? As I look round more and more I begin to understand it has to be me. That I have to learn to nurture myself deeply, on levels I have of yet to fully understand. That I need to get to my three-year-old self before anybody else can and ask her questions. A simple question like why are you standing outside a locked door waiting for someone who clearly hasn’t and isn’t showing up for you? My heart breaks for her and then all of a sudden I adult myself, who are you waiting for and why? How long have you been waiting? Then all of a sudden I realise I’ve been waiting for me and it’s my job to show up and care for myself in ways I never was. Love myself in ways only I know-how and trust the adult in my life, me.
