The first time I heard this phrase, it made me mad. The way it reached me was: oh, so not only are we to put up with what others inflict on us but we are the ones responsible? The more I interacted with people in personal or professional realms and the more I tried to get honest with myself, the more I understood that this is absolutely true. No one can harm us unless we let them and it’s not only that we give them permission, many times we help them.
Over the past three weeks I have been experiencing intense difficulties in a relationship. To say that from the get go, I concluded that there is a part I am playing in this would be a lie and I promised myself to always tell the truth if I can. The truth is that until about two days ago, I was absolutely furious. I was mad that this was happening to me, I deemed everything unfair and inappropriate, I cried, I put my fist up in the air. I spent tons of time explaining to my partner why I’m right and the other one is wrong.
And then, about two or three days ago, in a moment that I could not pass by, that voice inside of me got loud enough to make me hear: what part are you playing in the way you feel about what is happening? Remember that what is happening and what you think is happening are very often two extremely different things. I love that voice most of the time, but if at this particular moment it had materialized in a body I would’ve taken a punch to its face.
I kept on walking though (I have discovered that the second place my best thinking happens is when I am walking the dogs with no podcast on), and decided to indulge the voice and think about that question that Brené Brown asks, the one that admittedly makes her so mad: if you had it on the highest authority that you believe in that the person in front of you is doing their absolute best that they can in the moment, what would you think or do? And, because I like a challenge, I cross questioned that with another inquiry, I forget whose, that pushes us to think if the story you are making up is not true and you know for a fact that it isn’t, what else could be happening here.
The answer came clearly to me: Catalina, you are allowing people to harm you. More so , you are helping them. Once the fire and the fury subsided, I got curious enough to inquire further. And, I asked within, how am I helping? What is going on inside of me that creating a monster out of a disagreement? As it often happens, the answer seemed to have been prepared for a long time just waiting to be invited to the table.
It all goes back to the voices of my past that continue to reside in me and offer their opinion uninvited. These voices recognize the slightest of situations that could result in an attack and take it upon them to make a mountain out of a molehill (or a stud out of a mosquito as Romanians would say). As if it were not enough that we have to handle a difficult situation in the present, our past rushes to the arena with all of the garbage that we have hidden behind the door and under the carpets and in the corners and under the bed. And, in an instant, that one line email that says our relationship is not going well becomes, oh and now we’re going to fight each other to termination. Just like ticks on the body, the voices of the past and beliefs we created about ourselves based on what happened to us earlier on in our lives latch on to our thinking about the present making the issue bigger and bigger and before we know it, an email or a 10 minute conversation become a conflict.
The one in front of you says: I think you should do things differently or could you use a different tone speaking to me and what what we hear is someone challenging our smarts, telling us we’re not doing a good job, threatening our jobs, potentially out to get us or to push us out of a job. The progression is instant and it takes a lot of self knowledge and inside steadiness to realize it in the moment. If someone continued to ask me today, as they used in my childhood, what would you like to be when you grow up I would answer them that I would like to be steady inside.
My role models today are people who have the ability to sit with the discomfort of the voices of the past coming to the forefront when things get hard in the present. I admire and look up to those who, though they still get upset when things happen to them that they deem unfair or unwanted, because of their work themselves, manage to narrow the gap between the emotional hijacking and the steadiness and presence with what is happening in the moment.
Every morning, I flip the pages of a calendar, which was a gift from my chosen sister many many years ago. And the universe truly never sleeps and really likes to be a smart ass. When I flipped the page yesterday the phrase was simple yet poignant: When you stop learning you stop living. I had an instant double reaction thank you and shut the f*** up!
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