I’ll just jump right into this one.
I’ve been in an emotionally taxing situation in one of my personal relationships. I’ve had all the feelings — anger, sadness, hurt, guilt, and even shame. It’s been a bit of a bugger, I can tell you. I may love witnessing and helping others work through their junk, but that doesn’t mean I actually enjoy working through mine all the time. Sometimes, I’d rather crawl in a hole with a live cobra. I would also love to claim that I don’t have junk to work through anymore, that I’m somehow more evolved than that, but I would be handing you a stinking pile of BS. So, I’ll keep it to the truth instead: sometimes I hate doing the emotional heavy lifting that healing requires.
Still, I recognize that doing the work around my emotions, staying present in relationships, and walking through the tricky, mucky, muddy spaces, is important. One of my core beliefs as a human being and as a professional healer and coach is this:
We reclaim bits of our Selves and integrate our experiences of Life when we do the work.
That doesn’t mean I’m pretty about it, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t fall back into old, maladaptive coping skills when I’m doing the dirty work. I do. For instance, in the midst of this situation, I found myself trying to have a party with my favorite maladaptive coping skill family. Let’s call them the ButIt’sTrue Clan: Justification, Rationalization, and Blaming. Every…
