HappyComeLucky

I like to think of myself as quite a together person. I am emotionally intelligent. I am caring and supportive to others. I don’t get involved in drama and I am very good at seeing what underlies situations when they happen. These are very definitely some of my strengths and make both my private and professional life better.

In my professional life, I am often supporting people who are challenging. I have frequently surprised others with how quickly I develop a relationship with them where they are open and trusting even though they have a strong history of conflict and rejection of professionals. Recently I was asked what the key was to doing that. My answer was that I listen, don’t judge and I understand the impact of their experiences. Not everyone is dealt a good hand in life and some deals are very off putting from the outside. The people I work with are referred because of problems. I have seen the completely debilitating effects on both people and families of being classified as a problem. One of the reasons that these people are open to me is because I see their strengths, I see the positives of their set up and their relationships. They know that I see the reality, not with rose-tinted glasses but with empathy and compassion.

So, why am I telling you this? The last few days have been tough for me. I have had a complete loss of empathy and compassion – not for others but for myself. I have crashed from a feeling of possibilities and energy to a crisis of an emotional storm. The fact that I know that the storm was triggered by hormones doesn’t mitigate its effects.

The worst thing about my crisis of the last couple of days is that I have done to myself the very thing that I fight against for everyone else. I would like to use the phrase, ‘I saw myself as…’ or, ‘I classified myself as…’ the truth is that I was a problem. My soul, my mind, my core and my heart all joined together in a cacophony of blame and I knew I was nothing but a problem that sometimes hid how much of a problem I am.

Needless to say, that is an incredibly destructive and harmful place to be. Added on to the desolation that those thoughts caused was the knowledge that seeing me like that causes my man pain. That is a vicious circle. My pain spills out in a torrent of destruction and blame aimed at myself. That hurts my man. I then add more blame on myself for being the problem that hurts him. These are the times when I just want to cease to exist.

Luckily for me, the crisis passes quickly. Once the storm has passed, I have the clean up to do. In addition to clearing up the mess, now is the time to work out what damage occurred during the storm. This time, in the eye of the storm, I saw a flash of a hidden truth. This time, instead of just clearing up, I am going to go deeper and try to undo that buried belief that I am a problem. It won’t be easy and it will probably be messy but I have to do it.

My man said something that reached into me. He loves me. He loves me when I am together and not a problem. He loves me when I am a mess and I believe I am a problem. He loves me without a set of conditions.

I need to undo that belief that I am a problem. I need to learn to forgive myself rather than just moving on from a crisis. I need to show myself the love, empathy and care that I give unerringly to others.

I will believe that whilst I am not perfect, I am perfectly me.