What Are You Carrying?

So many people have had their perspective and feelings dismissed and belittled, that they now walk around battling for their very dignity, which they still always feel is being questioned.

The feeling of needing to fight-to-be-heard is so ingrained, it’s like a lens they wear.

Even when they enter their own homes as adults, with the family they’ve chosen, they’re still ready to defend themselves from attacks, without realizing they may have just alienated the only people who might have been happy to see them.

It’s a tangled up mess, with the weight of one person’s blind spots becoming other people's burden.

One of the hardest things for a triggered person to do, is see another way to look at the situation, by considering other people's feelings.

To them, doing so may feel like they now have to consider that the unfair people from their childhood might have had a point. Which isn’t the case at all.

But because of the secret traumas they carry from being repeatedly dismissed and gaslit, and in some cases repeatedly abused, they don’t have the skills to be able to recognize that they’re no longer in those old toxic situations.

And because of secret traumas they carry, they don’t have the skills to be able to distinguish a daily conflict from a war.

They may not realize that as adults we are safe inside ourselves now. That we can actually consider another person’s point without making it mean that our own point is invalid.

But the sad truth is, if we don’t recognize that we’re not in a war, but we behave like we are, we actually create a war in our home. And then we say to ourselves, “See? There is war here. That’s why I battle.”

We need to teach ourselves how to get out of war-mode and learn to create bridges instead. Bridges to connect our perspectives to understand each other better.

To let go of right/wrong and offense/defense for the sake of creating the kinds of connections that make life softer and easier, instead of stressful.

So that we aren’t always causing the people around us to have to work so hard to avoid our dangerous edges.

From what I've noticed, the only way out of protection mode, is reflection mode.

To practice being in the present moment, by first reflecting our own feelings, whatever they are, and by asking ourselves if these feelings are reactions to what is happening right now, or a reaction to something unresolved that occurred long ago.

We can stop time-traveling to those old wounds and enter the moment we’re in right now.

And in this moment you may actually realize that the people in the space with you right now are on your side.

And knowing that, you can begin to practice reflecting these other people’s feelings without scratching those old mosquito bites of needing to defend yourself.

Because you will realize that just as your feelings and perspective matter, so do theirs.

We can be the kind of person for ourselves and our families that we so desperately longed for as kids—we can take the time to see each other, to validate each other, to celebrate each other.

To make the effort to push the best versions of ourselves past all our crappy circumstances and offer these best versions of ourselves as gifts to the people we love.

Mourn the loss of your childhood, yes. Mourn all those zombies from your past who for whatever reason could never be present to see the amazingness of who you were. But please remember, you don’t have to give that same awful experience to the people in your home today.

-JLK