Are you operating from a place of woundedness?
Happy December!
As a therapist, I have the honor and privilege of being able to witness people at all stages of their healing paths. This means that I’m working with people who are still feeling very hurt and we are sorting through the pain together; people who have some space from their experiences and are formulating a plan to practice different emotional patterns; and people who are actively engaging in new routines, making mistakes, and self-correcting based on their new emotional blueprints. Across the board, everyone is actively learning. Sometimes I also encounter folks in the world who haven’t started on their healing work yet or are feeling stuck where they are, and their energy is very different. I can tell people are in this space when they make very broad statements like “people just aren’t good anymore” or “there isn’t anyone to date who is right for me” or “X type of person (usually referring to an attachment style) is toxic.” I’m not saying that their opinions aren’t valid or their experiences aren’t important. In fact, I’m saying the opposite: that their experiences are so deeply ingrained and have created so much wounding that there is little wiggle room to hold a different type of idea.
Healing isn’t black or white; it’s but/and. As complex humans, we can hold differing ideas that seem like they don’t go together simultaneously. We might have had a very difficult relationship in the past AND we also know that there are healthy relationships out there for us. We may have been with someone with an avoidant style and it was so hard to connect with them, BUT we also know there are folks with that style who are working really hard to increase their ability to hold space for and nurture healthy relationships. When we start generalizing about a particular kind of person/relationship/attachment style/life situation/healing modality, it’s an indicator that right now, we aren’t able to see the complexities or individual traits of that experience. This usually happens when we are in pain or trauma response, or we haven’t had an opportunity to notice the other options that are available to us. This way of thinking or feeling can hold us back from new healing experiences that change the pathways we have developed in our brains and actually alter the ways our nervous systems operate.
What does it look like to shift the way we are operating? In my therapy practice and personal life, I’m all about learning to live in the gray area (which can be very uncomfortable). Black and white, this or that thinking keeps us stuck in our old patterns. In my experience, it’s rare that anything really occurs on extreme ends of the spectrum and part of our work is to build the emotional muscle to maintain focus in the gray rather than defaulting to the extremes. It isn’t easy; there is something that feels good for us as humans to fall back into black and white thinking, maybe because it feels simpler or cleaner than having to hold different ideas at the same time (complexity can feel like a LOT to hold on to when we are experiencing stress). How can you live in the gray for a little while today? What is it like to intentionally hold ideas that seem to contradict each other, as long as they both feel in alignment for you? Can you notice the times you move into this type of thinking and what occurs right before?
Thank you so much for reading today. I also want to shout a HUGE thank you to everyone who purchased an online course last week for my first Pay What You Please event. I’m so grateful to all of you, every single day.
Warmly,
Elizabeth