I feel like this is a conversation I’ve had a on repeat lately and every time I talk about this topic, the person I’m chatting with shares their own tale of self abandonment, mainly stemming from a difficult childhood, so it seems like a lot of us are really feeling this struggle.
If you’re a regular reader here — and by that I mean you regularly read when I randomly and sporadically post — you’ll know I’m in my mid-forties, and although I’ve known in a tiny corner of my mind that abandonment, and consequently, fear of rejection was an issue for me, I’ve only really chipped away at tiny portions of it, and most of my adult life I’ve abandoned the idea of delving too deeply in — oh the irony!
Last year though I had some counselling due to my brother suddenly dying earlier on the year and it’s really lifted off the lid of some deep issues. All at once I was confronted with some really big feelings and with that I was able to identify some trigger words that were controlling how I thought and how I behaved, ultimately this was showing up in every corner of my life, so no wonder everything felt like such struggle.
Having someone to talk to who has spent years study psychology and human behaviour but is completely impartial to your life is incredible because their neutrality allows you to safely visit the sides of you that lay in the shadows. My counsellor was very softly spoken, patient and so compassionate but she also, in the most gentle and caring way, pushed me to go beyond what I thought my feelings were at face value.
As our sessions unfold these key words kept coming back — shame, rejection, failure — and honestly they have been ruling my life. You know when at the start of each new year we’re all encouraged by social media to pick our word of the year, one that will inspire and motivate us to live out those 365 days to our best ability? Well these are the anti word of the year, these are the intention executors, these 3 words were the heavy stone around my neck, weighing me down, causing me to continually drown in my own low self worth.
Now counselling certainly helped me to identify these words/feelings as my biggest blocks, it helped me name and acknowledge them, plus my counsellor was good and she talked me through and supported me to explore some strategies that could start to change how I dealt with them when they came up in my life BUT it was me that had to do the hard work of showing up, confronting them and putting in the practice of continuing this work daily.
I have to say it was easy actually to face my feelings when I was sat in the chair talking, what was harder was unpacking what was said, what I discovered after the session ended. It was also hard to actually do something about it, to change the decisions I made, adjust my behaviour, set boundaries with others and myself and take accountability for all this.
I had all this new information and insight, I had strategies and because I spoke with a few trusted others about it all, I had some really lovely core support from loved ones. So what was I going to do about it all?
Honestly there is not a simple answer here, there’s no 3 step plan or a to-do list because the situations that bring up shame, rejection and failure catch off guard and will continue to be present in life forever and a day. But I did know that I wanted to do things differently, and more important I was ready and don’t think I had truly been before. I also came to realise and actually believed that I deserve better.
A pivotal moment came when something in life dramatically went wrong when I was about 4 weeks in to my counselling sessions. I played a key role in the disaster and instantly my old negative behaviour resurfaced and I fell apart. My self worth was on the floor, I couldn’t function properly and it was impacting me daily. The key moment came when I acknowledge that I could bear to look in the mirror at myself because I felt so much shame, I convinced myself that I was a failure and thought everyone would reject me. But something inside me said why? Why are these things true?
In that moment I forced myself to say out load what I felt and questioned whether they were real. I also felt so much anger at myself because I had ruined the nice week I had planned for myself and then I started question that too. You see the shame, rejection and failure I was projecting on to myself said you are not worthy of feeling good about yourself, you are not worthy of enjoying yourself, you are not worthy of happiness and joy, you are bad, wrong and useless, you mess up, you get things wrong and now you must suffer for it.
I let myself feel all of that, I said it out load, in fact I said to someone else that I loved, that I thought would judge me too and it felt scary to be that open and raw. It was intense. But doing this helped me to do a few really important things, when I picked this apart I discovered that firstly, two things can be true at once - I can mess up, like we all do, and still be worth of joy, love and compassion. This may sound strange but it felt hard to accept at first but I kept pushing myself to acknowledge and believe it. Secondly it helped give me perspective, and I have to say that this came from talking to someone else. One night when I was still in the first few days of struggling my husband calmly said that it was ok, it was ok if all the worst case scenarios came true, it was ok if I was wrong, if people judged me and disliked me, it was if life fell apart and I lost everything, we would managed, I would manage, I would be ok because I had could figure it out, there was always a new path to walk down.
At first I didn’t really believe him, but he kept reply with the same message, it would be ok, I can figure this out, he would still support me. I realise then that I had never, ever had anyone in my life say to me it’s ok to mess up, its ok to get things wrong, I will still be here for you. And then I cried hard, I cried deeply, for the me now and for the me of the past and a big shadow lifted.
Now I understand that having a kind and caring person to get me through it was something I was very lucky to have. But still it wasn’t easy to believe those new truths, I had to work hard to reinforce them and only I could do that. I know too that if we all look closely we can find that person for ourselves, we just have to be brave enough to reach out.
What I did figure out though, all by myself, is that getting things wrong, failing at something, being let down by others or not being chosen, isn’t something that has to define you. Shit happen’s in life and it is awful sometimes but at some point I learnt that I was a less worthy person because of it. I learnt to associate failure and rejection with shame and I let it define me, how I showed up in my day to day and what I believed about myself. Those beliefs caused me to abandon who I was, especially when it came to other peoples influences in my life, it shaped my world and had been dictating my path for as long as I can remember.
It really was a lightbulb moment to see my behaviour for what it was, it blows my mind to understand it all now. Its still a working progress though Christmas and New Year have given me plenty of opportunities to slip back in to my old behaviour patterns. I’ve had to work hard to dismantle the shame and not default to this feeling but I can tell you its working, I am being much easier on myself and I can see the progress I’m making by my choices and actions.
My faults and mess ups don’t define me, I can be shit and still have fun (as long as I’m not hurting anyone or breaking the law right?). I actually feel so much liberation at times, I do slip a little into old ways and I’m sure some major things will come up that will really make me wobbly but by even just writing this all down here I can remind myself that my shadow self is no longer in control, that I don’t have to abandon all that’s wonderful about me when life gets tough.
You may also like to read the post Navigating the Past and Managing Regrets.
Photo: By Emma Jane
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