A Road Less Traveled
It takes exceptional courage to express our hurt to another, especially if we think our feelings won’t matter to them. It takes courage, character and integrity to be willing to mend a relationship rupture with someone we’ve hurt.
It’s sad to realize how so few people can do either. We humans got used to sweeping our feelings under the rug when we were little, because if we openly expressed our hurt, anger or frustration, it was often met with harsh judgement and/or punishment by our parental units.
How many little ‘emotional divorces’ do we accommodate within an ongoing relationship bond or marriage, when we fear speaking our mind, or we can’t admit to any wrongdoing? People with personality disorder traits carry a lot of core shame inside (“I’m not good enough”), and cannot accept their errors or faults, without engaging in obsessional, spirit-crushing self-recrimination. Thus, they avoid it altogether.
In looking more closely at interpersonal conflict thru this lens, we might surmise that it’s not so much another’s wrath toward us that’s so scary and threatening, it’s our own toward ourselves. People with personality disorders, specifically Borderlines, Narcissists and Codependents, routinely self-mutilate emotionally. They shame themselves, curse themselves, guilt themselves, etc., because due to poor parenting, they lacked the advantage of growing up with a positive and nourishing self-view. In short, they’re exceptionally hard on themselves~ or to put it another way, they are their own “worst enemy.” What’s sadder, is they PRIDE themselves for it.
As a young woman, I routinely congratulated myself for being so “self-aware” and on top of my faults and flaws. I was my own judge, jury and executioner. My primary motivation for relentlessly examining myself under a microscope and finding virtually ALL my shortcomings, was that nobody else might see and point them out to me, before I discovered them. I’m sure that type of experience would have made me feel ashamed~ and so, I effectively eliminated the possibility that it could ever happen! See how very clever I was??
The truth is, I could never have become the woman I am today, had I continued that practice~ and by now, my body would likely be wracked with disease and pain from all those self-beatings. When I came out of the ether one day so to speak, and realized that my fault-finding missions added nothing of tangible benefit to my life, and in fact probably undermined me, I invented tools for myself to break me of the habit.
In using these new ‘power tools’ as I fondly refer to them, I was able to significantly alter the course of my life, my relationships with others and my health and well-being, because how can we possibly choose someone who’s loving and good for us, if we’re constantly tearing ourselves down?! The obvious answer is, we can’t.
The aged don’t become infirm, crippled and incapacitated because they’re old. These outcomes are the direct result of beating themselves up unmercifully, for all the decades of their life since they were about 2 years old, and acquired vocabulary.
The upshot of all this? If you can’t forgive another who’s brought you harm and sincerely wants to MEND that relationship rupture with you, it’s because you can’t forgive Yourself for being “imperfect.”
Think on this, and learn, heal and grow.