When interactions feel awkward or uncomfortable, do ya fight for what's right, or flee?
Have you ever found yourself saying, "whatever!" when difficult feelings with another erupt??
If you’ve grown up disconnecting/dissociating from various emotions (like frustration, anger or hurt) because they feel too bothersome, scary or dangerous to address with someone, you’ve gotten accustomed to betraying yourself.
We are all equipped with a Fight or Flight reflex when we come into this world. The sad reality is, most people would rather flee, than take a stand and fight to defend what they genuinely want and need.
Learned Helplessness is a self-erosive element that follows us throughout our adult life, due to faulty childhood programming. When our feelings and needs were not honored or even noticed when we were little, we learned to adapt, adjust and accept what little we could actually receive from our parental units and home existence.
In order to accomplish this adaptation, we had to ‘normalize’ or numb our darker feelings of fear, sadness, anxiety, depression, etc., while accepting that there was no comfort, understanding nor soothing we could anticipate or count on from any adult who might even care that we appeared distressed!
I have worked with clients who when they’ve felt frustration or anger, routinely resorted to crying. Underneath anger and rage is always hurt! Crying is usually seen as a less threatening and dangerous emotion, than rage. We learn as kids, that our tears are far less likely to be reprimanded or punished, than angry outbursts.
While crying is essential to enable us to purge deeply entrenched, stored emotional trauma from our body cells, it’s a submissive, disempowered emotional state. Anger on the other hand, is a passionate, aggressive one. The latter is much healthier to accept, accommodate and express!
How many of us felt safe in expressing our frustration or anger in childhood~ even if we had to survive living with an episodically rageful parent? For a little child, an angry parent is utterly terrifying! Their voice is loud, shrill and booming, the color in their face may change to a purple hue, their facial features contort and turn ugly and frightening, and they literally turn into a monster before our very eyes!
How is it possible that a young child can retain an emotionally nourishing, safe, loving bond with a parent who’s literally Dr. Jekyll one moment, and Mr. Hyde the next?! How does he reconcile his desire to trust a beloved mom or dad, if at any time, their mood and demeanor can abruptly and dramatically shift in a threatening way? And more importantly, how can this not dramatically influence one’s inclination to wanna normalize and endure unstable behavior patterns in lovers or friends as an adult?! (How many Borderline Personality Disordered lovers have YOU had during the course of your romantic escapades?)
As a direct result of abusive or neglectful treatment in childhood when we felt no power of our own to feel, behave and express our feelings according to what seemed reasonable and right, far too many individuals have opted for a life of passivity, rather than calling on their innate, assertive, determined reflex to FIGHT FOR WHAT’S RIGHT! How sad is this?
Don’t even get me started on how this issue has influenced millions worldwide, to go along to get along. Even when their Constitutional and normal, God-given rights are being severly encroached upon by sinister, narcissistic megalomaniacs who are driven by inner emptiness and boredom to usurp the freedoms of global populations, we are pre-conditioned to allow it, due to self-limitations we were consistently programmed to accept as kids!
Are YOU passive or apathetic? When faced with an awkward situation concerning another, do you tend to sweep it under the rug in order to bypass difficult emotions it’s triggering in you? Do you wanna put it behind you as quickly as possible, and just return to feeling calm again? In an altercation or argument, have you resorted to using “whatever!” as you speedily exit a tormenting interaction?? Most likely you have. This is a betrayal to your Self. It’s best you learn to quit this shit, because genuinely healthy self-esteem can never develop under these conditions.
In summary, I’m asking you to start sweating the small stuff! Quite often, molehills must become mountains, because if we keep sitting on our real feelings, biting our tongue and suppressing our true nature, no good comes of it, and we allow our sense of Self to shrink smaller and smaller, until it ultimately vanishes altogether.