conversation – Soul Reflection

I Am Difficult

The topics that I write about can vary from parenting, to society, to truth speaking, to relationships, to introspection. How do I decide what theme to address? By whatever is haunting my soul.

My writing is an exorcism, when a thought or experience is lingering within, sounding and repeating around my heat and heart; when it wakes me at three in the morning to ponder and dissect. Sometimes the only way to help myself is to write it down.

So here I am at 4.30am, fretful and agitated, looking at a repeat pattern in my life. If it’s on repeat, I cannot ignore my need to face it head on and acknowledge what is mine.

When I spoke to my mother during a therapy session, a number of years ago, I expressed the feeling that I felt ‘tolerated rather than loved’ and I received a nod and the line, ‘that’s because you’re so difficult’. In a reconciliatory conversation, it arose again, ‘even when you were 8 you were already difficult’. And even more recently, ‘well you just make people uncomfortable’.

This is the message I have taken into my system and that then plays out in various forms within my social dynamics, as all of our programmed patterns do.

This past week has been a perfect example. Two friendships, two conversations, two opposing results, but all that lingers is that message.

For both, I felt something was ‘off’, the vibe wasn’t clean and, with a nod to my inculcation, I presumed I had done something to upset. To both I leave messages offering my willingness to chat and find resolution if there is something I have inadvertently erred on.

From one I receive a beautiful, heartfelt response. They are overwhelmed, struggling, distracted. It wasn’t me, just life. She cries, I cry for her. We hug. All is well. And I am grateful that I took the courage to check – clarity, resolution and reconnection. This is when being ‘difficult’ can work – pushing me to make things right. Except when it doesn’t.

The other friend did not respond to my overtures of reconnection and resolution and here I become fretful – was my message triggering instead of healing? Am I being difficult l? Have I made them uncomfortable? I make my husband listen to it, was there anything I did wrong? Nothing, he says, you’ve said nothing wrong, but you believe that you must have done something wrong. Yes! Because I’m difficult.

What if this other friend is also struggling doesn’t want to share? What if I have pissed them off but they don’t want healing? Where does that leave me? In this repeat pattern, this intrinsic messaging – I don’t know what I’ve done that is so terrible to deserve this disconnect, I only know that it is because I am difficult.

It is bland and generic and all encompassing. Without specifics it is all of me and maybe none of me. My self-protection is to prostrate myself energetically, open my chest and heart and beg to be told. I would prefer to hear the worst of their thoughts than this infernal and eternal not knowing – why am I so difficult?

The power of our patterns, the messages received by parents, teachers, loved-ones that niggle and jiggle and play out over and over again until we stare them in the face and ask – are they true? Am I so difficult? Or perhaps, is it okay to sometimes be difficult? Can I still be loveable and difficult? Because they have seemed so very mutually exclusive until now.

I don’t know that I am ever going to stop reaching out towards reconciliation and connection because when I have those moments, like I did with the first friend this week, it makes the sick and scared feeling all worth while. But I have a lot of work to do on those that don’t want to meet me there, for all their very own acceptable and personal reasons and patterns too. I cannot force others to reassure me that I am not really so difficult; that must come from within.

Goodness, it is a pattern I want to break; and boy, that messaging is super hard-wired. I can be pottering happily along having a lovely day only to hit someone’s energy wall and wonder – did I do that? Bam! Trigger! Messaging! Pattern! Repeat!

So now I will exorcise this pattern and speak it (write it) out loud. Remove the silent shame and shout: ‘I might be difficult and I am still loveable.’

And I’m going to put that on repeat instead.

First published on social media on 2nd October 2022

Our Achilles

Yesterday, I watched the podcast between Russell Brand and Brene Brown and loved it, of course.

Totally my thing, discussions on vulnerability and spirituality, boundaries of steel and the state of our global society. Meaningful, heartfelt, humourous and enlightening.

I was nodding happily along to it all right up until the last five minutes when Russell asked Brene’s advice on parenting. And then I was thrown.

I was thrown, not only because Brene’s advice was so contrary to my own views (and that is totally ok btw, this is not a judgement conversation) but because her philosophy to parenting seemed so opposed to the rest of her OWN philosophy.

Let me extrapolate, my understanding of her work on vulnerability and shame can also be looked at through the lens of control. Vulnerability being the release of control and shame protection being all about control. And yet here I was hearing Brene recommend what she called ‘choice parenting’ or Choice Theory. The principle of which is to give the children a choice to make… the basic premise being to continue with their ‘unacceptable’ behaviour and face a consequence OR stop.

Again, I want to hold this discussion without judgement but as a musing of ideas.

I frequently use choice with my kids but with certain differences. Occasionally I use it because something is non negotiable usually to do with physical or emotional safety. More often than not I use it to get my own way, for example ‘please close your mouth whilst your eating or I will have to take away your ice cream’. This is control.

I know it, I recognise it and I really really try not to do it because ultimately I am inflicting my utterly subjective values on someone else. Another important element to this principle is age appropriateness and development, what age are children able to understand and rationalise choice? When I heard Brene discuss constructive choice offers with wayward teens, there may still be background (and necessary?) control but I get that it can create immediate mediation and lead to thoughtful discussions. However when suggesting offering a choice to a tantrum-ing 2/3 year old – calm down or we leave the restaurant, I baulk. That is not a choice a small person can make fairly nor is it in anyway modelling vulnerability.

With the very best of intentions, work and graft, I moderate my feelings to be thoughtful and kind but when I get utterly overwhelmed by life’s happenings they sometime go awry. Sometimes I lose my temper, sometimes I’m just a bit grouchy and snappy. I have ‘a choice’ in how I express these yet frequently my thinking choice is retrospective, it comes after the event (I blame my Italian ancestry and Scorpio birth alignment – I maybe just a touch fiery at times!). When my feelings overwhelm me, I make a point of reflecting on them, being vulnerable about their root cause and making amends. Because I’m human and flawed and that’s ok.

Now if I, as a fully qualified and fairly reasonable adult, have moments of overwhelm, what can we expect of our little ones? Sure they may need to be taken out of a restaurant for a cuddle and calm down, to help them re centre and restore their spirit, but isn’t the ‘choice’ of removing them permanently, as a consequence of being totally vulnerable, not only punishing and shaming but also almost impossible for them to process?!?

Do you feel the contradiction like I do?

But this isn’t about making Brene wrong because she and I are both making parenting choices from our very best intentions despite our differences. It’s about our Achilles Heel.

It about the fact that we all have one; we can be so utterly clever and kind and wise and human and also make choices that contradict ourselves, are incongruent, flawed and bizarre.

I didn’t come away from this podcast thinking less of Brene (although I did yearn to speak to Russell about my perspective too!), I actually came away thinking more of her. She became more relatable and more real to me and absolutely more attainable as a vision for myself.

I don’t have any academic qualifications (zip, nada, none) so I am easily cowed to believe that I have nothing to validate my viewpoint or opinion, despite instinctively feeling that actually I have some cool things to share.

Watching the podcast yesterday reminded me that it’s not about the degrees and letters after the name but simply about the conversation, Achilles and all.

So let’s keep talking…

WTF

So last week I had one of those ‘what the f*** just happened’ moments. The sort when I think everyone’s on the same page and getting on happily and then I get smacked in the face by someone’s reaction and am sent reeling into next month.

And, in typical style, I have been reflecting on it….

So as a very quick précis, my child and their best friend had a minor falling out, nothing out of the ordinary for their age and stage. My child was feeling vulnerable and upset about the situation so I asked the other mum if we could meet before school to resolve it all before facing the day ahead. No biggie. Or so I thought….

My child started to speak to the friend but was so overcome by upset they burst into tears and asked for my help. I checked in with the friend to see if they knew what it was all about and before either of us could speak another word the mother interrupted, shooed her child away and angrily stated ‘she wasn’t having this’!

SMACK!

What the f*** just happened? Weren’t we all just gently and kindly trying to help the kids work things out?

The mother went on to state that she didn’t want her child ‘put on the spot’; that they could ‘figure it all out at school’; that I ‘shouldn’t be involved’ (facepalm!); and it went on. I goldfished for a few moments before fury hit me, my child was by this point sobbing with distress that peace hadn’t been made before school started. Honestly, whatever the perception and judgement on my way of doing things versus theirs, what left me speechless was the total lack of compassion towards another small human being. I simply cannot imagine seeing a little one (mine or anyone else’s) in such distress and refusing to help. What has happened to compassion?

So that is what I’ve been reflecting on. I am still feeling totally rageful towards the other parent but that is my journey to process and release over the coming days and weeks. And for me to find compassion for her – oh the irony!

But actually I think there is a deeper and bigger issue at stake. I believe, in general, the population are feeling pretty disempowered, taking charge of their own lives seems to be becoming a foreign concept. This feels deeply frightening and ultimately dangerous.

What I saw in this dynamic and in other recent moments has been a lack of personal responsibility, not out of malaise, but, more insidiously, out of habit. This is how our recent generations have and are being trained throughout their childhood, to pass the buck of responsibility. This litigation culture means that it’s always someone else’s fault and there is inevitably someone who can resolve the issue for them, be it teachers, parents, police, the lawyers, the government. And by always passing the buck, there is never an opportunity to learn how to handle and resolve conflict before it becomes overkill. When I brought my child to that conversation it was not only a space for them to express their fears and worries on the friendship but also perhaps to hear some hard words in return; maybe the friend was annoyed, maybe my child had done something to upset them, but there is no shame in facing our shadows and deciding how to integrate that into our psyche.

The constant avoidance of these moments not only creates this desperate place of disempowerment, where our own strength to face discomfort and challenge is never experienced and therefore not integrated fully into our beings, but with that comes this lack of compassion that I witnessed. The fear of conflict overrode natural human kindness and actually created a greater and uglier conflict than was necessary. That’s what fear is like, powerful, pervasive and ultimately distressing. In this scenario it was so strong that the other mother believed I had no right to be involved in the situation, a reflection perhaps of her feelings, if she hasn’t the power to face conflict calmly, why should I be allowed to carry it? Disempowerment demanding further disempowerment to justify their own.

Urgh, it feels like a big ugly tangle of disallowed feelings and suppressed strength. In venting conversation with my friends, I questioned ‘what happened to just having a conversation about it?’ Have we really reached a point in our society where the gloss veneer is all that is permitted?

Dark and difficult conversations are so vital to understanding the complexities of existence and humanity. Please let’s keep exploring them, it is only fear that makes them truly unpleasant.