{"id":1093,"date":"2023-07-20T23:05:12","date_gmt":"2023-07-20T22:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2023-07-20T23:05:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T22:05:21","slug":"i-am-difficult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/1093","title":{"rendered":"I Am Difficult"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So here I am at 4.30am, fretful and agitated, looking at a repeat pattern in my life. If it\u2019s on repeat, I cannot ignore my need to face it head on and acknowledge what is mine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When I spoke to my mother during a therapy session, a number of years ago, I expressed the feeling that I felt \u2018tolerated rather than loved\u2019 and I received a nod and the line, \u2018that\u2019s because you\u2019re so difficult\u2019. In a reconciliatory conversation, it arose again, \u2018even when you were 8 you were already difficult\u2019. And even more recently, \u2018well you just make people uncomfortable\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This past week has been a perfect example. Two friendships, two conversations, two opposing results, but all that lingers is that message.<\/span><\/p>\n

For both, I felt something was \u2018off\u2019, the vibe wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From one I receive a beautiful, heartfelt response. They are overwhelmed, struggling, distracted. It wasn\u2019t 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 \u2018difficult\u2019 can work – pushing me to make things right. Except when it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019ve said nothing wrong, but you believe that you\u00a0<\/span>must\u00a0<\/span>have done something wrong. Yes! Because I\u2019m difficult.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What if this other friend is also struggling doesn\u2019t want to share? What if I have pissed them off but they don\u2019t want healing? Where does that leave me? In this repeat pattern, this intrinsic messaging – I don\u2019t know what I\u2019ve done that is so terrible to deserve this disconnect, I only know that it is because I am difficult.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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?\u00a0 Because they have seemed so very mutually exclusive until now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t 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\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s energy wall and wonder – did I do that? Bam! Trigger! Messaging! Pattern! Repeat!<\/span><\/p>\n

So now I will exorcise this pattern and speak it (write it) out loud. Remove the silent shame and shout: \u2018I might be difficult and I am still loveable.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019m going to put that on repeat instead.<\/span><\/p>\n

First published on social media on 2nd October 2022<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 My writing is an exorcism, when a thought or experience is lingering within, sounding and repeating around my heat and heart; when … Continue reading “I Am Difficult”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[60,120,550,552,547,19,551,548,546,553,549],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holistic-health-emotional-healing","category-personal-moments","tag-connection","tag-conversation","tag-difficult","tag-friendships","tag-habits","tag-healing","tag-loveable","tag-messaging","tag-patterns","tag-reconciliation","tag-shifts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1096,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/1096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}