82: Finding Your Way Back to Wholeness

Yeah, I do see that as kind of like a thread running through, you know, a lot of experiences I've had with myself and in work with clients as well, that I think we do just often from a young age feel a bit out of place.

We feel a bit out of step with the people around us when they don't get it.

And, you know, so often as well, I hear from people like being directly told, you're too sensitive, you're too emotional, stop being so dramatic.

Yeah.

And, you know, sometimes it's explicit like that and sometimes it's just maybe more of a hidden or you just get the sense that somebody doesn't quite like it when I'm being like this or people are impatient or they just don't have the depth to meet us necessarily where we are.

And so that can...

I think, cause a lot of confusion.

And of course, when we're young, you know, we internalize all of that.

We come to the conclusion, something must be wrong with me.

I'm the one who's not how people want me to be or people find me a bit too much or not enough or whatever.

both, you know, it's confusing.

And so the natural step then is to almost like disconnect or create this gap between who I know myself to truly be and who I have to be in order to be acceptable to those around me and feel safe in relationship, which of course is crucial when you're a child and at any age.

Yeah, it really is.

I mean, you have to do that to survive.

I definitely did that as a child, just disconnect from myself, just live from the neck up because it's hard, whether it's overt or covert, hearing those messages of you're not okay as you are.

You need to change yourself, whether that's toning your emotion down or amping up your spontaneity or your decisiveness, whatever it is.

And yeah, we really take that in as little as young people.

Yeah, and I think there's another implicit message in that as well, that your senses can't be trusted.

Like the way that you're experiencing the world is somehow incorrect.

You know, you're feeling too much.

You're too bothered.

You shouldn't feel this strongly about this or that wasn't a loud noise.

You shouldn't find that difficult or you should be able to be in these spaces and just be fine like everybody else.

And so then that doubt creeps in about, well, yeah what my senses are reporting must be somehow incorrect or I'm misinterpreting reality you know so then of course it's even harder than to trust our true experience as I'm just taking all that

and remembering that it's so destabilizing to be told what you're viscerally experiencing in the world is wrong like Wait, I'm feeling this.