When I'm feeling meh or otherwise uninspired, I like to randomly flip to a beloved book page (my favorite for this activity is Glennon Doyle's Untamed) and read the found words as if they are a personal inscription.  Just for that day.  Just for me.   Another tactic I use is to find the same date, but years' past in my own journal writing.  Today I'm sharing my inner ('bout to be internet out eek!) dialogue on problematic empathy.

I think I glimpse my empathetic dilemma.  I was shown that other people's pain is more important than my own.  Calming that pain and helping others with it was more noble, a higher calling than maintaining my own sense of contentment, peace, and self-love.  That in order to "help" or to truly FEEL was to feel others emotions deeper than my own. 
Other people's pain and sorrow is  not helped by sacrificing my own inner love, peace, joy, and contentment.  I can have empathy without prioritizing that pain over my own calm.  

Flash forward 3 years and lots of therapy later, I can see the hallmarks of codependency.  As I clarify for my coaching clients, I am not a therapist and free example based therapy is not really my point in posting this. 

Rather I think this message found me today to remind me that anything, even something as well-intentioned as empathy, can be destructive without balance and perspective.  A weapon formed when a tool was all that is needed.  

It's that season where goals have been set. Resolutions made and perhaps already broken too.  And if that's the case, go easy on yourself.  No motivation or goal was ever won fueled by self-hatred, no matter what the weight-loss capitalistic assholes say.  

For my part, I resolved a few years ago to not make any resolutions. How very responsible and forward-thinking huh? Not really, don't mistake my unwillingness to get on that hamster wheel as some kind of trendsetting.  My commitment is to continue to serve the habits that serve me. Though this commitment still calls for check-in's and reflections. 

Is X still serving me?  Has Y really made me stronger/better?  As the questions start to swirl what I notice is that the real examination is between the act of reflecting and comparison. 

Am I seeing with objectivity or perhaps known perceptions or am I comparing myself to a societal or someone else's expectations? Mind you, neither method is "wrong" per se, it's lacking distinction between the two that can tear you down.  

I can reflect on my past actions and behaviors but I can't compare my intentions to versions of me that no longer exists.  That past me, didn't have the experience, wisdom and self-love of this present me.  Hope you can say the same, over and over again if needed, till you believe it.   

The old adage of there always being two sides of a story  and the truth having its own version  of events  is  an operating system that  as  an "HR person"  I've defaulted to many times  professionally.  

In my career  I've always tried and failed  sometimes at discerning truth.    There will always be those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by deceit.    Professionally some of the most insidious  lies I've experienced are polite mistruths  told about me.  Falsehoods told of my intentions or actions that don't outright harm but still eat away at the my own reality.  

Even now as a coach, I try to deduce  what side of the story is  the client falsely self reporting.  This  untrue narrative is rarely conscious  but nonetheless, believable.  Coaching holds a mirror for the client, a reflection I am honored to provide.  

Personally, what I've learned are the worst lies are the ones we tell our selves.    A friend asks,  "but when can you tell your lying to yourself?"  My simplistic response is any but simple; when you tell yourself enough truths.  

Keep truth telling.  
Contact me at [email protected], I'll hold that mirror for you. 

The fire and ice of trauma and therapeutic processing make the waters of existence tepid.  Safely afloat our raft of experience, we rest for self rescue.  Bobbing under to see what we can see , to know what we know.  For sure there are sharks of sharp stabbing  storylines  still to swim our way.  Also certain is the clarity of the waters.  They are self-made after all.  

I float effortlessly, natural is my buoyance and resilience.  The fluidity I trust safe in the sea of me.  No one else's acknowledgement is  relative or reliant.  No one else a counterpoint to navigate towards or away. 

Me, the sea, safely settled into a soothing song belonging only to my soul.  Every drop, every tear spilled within the ocean of ourselves known- mapped and secure.  Rest easy, I'll swim to your safe shores.  

In the quiet before all the restlessness of the world awakes, I can feel the stillness.  The peace that won't allow generalizations of my feelings, to categorize who I am and stereotype what I should feel, do, be.    I surrender to the peace and consent to healing. 

A life of comparable suffering is one I do not want, yet my entitled grief reigns from its throne.

A grief I chose not one died unto me.  And yet the waters of grief swallow me up just like any undaughtered.

I chose this.  You gave me life and chose to abort the pain inflicted by your righteous beliefs.

I chose this life and must put to death our relationship so that I may not have to birth my pain anew each day.

Mine is a privileged pain.  I swim in the grief waters by choice but nonetheless, I choose to swim. 
 

Was it an accident that my first attempt of posting was deleted or is the villainous force of self -doubt going to battle me today? 

When the grief of life excavations stills, the quiet demands  my courage.  Courage to live loudly  despite the unknown  audience, the  fear of further harm and the anxiety of existing . 

My superpower, curiosity wins .  And so my blog begins in the quiet.