A Shift in Perspective
One of the most intriguing phenomena of my work occurs when a similar theme arises from appointment to appointment, client to client, heart to heart. What’s even more incredible is when clients land on the same healing shifts in perspective. It definitely gets my attention. It also makes me wonder how many others would be helped by learning what my clients have been learning on their healing journeys?
This week’s big realization? For me and my clients? It’s this: IF, after an interaction with someone, you are left feeling ashamed, inadequate, like a worthless human being . . . THEN that person has just shown you the unhealed hurts and lies of his or her own broken heart.
Certainly you feel stunned and confused, powerless and incompetent, immobilized and at fault because of the unexpected reactivity of the other. Easy to feel like you are all wrong and you are the one who needs fixing after such intense reactivity coming at you. The deeper their words and actions against you go, it’s very likely the deeper their personal wounds. Certainly below their layers of conscious awareness.
But I’d say that a person who doesn’t carry shame doesn’t wield shame as a weapon. A person who doesn’t carry bitterness and jealousy doesn’t need to criticize you, or cut you down. A person who feels safe, settled, and good enough on the inside won’t turn you into competition. Conversely, a person who has peace, good will, and love toward self on the inside carries peace, good will, and love toward others on the outside.
This is even recorded in ancient wisdom:
Count on this: no good tree bears bad fruit, and no bad tree bears good fruit. You can know a tree by the fruit it bears. You don’t find figs on a thorn bush, and you can’t pick grapes from a briar bush. It’s the same with people. A person full of goodness in his heart produces good things; a person with an evil reservoir in his heart pours out evil things. The heart overflows in the words a person speaks; your words reveal what’s within your heart.*
Ask yourself this: What did I feel when Person A unloaded on me with blame, criticism, the cold shoulder, etc? And then ask yourself, What was I left holding for hours, days, moments after it all ended?
Your answers to that question many times reveals what’s going on inside the other. What the other feels inside, but aggressively shoves onto others so he can avoid feeling it personally. It’s what the other holds and rather than being with the discomfort, she tries to put it on you. Fear. Inadequacy. Shame. Self-loathing. Criticism. Anxiety. Self-hatred. On and on.
The less someone likes herself, the less she will like you. When a person feels badly about himself, he will be really good at seeing the worst in you. When a person feels like a failure and she is missing the mark, when she sees your success, she will find fault and leave you second guessing.
Where does the healing happen for the one who has thus far been at the mercy of a very wounded aggressor? It comes first through a shift in perspective. And second, through taking a moment to give back to the other what’s not to be taken to heart.
To get the shift in perspective, jot down or draw what you felt when it happened, and what you were left holding onto in the aftermath. Map your words for the feelings and experience of that. Even noting where it hit in the body. Then identify for your own good heart that you are not the source of those accusations, shaming feelings, inadequacies, etc-rather, it’s what the aggressor carries within his or her own wounded soul.
At this point we can start to feel compassion (not a need to rescue) toward the aggressor – they carry deep, unhealed wounds, and are causing more, not less relational pain for themselves. Yet we must offload what we picked up in the toxic interactions. We remind ourselves, “That’s not our stuff. It’s not ours to hold onto.” Unload the weight and wounds and refuse them access, realizing they belong to the aggressor.
At this point, depending on your spiritual practices, you can choose to forgive the other and release them as Jesus said, “Forgive them Father, for they know now what they do.” While also having new strategies in place to protect your heart and set stronger limits for your own emotional and personal safety.
My hope is that you find comfort in not taking on the way the person made you feel as any sort of fact about who you are. My hope is that you lean into the truth of who you are and hold onto that. That you recognize the source of the onslaught is in the other’s unhealed wounds and from there you can find compassion for the other in a way that unhooks you from the harm done, allowing you to learn ways to lovingly protect yourself from more of the same.
What to do about the relationship is a whole other thing. For another time. Today was just to let you know that what someone dishes at you isn’t your stuff; it’s theirs.
And remember, you have choices and inherent power. Frankl wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of human freedoms- to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” A good reminder that you do have choices and pathways, that you aren’t powerless in challenges with aggressors. It all starts with a shift in perspective.
*Luke 6:43-46 The Voice