Being emotionally goal oriented is stupid. Being mindful is hard.
Let me set a stage for you. A female child walks into a room. She knows that everyone in the room loves her. She knows that everyone in the room can easily harm her physically or betray her, which would lead to more physical harm.
This child has to become good at quickly assessing risk. She learns to smell who is in a bad mood and needs to be appeased. She learns to sense when someone is irritable and needs a clever joke, a hug, a song or a dance.
She becomes hyper vigilant to survive. There is someone always needing something. She is taught to serve and ensure that everyone is appeased before she can relax and she is terrified that if she relaxes someone else can come in the room and be upset which will make all of her work invalid.
She is in such a stressful situation for her entire life that the part of her brain that tells her that she is safe never fully develops. The neural connections have chosen to make other paths. They decide to build up the fight, flight or freeze sections, because they are the ones getting used.
This child grows up and can barely tell the difference between her anxiety and her intuition. She can know what you need, but not what she needs. She realizes that she doesn’t actually know what people need and these survival habits turn into manipulations. She gives what she thinks people need, because slowing down and asking them is vulnerable. What if they need nothing or to be left alone? What if their needs have nothing to do with you? What is she supposed to do then? She’s still running from the fear of pending pain and betrayal. She feels like she better do something or something bad will happen. Relaxation is not safe.
The only power she had growing up was in learning how to appease. As an adult, it turns into a need for control through manipulation, stemming from what seems the best intentions. Her tool has become a weapon and she’s so busy swinging it around to make sure that she’s safe that she is unconsciously hitting people with this weapon. She leaves damage.
I walked into a giant metaphorical mirror today. It hurt. Because there are places I want to go and be, finding out that I am try to pull strings and manipulate my way there is very painful. Trying to force and cling to a desire or an outcome makes it flee.
It’s so hard to be mindful when you never feel like you’ve had the luxury to sit still. Being mindful slows you down and makes your actions, words and feelings be present. Being in the present helps you take the next right action. Taking the next right action, leads you down the right path.
Seeing the end of a path and walking straight through and burning down every perceived obstacle seems to be my default style. This is not an effective style for the person I want to be in the world.
Mindfulness is so painful and slow. You see so much, you have to process so much, you have to care, weigh and balance so much. Through mindfulness you can be who you want to be based on strong foundation and values. Things bloom from mindfulness.
I wish my very scared lizard brain would start knowing that it is safe so that I can practice more mindfulness.
Because my boots are a bit singed on the bottoms. Need to slow down, breathe, feel safe and nurture myself. I’m so tired of running and fixing, would like to do some being now. How can I do that and feel safe?
