Experience is a great teacher

Oh Boy, has it ever been a year!

I have learned a lot about myself, my feelings and the stories my mind has created over the years in order to survive the moments with minimal discomfort, aka resistance.

I am creating this blog to help you understand what a story is and why we create them in the first place, and that in and of itself is a heavily uncomfortable notion. So viewer discretion is advised.

I will start by telling you a story (ironic I know) and we will take it apart to what it really means in the present moment.

It all started with a conversation, that gave rise to memories of my past. This conversation was a simple conversation about what the person I was interacting with thought about the concept of "good" and "bad". I no longer put things in a box of good or bad or label anything as such, I feel this concept is limiting and I choose to understand both sides deeper than surface level "good" or "bad" because we all make choices from the self perspective of good, but sometimes that good can be askew based on our psyche and unconscious / conscious programming, but I digress this is a blog for another day.

The conversation was about this person in my life (male) feeling as though if there is something he perceives as bad, it is bad, and if you don't agree you are also "bad". And it is interesting as I type this I am reminded of the stories that used to tell me similar, that I was "right" and others were "wrong" and if they did not see it my way I had no use for them in my life, and I now recognise this righteousness as resisting seeing anything my mind perceived as scary or unknown because what is in there? I did not want to understand because understanding some how made it "wrong" and how dare I be "wrong".

So, I expressed my opinion, and how I see both sides of the argument. That I didn't necessarily label this specific topic within our conversation as "bad" and that I actually deeply understand both sides and can witness the unconscious programming that led to the perceived "bad" choice of another. This triggered the male with frustration, that I was not seeing things his way.

Here is where the story kicks in.

After some thought, I remembered times in my past where my story, opinions, and beliefs shifted and changed depending on the male who was most prevalent in my life. This did extend to women when there was no male present, but specifically because in this case I was dealing with an important male in my life, I was looking at that and I reconised something, a pattern if you will.

Whenever I would engage with a man in my life and my opinion may have differed from theirs, I would shift or alter my opinion to match whatever theirs was, under the guise of safety and acceptance. I told myself a story that what they wanted was most important overall and that it would be safer for me to share their opinion than it would be to have an opinion of my own.

This revelation led to me explore my inner child, and I could find traces of this behaviour in my youth with not only my paternal figures, but boys I had crushes on in high school, my first boyfriend and all of my partners after that.

My opinions / beliefs where less valid than that of the person I was talking to, so if they did not match I just change my opinion, even if I do not agree and they will approve of me and I won't get triggered by their reaction or response to my truths.

Which is exactly what happened in the instance I shared.

And.

Because I am now able to see the stories I have created and do create, I was able to stop before I reluctantly agreed, and do some deeper introspection into why I felt I needed to agree just to well, survive.

That was the story, that if I do not agree I will somehow be put in a spot of danger and others will leave my life, and I will lose all my friends, and I will be lonely forever.

This was the story.

That was the narrative.

In the past I would have completely shifted or altered my story to match that narrative of the person in my life I deem as most important (typically male) and then my entire existence would be a story I created for acceptance and control of how they view me.

The story, removed me from my true feelings.

The story, led the leader of my life (me) to follow.

The story, while trying to keep me safe, removed me from my own thoughts, beliefs and opinions.

And.

This revelation, this AHA! moment led me to my greatest discovery yet.

I am not that person anymore.

Months ago, I would not have been able to speak in opposition with anyone without questioning myself and shifting my beliefs just a smidge to match those who were expressing their opinion.

Now, I can witness their truths, understand where they are coming from, and it does not change or alter my opinions or beliefs one way or another. Because I actually believe and always have believed that there is space for absolutely every belief, opinion, or choice to exist,"good" or "bad", and while there are things I do not necessarily agree with, I understand that that view point or choice was formed from somewhere, and understanding where it comes from, for not only myself but others, is an important lesson to learn in this life if we desire to express true empathy.

So I always ask questions, I always seek to understand the viewpoints of others, and I seek to understand where they are coming from. Because if we want to be happy within our relationships with others, we must be able to meet them where they are at "good" or "bad", and remove the story that it is only good or bad, seek to understand their deeper truths (unconscious), without the desire for judgement to be "right" overall.

That is a part of my story, those are some of my thoughts, thank you for reading.