When you go places alone, no matter how comfortable you are with people, there is a certain hesitancy that comes with finding a place to feel comfortable among couples and families, especially with unassigned seating at tables for 10 or so. There is a sense of trepidation as to where to sit that you feel welcome but not in the way or displacing a family member who may belong at that table. Even as an extravert who can speak to almost anyone, being alone adds a level of anxiety at events.
At one event recently, it was me that felt this anxiety and found myself searching for a table that would be welcoming for me. I found myself sitting with a family I love who has treated me as family. When my friend who was hosting came up to me, her words stung. She said she wanted to be sure that I knew there was a spot at her table because “she knows how I can get.”
Although this feeling may overwhelm me, I didn’t realize that my behavior caused that feeling in others. I realized at that moment that I didn’t like that at all. I was not upset with my friend at all, in fact my response was, “I’m good, I don’t have that reaction anymore.” I realized at that moment that I was probably exhausting or draining for my friends at times. My inability to completely heal so that I don’t react in a negative way has been my nemesis.
What reaction is that? Feeling unworthy, feeling unloved, assuming it is personal and that I did something wrong. Those feelings of assuming ill intent and taking things personally are at the root of the behavior that my friend was speaking to me about. They are also at the root of a lot of the wounds I have. My ex-husband once told me I was unlovable. I believed that for a very long time. With those words came taking everything others did personally, and always assuming that people were going to be upset with me if I didn’t do what they wanted, how they wanted, when they wanted. I judged myself so harshly I always assumed I fucked up somewhere along the line, it had to be me that screwed up.
In the book, The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz, one of the agreements is to not take things personally. One passage reads, “You take it personally because you agree with whatever was said. As soon as you agree, the poison goes through you, you are trapped in the dream of hell…taking things personally is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.”
Nothing other people do is about us. Nothing. It is always about them. This concept was game changing for me. I realized through the work I have done that it is similar to judging. Any judgment made about others is somehow about me. It is the mirror.
Learning that this behavior has caused issues with me in my life, I knew I needed to heal the unworthiness, and doubting the love around me so that I didn’t fulfill it’s prophecy. That mindset shift has been hard, and has taken many years of continued work. In fact recently I have been taking a class around becoming my best version. One of the tools we are using is understanding our disempowering beliefs and then creating our empowering beliefs. I was shocked one day after journalling to go back and read my disempowering beliefs. Two of them stood out for me.
The first was “The more money I spend on others the better chance I have of them loving me.” When I was getting ready to retire, I told one of my friends that I was concerned that people would no longer want to be my friend because I may not be able to do the things I used to do for them. She looked at me like I was crazy, and reminded me that people love me for me, for the heart that I have, for the way I am there for them, not for what I can do for them. She had no idea I felt that way, and I guess I hadn’t realized it either.
The second, ” I am difficult to love,” comes from a few places. Obviously the first being that ex-husband who told me I was unlovable. Then the many years of not finding love only to find it with someone who couldn’t sustain it. Then I had a family member say once that I must be tough to live with. All of these things made me believe that I was not able to be loved, I am unlovable.
Through a lot of work I have healed that but as we know, things trigger old wounds and we have to look at them again. That belief is one I still work on at times, especially being the only single one among all of my friends. I question my ability to be loved at times, and then I have to remember that my friends and family love me. I also now realize that, at least with men, as a strong woman I attract weaker men. They are looking for someone who is strong only to realize that many cannot take it. And they don’t know what to do when the woman needs them to be strong as she is lost. Both my ex-husbands, and the man I thought I would have a future with were like this. Once I needed them, they bolted. They couldn’t do it because they relied on my strength. I am ready to attract the strong evolved man who wants an equal relationship.
My empowering beliefs around these wounds are now “I am compassionate and live life from a place of love and service,” and “I am love.” I am working toward making these part of my themes for 2022, to really focus here so that nobody ever needs to say to me again, “I know how you can get.”