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My Thought For Today: Telling the Truth Isn’t Attacking Someone’s Character
I remember when someone who was once in my life told me that. They were going through struggles of their own and I remember sitting there watching their face, the emotions that flashed across as they spoke about the injustices they suffered at the hands of someone else and the defiance as they said those words. I nodded my head in agreement. Their words were truth. Truth is not an attack on a person’s character. A person’s character speaks for itself. If the truth causes a person to feel attacked there’s more than likely a myriad of reasons why. It’s not my place to be the person to say what those reasons are. I can simply point out that it may be something worth examining.
I’m learning during this healing journey of mine that the world and it’s inhabitants, all of us, are wounded. I’m not the only person who has scars even though there have been many times when I’ve acted as I was the only one who was trying to heal. My hurt, my anger, my need to feel understood and explain every little detail, the resulting lashing out when my attempts failed, when the people in my life didn’t reciprocate whatever it was I expected from them and I spiraled out of control, that entire powder keg of emotions was constantly exploding and imploding. It’s no way to live. I’m aware that I’m not the only person who lived this way. If someone pointed out something I said or did during this time or any other time in my life that may have offended or hurt them, I definitely felt like they were attacking my character, that they were attacking me, even if what they were saying was the truth. My self-worth wasn’t stable. I couldn’t handle any type of criticism and I definitely couldn’t handle accepting that I hurt someone else.
How we respond when we feel like we’re being personally attacked isn’t easy. I don’t want to lash out anymore, it doesn’t solve anything, it only makes matters worse, so I’ve had to change how I respond. It’s been a learning process, but today I work at evaluating my values, I look at the nature of the relationship, I look at my intentions, my emotional needs and what it is I may be lacking at the time because let’s face it, when I’m lacking certain things I know there’s usually more to the story and I know whatever it is I’m going through, I’m going to have to sit with it for a little while. Impulsiveness has not been kind to me or my relationships, so figuring out what’s happening behind the scenes is only going to help me. For example, if I feel like I don’t have enough support, it’s usually because my level of loneliness has increased. I know me, that means my sadness has increased, so I have to be cognizant of what other feelings I may be having surrounding a certain person or situation. Then I look at the timeline, what may have happened before I started feeling this way, what other feelings I had, etc. It sounds like a lot of work and it was when I first started doing this, but it’s saved me a lot of unnecessary anguish.
There’s also the other side of the coin. If I’m going to tell someone that their actions (or lack of action) or what they said to me hurt me, I’m going to make sure that I’m not lashing out at them. There’s a place for my emotions but it comes after the facts. I sit with this also. It’s very easy to get carried away with creating a laundry list of hurts when we feel like someone hurt us. Justifying how much someone hurt us seems valid but we lose credibly with that person and with ourselves when our hurt, our anger and our unmet needs speak louder than the deed. Often times it also causes the deed to become invalidated. The truth, the facts, speak louder than we realize. I’m learning to let the truth stand in its own and to let my emotions calm.
There’s a lot going on here. That’s how it will be while I continue to learn. Like I said, I’m not the only person on this vast planet who has wounds to heal. But I think if I can recognize that fact and the fact that we’re all trying to heal in some way, maybe other people can also. Then the truth can start speaking for itself, our emotions can begin to settle down and we can use them for more pleasurable experiences, we can begin to heal our wounds and our damaged self-worth and the world can become a place where we can coexist peacefully. It may seem naive, but I believe all it takes is one person to plant a seed for a garden to grow.
I’m learning during this healing journey of mine that the world and it’s inhabitants, all of us, are wounded. I’m not the only person who has scars even though there have been many times when I’ve acted as I was the only one who was trying to heal. My hurt, my anger, my need to feel understood and explain every little detail, the resulting lashing out when my attempts failed, when the people in my life didn’t reciprocate whatever it was I expected from them and I spiraled out of control, that entire powder keg of emotions was constantly exploding and imploding. It’s no way to live. I’m aware that I’m not the only person who lived this way. If someone pointed out something I said or did during this time or any other time in my life that may have offended or hurt them, I definitely felt like they were attacking my character, that they were attacking me, even if what they were saying was the truth. My self-worth wasn’t stable. I couldn’t handle any type of criticism and I definitely couldn’t handle accepting that I hurt someone else.
How we respond when we feel like we’re being personally attacked isn’t easy. I don’t want to lash out anymore, it doesn’t solve anything, it only makes matters worse, so I’ve had to change how I respond. It’s been a learning process, but today I work at evaluating my values, I look at the nature of the relationship, I look at my intentions, my emotional needs and what it is I may be lacking at the time because let’s face it, when I’m lacking certain things I know there’s usually more to the story and I know whatever it is I’m going through, I’m going to have to sit with it for a little while. Impulsiveness has not been kind to me or my relationships, so figuring out what’s happening behind the scenes is only going to help me. For example, if I feel like I don’t have enough support, it’s usually because my level of loneliness has increased. I know me, that means my sadness has increased, so I have to be cognizant of what other feelings I may be having surrounding a certain person or situation. Then I look at the timeline, what may have happened before I started feeling this way, what other feelings I had, etc. It sounds like a lot of work and it was when I first started doing this, but it’s saved me a lot of unnecessary anguish.
There’s also the other side of the coin. If I’m going to tell someone that their actions (or lack of action) or what they said to me hurt me, I’m going to make sure that I’m not lashing out at them. There’s a place for my emotions but it comes after the facts. I sit with this also. It’s very easy to get carried away with creating a laundry list of hurts when we feel like someone hurt us. Justifying how much someone hurt us seems valid but we lose credibly with that person and with ourselves when our hurt, our anger and our unmet needs speak louder than the deed. Often times it also causes the deed to become invalidated. The truth, the facts, speak louder than we realize. I’m learning to let the truth stand in its own and to let my emotions calm.
There’s a lot going on here. That’s how it will be while I continue to learn. Like I said, I’m not the only person on this vast planet who has wounds to heal. But I think if I can recognize that fact and the fact that we’re all trying to heal in some way, maybe other people can also. Then the truth can start speaking for itself, our emotions can begin to settle down and we can use them for more pleasurable experiences, we can begin to heal our wounds and our damaged self-worth and the world can become a place where we can coexist peacefully. It may seem naive, but I believe all it takes is one person to plant a seed for a garden to grow.
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