Embracing Your Glorious Mess

Who are you in the vast sea of all the characters we play in this life? Do you respect, appreciate, protect, vouch for, and accept who you are in all that makes you uniquely you? Self-love comes from experiencing love, and also having trust in the protection and safety that was present in your early childhood. Along with that security that you are loved and cared for, there has to be the element of acceptance- Acceptance to be who you are at all times without consequence.  Without the acceptance to be you, it is difficult to cultivate a sense of belonging and subconscious love of who you are and what you have to offer. We often confuse the loving behaviors from your family with the acceptance of who we are as a person.

Part of understanding and learning to love yourself is to detangle the experiences we have had with the messages we have received. Most people in the beginning will share that they had a happy childhood with the support of their loved ones. I had a friend say a similar thing to me yesterday as we were catching up and sharing stories of past relationships.

She mentioned that her family had always been there for her and still when she would go to school, she would feel unwanted and like she did not fit in. She shared that her comfort and solace from the outside world was her home, in her parent’s arms. When asked if she was always allowed to speak her truth on her own perceptions and follow her own path on what she desired, even as a child, she realized that it was not always the case. She shared with me that her mother would often criticize her efforts as it reflected in her studies, even though she eventually graduated as the valedictorian of her class. As she further reflected on this new paradigm, she realized other examples where she would wait to see her mother’s reaction to a certain style of clothing while at a department store before she would give her opinion. 

With this ingrained need to please her parents in order to validate her opinion or worth, it would then make sense that this behavior pattern would continue in her relationships outside of the home. Other’s opinions and impressions would slowly start to override her own to where her confidence in what she has to offer independent of another’s value judgement, would slowly disappear.

Now, being faced with this realization from a friend, not a gentle therapist (not that I am one of those either ahhahah), could incite a negative, immediate reaction. A need to defend oneself, one’s parents, or even to bite back on the person causing this discomfort. Makes total sense and that would be our ego at play.

My ego has a strong bite. She rears up, claws out, ready to pounce on whatever comment has triggered a value that has just been violated. She is there to defend my self-worth; and yet, many of us, including myself, have spent a lifetime taming the protector of our inner self instead of acknowledging that she is to be heard as a signal to own our worth.  We shush, placate, or dismiss this inner voice in order to keep the peach or to not draw negative attention. We fight to maintain the acceptance or love of the other person by keeping the peace but starting a war within ourselves.

The word ego has with it a negative connotation, however, there is a difference between how it manifests in a healthy way and letting it run wild with your insecurities. Recognizing the difference is crucial in learning to love yourself and overriding those past experiences that inscribed messages of inclusion and worth. Responding to someone with presence is quite different from reacting with attitude. Presence is embracing everyone in your warm glow of security and confidence, while attitude is an unconscious attempt to keep everyone at bay as a method of self-preservation in reaction to internal insecurities.

What would be the answer if I asked what you have to offer that is uniquely your own? If the immediate response were “nothing” or “I don’t know” it would be met with the raise of my left eyebrow, and a slight challenging tilt of my head as my gaze holds yours until you come up with an answer hahahaha.  Everyone has something unique to offer, starting with the experiences up to this particular point in life. Those experiences created a specific tint of color to the way you view the world and all that it stands for. There are instances where I see the interactions of other humans through bright colors that stand for understanding, courage, and hope while, (let us be real, for those who know me), the view is quite dark indeed. Both spectrums of my perception are based on personal experiences AND both end along with all the ones in the middle are valid and worthwhile.

Most of us grew up in an environment where we had to defend our right to exist and had a myriad of strings attached to our worth. The statements that governed our interactions such as keeping up with the jones, do not air your dirty laundry or be the best of everything if you want to be worth anything all influenced how we believed we should behave in order to be accepted or to belong. Most did not grow up in an environment where we were just accepted for being who we are- whether that was being pushed to get a certain type of grade to avoid punishment, follow a certain career path to bring honor to your family, believe in a particular religion, engage in certain hobbies, dress in a way to not draw negative attention, or present yourself in a way to prove you are worthy of being included with a certain group. The list of conditions goes on and on.

Conditional love is the root of all codependency. I will show you love/ acceptance if you do, be, think, or feel a certain way. Another manifestation of this is being so available for others needs and bending over backwards for them to show that they mean so much, with the hopes that “If I love you hard enough, eventually you will love me back this way too”. Setting healthy boundaries where you are not providing for their emotional/physical needs at the expense of your own is HARD. 

Rejecting and berating yourself because of your past behaviors will just keep you stuck. You have to think for yourself of how your morals are reflective of your values. The values are the compass that lets you drive your life. Let your values drive you instead of your ego. The key is learning to be strong enough to fight for you.  

Instead of saying I do not want to be codependent anymore, work rather on developing communication skills to challenge negative thoughts, or develop setting stronger boundaries. Acceptance of yourself has to be unconditional, but behaviors are based on conditions. Confusing right?! An example of this would be that I am a passionate person, so emotions are strong and bright with most occurrences. Just as my enthusiasm and joy is palpable, so is my anger and sadness. I cannot dilute one side and keep the other intact. That is who I am… but that does not mean that I get to behave in an aggressive and abusive manner when I am angry. Who we are as a person is not the same thing as how we behave.  

Start with showing compassion for where these early and often unintentional messages came from that formed how you feel about yourself. To acknowledge the correlation of the belief to the source (which is often our parents/ caregivers) is not the same as assigning blame. It is to understand how we came to be who we are now, so we can gradually work towards rewriting those messages. Through this process of untangling, you will be able to approach yourself with respect, admiration, appreciation, and curiosity. 

Is This What I Want? Authenticity vs. Conditioning

Relationships in any degree can be the most amazing experience in how we connect with one another with the meaning and importance they hold for us. In other words, we revel in the way they make us feel about ourselves and our place in the world. I have friends where the conversations do not need to be in full or complete sentences and they just get me and get what I am trying to say. We finish each other’s sentences and can even portray our message through charades, a look, or a crafty raise of the eyebrow. Seems magical and in these moments, all feels right with the world. Afterall, we humans do not exist in isolation, nor are we immune from the interactions and emotions of the people around us. Instead, our emotions and sense of self are shaped by, and a part of, an emotional system created originally by our family and continued by the involvement with our social circle.

In a similar way to how we can be cognitively connected to our peers and ride the same mental wave, we often also are connected to them on an emotional level. When those we are around regularly (spouse, roommate, children, close friends, or coworkers) are feeling excited and having a fantastic day, those emotions can also rub off on us- and in the same contagious manner, those who are suffering emotionally can negatively impact our feelings as well. I have heard many people share that when their partner has a broken heart, they feel broken as well. As much as this could sound like love and empathy, it’s dangerously close to enmeshment- a relationship where there is not a clear differentiation between the people involved as individuals.

There are two elements in separating experiences- cognitive and relational. Intrapsychic differentiation is when we can tell apart our thoughts from our emotions. In other words, it’s self-awareness of what’s going on cognitively. On the other hand, interpersonal differentiation is when we can distinguish our experience from the experience of people we are connected to relationally.

The main element in establishing a strong sense of our own identities is to learn how to identify our values and set boundaries to protect and uphold them. Boundaries establish appropriate roles, create physical and emotional space between individuals. Boundaries also create emotional safety in relationships. They reflect respect for everyone’s needs and feelings, they communicate clear expectations, and they establish what’s okay to do and what’s not.

Ideally, boundaries should allow for autonomy, respect for privacy, developing his/her own beliefs and values, and so forth. In healthy relationships, it is important to be emotionally independent – to be a separate entity, pursue their goals, and become the truest version themselves – not to become extensions of their parents/partners/friends (sharing their feelings, beliefs, values).

However, we tend to recreate the family dynamics that we grew up with because they’re familiar. That’s why we have years’ worth of re-enactments of the behavior patterns we learned and have been conditioned to follow. Some examples are saying yes when we really want to say no, neglecting our needs in order to meet another’s in order to maintain their approval/ affections, having a need to be competitive in our work environments which is more likely the need to prove our worth, having permeable work boundaries for when you are accessible, do whatever is necessary to avoid conflict and keep the peace, etc.

In order to break these generational patterns, we must learn to differentiate/individuate from those we feel we rely heavily on. Individuation is the process of separating yourself both physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and so forth. According to Dr. Firestone, “Differentiating from negative influences and identities from our past allows us to become who we truly are, rather than following a prescribed identity from either our family or our society. To the extent that we can develop and sustain our own unique identities and follow our own unique desires, we will be able to live truly fulfilling lives.”

Some manifestations of not having learned to be your own individual could look like:

• Not developing a strong sense of self; not being in touch with your feelings, interests, beliefs, etc.

• Approval-seeking and low self-worth

• Fear of abandonment

• Anxiety

• Not pursuing your passions

• Feeling burdened with inappropriate guilt for when you do something for yourself

• Absorbing responsibility for other people’s actions

• Having a hard time speaking up for yourself

• Codependent relationships

• Not learning to self-soothe, sit with difficult emotions, and calm yourself when you’re upset

• Feeling responsible for people who’ve mistreated you or who refuse to take responsibility for themselves

There may be times where we feel so stuck in these patterns and feel dejected at the understanding of how things outside of our control has written the narrative we now live. It is important to take the time to bow in gratitude for the past self that was there to protect who we were at that time. We behaved, loved, thought and reacted in a way because it was all that we knew how to at that time. Then recognize that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. We can always choose to start course correcting and untangling our sense of self from the person we were conditioned to become- towards healthier behavior patterns of who we are wanting to be. It is a process and in my work with individuals, I emphasize the three steps to breaking patterns: Learning, Knowing and Owning.

Learning: Asking does this make sense in theory even when it doesn’t make sense in how to have it be translated in feeling or behavior. Creating a pathway in your brain from theory and example of behavior.

Knowing: Is when you have the emotional and physical connection to your mind and what has been taught. When your inner self feels that what you have learned is now in alignment with your truth. It instinctively it feels connected and correct. Or it is where instinctively that it doesn’t feel in alignment and it grinds against the desire to move forward with an action.

Owning: Merging the understanding of theory with the ability to identify how it is in line with our own personal beliefs, values and desires and then being able to start designing a plan to put into action.

The process of differentiation paves the pathway of becoming beautifully bare, and undeniably you. Only then can we begin to separate ourselves from the chains of the past and lead the most individualistic and meaningful lives possible. Imagine feeling the freedom to live in accordance with what we value, to find our own sense of purpose and to experience true pride in our endeavors. To be connected to others without fear of judgement, to exist as a human being without consequence of not living up to someone else’s expectation, and to experience acceptance and love for who we truly without the masks we have become so accustomed to wearing. It doesn’t have to be just a theory; it can absolutely become our reality.

*For more information on differentiation, read The Self Under Siege: A Therapeutic Model for Differentiation by Dr. Robert Firestone, Dr. Lisa Firestone and Joyce Catlett, which focuses on the process of differentiation and provides examples from their clinical practices and their 35-year observational study of a group of normal individuals, their families and their children. In the book, individuals share their personal stories and their experiences, as they progressed through these four tasks, and the authors share their perspective on the therapeutic development.