Coaching has shown me to an extent just how many of us struggle with the same things.
For one thing, just realizing how many things have been programmed into us to make us less happy with ourselves. Less able to meet ourselves where we’re at, always focused more on what we think we should be.
We end up needing to spend so much time trying to unlearn the things that have affected us for so many years. But it’s so hard, because our emotions are tied up in those things. And to unlearn them, we now have to learn to deal with and process the emotions attached.
And while we’re dealing with all of this, it’s also so hard to trust others, yet we also NEED someone we can trust in for our mental health. It’s an anomaly to have a human that is truly totally fine constantly being alone. We simply weren’t built that way.
Yet, it can be very very difficult to find someone we can fully trust. We may trust people partly — in some specific ways and not in others.
The honest truth is — the reason many can’t fully be trusted is that they don’t even fully know or trust themselves. They may have good intentions, but no control or awareness of how they may handle certain situations. So you can’t risk it. Or, you may not be able to trust your words with them, because they may have a lot in the way of being able to consistently perceive those words with clarity, without preconceived notions or emotions & etc. distorting their perceptions.
So given this as well as conditioning, it’s easy to see why people walk around with walls up all the time. It becomes too risky to let those walls down and get hurt as a result, even if in minor ways.
But if our walls are up long enough, we become habituated to it and maybe even cut off from our own selves as well; not knowing what exactly we’re feeling when we’re feeling it or how to deal with those feelings. Thus the cycle of lack of self-awareness perpetuates.
That’s why on my end as a coach, striving to be as trustworthy of a person as I can is essential to holding a healing space for them & everyone else to be able to let go a little bit and fully express themselves without being judged.
It’s also good to keep in mind that everyone is a work in progress at all times, and that even if they’re not trustworthy in some way now doesn’t mean they won’t be later. It often takes life experience — life lessons — to become more trustworthy.
Keeping this in mind may also make it easier to frame things in such a way that even if people are responding poorly to us or handling things carelessly in some way, it may not be so personal to us, but rather they simply still have growth to do to see and handle things clearly and rationally.
However, I also know know it often doesn’t FEEL that simple to embrace this mindset, because regardless of the reason, it hurts to be in these situations. It can still hurt to be judged, misunderstood, or to feel fundamentally different especially from those we care about. Even if we know the people reacting these ways don’t really know who they themselves are, and maybe don’t even dare to be genuine themselves yet.
It’s okay to be hurt by these things and feel them out, no matter how “irrational” they might feel. In feeling these emotions out and fully understanding where they come from, we become less of their prisoner. This is a tough world we are asked to not only survive but thrive in, and we simply often aren’t given enough tools to do so.