Since I’ve written my last blog, I’ve gotten feedback that I should give real examples from my personal journey.
I’m currently reading the book “The Courage to be Disliked” and one of the many passages that stood out to me was that our reality is only shaped by the specific biology that we have, meaning our ears, our eyes, our brain. This can go as simple as my “blue” can be different from your “blue”, where you actually see my “green”. But it also goes much deeper in the direction of trauma, childhood, personality and much more. What I mean by this is we can objectively have the same “childhood”, but based on how we perceived it, or more importantly, how people told us to perceive it, we will have a very different memory and impression of it.
So here is an example.
I used to believe my childhood was full of stress, screaming, fighting and anxiety. I lived my whole adolescence hating my parents and blaming them for every single thing that went wrong in my life. In order to make my reality coincide with my beliefs, I started justifying every negative feeling with “it’s because my childhood sucked” or “my mom always yelled at me so I can’t help it”. When things happen in your life, and you consistently blame it on anything external (people, events, weather, work, etc), you end up falling into the mentality that no matter what you do, things cannot change, leaving your powerless.
But what happened to a good friend of mine? She had a really rough childhood – separated from her father at a young age, her mother was a drug addict and highly neglecting her. She was in foster care and was often moving around. Yet her grades were excellent, and now she is living the best life possible, married, successful at work, and most importantly – happy.
How can this happen? How can someone with such a shitty childhood, and someone with a quite normal one, end up with similar outcomes? My friend realized something that many people don’t, that your past doesn’t have to determine your future. If anything, it can be the fuel to live an even happier life!
How does this tie in with cognitive dissonance, the reason for our anxiety? Very simple. When you grow up being the victim, blaming everyone and everything for your bad life, you catch yourself in a trap. You either continue finding ways to stay in the victim mentality, so that your actions align with your beliefs “I don’t deserve true happiness”, or, you try to get out of it, by doing things that are good for you, but then you start to feel anxiety “I should get offended by what he said, because my trauma makes me really sensitive”. Any attempt to not listen to that voice, to ignore your past, just leaves you with a huge dissonance between your belief “ I am miserable and don’t love myself” and your action “I want to do good things for myself in order to love myself”.
Let me give you an example within my own relationship. You wanted personal, here you go.
I’m sure many of you will relate, and hopefully this can also help you get out of the trap!
The other day, Christos and I were starting to get intimate. We are quite open with our sexuality, so we like to try new things and know that whatever happens in the bedroom, we love and respect each other. As we were getting closer together, Christos was in a more dominating vibe, and usually I really like when he’s like that. He would say things that aligned with that mood, and I noticed myself getting less and less into it. At one point, I completely disengaged and turned away from him. Like a little kid. Rationally, it makes no sense. I know he loves me, so why don’t I just express what I am feeling? Because I am so used to the following scenario: someone does something that upsets me, I feel powerless and like a victim, and I retract myself from the situation to a) get empathy “oh you poor thing” but most importantly b) sabotage myself and my relationship. I had messed up beliefs about what I deserved in life, and having a wonderful loving relationship always seemed out of reach. The longer I believed it, the more I fulfilled that prophecy. My mind is just waiting for the opportunity to align my beliefs with actions and say “ I knew it! He doesn’t love me after all!”. And by retracting physically and moping, I am raising the chances of him actually getting angry and potentially leaving me. I am not courageous enough to look him in the eyes in that moment, be vulnerable, and say “baby, I’m not really feeling that today. Can you instead be gentle with me and tell me how much you love me?”
Even writing that makes me emotional, because it is so engrained in my brain that being vulnerable will just hurt me further. So, instead, I hurt myself and align my action with my belief “you are a victim” before anyone can actually hurt me.
DO YOU SEE HOW MESSED UP THAT IS?
It’s taken me the whole two years of our relationship, and I’m still working on it, to show myself that this man truly does love me, and he is never actually trying to hurt me. I am trying to show my brain that my beliefs about my past shaping my future are FALSE. Every time that I resist the urge to go into my victim mentality, I am showing my brain that I actually DO control my life, not my past.
It gets easier.
The next morning we tried again, starting fighting because I was being defensive instead of letting him feel me emotioanally, but this time, instead of just distancing myself again, I broke down crying and just asked him to hold me. His whole aura changed. He held me close, and told me everything I want to hear. Men react well when their woman shows themselves, they just want to help and be the hero.
It is possible to be loved exactly the way that you want, but only if you are brave enough to ask for it.
Well, that’s as raw as I will be today, wiping my tears away and hoping that this can help even a few of you to be happier in your relationships. If you ever need more advice or tips, I’ve got plenty, just reach out.
I would love to hear your stories, if you want to share, then I can share them with my audience anonymously if you’d like. The more stories we can share about our lives and how similar we all actually are, the more we can help ourselves and our community.
With love,
Nastia
