I should be grateful.
I’m actually really blessed.
Grow where you’re planted.
I’m just being avoidant.
Ever used those words to persuade yourself to stay somewhere that, deep down, you knew wasn’t right for you, where you didn’t want to stay?
I have. It’s a powerful and sneaky bit of self gaslighting that needs to be acknowledged.
Of course, sometimes those words are absolutely true. But if we know deep down we’re using them to override our intuition, our own knowing, then it’s problematic.
Because women were trained to override our knowing from very young age. I made a Reel last week about almost swallowing a slug in a salad as a child at a family gathering and being prasied for not making a fuss which might have embarrassed the host. Numerous other women had similar stories of shelving their own (entirely reasonable, human) needs, wants and reactions to avoid causing discomfort to others.
To a large extent, that was just the approach of the time: children were seen and ideally minimally heard, and no one was allowed to publicly acknowledge any awkward or inconvenient emotions.
But even in self-aware adulthood, sometimes the very courses, programs and modalities that were meant to help us get back in touch with the knowing, instead gave us another, sharper tool to use against ourselves.
In my own life, I tried to convince myself for several years that it was just my “avoidant tendencies” that made me recoil from my then husband - a decent, kind and caring man. I told myself I simply wasn’t able to handle someone who was emotionally available and needed to work harder on myself.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), part of us knows this isn’t true and will keep trying to get our attention until we acknowledge it. For me it was through a slowly increasing sense of desperation and a return to the disordered eating habits I had worked so hard to liberate myself from.
Finally, I chose to listen and make the needed changes. The unhealthy food behaviours started to ebb away, and my sense of self started to come back online, bringing some joy and hope for the future with it.
If this sounds all too familiar, let’s talk. Let’s put aside the weaponised self- help words and get you back in touch with what you truly want and know to be true. I assure you it’s possible, because I’ve been there myself.
