Why We are Hard to Talk To When We Don’t Own Our Stuff

I talked on the show this week about how important it is to take responsibility for standing in our truth and taking ownership of every aspect of our lives and ourselves.  From owning our feelings to our dreams and everything in between, owning our truth means we don’t put that on anyone else, especially the difficult stuff. But what if we haven’t yet mastered that ability to be that mindful and mature?  What does not owning our truth look like when we interact with others and how can we change it?

We Stay in Denial. No matter how many times the lesson is presented for us to learn, how many ways we are sitting in the consequences of not looking at reality, we aren’t ready.  So, we instead are difficult to approach about the situation because we aren’t ready to deal with it yet.  Unless we are ready to look in the mirror, we will resort to being defensive and maybe even lash out.  Thus, it doesn’t make us very approachable. Antidote:  Do the grief work with safe people to work toward acceptance.

We Stay Focused Out There. On people and what they are doing and not doing. On situations we cannot fix or change. We feel victimized by what is happening, and we therefore hand over our power. We focus instead on what is happening to us because of THEM. We don’t bring it back to us to recognize that we must grieve/deal/accept the reality then make some perhaps difficult choices.  Antidote:  Bring the focus back to our own choices.

We Get Defensive. We invalidate what they are bringing to us, assuming they use and “I” statement and don’t lash out.  We make it about us not being able to handle being called on something that very well may be true.  Maye we are late a lot.  Or leave things lying around.  Or stay on our phone too much. This just creates anxiety for them and us and makes problem solving almost impossible.  Antidote: Work on going back in the room and saying “I’m sorry.  It’s just hard to think I’ve screwed up.  I really want to work on it.”

We Hide Our True Selves. Perhaps years in the perfecting, we have learned not to reveal our vulnerable parts that might be rejected or shamed, or cause conflict. So we play it safe by talking about safe topics like other people, tasks, the news, or the gossip.  We avoid connecting with them around how we feel, how we think or believe, and where we struggle.  We give them no true humanity and fallibility and authenticity to connect with. Antidote: Practice revealing small bits at a time, such as “Yeah it’s actually been pretty rough for me.” When explaining your child’s illness. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the better it feels.

Ironically it takes tremendous cognitive and emotional energy to hide behind our fear.  Our fear of being found out -that we aren’t perfect after all. Fear we then can’t be ok and can’t be loved. Or even worse, that we don’t know how to connect the right way.  There is no right way.  Only the vulnerable, open, approachable way.  Try that, bit by bit.  See how it feels.  Then do some more. Before you know it, you’ll really be owning it.