How to Handle The Pain We’ve Caused & The Pain of Others
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Hey friends,
This is a story about yoga. It’s also a story about medical bills and a book. And mistakes and martyrdom and marriage and motherhood.
But mostly, this is a story about shame.
TOOLS
This week my therapist and I discussed how for me, yoga is non-negotiable. A tool that is essential to my well-being.
I love this term, “non-negotiable” because in definition it is so strong! It means, “not open to discussion or modification.” Read that again: not open for discussion.
And yet. Yesterday, when I was running out the door at 8:15 am for my 8:30 am class and my dear husband asks me, “can I shower?”, I had a very strong reaction. I was so mad. My mind went to, “How dare he open this up for discussion? He knows how important my yoga practice is! Why is he making me feel so guilty about this?”
Mind you, all he did was ask for a shower. But I imagined that a shower meant he was stressed, hurried and the kids were going to have to fend for themselves and everyone was going to be rushed and probably some yelling would take place.
So, my immediate reaction was that I wanted to protect them from that all. I wanted to relieve my husband’s stress, be there for my children and maintain peace. I wanted to make sure my husband wouldn’t resent me, be mad at me for leaving him in a pinch and I wouldn’t cause irreparable damage to my kids for the 10 minutes they were left alone.
At the time, this all felt totally logical. It felt logical because it was familiar:
The habit of rescuing others from their pain and abandoning myself in the process. Not wanting anyone to be upset with me and wanting to please.
Oh, so, very familiar.
GRATITUDE
The thing is, my husband wasn’t mad at me. But the story I told myself was that he resented me for choosing myself over him and the kids and helping them out and I was, therefore, a horrible, selfish person who deserved punishment.
Yea.
This same storytelling came up when I got an egregious medical bill last week. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t do enough research to anticipate these costs or avoid them. I felt that I had messed up, disappointed people, felt guilty for the huge expense, and that it verified my darker beliefs that yes, I am irresponsible, untrustworthy, and again, a horrible person.
In the response to a mistake, as a kid and even well into adulthood, I would lie. I would lie to try and overcome the uncomfortable feelings that followed a mistake. I would circumvent the truth and I would be shady instead of owning my actions and responding with humility. I did this to protect myself from the assumption that someone would be mad at me and hate me and reinforce my own narrative that I basically sucked.
And I’ve learned (painfully) that I can carry on this people-pleasing and self-criticism because it serves me. It serves me because if I am more concerned with how other people are feeling, I can control their reaction to me and thus protect myself from their judgment, disapproval, and them not liking me. I keep myself in a loop of self-deprecation so that I can be the martyr and thus no one will ever be mad at me and I will always have their approval and positive regard. This is why these habits have such a hold over me. They are “working for me”.
But here’s the thing: if we never feel the feelings of disappointment, embarrassment, regret, and failure, we don’t learn. It’s a true failure if we don’t learn the lesson. It’s a failure if we dive so much into the story of guilt, self-hatred, and self-punishment that we cloud our ability to learn from it. We drop into shame, and martyrdom and repent with such intensity that we miss the opportunity to learn.
INNOVATION
So much of the work I’ve done for myself is looking at the parts within me, the wounded inner child, and the belief systems that reveal the shadow parts that I project onto other people and situations.
This is not easy work. In fact, it’s so uncomfortable that I actively try to avoid it! When I feel crappy about myself because I’m worried about someone’s reaction to me, I go to the parts of me that know how to protect me from the pain: the people pleaser and the escapist. When I feel my actions have led to someone else’s pain or unhappiness, I can treat myself with such cruelty that I make sure that the words I say to myself are much more vindictive than any words someone can say to me. I anticipate (and assume) the reaction so I double down to prepare myself for the feeling.
And yet, I miss the lesson. I miss feeling the feeling that sometimes things just happen and it just sucks. The work is moving through the pain and taking accountability and feeling the suck without lying, negotiating, rescuing, avoiding, or figuring out some way to solve the problem so I (or others) don’t have to feel the pain.
And the thing is that we will upset other people. We will upset them because we are humans. We are imperfect and we do not always know better. We make mistakes. Your loved ones, your children, your kid’s teachers, your employers, your employees, and your neighbors will all do something at some time that you do not like.
How forgiving are you? How forgiving are you to yourself? When someone else makes a mistake, how do you perceive them? Do you judge them? Do you look at them with resentment? When someone has let you down, do you shame them? Blame yourself? Blame them?
How we treat someone else is a reflection and a direct relation to how we treat ourselves.
The more you shame yourself for your imperfections, fall on the sword and protect others and yourself from pain, the more we deny everyone the opportunity to learn and grow.
FEELS
Many years ago I read one of my all-time favorite leadership books called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. The author has a beautiful way of talking about the Drama Triangle framework with how we respond to situations. I find myself vacillating between Hero and Villian when I’m not present and stuck in fear and shame.
Instead, when I can observe and come to the situation with mindful awareness, I see there is another way. My favorite way of learning through a painful experience is to ask, “How is this for me?”
From this place, I’ve had the greatest revelation of all. I have found that sometimes I can intentionally self-sabotage because if I make the mistake first or I fail first then I never have to be perfect. I never have to live up to the expectations of having it all together or always knowing what to do best. If I fail first then I always get to be in a loop of transformation and personal development. I always get to be the phoenix rising. I get to blame my failures on this ongoing personal transformation and therefore never have to internalize the pain of letting someone else down. I’m pleasing them because look at me, I’m just a work in progress! How admirable and inspiring!
But sometimes, the Phoenix doesn’t need to rise, sometimes the Phoenix needs to fly. With this awareness, how do I get out of my own way to accept inevitable discomfort and move through it just as it is? How do I prepare for discomfort?
And what I’ve learned is that this is a practice. At Reset, we call this practice distress tolerance: the practice of being able to tolerate discomfort. Yoga is my most impactful practice for learning this and one we apply to clients. Yoga is the tool that allows me to practice being uncomfortable. And the more practice I have with discomfort, the less I need to protect and prepare myself. When I’m in my body and I’m going to my edge in a pose or stretch is so excruciatingly uncomfortable that my entire being is antsy to get out of it: I learn. I ask.
How is this for me? What is this teaching me? How can I stay present in this feeling without my shadow parts pulling me into their narratives and escape routes?
I don’t need to burn everything down, I don’t need to fall on the sword. I don’t need to be in a constant state of rebuilding and to keep making some triumphant return.
I can simply be in the suck. The suck of not saving someone from their pain. The suck of having to feel mine.
Told you this was a story about yoga ;)
