How Do They Make Us Feel?
It wasn’t planned to write today, I didn’t even know that I’ll be writing this! but as I was sitting in front of my screen, doing my usual procrastination session while listening/watching a podcast, I couldn’t stop thinking about a sentence that I heard yesterday and it stopped me in my tracks.
In theory it doesn’t sound like anything special so I don’t know why it stuck to my brain, however, the more I pondered on it, the more it gave me clarity.
“We are so attached to how we feel about them, that we don’t stop and think about how do they make us feel”
Read it again and let it sink in for a moment.
You see, I’m an emotional person, always have been and always will be! and while I did try to fight that alot of times in my life, but it always felt like I’m fighting against my true nature, so I surrendered to that part of me and accepted it as it is.
But being driven by emotions is actually quite a hard thing to live with. Because the way that you’d feel about people or situations it’s always so heightened!
Whether its positive or negative, the feelings will always be at the top of the range of intensity, and more often than not, that make me find myself in disastrous situations, whether personally or professionally.
But today, I want to talk about the personal aspect:
“We are so attached to how we feel about them, that we don’t stop and think about how do they make us feel”
This sentence stopped me because for the first time in my life I reflected on it by linking it to people that crossed my path.
And it hit me that I was so focused on how I feel about them, that I never really noticed how they made me feel.
You see whether I’m in a relationship, close friendship, family whatever it is, what I’ll say will apply to all of those deep and close connections.
I think I always treated people, gave them grace and accepted alot more hurt than I should, because of how I felt about them, how I loved them, how I saw in them the goodness that was buried deep into their soul that required alot of digging from my end to uncover, how I always measured the conflicts as nothing but a small inconvenience in the grand scheme of things and it’s something that we’ll always be able to work on, to fix and to grow from there but never to let go.
But how did they make me feel?
Such a simple question yet I’ve never asked myself that question until yesterday….how did they make me feel?
And I realized that they made me feel like shit! I replayed scenarios in my mind where I allowed people to cause me alot of harm voluntarily, it’s not like anyone asked me for that! no no I always needed to be the savior, the one that needs to go find the most messed up people on planet earth and help fix them, the one that gets so invested in their entire existence, but where am I in that equation?
Why did I invest so much of my time and energy to make someone’s life better, to make them feel better, to help them grow, to validate their emotions and accept their traumas, to take people in with open arms as they are, when the efforts and energy was never really matched.
And you may think that this statement makes it sound like, that everything should be transactional, I can give you this only if you give me that!
But the truth is…I never wanted it like that, I never asked for my love to be matched as I know I’m capable of loving to degrees that maybe others don’t know it exist.
I know that I’m capable of forgiveness for the most hurtful of things even when others latch on for years on a silly grudge that keeps on eating them alive.
I know that I’m capable of doing self analysis and reflection which allows me to always sincerely apologize when I do wrong and to find solutions instead of giving ultimatum, but for some even the word “sorry” they’d rather die before saying it.
So I know that who I am and the way that I’m built is not the standard that I see around me, so I’m not expecting that from anyone, but I feel like giving 80% to get 20% is an unbalanced equation no?
Upon reflection on myself and on the stories of those who shared their stories with me, I feel like majority of us we are struggling with the concept of “Self worth” and this is quite sad to be honest!
The thing in common between us is our childhood and upbringing. While none of us had the exact same story or the same type of parents, however, what we all have in common is that we were never really taught what our self worth is.
Our physical appearance on the days we looked good was never commented on to make us feel good about how we look, or not even on the days that we looked good, what about teaching us how we should love and accept ourselves exactly as we are! with all of our unique quirks.
My parents rarely commented on the positives, but never missed a beat to mention if I ever gained few KG’s extra.
How about celebrating our smallest achievements or our little hobbies.
I remember when I was a kid I liked drawing things and I used to do the names of my friends in Graffiti style, my friends used to love it! some of them actually hanged that paper in their rooms, and I remember calling my mom to my room to show her how I’ve done my name, she took the paper, looked at it, said “yes, nice” in the most robotic way and left.
How silly does that encounter sounds? but is it really silly? clearly it’s not since I’m 31 and I remember it.
How about asking us what we love? I don’t think my parents ever asked me what I love, like what do I love doing for a living, what do I love to do in my spare time.
Even when I spoke about it without being asked, it was always brushed away as if it’s nothing.
The only focus was always studying and exam scores, that as a grown up these didn’t equal to shit! all of my school grades or even my university degree didn’t equal to shit in real life! it was just a paper I only used to get my visa in UAE, that’s it! that’s the use of it! and even that visa I could’ve gotten without it.
So the Arab parents focus on the only thing that matters the least in life.
If we spend a minimum of 18 years (more than half of my life so far) where the maximum exposure is to our families in an environment where nothing about us was ever acknowledged as anything important, it’s no wonder that me or alot of those around me are struggling with self worth.
And for many reading this they’ll think and say oh I don’t struggle with self-worth, I know exactly what my worth is!….mmm really?
**On the day that you look really nice, and you see yourself clearly looking nice, if no body acknowledged that during the day, and that made you feel bad about yourself.**You struggle with self-worth.
When a junior at work points out something you’ve done wrong and instead of admitting your fault and taking ownership, you become defensive.
You struggle with self-worth.
**When you make so much effort to post something on social media to show others how amazing your life is, even when that’s not your true reality.**You struggle with self-worth.
**When someone gives you a genuine compliment and instead of accepting it, you start brushing it off and say things that busts that compliment.**You struggle with self-worth.
When you reach a high position that you worked so hard for and everyone arounds you at work can see how valuable you are, and yet inside of you, you always question if you are really capable of that position.
You struggle with self-worth.
**If you let your ego drive you, and you hide behind a fake facade that shows you as strong and invincible instead of showing your true self as you are afraid that your true nature won’t be accepted or appreciated.**You struggle with self-worth.
I can go on for days and days and the list will never end, the way I see it, unless the child was brought up in an environment where they were given unconditional love, they’ll end up having self worth issues.
And what’s even sadder is parents actually think and claim that they love their kids unconditionally as a given, when the reality couldn’t be farther than the truth.
Would your parents be proud of you even if you decided to drop school and become, I don’t know a street performer?
Would your parents still celebrate you, if you bring to them a person who you decided to be your life partner, and that person doesn’t match anything of what your parents want but that person is everything that you think is right for you?
Would your parents still be proud of you and accept you, if you tell them about your sexuality?
Would you parents have your back when their society doesn’t approve of you for whatever reason? or would they hide who you truly are as they are too embarassed that you broke the society norms.
Unconditional love is not a given right at birth, regardless if this is what most parents my generation say about their kids “Ofcourse I love them unconditionally!!!” only for me to say only one scenario of the above, and their face instantly changes and they say….well yeah god forbid that never happens!
Yeah…sure…unconditional love my ass :)
If we go back to reflect on “how others made us feel”, we realize that they made us feel like shit! because we never really believed that we deserve anything other than shit!
We lowered our standards because we were never shown how high the standards should be.
We accepted so much hurt, humiliation and abuse because we were too afraid of abandonment, believing that we will never get anything better than this.
We bargained on our values for them because we were never really told how our values are something core in our being and should never be compromised.
We hid who we truly are because every time we showed a part that really reflected us truly, it was attacked! questioned or frowned upon, so we opted in for a safe bland persona.
I can’t go back and change my childhood and upbringing, I can’t ask my parents to love me unconditionally and it’s too late for them teach me about my self worth.
But what I can do now as an adult, is to at least learn from my previous life experiences and to not let them pass without a lesson of knowing where did I go wrong? and here I don’t really mean where did I go wrong with them.
No. I mean where did I go wrong with myself.
And I actually already made major progress with that when it comes to friendships, I now have very high standards of who can be my closest friends, but prior to that, I allowed many to come close who weren't even worthy.
Now I ask myself how do they make me feel? can I be my true self with them? how do we recover from fights? do we contribute to each others growth? are we accepting of each others faults and we give each other patience and grace? would they celebrate my successes as I celebrate theirs?
And I’m very happy and content with where I am when it comes to friends, and there are some slight progress on the family aspect, well atleast boundaries are now more strictly put in place.
The only one left is “Relationships” and that is something at the moment I don’t have an answer for, will I act as I’ve always acted before? will I accept the same that I did before? or have I learned and changed? that I don’t know yet.
But what I know is, that now I’ll not be too attached on how I feel about them, but rather on how do they make me feel.
