Listen to the Words

I have a friend who is facing some serious personal relationship crises. She’s a great friend and an awesome person, but she does indeed have issues. Then again, who doesn’t?? By the time you get to adulthood, if you haven’t been kicked around a bit and thus have some baggage, you haven’t really been living. But I digress.

She had a recent breakup, which was the first relationship she had after getting divorced from an abusive asshole. This new guy was not abusive, but she was lamenting the situation and she made a statement that had me asking her “why do you say that?”

Essentially, by listening to the words that she was using to describe things, I was able to ask very specific questions that helped drill past all the “I’m such a mess” junk and start really digging into the core of the lifelong pattern that we ultimately discovered in the bedrock of every single relationship with men she ever had.

When that hidden core belief was finally given a voice, she was stunned. She kept saying “this is huge”, still trying to process it. In our case, this could be done because she trusts me enough to be honest not only with me but with herself when she’s with me. Trust is what allowed her reveal this truth to herself, so that she could see it and now, finally, she stands a chance of not repeating the same painful pattern yet again. I helped her find her Story Through The Mirror.

In the end, she said she needed someone else to point out the obvious to her. I said, no, that’s not true – but being able to do it for yourself is a long road of practice, work and reflection and it suuuuuucks but it’s worth it. I then shared my Hall of Mirrors self-training with her, in which step one is about taking back all of the projections. I could help her in this way because I’ve worked with myself enough to recognize that her crap is not my crap, and vice versa. I could actually say “that’s an interesting word you used here. Why did you choose that word? Let’s explore” and not be emotionally personally impacted by her situation.

So I’m going to add, not a new step, but a new tool to the Hall of Mirrors toolbox:

Listen to the Words being Used

If I’m trying to figure out why I went crazy in this situation, I talk to myself but writing it down works just fine too. From there, I pay attention to the words and any emotionally charged word or the pivotal word in the concept is the one I need to look at. In the case above, the word was “important”. It proved to be the pivotal word on which everything else hinged. “Important” took us down the rabbit hole.

What word or words take you down your personal rabbit hole? And if you don’t yet have the emotional strength to do this, that’s ok. Even recognizing that much is big! As I told my friend, emotions are our allies and they are always trying to protect us. That’s their JOB. If I don’t think they are doing that, then I need to start paying attention. Perhaps the guidance system that the emotions are using isn’t the one I consciously want them to use. But until I have the courage to ask these questions, I’ll always be unknowingly vulnerable – and we Westerners are TERRIFIED of being vulnerable. 😉

 

About the Featured Image: This image just cracked me up when I saw it on this post. My friend was texting me and I said something that made her bark out a laugh … in the audience of a school play. After she told me, I replied “the best place to laugh is inappropriately.” Turned out, it was a play set in a funeral parlor. How … appropo.