The Art of Staying
What happens when you hide from yourself?
It's easy to conceptualize and understand what hiding from others looks like, but sometimes we feel unseen because we are hiding from ourselves.
What happens when you hide from yourself?
It's easy to conceptualize and understand what hiding from others looks like, but sometimes we feel unseen because we are hiding from ourselves.
We run from the truths we know deep down inside.
We close our eyes to our true needs, desires, and stories.
We hide our shame and tuck away our pain.
This is how we self-abandon. This is how we self-neglect. And, this is another way we stay safe.
We shut down and close our eyes to ourselves in order to protect ourselves from pain. Abandonment and neglect are often powerful words that carry a lot of pain, associated with parents or caregivers who let us down. Yet, even these behaviors are honest humanly mistakes performed by humans without enough capacity and resources…even when we “do it to ourselves.”
In a lot of ways, leaving ourselves was how we survived.
When the shame is too much to bear, we shut down.
When the threat of rejection is too high, we fawn and people-please.
When there's a choice between belonging and self-care, we may choose the relationship over everything.
I hope you offer deep grace to yourself as you realize that you didn't give up on yourself because you were lazy, you preserved the sense of self you needed to function. You didn't settle for less because it's what you want, you didn't have capacity to tolerate the emptiness we must face before we arrive at what we deserve.
And, we can learn to do differently. We can build up the emotional muscle to change. We can shift our reactions from running from ourselves, to stay.
We can remain in our bodies even when we're anxious.
We can choose our needs even when they feel at odds with the needs of others.
We can learn to see the best in ourselves even when it's tempting to give up.
I hope you give the Art of Staying a chance.
I hope you take a chance to try being, grounding, remaining, existing in the truth of you, and see what life can feel like when you build up the capacity to show up for you.
listen to ep. 14: THE ART OF STAYING
This week on the podcast, we talk about practical ways you can begin the practice of Staying. I hope that as you write your goals for the year, that you remember what you truly desire and open up to doing things in a new way. Feel free to share your goals with me. I'd love to read how you are doing the work of seeing and loving yourself.
Learn more about on episode 14: the art of staying on the podcast now.
