When I was younger, I found the reactivity of my loved ones a scary thing.
I was attached to them. I wanted them to be my safe place. I had no confidence in myself to feel like my own safe place and as a child I would rely on the adults in my life to help with most things.
But when a challenge arose and the going felt difficult for them a reaction was usually inevitable. Most of the time the reaction was that of anger, frustration, pure rage.
To me their reaction felt like an erupting volcano. The anger that spilled out seemed to fill the room with hot ash and fire. My safe place was no longer there. And I lacked the tools and wherewithal to put out the fire myself. I could not save my loved one and I could not save myself. We were both just dancing on flames.
Others had a different kind of edge to them, but the reactions would still feel all consuming. Ice and heavy snow would come at me from an angle. As I tried to climb out of the freezing snow, a few sharp icicles would keep me pinned in the cold. Once again, my safe place seemed to vanish, and I had no way to rectify the situation. Feeling impaled by daggers of ice I grieved the safe place I wish I could have.
Eventually, I grew older. I learned that no one could really rescue me. Although more importantly, I realized that my loved one’s reactivity were only moments in time. Underneath all the volcanic anger and icy remarks was a person expressing a feeling.
At the end of the day, that’s all we are. We are just people feeling things.
We tend to grow up convinced that we must be more for others. Or that others must be more than they are for us. We feel guilty or ashamed in our bad days. And can often push too hard and burnout on our good days.
Thus, our ego roars its ugly head even when we trip. The slightest mistake gives the ego something to chew on. Our blood starts to boil or grows cold.
Then the one part of our day that we wanted to be easy feels impossible. We feel like we failed. We feel useless and good at nothing that we become reactive.
In the heat of the moment, it’s all we feel we can do is react, to express loudly, to blame something.
Though, when the adrenaline fades and we assess the situation, we may realize that our moment of reactivity wasn’t a good look and there was probably a better way to respond.
But we’re all just people. We are people working through the unknown challenges and our big feelings all at once. We are all trying and growing in our own time.
It felt challenging to see the reactivity of my relatives, but it was a relief to understand that they are people.
I always hated being a person. I was always embarrassed of having human emotions and every mistake I made felt like a serious blemish on my character. I tried to be some kind of superwoman robot. Somehow the vulnerability that I tried to avoid seemed to leak out of me and therefore made me look twice as human as I wanted to.
While we have breath in our bodies and hearts that keep a beat, we should give ourselves some grace.
Slow down. Take things really slow.
Enjoy the moments that we are able to pause, to breathe, to take in our surroundings while remaining connected to our own well-being.
We must let ourselves and our loved ones be human.
By doing so, we save ourselves a lot of heartache and it’s the most loving thing you can do for another.