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Being Comfortable In My Own Skin

Sharon Hayes — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 09:03:11 +0000

For many reasons, this has been a tumultuous year for me. It’s been a huge year of personal growth. I feel I’ve made incredible progress. I’ve had some huge epiphanies recently and I wanted to share them here:

On Letting Go

If I’m actively thinking about how I am letting go of something or allowing the subject I am letting go of occupy any part of my brain space, that means I haven’t let go. I have let go when it’s no longer something that takes any part of my conscious or subconscious thought.

An analogy: Imagine you have a sore back. You tell people for weeks about this sore back. Your back gets better. Eventually you forget you had a sore back. Then you see someone you haven’t seen in a while and they ask how your back is doing. It may have been days or weeks since you thought about it. You can smile and simply say the sore back is better. New topic and the sore back is forgotten until someone else mentions it or your back becomes sore again.

On Acceptance

I’ve come to realize that a lot of my issues with people have been centered around one or both of us feeling a need to change something in the other or pointing out the flaws or feeling an expectation to change the flaws for the sake of the other person. I doubt I’m alone in this. But I’ve had a mind shift lately. I’ve come to realize the world is a beautiful place because we are all different people and we’re all flawed in our own unique and beautiful ways. The best relationships I have with others are ones where we simply accept each other as we are. These are the types of relationships I want to focus on.

On Being Alone

Whenever I’ve been involved in a heavy relationship, I’ve always felt a need to back up and get some personal space. So much brain space was devoted to all the “alone” things I missed being able to do. Rather than feeling miserable about my current situation, I’m actually enjoying it and the freedom I have. I can read until 5 am with the light on if I want. I can go to bed and get up when I want. I can eat my meals when I want and eat what I want.

Sticks and Stones

I am happy and proud of who I am as a person. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to like me. There’s no need for everyone to like me. I will not sacrifice my personal integrity in an effort to get others to like me. I don’t buy into the idea of keeping friends close and enemies closer. That’s not how I roll. I’m not in high school.

Taking Action

Although I need to know in my head where I am going, I don’t need to have a clear picture of exactly how things should look before I start to take action. I don’t need to have all the information before I make decisions. The old me used to be able to make decisions and take action very quickly. The old me based decisions purely on logic. The new me is balancing logic and emotion in decision making. Bringing emotions in doesn’t need to slow me down. I’ve learned that my gut instinct is right 99% of the time and I have to trust it.

Damaged vs Toxic People

The older I get, the more I realize most people are damaged in some way. It’s inevitable that almost everyone has had at least some shitty time in their life – most of us many shitty times. For some people, the bad experiences help them grow into better and stronger people. Unfortunately some people just end up damaged to such a degree that they end up being toxic to those who get too close to them. Being able to recognize the difference between someone simply damaged and someone toxic is something I need to work on – but at least I am aware of the difference now.

Where To Focus Energy

A few months back, I hit a very rough patch. I lost some major clients going into my slow period. Not through fault on my side but because of the general economic situation. I had serious overhead and no easy way to scale back immediately. Although not a long-term issue, it represented a serious short-term one. I did what I could in the short-term to deal. But I also used up a lot of energy worrying and stressing over the situation. The misplacement of energy likely made the situation much worst than it had to be. Many bills got paid late. Payroll got behind. Vendor payments too. I’d never had this happen to me before. Some tough times, yes. But nothing ever to this extent. Given the money my businesses gross, it was almost ludicrous that it could have even happened to begin with. But it did. The strange thing is – the world kept on going. Nothing fell out of the sky and landed on me. I survived. But the bounce back would have been so much easier if I’d not worried, not lost sleep, not stressed over the situation. If I just focused on doing what I needed to. If I’d put my energy into fixing things rather than wasting it senselessly. I now know that stressing over things isn’t going to help things. If anything, it will make the bad that much more difficult to overcome. Rough patch: I’m prepared to take you head-on should you ever decide to rear your ugly head again.

Care to share any thoughts on the above? With the end of the year steadily approaching, what have you learned?

How Friendships Are Changing

Sharon Hayes — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:46:19 +0000

The lifespan of friendships is becoming shorter and shorter over time. Just a generation ago, most people were limited to friendships based on where they currently lived, where they had lived and networks based on where they went to school, their own activities and interests, their children, their neighbors, etc. Very often people maintained friendships over their entire life not because they even necessarily liked the person but because of shared history – similar to how many view family members.

The growth of the Internet has changed the dynamic of friendships – how we find new friends, how we cultivate new friendships, how we maintain and stay in contact with existing friends. We’re no longer limited by geography when it comes to meeting new people. It’s much easier today to find people who share common interests that we can bond with.

What many look for today in friendships has also changed. Life has become sped up. Things are becoming increasingly specialized. For many of us, it’s a natural that we’ll develop friendships – offline and on – more tied in with our interests than our backgrounds.

I had an email exchange with Jane, someone who has been an off and on friend for over 25 years. She wrote:

“I have friends I’ve made online who I’ve known only a few months who I know more about than friends I’ve had offline for 20 years. I mean I know more about how they feel and think about different topics.

Look at you and me for example. We’ve known each other since high school. But I don’t know what music you are listening to these days. I don’t know who you voted for in the last federal election. I don’t even know if you voted. I don’t know what makes you happy these days. I don’t know what your dreams are and where you see your life in 5 or 10 years from now.”

I know exactly what Jane meant. In our case, we rarely communicate with each other online. We see each other every few months maybe. Generally when we do, we’re “doing things” where getting into deep discussions isn’t really a possibility. Our exchanges are about surface things. How her kids and husband are doing. Where I’ve been traveling to and what is happening with me in business. The polite chit-chat that doesn’t exactly stimulate deep discussions. Jane and I have agreed that the reason why we even remain friends is because of our history.

Tammy is another long-term friend of mine. Staying in touch online, having more frequent telephone calls, etc has helped us move our friendship over the past couple of years to a much deeper one than we had before. Like with Jane, Tammy and I don’t really have a lot in common but we do have the desire to maintain a long-term friendship based on mutual trust and are willing to work at it.

Thinking about my friendships with Jane and Tammy versus online friendships that have come and gone or stayed… got me to thinking about the fluidity of friendships today. Humans, by our very nature, are not solitary creatures. Friendships and relationships provide us with comfort. But if the lifespan of friendships is getting shorter and shorter, is that having any kind of impact on our psychological well-being? Our experience predicates how we behave in various situations. Will we become less inclined to fully share and trust if we question the longevity of a friendship? Will this just perpetuate shallow relationships with others? Our lives today are becoming increasingly uncertain on all levels – marriage, work/profession, where we live, etc. Are we now starting to lose the security blanket of long-term friendships too?

Would love if you could share your own experiences and thoughts in the comments.

Letting Go

Sharon Hayes — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:47:23 +0000

Writing my last blog post required a huge amount of energy. Once it was done, I felt empowered. What helped more was reading the comments, the DMs, the IM’s, the emails and the tweets I have received since writing it. I knew before writing it that we all put up walls to some degree. I knew that most of us also wear masks – rarely truly letting people in to see who we really are. But the validation – actually knowing I wasn’t alone in how I was feeling and that I wasn’t alone from a friendship point of view – greatly contributed to the emotional strength I now possess.

In my last blog post, I made it seem like there were only 2 ways to deal with emotional burdens: trying to decipher things or burying them. A couple of conversations with good friends reminded me there is a 3rd – and much healthier way – simply learning when to truly let go.

I’ve already shared that I have trouble dealing with emotional things. It’s difficult enough to figure out why I feel the way I do, never mind taking into account someone else’s emotions and the reasons they feel and do the things they do. You can analyze what it was about you that caused them to feel or do whatever it is that they felt or did and find yourself going nowhere but crazy. The truth of the matter is, it is often nothing about you, but entirely about the other person.

If you separate out from the situation what is/was under your control from them, sometimes you’ll find there were things you could have done differently. You can choose to take personal responsibility for those behaviors and emotions then chalk it up to – sometimes a painful – learning experience and then let go of the rest.

Perhaps because I’m a strong person I have always had an issue with truly letting go. I equated letting go with a sign of weakness. But, really, is it? By not letting go – and releasing whatever emotions you attach to a situation or a person – you are giving it more power. Holding onto things, trying to sort through things that often have no answer in logic, is actually weakness is it not?

There are a number of things I’ve written/tweeted relating to this over the course of this year. I think at some level, I knew what I should be doing from a logical standpoint; I just needed the emotional side to catch up. Here is one of those tweets:

“Truly letting go of something can not only change your mindset but it can change your life.”

Many years ago, I was in a place where I had let myself start to feel. At the time, I was in a relationship that was troubling. It was someone I was very close with who had, in my opinion, taken on a bad behavioral pattern of saying and doing things to intentionally cause pain. I confronted him about it – saying we either had to end our friendship or things had to change. His response to me was: “I do not do things to hurt you. It’s how you choose to respond that causes the pain you feel.” I felt he was being cruel by not making an effort to understand why I was hurt. In retrospect, I realize he was right. He was at a very bad place in his life. I let his words and actions hurt me. In doing so, I gave up personal power. I walked away from what had been a very good friendship because I let something that wasn’t at all about me/our relationship but relating to other things he was going through impact how I felt.

With serious prompting from one of my friends, I realized it was time to take my own advice. In 3 specific circumstances that were bothering me – emotional baggage if you will – I decided not only to let go, but to take personal responsibility for that which was mine and to also tell the people. I received closure in doing so. After all, isn’t a lack of closure one of the major reasons we have pain from many situations? The ball was in their court for how they chose to respond, if they responded at all.

My state of mind was not at a place where I actually had let go before writing/sending the emails. But through the process of getting it out there, I had a mindshift. I also now have my personal power back. I’ve let situations that were draining me on some level make the shift to being learning experiences.

This isn’t about putting walls up. This isn’t about stopping myself from feeling. It’s about recognizing that sometimes – no matter how we feel, what we did, what damages were done – the only thing we can change is how we choose to react and when we’ve decided we’ve given up enough on an emotional level to something or someone.

Putting Up Walls

Sharon Hayes — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 02:26:11 +0000

As I write this, I feel crushed and drained.

For several months, I’ve wanted to start this blog. I’ve felt the need to have some outlet where I could express “stuff” that has been going on inside of me. Countless times, I’ve found myself staring at the WordPress editing box. Sometimes as many as a dozen sentences will actually get typed. Then I end up backing up when I realize that I’m simply not comfortable putting myself out there to the extent that I feel the need to. A few days ago, the reason why I was having this difficulty clicked. Ironically, it is the reason why I wanted to start this blog to begin with. I’ve lived most of my life putting up walls. No, this isn’t uncommon. I suspect to some extent everyone does it. But I’m not so certain if the way I handle things is normal.

I’ve lived most of my life on the surface. I had some really bad things happen when I was young. That combined with an incredibly difficult relationship with my mother resulted in two things: recurring issues with eating disorders and letting myself live a surface happiness to avoid dealing with massive pain inside.

Most people put up walls of varying kinds. There’s the public me – who is sociable, outgoing, fun-loving, confident and not afraid to express herself. That is who I want to be. But bubbling beneath the surface is a completely different person. Someone that never really dealt with issues that should have been dealt with..who goes through this continual cycle of feeling the need to deal with it then realizing the best way to deal is just to avoid. I rationalize it away by saying you can’t undo the past. I’m not into psychological mumbo-jumbo.

On September 11th, it will be 10 years since my mother died. More than an anniversary of a loss of a person, I identify with it as the anniversary of a loss of the ability to get closure on some very difficult things. After she died, I had to take care of my dad. He moved in with me not long after and had started to have health issues of his own.

I think it took probably a year for me to realize the pain associated with my mother’s death. I was too busy making sure my father was okay to deal with my own emotional issues. For the second time in my life, I wasn’t able to cope on an emotional level. I couldn’t block out what I was dealing with. I decided it was time to get professional help. (Note: the only time in my life I’d ever seen any kind of therapist was when I was very young because of my purported “genius” level IQ and concern by educators that I wasn’t maximizing my abilities.)

I went to see one psychologist. Since I was never one to talk about the things going on inside me, never mind doing so with a stranger, it was very difficult to get started. Once I did, everything just started coming out. He didn’t say very much during the session. At the end of it, he said to me he didn’t feel I needed therapy. He thought what I needed was to get pregnant and start my own family. In his words: to create my own happiness to replace the bad. Say what? Needless to say this left me more than slightly disenchanted with the idea of seeing a therapist.

One of my good friends is a counselor. Although she knows a lot of what I’ve dealt with, in spite of our friendship, I’ve never been able to let her in the full way. Around 6 months after the failed session with the psychologist, she encouraged me to see someone else. She suggested it was failure on the part of the psychologist and at the very least, I could benefit from talking with a professional.

I saw my GP and talked to him. I wanted a referral to a psychiatrist. I felt myself slowly becoming unhinged. My GP’s initial solution was to put me on anti-depressants. He said he didn’t feel I needed them. He said I seemed like an incredibly strong person. I had the prescription filled, but never took one.

I saw the psychiatrist. I went through a couple of questionnaires. Diagnosis: perfectly “normal.” After a brief discussion, he said most people would not have been able to cope with some of the things I have. Ergo, I am a strong person.

Just over a year ago, I decided to give a distance therapist a try. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find someone that I thought would be a good fit. The initial session went well. She had me do some follow-up work on my own. But instead of dealing with the emotional baggage inside of me, her focus in the next session was on helping me formulate a plan to change the exterior. I tried to explain to her – the reason everyone thinks I am strong is because the exterior seems to be mostly together. It’s the inside that is having issues. I was frustrated. I saw we weren’t going to get anywhere so that was my last session.

I’ve worked hard lately at trying to let people in. There are probably a few dozen people that know bits and pieces. There are fewer than 10 that know more. Taking the walls down that I’ve worked so hard at putting up hasn’t been easy. I’m used to being the person there for people. I’m not used to letting others even get a glimpse of what is inside. It’s difficult. I am someone that thrives on logic. The cut and dry answers to things. But the minute emotional stuff comes up or I let myself open up, it becomes very difficult. People feel selectively “safe” for me. This isn’t a reflection on them as individuals but more about me. When you open up to someone, when you let the walls come down, along with it come expectations. I’ve always had a difficult time asking for what I need from people. This is part of what I struggle with. When expectations aren’t met from someone you’ve taken the walls down for, how do you react?

Part of me desperately wants to go back to the old me – the person that was fully functional on the outside, where I just didn’t think so damn much and over-analyze every relationship with the people in my life. It was easier. You have no expectations of receiving or worry about how people will perceive your shared vulnerability, there is no disappointment. But the other side of me realizes that if I ever want to find true happiness, I need to get myself to the point where the exterior is a true reflection of what is inside of me. I used to think if I kept the walls up, eventually I’d get there. Now I realize that it can only happen by taking them down.