This is such a very, very simple concept, but this has been a huge epiphany for me.
So, you find a beautiful seashell. And you are so excited because it’s the most beautiful seashell you’ve ever seen. Naturally, you run to your parent/friend/whoever and say “ohmigosh, look at this shell!” and how they respond will either keep you excited, or make you want to stop looking for shells.
Parents are your first mirror. They show you who you are. They help you regulate your emotions. You go to them upset, happy or any number of emotional states and they are supposed to teach you about that emotion based on who you are. In theory, they also like you and want to do this.
But if every time you went to that parent, they made you feel like a burden, like you were annoying them, wasting their time, that everything else was more important than you, it sets a tone. It teaches you that how you are feeling is wrong. You are wrong. So, you might try to change that feeling. Change your reaction. Stop being excited for stupid things etc.
Make that child extra super duper sensitive and it makes everything worse.
So, upon waking today, my brain distilled my relationships down to this concept. I had a bucket of seashells I was excited about, and one by one I was holding them up. The people who cared about me even a little bit were also happy to see the seashell, the ones who didn’t care turned away from the seashell.
It’s a metaphor. Not the best one, but it’s there.
So, if you sort of hate yourself or you were taught to hate yourself, you might gravitate towards the people who hate your seashells. If they like them then they must be wrong, since you are wrong.
Does that make sense?
I think healthy people will read this and their eyes will get huge and they’ll exit at this point. I know, I know… you wouldn’t have let this happen. You’re awesome. Thank you for staying this long.
But for the ones of us who had parents that wanted to drop kick us into the next zip code for existing… we get this. We wanted them to like our seashells so bad.
And this is so so simple. I don’t know why I didn’t see it this simply before.
But just imagine… every time you went to someone and you were upset, truly upset about a legit issue… and they turned away from you every single time? That’s abuse. Or call it something else if all you see is a black eye when you hear the word “abuse”. Extreme neglect. Control by disengaging. Diminishing your needs for their comfort. In other words? They don’t really care about you, let alone your seashells.
Or the opposite side. You go to them so happy, so joyful about something. And they also turn away, tell you that your joy is stupid, unwarranted or childlike. That’s also abuse. It’s the opposite of connection and it’s the opposite of someone liking you and it’s someone who is trying to control you by invalidating you, invalidating your joy.
I know… Most of you will say this is 1st grade spelling for dummies. But for those of us who were pushed aside, ignored, told they were a burden and/or our parents were chronically annoyed (depressed, alcoholic etc) this is a very very basic concept that is hard to grasp.
Because we would keep trying to show our parents those seashells, thousands of times, hoping their reaction would change.
In a nutshell, your seashells matter.
So, starting today I will stop looking in someone else’s mirror to validate myself. It’s their reflection, not mine.
