Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Sky High: The Air of Independence, It’s Benefits, and It’s Detriments

The empowering philosophy that you can create your own reality, and that you can live happily regardless of your surroundings... are both ideas that can be immensely beneficial. I would say that to an extent, we all need this self-empowered momentum to feel an understanding of the positive states we want in life. When we feel empowered in ourselves, we feel ready to take on the world, able to deal with the stresses in life, more objective, and confident in the steps we take. We begin to understand, "Wow, I really do have the power to influence how I feel and interact in the world because I can be a strong, independent individual." We do not feel powerless to our emotions, and life feels lighter and easier.

It feels amazing to people who've felt helpless, powerless, or anxious to perceive oneself grounded enough to be an individual and positively focusing in an independent atmosphere. You feel the ability to care about yourself more than anyone, and even the ability to stop caring what people think. It is a positive momentum...

...to an extent.

Why do I say this? I can attest to both the benefits and detriments of the positive focused, independent, "everything you need is inside you" philosophy. This is because I can see the very reason anyone is drawn to this philosophy. Anyone who's turned to these empowering philosophies did not have anyone else there to offer them the love, connection, security, and care they so badly needed in their life.... that they decided to become everything for themselves. We felt so helpless and powerless to trusting others, cultivating connection, and finding understanding that we decided the only way we could obtain those things was by becoming empowered enough in ourselves.

This is where positive focus and empowered independence can become a true issue. It feels so good to be empowered, that why would anyone ever look back? Why deal with negative emotion when you can create something better, or just focus better in the situation you're in?

Focused Quotes. QuotesGram

We are human and naturally want to feel good. When a philosophy provides that for us, we can resort to it as a way of being.

Because it feels good, positive focus can convince us that it is the way we should live our life, in every second, every interaction...

It is dangerous in this way, because at some point, positive focus can be used to ignore real issues in your life, real traumas, and go into denial. Taken too far, it can blind us from the traumas we have and truly addressing them. It can blind us from changes we need to make. It can blind us from feelings we need to accept and understand. We mistake positive focus for loving ourselves, when a huge part of loving ourselves is acknowledging the totality of who we are and what we feel.

Because we cannot acknowledge the realities within ourselves, we also don't fully recognize or validate them in others. We become insensitive, because we had to do so with ourselves since no one else was willing to be sensitive or empathetic with us. We lose the ability to see, feel into, and understand other people... desperately wanting it for ourselves on some level, too. Or, we try to obtain connection by becoming people-pleasers, trying to be good so people like us, doing what we've learned was acceptable or right to guarantee connection in any way we can. We abandoned ourselves at some point. Deep down, the person trapped in the "positive focus loop" is really afraid. Afraid of their own emotions, and fear of other people's emotions because we experienced boundary violations whether it was through neglect, enmeshment, withdrawal, or invalidation. We don't trust others with ourselves, and we don't trust ourselves with others because we never could. This causes a huge rift between us and other people. We feel worlds apart from them. It is an epidemic.

What happens? At some point you can focus as positively all you want, but it does not take away from the other realities of who you are. Many people experience a reality crash because of this. Being that so many of us were driven to these philosophies from lack, we still experience the helplessness, powerlessness.... and it is the helplessness and powerlessness of feeling completely alone in our realities. Isolated.

What's more? Since who we are is reflected in our life, we will continue to create these isolating experiences and lack of connection through the people we interact with, the places we live, where we work, etc. It looks like everyone around you having a connection that you don't, even though they may not be deeply connected either. We see the lack of understanding and connection mirrored by people in our reality who are not ready for the depth of it.

The loneliness epidemic: We're more connected than ever ...



You can use positive focus as a means of loving yourself in a way that you can become more embracing to your total self, but some of us continue down the positive focus train without turning back our hand to our wounds. This manifested in my own life by learning how to do everything for myself. Traumas and a lack of secure connection or attachment led to an "air of independence" where I came to rely on myself in many ways that I could not on others. You learn to do almost everything yourself, and because of that... in a very beautiful way, you can change your life. But, at some point you learn that independent self-sufficiency is not the end-goal. You learn that it's important to address your deeper emotions of fear, anger, helplessness, powerlessness, loss, grief... And, as a result, you learn the innate connection between you and other people. You learn that all humans struggle with the same things, and there is a profound compassion for humanity, which includes you.

To give good news, if you are feeling and understanding this rift between you and others, it means you are on the horizon of deeper self-understanding, awakening, and connection with yourself that will soon be mirrored back to you. Right now, you may be looking at the evidence, manifestation, or reflection of your previous self that had not developed this awareness in the people, places, or things which which you interact. The gates of awakening are often suffering. It may be a rocky road as it requires confronting what prevents you from being present with, holding space for, and accepting emotions within yourself and others. And the opposite... trusting others with yourself. But one thing is certain:

Finding your way back to the security and trust of connection will lead to warm acceptance, understanding, fluidity, freedom, inspiration, and many other things.

The time has come for some of us in the self-help movement to stop relying solely on ourselves, positive focus, and self-sufficiency. Although beneficial to an extent, in excess we block ourselves from our deeper feelings, truths, and realities. And it is by allowing these aspects of ourselves to exist, be heard, and understood, that we foster true connection with ourselves and others. When we unite the truths of who we are, we know the answers right for us. We know the changes we need to make. We feel ourselves within others, and others within ourselves. We ultimately do not connect with people over similar interests, styles, or appearances... but because we are able to take them as a part of ourselves and love them as ourselves. Love is beyond reason. Connection is felt, and felt connection involves emotional acceptance and understanding. The time has come not for dependence or independence... but interdependence.

Healing for a Broken Heart: Connection not Perfection

We feel like water when the love has thawed the frozen ice of fear. This is heartfelt connection. This is compassion.

I sense much more on this topic to come.

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