Seems like life will send us lesson after lesson until we truly learn to choose ourselves. We cannot build deep and lasting connections with people who cannot meet the deep parts of themselves.
People can be aware of their trauma, people can know their attachment style, people can speak to the ways in which they are damaged. But that is not the same thing as being able to truly show up differently. This is where we have to look at peoples actions more than their words.
Someone can seem emotionally available, but when things get difficult or uncomfortable, or they have to face themselves in a negative light, they run and can’t do the work.
I’ve worked with so many clients lately who are struggling in unhealthy relationships. Whether that is friendships, marriages or dating relationships, we have to be able to look at the writing on the wall in front of us even when we care about people so much.
Choosing a life of chaos and unpredictability because someone else won’t do their work in therapy is not a life that is worth choosing. We have to face our own attachment fears and be willing to be alone and walk away in order for healed people to come into our lives.
I know at times it can feel like, but where are these people? Do they even exist? And I don’t have an easy answer for that. I do think there are way more unhealed people running around outsourcing their work on others.
That could look like— If I tell you all the ways that I struggle then maybe you will have compassion for me and you’ll help make up that work for me. When I fail you, you will have empathy for me because I’ve told you that I’m broken. That’s not the same thing as being accountable for your own work.
We have to be careful about having empathy for people that have awareness, but haven’t healed. Those are dangerous situations which we will be tempted in all of our goodness to help pick up the pieces for them each time they fall short at the cost of our own peace of mind. And at the cost of the love that we truly deserve. We are only enabling them and abandoning ourselves in a subtle way. Do not care about someone’s wounds more than your own mental health.
