Navigating The World

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Fair Warning:

This post is not designed to inspire or serve as a resource to others - this is therapeutic, purgative writing at its finest.

Once again I have been reminded about how accurate my intuition is.  When I made a faux pas at work yesterday I felt mortified.  I tried as best as I could to address my error thereafter.  I couldn’t think of any way to be more conciliatory in my actions during the remainder of the day.  I left work hoping that my error would not cost me my job.  But my intuition was telling me I had made a major mistake and it might have cost me my job.

Today I learned that my intuition was correct.  So now here I am back at square one…again.  I am tired of living in a world that sometimes feels incredibly unforgiving.  And some days I am especially tired of living in this world because I feel that I have nonetheless been quite retiring, flexible and kind…even with people whose conduct did not merit such a gentle, magnanimous approach.  When I experience disappointments like what I experienced today I feel very inclined to hide from the world for a period of time as a means of coping.  I have experienced enough unjust treatment in the world (abuse as a kid) to last me a lifetime.  I do not need nor desire to be at the receiving end of the unkindness of both strangers and those I call friends, acquaintances or otherwise.

So today I get to go home and yet again cope with the unfortunate reality that I do not have a family of origin I can go to when my shoulders feel weighed down by the demands and stress of the world.  It’s an all too familiar feeling.  This reality was my life reality for much of my childhood.  Abuse, neglect and deceit caused me a lot of harm.  The legacy of that early time in my life still acts something like an undertow of water that an undiscerning diver might get caught in near close to shore.  I have worked with great diligence to overcome how the harm in my early history distorted my view of the world around me.  I walked away…far away…from my family of origin because I have come to conclude they are fundamentally incapable of or unwilling (or both?) to truly listen to me. 

I want the people I include in my life to actually listen to and care about me.  I want their actions and their words to align.  I have met enough people whose words and actions do not align.  I have become quite astute at recognizing such people.  Indeed, I am so good at it now that a red flag will usually rise up in my mind if I sense I am in the company of a person who lacks integrity.  I just still need to learn how to attentively pay attention to my intuition.

For the remainder of this day I am setting one and only one goal for myself.  My goal is to decompress, feel better and refrain from engaging in the very unhealthy behavior of engaging in catastrophic thinking.  I have survived far worse than what this day has offered to me thus far.

…….

I’m on my way home from a session with my therapist.  I was at least fortunate to have scheduled a session with him today.  I had no idea how much I would need it.  I basically spent the majority of it speaking about what happened in the last week.  My eyes misted up a bit but not as much as earlier in the day shortly after my day at the Foundation ended.

My therapist expressed sympathy for my sentiment that the communication that occurred within my work environment could have been better.  I spoke at length about how the experience of losing my job re-triggered old memories and associated thoughts and feelings from my childhood.  As I noted above I didn’t really feel I had anyone all that available to me to fulfill my needs when I was a kid.  My father was emotionally aloof and I didn’t have a stable mother who played an immediate role in my life.  I felt isolated and lonely.  Such experience over a protracted period of time is not healthy.  And it’s especially not healthy for a child to experience.  Sometimes I feel as if I am going to be ‘attending’ to the harm such loneliness caused me for a very large part of my adult life.  But then again I recognize I am not in the best frame of mind at the moment.  The reality of the goodness of my life will undoubtedly appear more clearly to me when I awaken tomorrow.

I suppose what disappoints me most about the loss of my current role is the fact that I was really enjoying the opportunity to further develop my skills in the arena of relationship cultivation.  Working for a major foundation was an excellent opportunity for me to further hone such skills.

As the light of day wanes away and night arrives within a few hours I am going to do my best to maintain a detached perspective about the developments of today.  For all I know a much better opportunity might enter my life as soon as tomorrow.  I think a true freedom for the mind comes when, at the end of each day, we release all that we experienced of the day, both the joy and the pain, and go to sleep knowing that tomorrow (when it arrives) will offer us yet another chance to create anew.