Facebook is one of those places where people pour their heart out about who’s wronged them. It’s a venting space and, whether you agree with that or not, we are pack animals and we like to feel the justification of agreement from other people that our annoyance is right. We know deep inside that the only path to real healing is to get to the real truth. The thing is, people don’t give you the real truth, because that kind of truth is scary and often leads the loving truth-teller to be rejected.
We all have fears – being rejected, not being seen, feelings of not being good enough. Most of us carry enough shame to sink a battleship. When our pain is triggered we want to understand, and ‘get to the bottom of’ the problem in order to have healing. As I said, we know that the path to healing is honesty. Yet the first thing we do when someone pushes those pain buttons is get angry.
When someone treads all over our deepest fears about ourselves we freak out, as the evidence from that person in the outside world indicates that it might just be true. We know when people stand on our insecurities because we react the most. If it wasn’t an insecurity we wouldn’t care. And, sometimes people do push our buttons when they see a reaction.
Like a dog wanting to bite the toy more when it squeaks.
Every single person has the right not to like you. You’re not entitled to have the world like you. We tend to think that if we have an area of pain, for example, abandonment issues, then people are not allowed to abandon us. So, when they do, we rant about it on Facebook as if we are entitled to slip along freely on the river of life and not hit a few rocks.
When people react, we try to find the thing inside of us to change, so we can heal and stop that pain happening again. We look for the truth. We know that there is no healing when there are lies, and so we look for the truth in ourselves to fix what we think is wrong with us. The thing is, it’s impossible to make everyone like you, so by trying to fix yourself to fit in with everyone else you will just hurt yourself more.
Some people live as if they have a sense of superiority. It doesn’t matter how perfect you make yourself. What you need to become good at is allowing them to be shit bags, knowing that they have every right not to like you and you have every right not to give a toss. But, you don’t have the right to try to make them like you, and then get angry when they don’t.
The more we feel in pain, the more we think people must make accommodation for us and our pain. The only path to healing is to be deep down honest with ourselves. What we are really doing when we are bitching on facebook, is seeking healing. The only route to healing is to be honest, but we often want that honesty from other people. We want them to tell us, what is it about me that I need to change in order to be liked by you? There’s no honesty there. They can’t be honest because they only have a perception of you. None of their opinions about you count. They only have their life experience to go on, not yours. Honesty is when you say, ‘this triggers me, it sucks and I hate it, and I love myself anyway. I don’t need to fix or change, I need to accept’. The people who receive love are the people who believe they deserve it. The people who have a fear of being abandoned alone and distant end up just like that. If you believe you deserve love and you can start by loving yourself first, you’ll overcome your triggers much faster than trying to change.
