If my 28 years on earth could talk… it would distill to this – the depth you experience yourself is the depth you can experience another.
I am here to give myself grace and extend that grace to others. Empathy is the art of both considering and understanding another’s emotional response, journey and present feeling. It seems to be scarce these days with the self imposed victimhood many carry around. The subconscious mind believes ‘how could I feel the emotions of another when mine matter more.’
Your emotions matter. My emotions matter. Yet when we understand that e-motions are energy in motion. We can ask ourselves what is this feeling moving off of? Is it moving in love? in fear? in greed? in guilt? in doubt? in peace? in gratitude?
A more intuitively emotional blog post this week.
Early in 2024, I swallowed a big truth pill about myself – and primarily the women in my life – that I’ve accepted the conditioning of unworthiness, victimhood and emotional co-regulation as normal to project into how I inter-relate with others. What is the cause of this? I wondered. How do I still feed into this?
This is what I came up with:
- moving off emotions rather than sitting with them first
- not pausing to let a decision marinate
- not realizing that my choices affecting the people I love in my life
- learning what love really is which is consideration
- understanding others emotions does not negate my own
- lack of acknowledgement that there can be two truths at once
The cause is a myriad of experiences, energies, programming and emulating that I picked up along the way earlier in life. But a key component is being around people who didn’t like themself – so it was hard for them to love themselves. Because of this lack of divine union with their inner self – they saught this belonging and validation from the outside world.
And naturally I found myself doing the same damn thing. I had to remind myself there is no shame + no condemnation only love and acceptance for my actions which where based on the level of consciousness I was at.
Mind you, it is still a process. I am a continuously evolving being.
What I’ve learned after living around covert narcissism
Realized that the niceness around me was actually complacency and manipulation in disguise creating an air of emotional unsafely that felt familiar and comfortable. This familiarity I fed within my own psyche and created in relationships with others.
A covert narcissist is clinically defined as someone who internalizes their self-importance while hyper-fixating on their need for attention. This creates an unsafe environment for anyone near this person to be manipulated into emotional regulation, blamed for another feelings and/or expected to reciprocate the same actions of people pleasing for the others sake.
As the oldest daughter, I often found myself in the middle between my parents and siblings. Dancing around emotions, needs and their exceptions while simultaneously neglecting my own. On a very recent phone call with my younger (middle child) sister, I finally shared this truth. I’ve had to ask myself the question .. ‘well, who holds space for me?’ The answer is my soul does and my community does – which makes up my partner, friends + now my blog guests.
I am purely speaking from my own experience, psychology research and nuance with undiagnosed persons. Learn more about this clinical disorder from a certified + trained psychologist, psychotherapist and/or psychiatrist.
The seed of manipulation is found in people pleasing, low self worth and lack of emotional awareness. This is the root of seeking the comfort of others to co-regulate our emotions. It is an unnatural process that is rooted in a survival technique one may have picked up when they were young. I definitely had and those before me as well.
In this process, I have acknowledged the unconscious conditioning of other humans as I found this to be true with myself. As an adult, it is our responsibility to notice the inconsistencies of our words and actions, the nuances of our emotions and the great lengths we may take to avoid them. This is where the opportunity to grow and learn is found – with our darkness.
Why relationships are so pivotal to our Earth experience
If we negated all relationships we diminish the opportunity for lessons and growth. People are our mirrors. They show us parts of ourselves that may be hiding – through triggers. Hiding in what we don’t accept, what we don’t allow to come to the surface and be felt. Our reaction carries the seed to more self-understanding.
It wasn’t until I attracted a man who would sit with me and hold up a mirror for me to see the gaps in my own conscious awareness. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that our relationships with other humans are the greatest gifts this life gives us. ~ The gift to know ourselves in deeper ways.
So I share this sentiment to all the authentic relationships I experience: Thank you for being one of the people who are not only attracted to my light but hold space for my darkness.
No more running from the ugly parts of myself
The spiritual community seems to avoid the notion of the shadow or the immaturity of the ego – as it seeks to eliminate this aspects entirely. But how can we truly eliminate this aspect of ourselves that is required for a 3D experience on Earth. Would we really be fully embracing life if we only experiencienced the ‘seemingly’ good parts of it. That would mean we are building a fantasy instead of cultivating the grander awareness of reality.
I used to be there at that level of consciousness. Running away from everything that didn’t feel good. anything that required accountability. anyone that expected authenticity from me. Even negating all bad things and only wanting to feel good 100% of the time. Just so that I can ‘vibrate high’ ‘only be around a high frequency’ ‘good vibes only’. This only led to the perpetuation of my own suffering.
We all came here to mind and master our own vibration. That begins by sitting with the present vibration, feelings and emotional state. In the words of my beloved buddhist teacher, Thich Naht Hanh, “Don’t just do something sit there.”
The true meaning of higher vibrations is unconditional expanded awareness. On the frequency scale, as you literally vibrate higher – your capacity + awareness of duality expands, ask Buddha, Jesus, Mother Teresa, Hanuman, Krishna and the like. The spiritual journey is not about avoiding the negative or ‘ego-defined’ bad stuff, its about acknowledgement, awareness and LOVE for it all.
Thats the journey. Albeit an astounding one. But a path towards Universal Crystalized Consciousness. The courage to say + feel, ‘All is well with my soul.’
Till the next one – Sai 🪬
