Shadow Work - Writing Prompts for Aquarians Pt. 3

 

Where am I holding myself back in life due to fear of others' judgment?

There are parts of my grief and what I've discovered as I've processed my grief over losing my parents that I don't share with people because I know a lot of those people would judge me harshly for it. Once someone has passed, it seems like everyone who loved them is suppose to put on these rosy glasses to only see the very best of the person they lost and their past interactions with them. Not everything is rosy. A lot of things are dark and ugly and still hurt long after time and death has changed everyone involved. If you express those things and are honest about the pain, then you are a bad mother/daughter/sister/friend.

I miss both of my parents and I loved and still love them dearly. Neither were perfect people though. There was some very serious psychological trauma in one of those relationships that shaped how I interacted with the world, how I thought, how I loved. Physical and emotional distance helped chip away at the wall I had built to protect myself, but the attempt to avoid further pain still affects my actions every day consciously and subconsciously. Without the constant reinforcement, it's getting better, but I still have a long journey before this rediscovery of self is complete. 

In ways I feel relieved that I am not under the burden of expectations anymore or the psychological/emotional attacks when the expectations weren't met. And that leads to survivor guilt and self deprecation. I am working to work through that. We'll see where it goes.

So, it's hard to express to someone how I feel and not feel awful for feeling it and even worse for saying it out loud. There's a huge burden that's been lifted, and there's another dragging me down. Someday I will fly. For now, I will have to settle for a bit of a float. We all float down here, right?

Shadow Work - Writing Prompts for Aquarians Pt. 2.2

 

When have I judged or held back my emotions? (Part 2)

It's weird when you have this sudden realization about something that happened years ago, and you're like, "Huh, that's why I did that!" Honestly, I hold myself back in some way every single day because I have learned it’s safer to keep some parts of myself for myself than share them and get hurt. I do it less as I get older and have slowly separated myself from the people and places that are the most toxic to me. But sometimes I catch myself falling back into old habits.

I remember being in college taking an acting class because it was required for my teaching degree and the profession getting so angry with me. We were  doing a visualization exercise where she would throw things out at us and be like, and then this happened and now this and this ... what do you do? I completed mine, and she just looked at me and said, "You wouldn't react that way. No one does." She poked at me and poked at me and demanded that I would get angry and do this or that like normal angry people do. I looked at two or three other people I knew in the class and told the professor to ask them, they know me. They all agreed with me, I was being pretty true to how I would actually react in a stressful situation.

At that point in my life, I had spent so long around an explosive parent who only got more explosive if you reacted to the instigation, that I could field most stress without any outward reaction. It was a coping mechanism for anxiety and psychological abuse. It was also a silent protest because I refused to feed the chaos by losing my composure. Losing composure was a failure/loss. I can look back and see so many instances like this over and over. I realized it on a surface level when I was about 24, and by 25 I had moved as far away as I could manage. I learned to not only disengage but to be forceful about why I was disengaging and put the ownership for the growing distance where it belonged. It got worse for a while. There were lots of, "You were never like this before. What happened to you? You used to be so soft spoken and kind." The real answer was I used to just bear it to keep the peace, and for the first time I was looking out for my peace. Improvement happened slowly over more than a decade, with a load of setbacks.

Odd how random things just make you go, wow, I'm glad I'm here and now and not then anymore.

Shadow Work - Writing Prompts for Aquarians Pt. 2

When have I judged or held back my emotions? (Part 1)

I do it all the time. I do it to protect others, and I do it as self-preservation to protect myself as well. Growing up, the society I was raised in was built on very reserved people. They didn't raise their voices in anger or joy or sadness. You received the very palest hint of emotion in public, and you saved the real thing for the privacy of your own space with no one to witness it. The women especially were expected to be soft-spoken, obedient, level-headed, genteel. There was a constant simmer of unexpressed emotion underlying so many interactions, it left me tense. It was like walking on egg shells forever. I am very good at applying the mask, soft on the outside but hard as steel and thick on the inside. No one ever saw inside. I grew to hate it. I felt so much of me was inside, hidden, that there must be something wrong with me. Why did so much of me have to be locked away. The things that made me happy were weird. The things that infuriated me didn't seem to bother anyone else. The rage and the hurt simmered for years beneath the surface. I found ways of dealing and luckily there were a few people I could be a little more me around. As time went on, I removed myself from the spiritually and mentally claustrophobic places and the toxic people. 

Shadow Work - Writing Prompts for Aquarians Pt. 1

What limiting beliefs do I feel ready to detach from?

I am ready to let go of the limiting belief that I only have value within my family if I can produce children. I am more and have always been more than a breeder of more family members. Carrying on the family name and biological footprint is not my responsibility, destiny, or obligation. I can't have children. I am the only living child of my deceased parents. I am the last of their line. I am sorry that they didn't get to have grandchildren before they passed. They would have loved them beyond measure. But, the ability to provide that experience for them was beyond my control. I feel like for many years my mother held resentment toward me for not giving her those grandchildren. That wasn't my fault. I need to let go of the mindset that lets me blame myself for her unhappiness. Her feelings about it were hers and shouldn't be allowed to reflect on me. Considering the genetic legacy I've been handed from both parents, not being able to pass those along may not be a bad thing.