This past week has brought up a lot of feelings for me around the experience of betrayal. I have some deep wounds and scars of betrayal scattered throughout my body and my soul. They range from people spreading lies about me to a lover cheating on me and threatening me to a lover raping me to some atrocious emotional manipulation to some spiritual betrayals as well. And you know what the saddest thing about all of that is… how common all of those things are in everyone’s life. We live in a world where manipulation, gaslighting, threats, physical and sexual assaults, and simply telling lies about someone happens every day. We live in a broken world filled with broken people doing shitty things to more broken people and the cycle continues. So few people are actually trying to heal in a world where healing is an absolute necessity for goodness to survive.
This week felt almost like a breaking point for me around all of those feelings. Feelings around past friendships and past relationships bubbled up to the surface in a way that I didn’t really understand. In my therapy session this week, I talked a little bit about random things that had been on my mind that I should work on but hadn’t yet and it was only near the end of my session that my therapist pointed out that all of the things I was mentioning were all centered on the concept of betrayal. Once she pointed it out, my head started to spin. You know those days where you’re having 8000 conversations in your head all at once with no actual progress made other than working you up even more? That was me this week. It wasn’t until I started to talk to my partner about all of my thoughts and feelings around it that the voices in my head started to quiet.
I can’t quite explain in words how lucky I feel to have a person (and especially her being my partner) that I’m able to talk to about these things who actually listens, understands, and is somehow able to help ease the anxiety around it. I didn’t fully understand or realize until this week how good it feels to have someone really in my corner, someone who has my back, and someone who would defend me against anyone who comes at me. I didn’t realize how important loyalty is to me until all of my thoughts and feelings of past betrayals were met with the strongest sense of loyalty I’ve ever felt. I don’t have to worry about my safety around her, I don’t have to worry about what lies she might be spreading about me or about her letting lies about me continue to spread, and I don’t have to worry about if what she is saying actually aligns with what she’s feeling. I’ve felt all of this about her throughout our friendship and relationship but I don’t think I fully realized and fully felt it until I was faced with it while in the space of the awareness of my deep feels around betrayal.
All week I couldn’t quite figure out how to let go of those negative feelings or how to not care about them anymore or how to just not a give a fuck in general about people who do and say shitty things and refuse to apologize for those shitty things. The thing is… I’m not wired to not care. I’m not wired to not give a fuck. I’m not wired to even really let go of those negative feelings… forgiveness isn’t my strong suit, especially when no apology has been offered or no accountability has been taken. But what I am good at is focusing on and giving energy and attention to intense feelings in my life. I’m so damn good at feeling feelings to the max and caring to the max about the things around me. So why am not putting more of my energy into caring about and feeling the loyalty of those good people in my life rather than focusing on the people of my past and the betrayals that I’ve felt. I do think that those good people are rare af but that doesn’t mean that I can’t put my heart and soul into leaning into those feelings and connections rather than all the shitty ones.
I honestly don’t think that this world has evolved to a point where we’re going to have the good outweigh the bad – there’s too much awareness around the hurt and pain and violence now. But we do live in a world where there are some damn good hearts and souls out there shining brighter than ever. We’ve all had our lights dulled, dampened, and put out by others – and, if we’re being honest, we’ve done some damage ourselves also because nobody can navigate being human without even unintentionally hurting other people along the way. All we can do is do our best to heal ourselves, be a safe place for other people to take shelter in when they need to, and take accountability for our actions when we do fuck up. I wish having honest and open conversations with the people who have hurt us was an option also but when people aren’t safe to be around or talk to, those healing conversations definitely can’t be had with them. What we can do instead is confide in and lean on the people who are safe and loyal and good.
So let’s focus a little more on those good people in our lives (and by ‘let’s’ I mean you, me, anyone and everyone). Let’s put our energy into healing ourselves through the goodness in other people and the goodness inside our own self. We’ll make mistakes and trust the wrong people along the way but I think with a little effort, we can actually heal those hurts by having different and better and damn good experiences with those good hearts and souls out there rather than trying to heal those hurts with unsafe people from the past. So lean in, my friends. Lean into finding and holding onto those safe people and safe places in your life and lean into the light of any goodness you can possibly find out there.
❤
Chelsea
CKB Coaching, LLC 