Where do you turn when you take a Nosedive?
Utilizing Relationships to Identify and Recover from a History of Pain
07/11/2024
When I was a sophomore in high school, my family took a trip to Chicago to meet the family of my brother’s fiancé. One day my parents scheduled us to take a bus tour of the windy city. That morning I woke up and the world just didn’t feel right. A little light-headed, a little sick to my stomach and a little tired. When I expressed how I felt and a desire to stay in our hotel room, my mother begged me to come along. After a few minutes, I gave in and we were off on our tour. After the first stop or two I decided that getting off the bus was too much work and would prefer to remain in my seat, head planted firmly on the back of the seat in front of me. Feeling worse and worse I was just counting the minutes until the day ended and we could return to the hotel. Finally, that moment came. The bus let us off and we made our way to the parking garage. As my father paid for our parking, I leaned against a black and white tiled wall and watched as the white tiles began turning black until the whole wall disappeared. The next thing I knew, I was looking up at the ceiling of the parking garage listening to the sound of a nearby siren. As I later learned, I had passed out, sliding down that checkered wall. My nose was broken, my cheekbone was cracked and my lips were severely cut by my braces. An ambulance ride to the hospital revealed that I had contracted the “Chicago Flu”. While it has turned into a great story, I would describe that experience as a prime example of how life is not easy.
I’m sure your story is different, but we’ve all had experiences where we meet life face first. It may have been through childhood trauma, or a difficult loss or public humiliation. We’ve all felt it and the emotional impact can be like a nosedive into a hard concrete floor. Those are the memories and feelings that stick with us. Years later, those types of experiences, having been reinforced by other experiences that we perceive as similar, begin showing up in ways that negatively influence our lives. They can be the seeds of depression or anxiety or poor self-esteem. In some cases, they can be the roots of addiction or dysfunction in our lives. We replay the negative and damaging thoughts these experiences generate, reinforcing distorted thinking day after day, year after year until thoughts become well entrenched beliefs. My post on Habits discusses neural pathways and how they expand or diminish based on the thoughts we reinforce.
So with all of this in mind, the important questions become…
What are those experiences?
How do I identify them?
How do I address them?
How are they affecting me today?
A study by the University of Texas in 2010 found that relationships affect mental health, healthy behavior, physical behavior and mortality risk.
It is our relationships that have the most profound effect on us, both positively and negatively.
It’s important that you hear this, because our best resource for both identifying those internal wounds and addressing them is in our closest relationships. I regularly walk clients through their childhoods for this purpose. As I frequently tell clients, I have no interest in throwing anyone under a bus with this exercise. I joke with my kids all the time that the most important thing is that we have someone to blame. Our impulse is to often seek someone else to be accountable. But the reality is that all parents pass baggage on to their children, present company included. We all carry hurts and wounds that influence us in the way we live and parent. Your parents are not unique in this and neither are you if you have children. It’s unavoidable. Finding someone to blame does not absolve us of the responsibility to identify and address our own baggage. It may not be sexy, but it’s the only way to finding a higher degree of peace and fulfillment in life. No, you can’t find it in a pill. Medicine can assist you in the journey, but if you take anti-anxiety or anti-depression medicine to mask your struggles without working on what created them it’s like turning on a fan to vent the smoke out of your house - if you don’t address the fire it will only grow.
Repairing the damage involves close relationships as well. Quality relationships provide us the opportunity to be real, go deep and find acceptance for who we are and not who we may pretend to be. No social media personas allowed here. No hiding. “Being real” with others can allow us to expose and refute dysfunctional thoughts that impair our ability to receive love and find peace. In genuine acceptance we often find the strength, courage and motivation to honestly explore our struggles and reach for something better. I’ve watched it happen time and time again. We need relationships to be healthy. Noted researcher and author Brené Brown stated in her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead…
“Connection is why we're here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.”
The path to healing requires connection and vulnerability. Fulfillment does not come through crafting the right image, but in finding safe relationships to be open and honest with our fears, flaws and failures.
Psychologist Carl Rogers first developed Person Centered Therapy in the 1940s based on the simple idea that change happens in people when they are provided empathy, congruence (being your genuine self), and unconditional positive regard. This concept has become a cornerstone of counseling. It is how we heal and it is available in honest friendships and relationships. Attend a local AA, Al-Anon or Celebrate Recovery group and your likely to find it. You might already have people like this in your life. It’s not a short journey, but the more we dive into our closely guarded and often hidden insecurities, the closer we’ll move towards finding peace in ourselves. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the facing of it’s presence. All it takes is witnessing how desperately we all try to hide and deny this fear to know it’s true.