Do this. Do that. Go left. Turn right. Fuuuuuuuuck. Can I ever do anything right? According to everyone else, no.
Isn’t that what we are taught growing up? To be perfect little specimens? Quite frankly I am tired of being picked and prodded. I am not a heifer. I feel like that’s what we women are treated like. If we don’t fit into that ye olde European white male standard, than we aren’t worthy.
The problem is that many of the women in our society do it to each other, and they don’t even realize what they are doing. (I have 100% done this. I don’t want to leave myself out.) They shroud it in terms of caring, such as “I was only trying to help,” while at the same time demanding that you now hold them up.
I write a lot about emotions, because I suck at them quite frankly. I am not so sure the people around me are very good at them either. Our capitalistic culture is so caught up in IQ that we have a bunch a grown ass adults acting like children, because we weren’t taught how to engage with our emotions. Instead, we just dump them all over each other.
To compound the issue even more, we then shame the people who go to therapy to try to learn how to better themselves. That, or we go bankrupt trying to afford the help that we so desperately need. I have the bills to prove the latter.
I’m sorry, but…
I was only trying to help. That is exactly what people say to me after I get triggered because of something that they said. This is emotional manipulation at its most basic level.
You just negated your ‘sorry’ with that ‘but.’ Furthermore the person who got triggered now has to turn around and make you feel better. You have now successfully become the victim of your story, and me the villain. Can you see how twisted this all becomes?
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
Fred Rogers
That sounds like some sage advice at the time. I am beginning to realize that the “helpers” aren’t always so very helpful. They can actually be quite damaging to a person’s self-esteem. Think about it. When someone tells you what you should be doing, what happens inside your body?
Where I Go
I drop, literally. My shoulders, my eyes, I deflate. My first thoughts are, “Why are you telling me this? Look at all the things I am doing. Why can’t you be excited for that?” It makes me not want to share anything at all.
When we say to someone, “you should, blah blah blah” we aren’t actually enjoying them or what gifts they have to offer the world. We are telling them that they are not enough. We are telling them that we are right, and they are wrong. But who really knows what is best for them? Them.
Maybe some people don’t understand what I am doing. Shit! I’m still trying to figure it out. Here is my ask: Let’s please stop criticizing each other and start celebrating each other. Even for the stuff we don’t understand.
Mad love, Jenna
