my space tracker

Hope Forward: Surviving and Thriving through Emotional Pain: The Land of Doubt and Maybe

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

The Land of Doubt and Maybe

It can be painful not to know.  Not to know if you should stay in the relationship or leave.  Not to know if you should stay at your job or try to find a new one.  Not to know if you should try to forgive someone who has behaved badly or who has hurt you.  Not to know if it is you who is messing things up, or if it's someone else's fault, or exactly, generally, what the breakdown of responsibility is.   It can be painful not to know if you should reach out and try to make an amend.  Not to know why this (whatever this is) is happening.  Not to know if someone can grow, could be worked with, could understand.  Not to know if we should invest time, or money or emotional energy or all three to find out, to work it out.  Not to know what will be worth the effort and what will just disappoint us further.  Not to know if our fears are real, or our feelings are trusted guides or only reactions based on old patterns of defense.

Here's what happens sometimes, to some of us.  We want it to get  better quickly, of course, when it hurts. We want to know, or we think we do. Give me a solution.  Fix it. Fix me. Fix him/her.  Don't make me wander around in it, or venture into the unknown, the unpredicable.   It's too uncertain.   Too frustrating.  Besides, we think, how will it help?  And sometimes especially when our emotional well-being or sense of self seems to be latched on to someone or some situation being different, we lose faith.  Often, we (usually unconsciously in part at least) hook our self worth, self esteem, peace of mind to what someone else thinks, understands, agrees with or does.  We get lost trying to find ourselves.

The land of doubt and maybe can seem like an endless mine field.  We just don't know exactly where the emotional bombs are or what the point of forging forward is, or how, even if were were willing. So much so sometimes, that we don't even want to look around.  

Seems to me though, as I continue to hear so many stories of emotional pain, frustration and confusion, that we are more resilient than we think, sometimes more reslient than we want to be.  And most of the time, when we ease up on our selves, we somehow can tolerate not knowing just a little bit better.  I find too, that we when this happens, the instinctively correct answers seem to come, they seem to emerge from some quiet healthy place deep within, and then instead of the land of doubt and maybe being littered with bombs, it becomes abundant with possibilities. 

No comments: