It has taken me time to accept and cope with my abilities, my “new” way of conducting myself on a daily basis. Previously, my willpower put my expectations out of proportion.
Has something similar happened to you? Maybe you have had certain expectations of some situation, person, activity or anything else. Then, the reality is different.
It’s been over a year since my last post. Putting my expectation of writing head on, with the fact that I couldn’t do it myself. It was very uncomfortable. But I had to do it. I had to let go of my own expectations, as they were not working in my favor. I had definite goals, a strong drive, but I didn’t have the ability to do it on my own. My health took priority, but I still felt like a fraud, I felt like I failed my own expectations. I overestimated my willpower, and underestimated the recovery process after the emergency surgery that removed the brain tumor that was hurting my optic nerves. And you, what do you do when what you want, think, hope, doesn’t happen?
What I experienced for a long time was a very deep guilt. Not fulfilling my own or other people’s expectations evoked a visceral conviction that I was never going to make it, that my efforts fell short. When I did accomplish something, the pleasure, or the celebration, was short-lived, ephemeral, soon disappeared, to give way to guilt, my companion of yesteryear. Although there is a healthy side to guilt, that was not what I experienced.
Returning to my present, I had to question my own tendency to fall into this toxic guilt. My day-to-day performance, my day-to-day operating takes me longer. I always considered myself a patient person, but the life change I experienced, since shortly before the surgery, has led me to have to discover and exercise new levels of patience that challenge me to the bone. Here, “resting” in guilt was not getting me anywhere.
The healthy expression of guilt leads us to seek to replace what was lost, broken or hurt. After the reparative act, the guilt fades away.
Toxic guilt, after the reparative act, does not go away, it stays to sink you, to sink me. This toxic expression of guilt requires another kind of attention from oneself, self-compassion. There is no need to to “stay” there.
What expression of guilt do you experience? God forgives you, so what is your part?
This is part of what helped me. Spend a moment of my day imagining how God sees me, what he really feels about me. If what comes up is not compassionate, it is probably not God, but that previous tendency. I “stay” there until I can experience, even for a short time, that feeling of acceptance of myself. That feeling is the beginning of discovering how God sees me.
In case you experience toxic guilt, I invite you to try something similar in your moments of personal prayer. And I know that you can also begin to discover a new dimension of God’s compassion for you, and an even greater self-compassion.
In the past, I overestimated my capabilities, and underestimated God’s compassion.
Each Lent we focus as a community on looking for mistakes to repent of. Once those thoughts, feelings and actions are identified, guilt may arise. What is your experience of guilt? Does it lead you to self-condemnation, or to a restorative act? Listen” to that experience, and respond in the direction of compassion.
When we are not used to listening to our emotions, it is difficult to identify them, it requires attention, intention and practice. During these months of physical, mental, spiritual and emotional recovery, I had the opportunity to put into practice many things I learned in my training, giving life, meaning and destiny to everything I learned in my graduate studies. I walk a journey that I have not finished, and I would like to share it with you.
To walk and work together, I have prepared the workshop entitled “Sensitive to Love, Sensitive to Compassion.”
If you would like a complementary introductory meeting, you could:
*Identify the expression of guilt you experience, healthy or toxic.
*You could learn spiritual tools to respond lovingly, increasing your sensitivity to God’s compassionate love.
*You will be able to begin the path to a more real, deep and human self-compassion.
I would love to accompany you in your process.
M
P.S. And I am SUPER happy, because thanks to the support of technology, I can now write and “read” by myself. If you catch any typos, it’s because I didn’t see them :p
