Hurtful Words Of Healing And Support

 Written By Don Shetterly

Do we ever stop to think about what we say to others?  Do we realize that sometimes our words are so hurtful even though we intend them to be healing?  Obviously, these are rhetorical questions, but I am constantly amazed at how people can be so misguided when they think they are helping others.

If you've suffered from mental illness or depression and anxiety, you've probably heard the routine statements, "just get over it" and "just move on."  These statements are so hurtful to others, and they do little to offer hope and healing for their lives.

I had one person tell me after I came out of the hospital from being paralyzed by a conversion disorder that I should have just prayed about it.  I was stunned.  However, I replied to them, "if you broke your arm, would you just have prayed about it?"  Her answer was no.

Yet it doesn't stop people from engaging their vocal chords and disengaging their brain cells. I'm sorry if that sounds rough, but when people make these statements to others who are struggling, those statements are very harsh.  They are hurtful.  People are already going through enough without others piling on to the pain.

I do understand that sometimes we don't know what to say or how to say it.  I do understand that sometimes it is uncharted ground that makes us fearful of saying the wrong thing.

The best thing you can do is to connect with your heart.  I don't mean engage the brain first.  I am advocating that you engage the heart first, then attempt to speak from the vocabulary in your brain.

If you can share experiences that help others connect with you, it can be helpful.  Again, this must be done from your heart and not from your ego or brain.  If it is heart centered, you are more in tune with what they need.  It is never about what you need in this situation.  It is about what support the other person needs.  Be careful that it doesn't become about you and your experiences, but how those relate to their situation.

Many times, the issues we see in others connect to issues held deeply in our own lives.  I often acknowledge their presence, but we should not inflict our own issues upon the other person needing support.  Our issues are not their issues.  Our issues should not be forced upon them.  They need support at that moment, and if we offer it from our heart and our experiences, it will help them more than we know.

 

Let's stop being hurtful with our words in helping support someone.  There's a good chance you will likely mess up at some point, but be honest and heartfelt.  Be understanding if you are not getting your point across.  Be understanding if they don't understand what it is that you can see.

In the moment of grief and despair, our eyes and our minds are not seeing clearly.  Remember that, as you're offering words of support and healing to others.  It will go a long way to truly offering to be there for someone and not inflicting emotional pain upon them through your words.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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How Does It Feel To Be Adopted

(by Jody, Mental Health Matters)

Someone asked me a question a while ago, to which I did not have an instant answer. She had asked me “what’s it feel like to be adopted?” and my instant reply was “how does it feel to not be?” but long after the conversation ceased, I found the question still rattling around in my brain.

I began pondering the many emotions and thoughts I have had over the years regarding my adoption and decided to try and answer that question from my perspective, which, please keep in mind, is not the average adoption. Every adoptee is going to have their own experience, which in most cases does not mirror mine.

Adoption is a weird amalgamation of rejection and acceptance. I was adopted at 18 months old and had bounced through multiple foster homes before I arrived at my permanent family, and although I was too young to fully comprehend the situations I had been through, I knew something was wrong. There was never a time that I did not know I was adopted and my parents made sure it was an open issue should it be something I ever chose to explore.

I was told the typical things by my parents…you were chosen, so that makes you even more special, or that someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure and although I tried to believe their words and intentions I never for one day felt like I fully belonged. After all, to be “chosen” means you were already “un-chosen”. I often felt like I wasn’t actually chosen, I was next on the list of children up for adoption, and they were the next parents waiting.

For me, there has always been a sense of detachment, not only from my parents but from most people. I wonder if it comes from being chosen rather than being “born to”. Not only did I deal with feeling unwanted and not good enough, from being given away, but I also felt like I was disposable; I had been given away once, and then in my case four times after, so there was obviously something wrong with me; something that made me not good enough to be loved and cared for at such a young age.

When I was around five years old, my parents fostered a girl a few years older than me for a period of time that I can’t recall, due to circumstances which I cannot remember; she left our home and was placed back into the foster system. I never heard from or saw her again. From that day on began an innate fear of being abandoned to wherever it was I came from. After all if they could return her, they certainly must be able to do the same thing with me. This is the base for my deep seeded fear of abandonment and insecurity.

There is an odd feeling of disconnect that comes with adoption. Perhaps it is the not knowing; the curiosity about our family of origin and our birth parents background. It was always weird to me to see other kids who looked like their families or brothers and sisters that looked alike. It made me wonder who I look like…do I have my father’s eyes and my mother’s lips, or did I have a sibling somewhere that I resembled, someone with similar features to mine? I yearned to look around and be able to see someone that looked like me.

As I grew older I wondered about such things as my personality traits, my abilities and my physical and mental health background. There was always a curiosity if I was talented at soccer because my father was athletic, or maybe my passion for reading and writing came from my mother, but instead I am left with a sense of transience and curiosity.

There were times I wondered if either of my birth parents came looking for me, or if they ever thought of me, or if I was just a forgotten part of the past. I wondered why she gave me up and how she felt about doing so. I grew up with an innate sense of rejection and wondered if she ever felt bad for abandoning me. Were her reasons legitimate or was I just too much of a burden.

It was in my early twenties when I learned her background and her propensity for drugs and alcohol and suicide attempts so maybe she really did give me away in hopes of a better life, or maybe she abandoned me to get back to partying. So many answers to my questions were buried when she died, before I had a chance to meet her, and I think because of that I have had to make peace with creating and living with my own answers.

So adoption for me, to sum it up, feels like being loved on the surface and not unconditionally. It feels like not quite ever being able to find your place in a family, a relationship, workplace or even the world. It feels like living with a never ending curiosity which you know will never be satisfied with the truth.

Most of all for me, it was the sense of being abandoned so many times and living with the fear it could happen again. That fear, unfortunately became the driving force in my life and by allowing that I have lived my life doing anything and everything to avoid abandonment, when in reality, that is just not possible. I often heard my friend’s parents tell them they love them no matter what…that sense of unconditional love I crave so badly but will never receive is something that has left a void deep down in my soul.

I just wanted to belong.


- Jody (Jody's Blog)

Read all of Jody's Columnist Posts

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Jody

Guest Blogger
Writer
Survivor, Warrior, Conqueror

Visit Jody's website at

Jodyb2016 Wordpress
Twitter:  @onelastkick71
 

  

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly and Jody

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Sorry But Stress Is Present In Life

Written By Don Shetterly

Sometimes I see things stated and my eyes bulge out of my poor little mind. I am amazed at how unconscious and aware we can be even by those who claim to be conscious.  I believe that the things we preach to the world especially when they are our beliefs have serious consequences, and we need to be far more aware than we are.

I saw a quote online that said, "there is no such thing as stress in the world.  It is all in our mind." 

I had to read the quote a few times to make sure I saw the statement that I did.  Yes, that is the statement that I read, and it boggles my mind.

I had to read it and do a double take to make sure I saw what I did.  Yes, that is the statement.

This statement could not be further from the truth.  In fact, it and truth are strangers in distant galaxies.

There is stress no matter where you look.  Some of it is positive stress which we need in our lives.  Some of it is toxic stress.  No matter what you think your thoughts can do, stress is present.

• If you walk outside in the hot sun, the stress of the heat makes your body work to cool and find equilibrium.  
• If you get in the car and drive down the street, there are cars not obeying the traffic laws and rules of driving so that they can present stress to you. 
• There is the boss that yells at an employee in front of a meeting for something beyond their control.  That is stress on your mind and body.  
• There is the demanding boss that wants you to follow their every whim and demand with no respect for you.  That is stress.
• There is the stress of the kids needing help with homework, or to take them to every activity meeting they have.  
• There is the stress of trying to get your family fed and answering emails and texts from the boss.
• There is even stress from moments gone by in how it impacts your current thought processes on a million different subjects and points.  
• There are the financial consequences of spending too much and dealing with your ever changing budget that creates stress.
• There is that rude person who tries to ruin your day or just get in your face for the stupidest thing that they can.  
• There is the stress of a significant other feeling left out or putting demands upon your time that causes stress.
• There is the stress of all those things you were taught and learned as a young child that now sometimes makes current moments not seem reasonable to you.  In the process of those connections that happen unconsciously every minute of their day, they create stress that we don't often see.
• Learning and growth are most likely stressful moments because it takes you out of your comfort zone and into something new.

There is hardly a day that goes by where we have no stress.  If we walk around not recognizing the stress in our lives, we're not as awake and aware and conscious as we think we are.  We may be able to talk the talk, but if we can't connect the talk with real life action or the places in our bodies that it resides, we're only fooling ourselves.

If you don't recognize stress in your life, you're only setting yourself up for a big fall later on in life.  At some point, it will build up to a breaking point, and it will get your attention.  You can mark my words on that.  I've lived it.

We can't go through life putting the happy smile on our face while we ignore stress and connections to the past.  If you try to do this, let me tell you from first-hand experience that the result will not be a good one.  I don't say this out of belief.  I say it from experience.

Learn to recognize stress for what it is.  It is present.  Instead of trying to act like it doesn't exist, go in and allow yourself to see it for what it is.  Allow yourself to find ways to acknowledge and let go of it. 

It is not just an exercise for the mind because stress finds a place within our body.  If we don't see its existence, it takes us permanent residency and then crowds out the joy and peace and love you so badly desire for life.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2017 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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