In My Entitled Opinion

Control and My Entitled Opinion - How to ruin our connections effectively. 

Control our friend and helper that keeps us 'safe' in a world that seems so unpredictable. In a world that is so chaotic and dangerous, making it a little more predictable, a bit more safe. C0ntrol selling us power, strength, confidence. Making us feel indestructible, untouchable. Untouchable. Untouchable surely we become, not only for all that we are trying to fight off, that we are trying to keep away from us to protect ourselves but also for everything we're actually craving so much. Love, connection, belonging. There is never only one side, one effect to our mechanisms. There is always the other side we like to overlook. The side of what our protection mechanism is also keeping from us besides the unwanted pain and shame and guilt. And not only that but what effect it has on the other part involved which is mostly  causing the exact pain we're trying to keep out the gates for ourselves. That exact feeling that is causing us so much anxiety that we've developed a coping mechanism, we're directly causing the other side. A natural current that we're not even aware of as long as we're listening to our mind which is just trying to 'protect' us.

Control is the natural counterpart to trust. A weapon, a coping mechanism to shield us from hurt, reality or a truth about ourselves, we don’t want to face. Organically it's becoming a threat to our wellbeing like every other defense or protection mechanism when remaining unseen, when staying in the dark. When it's not in balance with its natural counterpart trust. It becomes the opposite - uncontrollable. It has taken us over without us even noticing when we're not aware of where our behaviors are originating from. Where the roots are. Is it coming from a healthy source or as a trauma response. Things are never one dimensional. Not one or the other. The limitations of our mind wanting to play tricks on us, tells us it's either one or the other. When taken out of context, out of the situation we cannot say if it is an appropriate way to deal with a situation or not.

Yet when we’re dependent on it when it’s taking over our life it becomes obvious that is out of balance. From a notion of lack of trust in ourselves disconnection from not knowing ourselves, creating a disconnect. A disconnection from our emotions from who we are. A lack of understanding where we are coming from and where our emotions are rooted. Staying in our rational intellectual mind defending everything that comes our way with arguments no matter what it takes (gaslighting, twisting truth or manipulation) to protect ourselves, keep our reality, our truth intact is a sign of emotional prematurity. A sign that we haven't done our work. That we're still in the dark about our conditioning and triggers. Causing again the same pain to the opposite side that we’re trying to protect ourselves from. 

Having an intellectual mediocre intelligence or smartness, not understanding that this is only a tiny part of our human intelligence excluding all intuitive and instinctive intelligence let alone our emotional and spiritual intelligence. Constantly overestimating our power, confidence and ‘knowledge’ as we’ve built a stable, sturdy, unshakable identity construct of who we are that is almost impossible to break through as we’ve outsmarted ourselves pushing out the hurtful, dangerous and threatening truth from our reality. That truth that it would take to truly break us open. To connect, to break through, to break open, to shift, to change, to get in touch with our true self, with who we are and who we could be. Keeping us from growing, expanding, healing, feeling. 

Unable to integrate all the different parts of our being making it even more impossible to integrate any part of another being when it doesn’t fit our belief our perspective. We cannot accept something in another person that we're not accepting in ourselves. If I haven't accepted my rage, I will not accept it in another person. If I have not made peace with my shame, I will shame others. If I have not come to terms with my anger, I will blame others for when they get angry. And so the circle continues of us shaming each other for what we don't want to look at in ourselves. When we have not made peace with our past but condemn everything that is disturbing our 'peace'. Our alibi peace. Peace that we confuse with staying in control. Because true peace can only come from accepting all our parts and not from pushing the ones out that we don't like, that we demonize. 

Constantly in an unconscious battle that we wanna win under the cover of ‘wanting to learn’ or ‘understand’ but really we’re just fighting to confirm or bias about ourselves when we haven't been honest to ourselves about our hidden pains. We will not be able to be open for a genuine reflection about ourselves from the outside because we live in denial of these parts. A reflection from the outside, mirroring us what's really inside is too hurtful, too shameful, too offensive to find the courage to really listen, to hear, to see. Courage. Because courage is what it takes to look at the parts we're so afraid to see. And courage takes emotional maturity which we can't reach as long as we refuse to look. To learn. To listen. 

The wound is where the light enters. - ~Rumi~ [...if we let it I may add or if we're ready]

We will do everything to rationally justify where we are coming from to stay 'safe'. So once someone touches one of our mother wounds -and we haven't reached Rumi's degree of wisdom and enlightenment- a part we aren’t aware of, a part that’s in the dark in the blind, not integrated but most likely kept suppressed to never come up, we will keep fighting. We will fight for them to be wrong. For whoever is mirroring us. Fighting them off by twisting the truth, by turning the plates, by turning on them, telling them how they are wrong. We become an alchemist for feelings, transforming them, twisting things around, telling them that it is their fault for 'making' us feel that way. Telling them they need to work on themselves to not say such things or that they are the bad person for telling a hurtful truth about ourselves that we weren't ready to hear. We will turn it completely around and project it on to the other person, making it their responsibility to not 'hurt' us because we're unable to take accountability for our own emotions. Nobody can shame us, nobody can insult us, nobody can make us feel as if there is something wrong with us when we know who we are. We will not take things personally anymore that have nothing to do with us. Yet when we don't know, when we're unaware, we take it personally because it is. It is our pain, our own, nobody can cause us this pain but maximum trigger it inside of us. When this happens instead of becoming defensive, we could just pause for a second and understand it as an invitation from life to look at what is hurting us. To look at what we haven't healed. We could be grateful for that person who was courageous and vulnerable enough to mirror us and take this as an opportunity for us to grow and heal ourselves. But instead of acknowledging what a fragile treasure was given to us by sharing their story, their thoughts and feelings, we ruin the situation by making it our own. 

Can I not have my own opinion? We go because we need to get back in control over the situation that has such high potential to disturb our 'peace', disrupt our so carefully built identity and bring out long buried feelings from the dark. Yes you can but you're not allowed to share it at all times when no feedback is asked for. When an opinion is wanted we ask for it. Opinion our all friend in our oh so opinionated world where everyone has an opinion about everyone and everything and needs to neurotically share it at all times in need to let the world know what we think when nobody asked for it.

Let your words pass through three gates.

Is it true?

Is it necessary?

Is it kind?

~Rumi~

...One of the greatest mystics and poets of all times. One of the thinkers that has shaped literature and our (un)conscious minds and yet... Who cares is the motto when it comes to sharing our 'humble opinion' which is more of an entitled opinion. Do we feel we have the title of some grand master, of a wise philosopher or at the very least the smartest person in the room to constantly give feedback when no one has asked for it. Rising above someone else as if we were God sent, the one who is holding the answer everyone was waiting for, the truth, the Master, the Guru, the one who they came for to hear what we have to say. I matter. I wanna be seen. I wanna be heard. I am important is the message we want to send. A collective coping mechanism that is even earning public respect. A widely accepted trauma response (social conditioning) at its best. So integrated in our society that we think it's perfectly ok to comment on everything someone is sharing with us in trust. At the worst we're placing ourselves above others because our opinion matters, hiding so we don't have to become vulnerable ourselves, poking someone else's thoughts and feelings, becoming untouchable by making us superior to 'them', they cannot hurt us because we know better. This is where the separation kicks in. Consciously or unconsciously sabotaging a communication on eye level is a safe way to disrupt a connection. There only can be separation when the ego is trying to defend his position as being the smartest one in the room. At the same time we also become the dumbest one, the one who is blind, convinced that we hold the truth when really it may be much more constructive to improve and refine our listening competence to actually connect to a person, providing a safe space where we truly listen to the other person to understand them, to see them, to hear them, to feel them. Having an underlying ulterior motive beyond listening to the other person is directly cutting us off from truly hearing what they have to say. From truly understanding and feeling what the other person is trying to share with us, already on the verge of challenging what was said, analyzing it to share our point of view. No matter if we call it perspective, feedback, opinion or point of view. It will still draw the attention away from the person who is opening up to us, taking their space, making it about us. Instead of listening with an open heart and mind we come to form an opinion about everything they say, everything they are when exactly that is keeping us from seeing and hearing them. Not everything that is shared with us should be seen as an open invitation for discussion especially when it's about personal sensitive topics. Maybe most of the time we just need someone to listen. To truly care about what we have to say.

When we come around with our oh so valuable perspective we cut off the connection every single time they are trying to open up by our constant need to judge them -which of course we are not, we're just giving our precious opinion because that's much more valuable and has no socially negative connotation and so the person we're talking to can't reasonably and rational give us a 'proper' (socially accepted) reason to take the entitlement away from us right? Because how would that look?! 

But we're not judging. Without even realizing it we sabotage any relationship before a bond could even be formed. Simply because our ego wants to protect our identity. Simply because our mind can't stop treating every thought, every idea we hear from someone as a quest to be solved or a mission to make it our own, to not be caught in the things we are not ready to face. Taking everything away that the other person was saying, taking over control every time, taking away the most precious thing one can have. Their space for existence. Their own story. Their own identity, their own being, making them become transparent in our presence, a ghost as we now cannot see anymore what's inside of them because our mind is too busy defending and reaffirming our identity in everything they say. Hiding away all the personally and socially undesired emotions and feelings that find no acceptance in the socially normed world instead of giving space to all that makes us human.

When our deepest desire really is to connect in our most humanly version, our most authentic self we in reality unknowingly separate from the other person by trying to take away their truth instead of validating their feelings. Instead of finding compassion and understanding for all that they are without further opinion but pure empathy; we’re fighting our own personal battle against them, to keep our own self made identity safe; making it about them, with our defense as sharp as a knife cutting new wounds in the other person's heart when they don't see through our coping strategies. Keeping love out, staying in disconnect as long as it helps us staying in ‘control’. 

When we flip the situation around, we're unconsciously confirming the very thing that we’re trying so hard to fight off. When we’re not in the clear with ourselves, when we haven’t tackled that place inside ourselves. That place that hurts so much. The things we’re still identified with knowingly or unknowingly will be exposed to the knowing eye. The person who stays in the dark, not realizing the dynamics of the mechanisms working inside us, is us.

Instead of holding space for what the other person is sharing with us in trust even when they are hurt, angry or upset, we blame them, cut them off or try to turn the it all around, making it about ourselves and tell them that they are wrong or things are different from ‘our perspective’. 

Some may cover their disconnection, distracting the other person by rationally explaining how some emotions are not 'right', 'accurate' or 'appropriate' when in no world we are ever in the place to have an opinion about how anyone else feels. It is easy to finger point at others when we don't want to look at ourselves. Selfishly and hurtfully we will use their vulnerability when they have opened up their feelings to us to shame them, only to protect ourselves, to safe ourselves from the hurtful truth we are not ready to face.

Another fantastic strategy to round it all off is to make ourselves look superior by claiming to always stay calm, keeping cool or at peace when really it is simply another mirror of our lack of connection to our emotions and an 'inappropriate' reaction to an emotional situation. Feeling a superiority by staying 'calm' (on the outside) when it's just yet another sign of disconnect and a lack of trust in ourselves, a trust, an allowance that we are ok, that we are the same whole and lovable when we are feeling socially undesired emotions that are rejected and unappreciated by most of people.

Not giving ourselves permission to feel these emotions or act on them coming from our deepest wounds we're so afraid to look at. Shame, guilt, anger, frustration... We cannot be held accountable for… we don’t want to be held accountable for. Fear, anxiety, embarrassment. Discomfort, exclusion, insecurity, unworthiness, … the list is endless. An endless spiral that builds walls between us, creates greater distance than there even was before. Instead of building trust or creating a deep bond we dig a large ditch between each other. A vicious circle that can only ever be broken when we finally face our personal demons. Our own shadows, our pain. When we stop pushing the truth out, when we start opening up and truly listen.

I wish for nothing more in this world than for all of us to integrate all the beautiful parts of ourselves that make us human, that connect us, that bring us together. Let us become vulnerable again so we can truly see each other for who we are. Let us truly listen to one another and where we are coming from, acknowledging our stories, our wounds and fragility to grow together and hold space for each other instead of making each other invisible. Transparent. Ghosts. Taking away each others space to exist by emphasizing the biggest of all of our pains not to be seen, belong, to matter and be of importance and finally spiritually kill our all being.

This will only be possible by truly piercing through all the different dimensions. By letting go of the urge to rationally explain and understand everything, let our mind control us but to listen with our hearts. Start experiencing through our feelings as this is our intrinsic nature. Feeling creatures is who we are. Denying parts of our nature will always keep us separated, disconnected from ourselves and so we can’t trust ourselves because we don’t know ourselves through emotions; we are disconnected and so we use the tool of 'control' to survive and miss that control has us controlled.

By allowing us to coexist with all that we are, giving space to each other we can create a world that has room to hold us all with all that we are. All our thoughts, feelings, emotions, experiences, stories, providing each other the space to be all of it instead of constantly looking for a different angle, forming an opinion about who someone is and coming up with an idea if this is good or bad, right or wrong, if we agree or disagree or like it or dislike it as this is not our place and never will be. It cannot be the aim to stigmatize each other to rise above each other to feel better about what we don't want to look at. The world has enough space to hold all of us with everything we are. Everything we're meant to be and to let us connect through our undesired feelings. Because we all have them. Visible or suppressed. Hiding behind the calm or in peace. Are we really at peace or just barely staying in control? The control that's truly controlling us...