WHO IS DRIVING?

I had a conversation with a lady the other day that went through trauma as a child.  Her life was full of hardships and loss.  She felt that she had no control over her destiny and that she always fell prey to predators out there looking for people like her.

When she told me her story I realized how her narrative was one full of hurt, anxiety, depression and a complete lack of self-love.  I know that we all sometimes fall into this pit of self-pity and that it is not easy to climb out of the dark hole we fell in.  It is especially difficult when trauma happened when we were still young.  We tend to try and make meaning of these turbulent times in our lives and whatever meaning we make at that level of consciousness can easily become our narrative and form part of our identity.

I asked her to imagine that her life was represented by a motor car.  Everything she has experienced, all her strengths and weaknesses, relationships and dreams were in the vehicle of her life.  I then asked her where she was seated.  Was she in the driver’s seat, in the passenger seat, on the back seat or even maybe in the trunk.  She quickly answered that she was in the trunk.  She saw herself as baggage.  In her narrative she was never behind the steering wheel where she should have been.

I then asked her who was behind the wheel, doing the driving and she went quiet.  She realized that she abdicated her responsibility for her life and that not being in the driver seat has cost her dearly.

If often happens that we fall in the same trap.  We feel that our lives are out of control and instead of taking responsibility for it, we shy away and play the victim.  The reality is that no one else is going to take responsibility for our lives and that blaming and shaming others is not going to prevent our out of control lives driving off the cliff.

Self-pity paralyzes you into inaction and keeps you focused on the past.  Self-pity keeps you from seeing future options and possibilities.  Self-pity is an excuse for not taking personal responsibility and for blaming external sources.  Self-pity brings you and everyone around you down.

I would love to share this poem that we sometimes use in our training programme.  It is thought provoking and it certainly helped me to become more self-aware.

I hope you will enjoy it:

“I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost… I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes me a long time to get out.

I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in. It’s a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. I walk down another street.”

― Portia Nelson, There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery

“She could never go back and make some of the details pretty. All she could do was move forward and make the whole beautiful.”

•      – Terri St. Cloud