Self Improvement … Life … Mental Health

I Chose Fear Until I Chose Freedom

My History Had Me Constantly Fearing Rejection Until I Had the Courage to Choose Freedom

Each of us have a variety of life experiences which may cause us pain and anguish. Even more than the experiences themselves, our perspectives and our perceptions frame those experiences.

They create an emotional legacy that can be pervasive and disabling. This frequently happens without any awareness on our part. For me, my experiences which I perceived as rejection followed this pattern to a T.

After examining our reactions to our circumstances we often become aware of a logical disconnect.

We can choose to shove those feelings down and pretend they don’t exist. Doing so sentences us to a lifetime as an emotional cripple.

In doing so, we close ourselves off from the joy that is just beyond our self imposed prison gates.

As an alternative we can step into the confusing quagmire of uncertainty and seek for answers, then for understanding, then for the key to unlock the gate and be free to joyously experience life.

Let me share with you my journey to unlocking those emotional prison gates …….a road of self discovery, a road of healing, a road of personal triumph.

In the process it is my hope that you will begin to see your road and know that it is there……just waiting for you to begin your journey.

Abuse

There was no discussion of childhood sexual abuse when I was growing up. As a child experiencing this, it felt horribly wrong. There were no resources, no public discussion, no community awareness or support.

It was a feeling of being isolated by this dark secret I was afraid to share with anyone.

I did not have the physical or emotional strength to repel my father’s advances. Instinctively knowing this was wrong, yet with nowhere to turn I became plagued with guilt.

With a child’s limited capacity to reason, I felt as though I must be responsible. That there was something wrong with me.

When I was 14 I was physically and emotionally strong enough to stop it, yet fear kept me away from home as much as possible.

At 15 I told my mother about the abuse. I wanted her to take me in her arms and tell me he would never hurt me again and that she would kick him out.

Instead, she dismissed his raping me, as him just wanting to be close to me.

That night I emotionally buried my mother.

Ultimate Rejection

Years later, as I began to work through the pain, I defined my father’s choices as the ultimate paternal rejection.

I defined my mother’s choices as the ultimate maternal rejection.

At the same time as I was working through this pain and was looking to find my path to hope and to healing, I was dealing with a precious daughter who was making horrible choices with major life consequences.

Her choices were diametrically opposed to everything she had been taught and to every moral principle I held dear. To me, this was the ultimate rejection of me as her mother.

About this time my husband of 20 years announced he wanted a divorce. That certainly qualifies as rejection by a spouse.

Think I had issues around rejection? You had better believe I had.

Rejection Goes Global

I realized I was feeling rejection everywhere in my life. I realized this was not healthy nor was it “normal”.

As I stepped back, I realized that my perceptions were badly skewed.

For example, if I was visiting an area several miles from home and I saw a friend from home chatting with someone else, and they didn’t acknowledge me I felt rejected.

I had no reason to believe she had even seen me and yet I felt rejected.

The little voice in the back of my head loudly proclaimed; “Well ______________ doesn’t think you are good enough to acknowledge when she is with her friend.”

Ridiculously Unreasonable

I allowed my insecurities to keep me from acknowledging her.

Ultimately I came to recognize that my emotional response was a legacy from the past. My feelings of rejection were tied to feelings of rejection from so many primary people in my life.

Nevertheless, this was not enough to silence the voice. Logically I knew I was being irrational and unrealistic but my emotions were not logical, they were however powerfully real.

Silencing the Voice

Once I was able to see how my emotional reaction of “feeling rejected” was inappropriate and out of proportion to the circumstances, I was able to start to develop a strategy.

I realized that when feelings of rejection started to appear, and before the voice could gain a head of steam, I had to step back and ask myself this question. “Is feeling rejected a reasonable response in this circumstance?”

99% of the time it wasn’t and that awareness quieted the voice.

This was a conscious process and a conscious choice each and every time the feelings of rejection began to appear.

After a few years it no longer needed to be an ongoing conscious choice. The switch began to flip somewhat automatically.

Still there were occasional times when I needed to respond consciously. By that time, I could joke with myself; “Give me a break…..here we go again.” I also knew what I needed to do to get out of that space.

Tonight as I type this article those feelings of rejection have come up due to something that occurred earlier today.

Even now, many years later, there are occasions where I need to access those tools I developed so long ago.

The voices we hear are persistent and the legacies they represent feel like barnacles. We may never totally eliminate them, however we can reduce the frequency, lower the volume and choose to quickly toss them in the garbage.

Achieving Freedom

Having the ability to silence these voices gave me the freedom and the security to experience a normal range of emotions.

There was no longer anything being short circuited and dumped into rejection. Even more importantly it gave me a tool to use in a variety of circumstances.

It gave me the ability to look at my reactions and see if they are consistent with the woman I am striving to become. If they are not, I now know how to CHOOSE to use my ability to change my perspective to a more realistic one.

With that comes the ability to break up the boulders on my pathway to becoming the woman I believe I was meant to be.

It is imperative to understand that traumatic experiences may have left boulders and craters along your pathway. Know that you have the power to examine every impediment that stands in your way and then to smash any and all impediments to smithereens.

Your barriers may be different than mine. The road to freedom is the same and it is worth it. Join with me. Walk in the path of your higher self and CHOOSE freedom.

What are some of the boulders on your path? Has sharing a bit of my journey given you clarity as you traverse your own?

The lock to the chains of our history is fear. Choose to be courageous. Break the lock and dismantle the chains and experience the healing balm of freedom. You can do this. I can help. Here is what I promise you … once you do it … your only regret will be that you didn’t do it sooner.