I now want to offer some specific strategies and language for how to communicate and stay calm in those moments when you just want to scream “this is not my fault; this is about you—don’t you see that?!” That reaction is so natural and understandable, but it doesn’t usually go well when followed, and rarely leads to greater peace or closeness with your partner. The difficult truth is that if you want to break the cycle of projection and defensiveness, you’ll need to practice a more mindful and disciplined strategy.

Projection is difficult and painful for both you and your partner. Your partner’s core wound is re-activated and they’re deep down the rabbit hole in a negative narrative. And for you, the one being criticized and misjudged, it’s frustrating, hurtful, and infuriating. It’s also profoundly lonely because your partner is not with you in the present moment when they’re lost in projection; they’ve disappeared into a past reality that you’re not part of. So, what can you do and say to navigate this challenging situation in a thoughtful and productive manner?

The first thing to do when you smell the scent of projection is, counterintuitively, to shift your attention away from your partner and bring it towards yourself. That is, to ground yourself inside your own body. You can do this by simply placing a hand on your abdomen or heart (or anywhere that helps you feel present). From there, you can inconspicuously (or not) take a conscious deep breath, which will prepare you for the interaction and help you stay calm and connected to yourself, which can be difficult when the projection train is heading your way. Taking a conscious breath (or three) can also help create a separate, safe space where you won’t be swallowed up by your partner’s feelings and narratives, and overcome by the survival instinct to defend yourself.

When you feel grounded in your body, you can more thoughtfully respond (or not respond) to your partner’s grievances. When your partner accuses you of making them feel bad in a way they always feel bad, the best plan is to become Teflon, that is, to unstick (and make yourself unstick-able) from their projections, which involves resisting the urge to join them in their storyline. Instead, you want to empathically reflect your partner’s feelings, what they’re suffering, but (and this is important), without including yourself in the reflection. As in, “I get that, for you, the situation felt really invalidating.” It’s also helpful to use words that frame your partner’s experience as feelings not facts: “You felt invalidated” rather than “You were invalidated,” or worse, “You were invalidated by me.” In using feeling words, you highlight the fact that this is their experience (which means it’s important) but not necessarily what happened in some absolute reality.

It’s also helpful to use language like “for you” and “in your experience.” For example, “I hear that—for you—it felt like this…” or “I get that—in your experience—it felt like this…” By using these sorts of phrases, you also suggest that the experience they were living might not be the experience you (or anyone else) was living. Your mindful response is designed to unlink their experience from you and also from what is.

Your task in responding, always, is to draw the “conversation” away from the you-based storyline, and empathize with the feelings and suffering your partner is caught in, to make it clear that you see and get their experience, their pain. Your skillful language is designed to create a separation between how they feel and what you did. Ultimately, the skill in responding to projection is to be sensitive to the other person’s pain, but not bite the hook—not engage in the personal battle over who’s to blame for that pain.

So too, it helps (if you have the emotional bandwidth) to lead with an affectionate word, like “sweetheart” or “love.” As in, “Sweetheart, I hear that you felt invisible in that interaction.” Notice that you’re not saying “I hear that I made you feel invisible.” Or perhaps, “Love, I’m sorry you had to go through that pain.” If you choose to use the word “sorry,” do so carefully; be mindful that your sorry-ness is not about having caused your partner’s experience, but rather, for the fact that they are suffering at all. When projection is happening, skillful language can help you create space for yourself, between you and your partner’s narrative, which you can then maintain regardless of whether they want to collapse that space. Responding mindfully doesn’t just change the relational dynamic, it keeps you safe and saves you from having to get on the emotional roller coaster your partner is riding.

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The key “don’ts” in dealing with projection are:

1. Don’t bite the hook.
2. Don’t engage in the battle your partner is trying to wage
3. Don’t try to prove your innocence or set the record straight

All of these “don’ts” are saying essentially the same thing, and if you practice them in whatever ways you can, they will change how you experience your partner’s projection, and also change the part projection plays in your relationship.

There might also be an opportunity, not in the thick of conflict, but at a more peaceful and loving moment, to draw your partner’s attention to the fact that their feelings with you seem similar to feelings they’ve described from other times throughout their life. The key is to raise this issue with curiosity and not judgment. As in, “Do you think this feeling of (fill in the blank) might be one of those core experiences for you, one that reappears in lots of different forms for you?” You might also share a core experience or wound from your own life, one that reappears in different situations, to remove any shame, create connection, and show your partner that what they’re experiencing is something you share and part of the human experience.

I would be remiss, however, if I ended this post here, without saying this: telling your partner they’re projecting onto you is almost never a good idea. Regardless of how certain you are that projection is at play, to assume that you know more about what’s happening in their internal world than they do, that you know the real truth, is disrespectful, unkind, and not helpful. When we do that to anyone, assume superiority and make an interpretation that pathologizes, shames, or claims to know their truth, we emotionally violate that person and rob them of their dignity. Don’t assume the role of authority in your partner’s experience; it isn’t compassionate and it won’t encourage greater awareness in your partner or serve to deepen the connection. If you want to break the cycle of projection and create a more conscious and intimate bond with your partner, mindful communication—which starts with your response—is ultimately what works.

The post Responding Mindfully When Your Partner is Projecting On You appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Bob often gets angry and accuses his wife of overlooking and dismissing him, to which she defends herself, claiming that her behavior has nothing to do with him, that she’s just being the confident and independent woman that she is. But Bob remains convinced that it’s Jan who’s deliberately disappearing him, and that she’s responsible for his feelings of irrelevance and humiliation.

Bob is a 51-year-old, highly intelligent, well-educated, and ambitious man. He was raised in a tiny midwestern town, with parents who were absent in all ways imaginable: physically, mentally, and emotionally. They took no interest in Bob whatsoever. Professionally, Bob has spent his life creating projects, both artistic and business-oriented. Despite his great intelligence, original ideas, and hard work, he hasn’t (as of yet) been able to build any of these projects into a career that provides him with recognition or acknowledgment. He also, for that matter, has not yet been able to translate his efforts into financial stability or true independence. He calls himself a “failure” and suffers with shame and low self-esteem, which makes it hard for him to form close friendships. Bob has struggled his whole life, trying to create a place for himself in the world, one where he matters and his talents and wisdom are seen, validated, and respected.

From what Bob describes, Jan is a woman in her late forties who’s built a successful career as an illustrator. An award-winning, highly-respected artist in the publishing and music industries, she’s a sought-after artist who gets to make her own choices on the projects she takes on and how much she gets paid (which is a lot).

While Bob acknowledges that Jan has worked hard for and earned her success, he’s also quick to point out that the only difference between him and her is that the “universe” has rewarded her efforts and not his.

Bob also acknowledges that Jan is a confident and highly likable woman who makes friends and connections easily. She was raised in a financially well-off family, which has allowed her and Bob to enjoy (and provide their kids with) a comfortably cushy lifestyle. There’s no question that Bob respects and adores his wife, but it’s also clear that he resents her. He believes that life has come easier for Jan and that her success is just part of her privilege. While he, on the other hand, was offered nothing—no guidance and no support.

The relational framework from which Bob operates, namely, that his wife is making him feel humiliated and irrelevant (and choosing to do so), is, in fact, very common in relationships. We blame those people we’re closest to for causing our feelings and conflate our experience with their intention to create it.

Different people trigger different feelings in us, and specifically, different feelings about ourselves. Our narrative of the other person, and most importantly, who we are in comparison with the person we’ve constructed in our narrative, then creates a particular self-experience, an identity that crystallizes in their company.

Rather than own our feelings and acknowledge the source of our vulnerability, shame, anger, or whatever else we’re feeling, we decide that the other person is responsible for making us feel our difficult feelings. We disown our own shame and insecurity and project it onto the other person; we are not insecure…they are responsible for it; they are the ones doing it to us.

Bob struggles with powerlessness and humiliation as a general theme in his life. And yet, he needs to believe that his wife is responsible for these feelings. His humiliation is not about him, and not about what he’s (sadly) experienced in his life, or for that matter, what he’s been able to generate and make happen for himself.

There’s no question that other people affect how we feel; we are not islands. And yet, when we hand responsibility off to others for our own difficult feelings, for creating them in us, we effectively escape and reject responsibility and authorship for our own life. In so doing, we deprive ourselves of the opportunity for self-compassion—to acknowledge what we’ve lived and how we got to these feelings, which would then allow the feelings to transform and heal. Simultaneously, making our suffering something the other person is doing to us deprives us of the opportunity for autonomy and ultimately, growth. If our shame, inadequacy, rage, or whatever else were to be about us, about what we’ve actually lived, then we can get on with the job of changing it, creating a different life and different experience of ourselves.

In Bob’s case, as long as his sense of failure still belongs to his wife, if it’s still her casting failure upon him, nothing can, or will, change for Bob.

This example may sound obvious, but projection in the face of the obvious happens all the time and causes unimaginable stress and conflict in intimate relationships. If the partner being projected onto is not incredibly conscious, present, and grounded in the moment it’s happening, they can easily fall into the trap of defending themselves and going into battle to prove their innocence, which is never productive or affirming.

Some of it is just biology: the ego’s survival instinct gets activated when we’re accused of something and triggers a kind of fight-or-flight response in the nervous system. Being told we’re responsible for (and intentionally creating) bad feelings in another person we care about launches us into a defense or counter-attack—into proving that we’re not to blame, and not the bad person we’re accused of being.

This cycle of projection and defense keeps our relationships stuck and keeps us stuck in our own evolution. We focus on our partner and what they’re doing to cause our experience. We devote our attention and energy to how they need to change—to fix our pain and make us feel differently. We insist that a different reality exists, one in which we don’t feel what we feel, a reality that we imagine our partner controls and could create for us…if only they were different.

In part 2 of this series, I will look at ways to break out of this cycle of projection and defense, both for the projector and the projected upon and how to free ourselves from this repetitive loop that leads to conflict, disconnection, and, in a word, suffering. We’ll look at how to move our relationships to a more evolved, conscious, and harmonious state.

The post Projection and Defensiveness: The 2 Relationship Toxins that Can Poison the House appeared first on Nancy Colier.

I recently witnessed, yet again, how utterly vital self-awareness and discernment are for the job of good parenting.  I’ve known my friend Dan (all names are changed) for a good long time.  Because he’s been in my life for decades, I’ve also known his kids since they were born and have my own relationship with his son and daughter, who are now teenagers.

On a recent walk, Dan was raging to me about his teenage daughter Kim and an incident that had just occurred between them. Earlier that morning Kim had been taking photos and Dan, who knows a lot about photography, had offered Kim a suggestion for how to frame her photos in a more rich and interesting way.  Kim, who is 15, had gotten irritated with her father and rejected his suggestions, telling him to leave her alone so she could take her own photographs the way she wanted to.

Dan was very angry because, according to him, Kim rejected everything he offered because she didn’t respect him.  In his narrative, his daughter didn’t think that he was someone who knew anything of value.  She ignored his suggestions because she didn’t think he was someone whose opinion mattered.

I listened to my friend with a lot of mixed feelings.  I knew that this narrative about not being valued for what he offered had been Dan’s experience since I knew him.  I was aware that my friend had struggled with feeling invisible for his entire life, and that he had always felt unseen, unappreciated, and unvalidated in his work.  I knew that this was Dan’s “stuff” being triggered by his daughter’s healthy need to make her own choices and create in her own way.  I felt sad too for my friend and his desire to have his daughter appreciate him and be valued for all that he did know.

As Dan expressed his anger to me, I also had in my mind conversations I had exchanged with his daughter.  She had shared with me how controlled she felt by her father, how he never could let her do anything her way and had to constantly teach her something and show her what he knew.  She had expressed great frustration that her father was constantly trying to improve her and could never just be with her as she was or let her be who she was.  She felt that she was relentlessly being fed the message that she wasn’t good enough.  She had to do everything better–be better.

Simultaneously, because Kim is an emotionally savvy young woman, she was able to see that when she took suggestions from her father, she felt like the whole experience became about him, like she was being held responsible for making her dad feel valued, important and seen.  She naturally then resisted taking his suggestions because she felt like to do so kidnapped her experience and turned it into a “Look what dad can offer you… see what a valuable person/parent dad is,” all of which she (understandably) wanted nothing to do with.

I knew all this as Dan raged on about Kim’s crimes and how she was deliberately rejecting his wisdom and expertise.  When he got to the end of his rant and wanted me to validate his feelings, I was in a bit of a pickle.  But because he is a dear friend, and because I love Kim too, I felt required to speak a bit about what I saw happening.  And so I empathized with him about his frustration and anger.  I tried to make space for the feelings of invisibility and dismissal that he was expressing.  And then I offered too, a possible other explanation for why Kim might not want his photography advice, one that might lessen the sting, but at the cost of contradicting his storyline.

I reminded my friend that Kim was 15 and needed to learn, but also to be allowed to figure things out for herself and that it was terrific she was playing around with the camera at all.  And I told him that I knew, for sure, that she did not think he was a piece of crap, as he had decided was the case, but rather that she was trying to become a person in her own right and sometimes his suggestions felt like they worked against that for her.  I tried to be gentle with him and decided to leave out the age-old quality of his storyline, how he had been struggling with these feelings long before Kim appeared on the scene with her camera.  I also left out my belief that he was accusing his daughter of intentions that didn’t belong to her.  I knew Dan was raw and that feeling unvalued was his core wound, and so I simply attempted to add another possible experience, truth, or frame (Kim’s) into his storyline, to bring some air into his airless narrative, to break up the solidness and certainty of the story he had constructed around his daughter.

The truth was I felt compassion for both Dan and his daughter, and I wasn’t sure how to help the situation other than to hold up all the truths that coexisted—that meant Dan’s feelings of invisibility, his wish to not only be valued but also teach his daughter where he could (which was a healthy desire), and Kim’s need to be valued as she was, without improvement, and her need to not have to continually validate her dad for his knowledge, to make up for her dad not having been seen by the world.  But what I couldn’t sit by and allow was my friend’s assignment of blame to his daughter for what was his own wound; I couldn’t simply watch as he denied his own “stuff” and placed it on her.  The experience with Kim had indeed triggered his core wound, yes, but not because she intended to do so.  He was making something that had nothing to do with him about him, collapsing his personal experience with a larger truth, which was not okay.

When I shared Kim’s experience with Dan, an experience that was radically different than the one he had assigned her in his narrative, my fantasy was that he would suddenly feel a wave of fatherly compassion for his daughter, that he would be able to step out of his own ego story, ego defense, and feel empathy for his daughter’s experience of never feeling enough, of always having to be better (so that dad could feel valuable and visible).  But nowhere in me did I really think that scenario would happen, and indeed it didn’t.  My friend stayed loyal to his ego defenses, stuck with his narrative, and exploded at me.  By offering a different truth, namely his daughter’s, I had asked him to look at his own “stuff,” his history and what he was assuming to be truth, and also, perhaps, to open his heart to his daughter’s actual experience rather than the one he was constructing for her.  This, apparently, was not what he was wanting or needing and we decided to convene again when he was calmer.

But all that said, it got me thinking again about how important it is for us as parents to separate out the “stuff” belongs to us, from our histories, and what is actually true for our kids.  What our experience is and what their experience is, letting them co-exist with dignity, as different as they usually are.  We’ve all been Dan at one time or another, and, when we were younger, we’ve all been Kim and had our parents’ stuff hurled onto us.  I grew up in a home that sometimes felt like a house of mirrors, where you were rarely in a conversation that included your actual truth, but rather were related to through the projections of others, always saddled with something you had been assigned (positive or negative) that was part of someone else’s story.  And so, when my friend Dan attached an intention to his daughter that belonged to his story and was not her truth, I felt my own wounding arise.

Often as parents, we are triggered by something our child says or does. If we don’t catch it in the moment or shortly after, if we don’t own our “stuff” as ours and keep it safely away from our kids, we end up in a distorted and confusing relationship with our children, one that denies them the right to have their own truth seen and honored, their own intentions validated, and denies us the possibility of a fresh and truthful relationship with our children.

When we collapse our stuff and their motives, we end up believing that our kids are responsible for re-wounding us in the way that our narrative dictates, when in fact we re-wound ourselves by turning our subjective experience into an objective truth with all the accompanying perpetrators.

Instead, when we are triggered, we can pause, feel the triggered-ness, the wound, and take the experience as an opportunity to bring ourselves compassion.  Our kids, if we can stay awake and aware, offer us the gift that is an opportunity to awaken, pay attention and bring kindness to our own pain.  They show us what’s buried in us; let us not, in our ignorance and defensiveness, bury our kids back in with our pain.

Because we have a subjective experience does not mean it is an objective, capital t Truth.  We can have a very real and strong experience, but that does not mean that the other person is doing that to or at us.  Their actions trigger something in us, but their experience, what’s happening in and for them, is undoubtedly very different than the experience we are having.  And both experiences are true and valid.

Our kids are trying to become people, to individuate and discover who they are.  That’s tough enough without having to figure out, pick through, unstick from, and climb their way out of our storylines.  Our kids awaken in us what we’ve lived, which includes our suffering.  We can bow to our kids, as the messengers of our own pain; they bring it, some of which we might not have even known was there, but they bring it so we can heal from it.

As parents, it’s our responsibility to separate what belongs to us from our own childhoods and adult lives and not intermingle that with our children’s truth.  Their truth belongs to them just as our truth belongs to us.  And all such truths can, with awareness, co-exist in harmony.  Our greatest responsibility as parents, as important as showing up for all the softball games and dance recitals, is our own self-awareness and the willingness to take responsibility for our own “stuff,” to feel what arises without turning it into a story about anyone else.  And in so doing, we offer our kids the dignity of deciding and discovering their own truth and having it heard, without our wounded and wounding intrusions.

The post How to Not Burden Our Kids With Our Own Emotional Stuff appeared first on Nancy Colier.

For a long time, I worked like hell to provide what she wanted, what she was demanding, not necessarily because I wanted to, but because I felt I should.  But no matter how much I gave, it was never enough and I was never acknowledged or experienced by her as the person who was offering what she needed.  I was constantly arguing my case for why she was wrong about me, wrong for blaming me; I continued telling her how much I was doing, why she should appreciate me.  But it never made a difference.  I was forever stuck in the role of the one who wouldn’t provide what she really needed.

After what felt like eons of giving and giving and continually being told and experienced as the one that wasn’t giving, I started to feel differently.  I started to feel like I shouldn’t have to provide these things that she demanded from me and felt entitled to.  I started to argue with my own sense of should and rethink what I should be willing to offer.  I also started to argue with her about whether or not it was right or fair for her to expect this service from me.

And so, for the next few years, we remained locked in a new battle, namely, who was right about whether or not I should have to offer the kind of help she required.  I said I shouldn’t have to and she said I should.  What was the truth?

More time passed but we both held our ground, each of us growing more stuck in our positions, convinced of our rightness.  Resentment infiltrated our relationship from top to bottom.

But then something truly unexpected happened, for me.  Something simple but utterly profound.  I don’t know what it will mean for the relationship, but I know that it’s opened up infinite space inside me, a deep okayness and strength, and thoroughly changed my reality.

What happened was this: I realized that at the bottom of this lifelong battle with this woman was a simple truth, a truth that had been shunned, stepped over, stepped around, ignored, and never allowed to the table.  I can say it out loud now, scream it from the rooftops, and here’s what it sounds like: I do not want to be responsible for providing what she needs.  It’s not that I shouldn’t have to (that’s a truth that depends on one’s inner universe), it’s not that I have been responsible and it’s gone unacknowledged; it’s far simpler than all that.  I don’t want it—that’s the whole story.  I don’t want to requires no further dialogue, explanation, or justification.  It sounds like a small turn, like something I already knew, but it was a revelation.  It was a truth that for decades had been forced to hide in the shadows of should and shouldn’t; buried under all the effort, the thousands of words, arguments, and tsunamis of fear and guilt. This truth had been denied permission to be heard or even to exist.

As long as I was still relying on the argument that I shouldn’t have to, I was still dependent on her and everyone else to feel solid in my choice.  The strength of my own truth didn’t yet belong to me.  It was still a truth of consensus, one that had to be agreed upon, and thus something that her rejection was able to undermine.  That I could never be validated in the idea that it wasn’t fair to ask this of me, that I shouldn’t have to, meant that I could never really stand in my own shoes. I could never not feel guilty for my choice even with the awareness that all the doing in the world would still not earn me the place of the one who was doing it.

What freed me was that simple but awe-inspiring shift in awareness and perspective, the appearing of the real truth, the I don’t want to reality.  In that moment of awakening to my own not wanting, I realized that this truth more than any other had been the unacknowledged, unsafe to acknowledge key to unraveling the whole knot.  It wasn’t about not being appreciated for it; it wasn’t about winning the fight that I shouldn’t have to.  It was just about discovering the plain and simple “I don’t want to.”

Remarkably, “I don’t want to” is not up for dialogue, discussion, or agreement.  This truth is not a truth by consensus.  It’s mine wholly, and to some degree, non-negotiable.  When I found my I don’t want to, I found my own two feet planted firmly on the ground, weighted and strong.  I found clarity and with it, freedom.  This other person no longer held the power to allow or deny me my truth.

What I’ve noticed since this awakening is that I am far more able to look at this other person without resentment.  What is is and I don’t have to defend it anymore.  And simultaneously, I don’t feel the same fear, fear of the guilt inspired by her belief about what I should be willing to offer, fear of being accused of being bad.  Oddly, it actually feels like I can enjoy her a whole lot more as well.  The truth, awakened in me, allows me to look at this other person in the eyes, and stand in the light of what’s true, for me.  Where it will take us in the relationship, I have no idea, but whatever happens, I don’t want to has, for me, turned out to be the get out of jail key to freedom.

The post When the Truth Sets You Free appeared first on Nancy Colier.

Carol came to see me with a serious agenda.  She and her husband had had a disagreement the evening before our session and Carol wanted to explain to me why her husband had said what upset her, and specifically, what in his personal psychology and history had made him decide to hurt her. She also wanted to lay out her theories on what was wrong with her husband in a more general sense and how she was going to explain it to him so that he would understand and be different.  Knowing what she knew about him, she was sure that once she laid out her case and helped him understand what was wrong with him, he would become different—and as a result, she would be okay once again.

My client had come up with an intricate, psychologically sophisticated and comprehensive narrative about her husband’s intentions, resentments, methodology, and shortcomings, and tying in his familial history, present psychology, and relational style.  Carol’s presentation was a multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and multi-generational storyline. Most developed in her narrative, interestingly, was her theory about her husband’s strategy and intention to hurt her.

Carol was suffering and I listened empathically as she constructed her clear case for why the experience with her husband had happened. And simultaneously, what she needed to do about it or explain to her husband so that he would understand why he was wrong, and would never do this kind of thing again.  I felt her pain and frustration; I also felt how her words and ideas were trying to keep her from feeling her pain, give her some protection from her heart’s hurt, make her pain manageable. And, I felt how desperately those words were failing her.

Everything Carol said made perfect sense. In court, she would have won her case.  At the same time, I have been listening to her theories on her husband for many years, and also keeping her company in her suffering, as none of her well-crafted theories and/or action plans have changed how he behaves or how she feels about it.  I’ve watched as none of her theories and action plans have brought her happiness or peace.

On this day, I felt we were ready and so I asked Carol to consider a few new questions in relation to her story and her experience. “What if none of the thoughts and intentions you’ve assigned to your husband are actually true—for him?” I asked.  And, “What if your thoughts only exist in your own mind but don’t really exist anywhere else?”  And furthermore, “What if your narrative, no matter how true and real for you, is of no value whatsoever in making you feel better?”

It was a risk to pull Carol out of her story.  At the same time, she had been telling me her theories on her husband for a long time and I trusted that she knew my re-direct was coming from a desire to help, and also that we’d given enough space and attention to the storyline of the moment, enough so that she would be willing to pull the lens back and examine the story-making itself.  I have learned from experience that asking someone to move out of their story before it’s received its due process is not useful or kind, but Carol and I were in a place to take a new turn in our journey.

In this moment, as sometimes happens, grace graced us and Carol had an awakening moment.  Her paradigm shifted and it suddenly dawned on her that what she had considered to be the truth, not just for her, but for her partner too, might not be the truth.  She saw that her narrative could make utter sense to her, could be un-challengeable, and yet could have absolutely nothing to do with what her husband was experiencing.

Her mind opened to the possibility that her idea (and certainty) as to why her husband was intentionally hurting her might be false, for him, or just an idea in her head.  In an instant, Carol literally unstuck from her most tightly held thoughts, she surrendered to the freedom of not knowing what’s true for anyone else.  Carol realized that just because she had a thought didn’t mean she had to believe it, even if it made perfect sense in her own head.

It’s revolutionary and profoundly liberating when we grasp that our version of the truth, which not coincidentally always places us at the epicenter of what’s motivating everyone else’s behavior, may not and probably is not the truth for anyone else.  Tragically, in an effort to help ourselves feel better and make sense of our pain, to know and be able to control what hurts, we construct elaborate stories on why others are doing what they’re doing to us.  We lock in a truth, one that applies to everyone and everything, and no matter how painful that truth might be, we hold onto it, believing that knowing is far safer than not knowing.

The narrative we are living and suffering however, is unreal and unnecessary.  It’s made up by our particular mind, with its particular wounds, conditioning, experiences, thoughts, and everything else we’ve ever lived.  In the end, we suffer alone, trapped in the certainty of our story, the story of what’s inside everyone else’s head—inside a pseudo-reality of our own damaging design.

It’s also remarkable to discover that our theories on why what’s happened to us has happened, and what we need to do about it, that none of them, none of our beautiful, logical works of mental art, will ultimately lead us to peace.  If peace is what we want, our mind and its theories will not take us there.  Trying to find peace with our mind is like trying to open a lock with a banana.  The mind is simply the wrong instrument if peace is what we desire.

That said, the next time you find yourself convinced of and grasping onto a storyline about how you’ve been wronged or any such thing, ask yourself, What if all my ideas on what’s true for this other person, the world, or whatever else is the protagonist of my narrative of the moment, what if they’re not actually true—for the other, not true outside my own mind?  What if my truths are only true for me?”  See if it’s possible to loosen your grip on the “big T” Truth.

Paradoxically, when we give ourselves permission to not know what’s true, to turn in our badge as master-interpreter of everyone else’s behavior, surrender our throne as judge and jury of universal truth, blessedly, we discover the very peace we believed we could only find through our storylines and certainty.

We get there when we get there, but usually, with enough mental fatigue and smart storylines under our belt; when we’ve tried long and hard enough to find peace through the mind’s gymnastics and found ourselves again and again at pain’s door, suffering within our brilliance and certainty, knowing so much but not how to be happy, we start to recognize our banana without having to shove it in the lock for too long.

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