Last month I ran into a friend I’d had a tumultuous history with, a close but toxic friendship turned more into an acquaintanceship over the years.
She never did smalltalk. She saw through people to an uncomfortable degree at times. She would always be radically honest about where she was at in her life.
And this case was no different, despite not having seen each other in a year.
“Yeah, my family says I’m an airhead. My boyfriend says so too. I used to think I was smart before, but I realized I’m not.”
My first thought to this:
WTF?
Tumultuous history or not, I knew that this friend had one of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever come across.
What level of brainwashing had to occur between now and when we were close friends for her to believe that she was an airhead? Everyone around her was saying she was one way, and she tragically started to believe it.
I recalled back to when I was in the roughest period of my life.
I was talking to a different friend, who mentioned I seemed like a fearless person.
“I think I was in the past, but I’ve regressed a bit in my life. I may have this fearless exterior, but on the inside I’m a scared little crab,” I responded. (the crab was a reference to my Cancer sun and moon. #cancerpride)
My friend didn’t correct me or offer a different perspective—just took this negative evaluation I gave myself at face value.
I’m not necessarily blaming that friend.
But here is what I would have said, instead, to my past self:
“A crab crawls sideways, not in a direct fashion towards her intended destination. But she is diligent and always reaches it in the end.
Sometimes what looks like regressing on the surface is actually how you move forward. True fearlessness is being the scared little crab who moves, in her own sprawling way, towards her destiny.”
It would have made all the difference if I’d had someone who could mirror my highest self back to me at that time. (Shoutout to my OG friend Jenna who always did this for me!)
Indeed, the major turning point to my rough patch came when I hired an astrologer/coach (Shaunga Tagore) who only had to say one sentence to change everything. Without them mirroring back to me my real truth, I might have been struggling on the same issue for many, many more months.
After that, I had to do a major audit of what bullshit was being reflected back towards me in my environment.
It’s not necessarily the fault of anyone around you if they can’t reflect you properly. Sometimes, people can meet you only as far as they’ve met themselves. Sometimes they can’t see you because you don’t let yourself be seen.
And sometimes, we’re the ones holding onto our own limitations, these distorted versions of ourselves, for dear life.
I’ve had friends who berate themselves so much it gets tiring trying to correct them.
It makes sense — if a negative self-concept is part of your identity, letting it go is a kind of death. It’s also very likely you would surround yourself with people who help confirm what you already believe about you. And those who have grown up in abusive or critical environments may have a negative self-schema that is particularly hard to reprogram (but NOT impossible.)
The best thing to do if we’re living in a funhouse full of warped mirrors, is to recognize the distortion staring back at us in the first place. We start to replace those goddamn warped mirrors.
We start to see ourselves clearly.
As multidimensional. magnificent. And whole.
✨✨✨
Want me to be the light on your door? (That’s a reference to the velvet underground song, “I’ll be your mirror”. Great song.) Email me at nerd4healing@gmail.com and let’s chat 🙂
Originally got that crab crawling sideways analogy by Kiki O’Keefe/Sarah Panlibuton Barnes at Man Repeller!