What I learned this week.
This has been a week of personal growth and facing fears.
Here are the two occasions that taught me something important.
Doing boundary exercises with a person I didn’t know that well.
As some of you might know, I have a fear of unknown men and letting people close to me. I’m on a journey of overcoming this,so yesterday, we did a bunch of exercises in order to begin this process.
What happened? We spent an hour practicing different scenarios where I got to experience this person slowly getting closer to me and walking past me from different sides of the room. ( The exercises were led by trained professionals. )
At one point, my task was to pick up a balloon from his hand while he was sitting on the floor.
This took me tre trys before being able to stand still close to him without an urge to take a step back in order to protect my personal space. When I was finally able to do it and saw that nothing bad was going to happen, it made me feel so proud of myself. The exercises took a lot of time ,patience, and deep breaths to complete.
The thing that helped me the most along the way was knowing that I was in control the whole time. If at any point things got too overwhelming, we stopped everything to talk about feelings and to decide if I felt comfortable with continuing or not. Nothing happened without an introduction and giving me a chance to stop at any time.
What I learned? : we are all capable of facing our fears when given a safe space where all emotions are allowed to be felt.
Having a difficult conversation with my coworker.
Approximately a week ago, there was a situation where an inappropriate joke was told. This touched a topic that was sensitive for me,so it made me feel horrible. We don’t know each other very well, so I held everything in for quite a while. Today was the day when I finally decided that it was time to have an open and honest conversation with her.
It took me two tries and some convincing on her side in order for me to be able to open up about it.
The thing that helped me the most was her patience and encouragement when I was struggling to share my feelings. She was just sitting there saying “ Hey, Don’t worry about putting your words in the right order. / You can talk to me about anything at any time. The most important thing is that you are able to talk about what’s on your mind.”
It turned out that she actually took my feedback well, apologized, and promised to me that this is never going to happen again. She didn’t mean to hurt anyone
What I learned? If someone has enough patience to give me the time necessary in order for me to feel safe enough to lower my guard it’s possible to talk about anything and to have these sensitive conversations. Also, the worst-case scenarios almost never happen,so we shouldn’t believe everything we think.
Are there any life lessons that you would like to share? If so, please leave a comment. Let’s continue the discussion together ❤️
