Winning Wednesday ~ Winning Emotional Wars
Dedicated to all my ladies and gents that have won their emotional war!
Relationships can sometimes feel like an emotional war. A war you don’t want to fight but sometimes find yourself right in the middle of. You wonder how you got to that particular place at that particular moment in time and wish that you could find a safe way out that would minimize injury for all involved. Sometimes you wonder if you bring out the worse in a person because who they become during and after the emotional war is someone you’re unfamiliar with, someone you would have never believed existed a few moments before all hell broke lose. Sometimes you wonder if this person has the power to change you and make you into someone you really don’t want to be. And then you think back to when the people who loved you, told you that you were changing – that you were changing in order to make things work with the very same person that you are now at war with. And for a second, you say to yourself “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do” and then, the smarter you that always keeps it real, whispers “Girl you know when its right, you don’t have to change a damn thing about who you are” and you think “oh shit, I gave away my power- I HAVE changed”. Now, this realization makes you want to fight that much more! So you dig your heels in deep and fight even harder, engaging in a bitter and intense emotional war.
Often past feelings of hurt tend to precipitate the actions and words that spur the war. Feelings of betrayal, a loss of control and disappointment transform both parties into aggressive warriors, one trying to conquer the other. You feel as if you’re thirsty for blood because every frustration, hurt and disappointment you hold deep within, you want to share with your enemy. You want to inflict pain but at the same time you want to be held by someone who truly loves you. You look for a place of healing but you’re in the midst of the war and peace cannot be found on the battleground.
You know what you must do, but in an environment of war with grenades and rounds of ammunition, you feel so overwhelmed and scared you don’t even know where to begin. So you sit. You take a seat right in the middle of the battlefield, cross your arms and you just sit. Every now and then you have to dodge a bullet or fire something back just to stay alive but otherwise you just sit, waiting for the whisper that you will hear when the time is right. You know exactly what the whisper will say ~ it will say “RISE” and with that one word you will know exactly what to do.
So how do you win the emotional war?
You win by waiting and listening for the whisper. And while you’re waiting you arm yourself with words. Not words to hurt the other but words to comfort your own soul. You begin to recite things like … “Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.” “Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” “If you really love something set it free. If it comes back it’s yours, if not it wasn’t meant to be.” “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” ”Everything happens for a reason.”And when you’ve raised your spirits with enough words of wisdom, you begin to realize that the war had nothing to do with anyone but you.
The real battle was the one going on between you and the person you want to be. You realize you wish that you could’ve been stronger and demanded more of what you deserve, you realize that you wish you could’ve explained better the feelings in your heart, you realize that you wanted to follow your heart and that you stopped yourself. And now you’re angry for all that you wanted, for all that you wanted to say, for all that you wanted to do but didn’t have the strength to. And once you’ve realized that, the emotional war begins to slowly reach a ceasefire. Because you continue to look inward, ignoring the enemy, who in fact wasn’t an enemy at all. They were simply a mirror, a reflection of yourself. And because you now understand this, you continue on an introspective journey, ignoring everything being said and done around you and low and behold, a sense of calm is brought to the battlefield.
Before you know it, you begin to see that everything does happen for a reason. And sometimes if you allow yourself to sit peacefully and listen, you come to understand the causes of war in an even more profound way. You realize the war happened because you allowed yourself to be fooled by false hopes and promises and lofty wishes. You begin to take responsibility for all your actions and reactions and you begin to listen. You realize in order to avoid another war, you must listen carefully. When you listen to the whisper you’ve been ignoring all along – you see that the war was absolutely, 100% necessary because you were too stubborn to stop and listen. You were too stubborn to observe and be present. You were too stubborn to do what you knew you needed to do, but were too scared to do. Because sometimes its too scary to take a chance so you take the easy route. Even when the whispering tells you that you are heading the wrong way, you don’t listen because you’re too scared to take the road that would truly devastate you if it turned out to be the wrong one. So you do what’s easy and get caught in the web. And then you think “Wow, love really is like a war, so easy to start but so terribly hard to end. And then you think, why did I do this to myself ? I knew better-I knew better!
But, the truth is you didn’t know better! For had you known better you would’ve done better! And so, the war ends when after listening to the whisper you realize that now that you understand, now that you know better, you WILL do better.
