Hugging a Cactus 🌵
The area I'm trying to level up in my personal life these days is around my relationships with other people.
It's my next big area of growth, and there's a lot of work to do in that area because I have been messy, lol.
I wanted to share a glimpse into some work I had to do around one of my relationships recently because I think it will be helpful for those of you that might be struggling with this as well.
I had a lot of drama recently with one of my friendships.
I've done a lot of work around this, and let me tell you; it can be soooo annoying. 😫 But, I know the payoff at the end is worth it for me.
Here is my story, the tamed down version of it anyway. This friendship has been a bit bumpy for a few months.
I've noticed that anger/frustration would often follow my successes or wins, I felt like it was very one-sided, I would try to hide it when things would go well because I didn't want to upset the other person.
I'm a very casual, fun, loosey-goosey, supportive, love when my friends do well, and probably a bit distant (if I'm honest) type of friend.
Again, this is my version of the story; I'm sure theirs would be way
different, and the truth would be a combo of the two.
But I held onto my story for dear life. Even though it felt awful and made me show up in a way I didn't feel good about.
I was basically hugging a cactus, it felt awful, but I wasn't ready to let go.
I got coached a few times on it, but it didn't really help, just made me more annoyed. Sometimes we need to go through the muck before we're ready to clean it up.
So here's what helped me have a breakthrough. I sat down and typed out my entire "friendship" story so I could look at it. Then I asked myself how I could take responsibility for how things played out.
My brain HAAAATTTTEEEED this.
I am my number one client, and I am my most difficult client because I can be a stubborn know-it-all, and I will hold onto that cactus for dear life. 😂
The upside is that my stubbornness makes me a much better coach because learning how to cut through my BS helps me see through my clients’ stories quickly.
After throwing my head back, groaning, and being a full-blown toddler about it 😂 , I came up with the following:
I noticed aggression and frustration when I would talk about something good that happened or a goal I had it, etc. And I assumed that I knew the motives (jealousy, didn't want me to do well, wasn't happy for me when things would go well, etc.). Of course, my assumption was the worst possible scenario because that's what our brains do.
After getting honest with myself, I surely noticed a few times when I felt the compare and despair, and I handled it like a complete freaking weirdo. Seriously. Full-blown weirdo.
I shut down and pulled back. When my relationships get bumpy, I tend to check out. I developed that skill as a child and I'm pretty dang good at it. I'll drop a quick bye Felicia and move right along. (This doesn't serve me at all and I want to clean this up)
I expected her to support me the way that I felt I had supported her. This one took me a hot ass minute to work through. And by minute, I mean months, lol. Friends should support friends, right? It sounds like such a helpful thought, but it's not. AT ALL. I had an unspoken rule book on what that support should look like in a friendship, and anything else was "wrong." All subconsciously, of course, I for sure didn't recognize this at the time. And I just created my own damn rules, lol. It's not like it's etched in stone somewhere that a friend must do A, B, C, D. Seriously, who in the world am I to determine what a person should/shouldn't do in friendship? Lol
When I noticed jealousy/frustration, I assumed that they didn't like it when good things happened to me and that they didn't want me to happy or successful.
I somehow missed that those two can totally co-exist. Someone CAN be happy for your success and want the same for themselves and feel a little jealous at the same time. Mind blown!
Legit never even crossed my mind, lol.
We're all human; we're all messy at times.
We all show up in ways that we're not proud of; I believe we're all doing our best, and sometimes our best isn't great.
And that's okay.
I also think that we're pretty damn creative at avoiding the work we need to do on ourselves by staying too busy to address it, pretending it doesn't exist, or numbing out in general.
And I think that the people closest to us trigger us repeatedly until we are forced to do the work on ourselves that we need to do so we can continue to evolve.
If this is your struggle, pay attention to the things that trigger you with other people and get super curious about what's really going on beneath the surface.
It can be super annoying and difficult for you to see it objectively because you are in the weeds.
And we all love to be right, even when being right only hurts us more in the end.
And I am here to help.
If you are struggling, hit me up.
I can help you see your situation differently and feel relieved immediately.
And I can do that quickly thanks to my own stubbornness. 💖💖
Drop the cactus,
Machele
P.S. Shout out to my fellow coach, Jody Moore, for the great analogy of hugging a cactus.
Machele Galloway is a Certified Life Coach through The Life Coach School. She's based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and specializes in helping her clients manage their time and their minds. She firmly believes that you can't manage one without managing the other. She virtually coaches women nationwide. If she isn't coaching clients, she is studying concepts and techniques. And if she isn't doing that, she's probably playing with a dog or watching the Real Housewives of some city. - “Life is short. Play a little.”
