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May 26, 2015

How I Gave up the Battle and Learned to Love Myself.

Jordan Gray

I grew up with the underlying belief that I was too sensitive.

I felt too much. I cried too much. I was too much.

Whether childhood bullying, emotionally suppressed parents/grandparents/great-grandparents, or any other reason that caused it is irrelevant.

What mattered is that I had a deep fear of being myself.

I learned early on, that in order to get by and to not be a nuisance, I had to suppress the emotions that I felt.

I wore a highly convincing social mask through elementary school that helped me be popular, while simultaneously sapping myself of my personal integrity, drip by drip.

If someone hurt my feelings, I’d calmly walk to the bathroom and silently cry in the stalls.

If someone was too rough with me during recess, I’d pretend like it didn’t hurt and would cover up the bruises for the following few days.

And at the end of every school day I’d lie in bed awake at night and feel all of the residual emotions that I didn’t feel like I was allowed to feel throughout the day.

This underlying resistance to my sensitive nature resulted in me becoming quite depressed as a teenager.

At the age of 14, when most of my peers seemed to be adjusting to high school life quite well, I tried to take my own life.

I had such big feelings and I didn’t feel like anyone understood what my internal reality was. When, in reality, it wasn’t their responsibility to read my mind. It was my responsibility to face and accept who I was at my core (something that I, like many 14-year-olds, didn’t have the mental tools or resources to know how to do).

I went on like this for the next 13 years.

I dated women who were just as emotionally repressed as I was. If any friend, family member or lover tried to get close to me, I would quickly push them away. I avoided anyone who I thought would have the ability to see through the walls that I had erected.

After enough years of emotional suppression, I forgot that I had suppressed them at all.

But then cracks started to show in my heavy, self-imposed armor. Any movie that had an overtly emotional male lead made me bawl my eyes out. Anytime I saw a couple in public where the female partner was being physically nurturing with her male partner, I would tear up.

Any hint of emotionality (especially male emotionality) would hit me like a regulation sized basketball being hurled at my gut. At the root of all of these triggering moments, I envied the freedom with which I saw others expressing authentic emotions.

It wasn’t until my 27th birthday that I truly decided that it was time for me to let go of the habit of emotional suppression and to feel all of the emotional residue that I had pushed down for the previous decades.

I can remember the moment in such vivid detail.

The wispy white smoke from my recently extinguished birthday candles was still visible and lingering in front of my face when I had the thought, “27 sounds like a good age for me to fall in love with myself.'”

My journey towards self-acceptance was not an easy one (it rarely is). It took many months of journaling, reading, (ugly) crying, talk therapy and forgiveness meditations in order to get to a place where I felt at ease with myself.

And through all of the experiences that I went through, the biggest lesson that I learned throughout my entire journey was this:

The best way to win the battle between our inner demons and us is to put the sword down.

Stop fighting it.

Stop resisting it.

Because any time we lean into our self-development from a “fixing” perspective, we’re really just denying our true nature and sub-communicating with ourselves that we are somehow broken.

And since learning to honor and accept my sensitivity, I have allowed myself to be surrounded by people who love and support me for the same things that I love and support in myself—resulting in an upward spiral of self-esteem and self-acceptance.

So what about you, beautiful reader?

How could you accept yourself more, if only a little bit?

What part of you is waiting to be loved and accepted with your patient compassion?

I would love to hear about what you have been facing in your personal journey. Tell me about it in the comments below.

 

Relephant read:

How I Achieved Authentic & Radical Self-Love. 

~

Author: Jordan Gray

Assistant Editor: JoJo Rowden/ Editor: Ashleigh Hitchcock

Photo: via the author

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