SPFPP 236: 69
This episode is about perspective. I draw a six on the ground in front of you and you don’t see that, you see a nine. There’s a process that happens in the brain calling from our past experiences that lead us to communicating to another person what we see and boy did I realize this and have a healing experience with my parents. You’ll hear about it here.
I've run Something Positive for Positive People for 5 and a half years now and it's been a non-profit for a little over 3 of those years. I'm experiencing really mixed emotions as I sit here about to hit the "transfer funds" button to pay myself even though the money from the Oregon Health Authority has been signed off on to go TO ME.
The struggle comes from having my identity wrapped into not just being someone who doesn't need anything from others, but also who others need. I see that spill into SPFPP as me infinitely giving with ease but facing significant discomfort with receiving, as that's what this space, podcast, advocacy, website, platform is all built on.
This resistance to receiving what I've worked for, or am worthy of stems from events in childhood that I gave a narrative to as an adult that dictated my behavior. Beliefs like it's selfish for me to take more than I need when so many others don't even have their survival needs supported.
The resistance to receiving was a misinterpretation of how I wanted the world to see me, as selfless, needless, NEEDED, and it took for me to hear from Nikki & Courtney (my mother and father) in THEIR words that I can go beyond just surviving and thrive.
I asked my parents directly to validate me because at 33 years old, 2.5 years into therapy, I finally realize there's a psychological block I have to receiving fully. I've been asking the world around me for something without asking for it as a substitute for what I've been seeking from my parents since . . . Who knows? I'm privileged that I was able to experience this healing having both my parents still here when I came to realize that the validation I receive through my work, passion, hobbies, relationships, etc. despite their quantity, carry little to no significance at all.
No, I don't need anyone to validate me except myself, but my SELF was trapped in a fog of misinterpreted beliefs about who I believe myself to be. There's this reoccurring dream I have where I'm a kid being picked up from my mom by my dad. We got to his house for the weekend and he walks to the door. I hop out, shut the door, walk around the car to the house by a sewer and something grabs my leg. In my dream, I scream for my dad to save me, but he doesn't hear me. I interpreted that as "he can't hear me". After hearing my father say to me "Son, I didn't realize you needed anything", I realized that I wasn't screaming for help. I was too proud to ask for it because I didn't think he could help me.
I broke through my chains of fog by directly asking both my mother and my father for what the world around me feeds me often but I can't digest, validation. How the world sees me isn't near as important as how I see me, yet the fog of my beliefs wasn't something I alone could come out of.
So I screamed. I screamed for my mother and father. Asking for help was enough to lift the fog enough to see my next step out of it. I can work with that, but I took it a step further and I asked them to validate me, which was the hardest thing I've done to that date.
Their validation, and expression of how they see me lifted the fog completely as I was able to let go of my narratives I created about how they saw me and I was able to hear from them how they saw me. What's powerful about this process is that now I am no longer guessing "how do my parents see me?". Knowing that I was wrong about how they see me allowed for me to know that I was wrong about how I SEE ME, because I couldn't.
The validation I subconsciously sought out from the world to tell me who to be didn't guide me through the fog like I thought it was, it kept me there. My parents led me through my false narratives and beliefs with their voices so that I could recognize my own.
My voice is saying I AM worthy, confident, capable, intelligent, deserving, and many other kind and inspiring things that I've been able to say to any and everyone else BUT myself.
I am worthy of receiving.
I hit that transfer funds button with tears - because I know the IRS gone get a piece of it lol, but mostly because I'm proud of myself for asking for what I need directly, and having received the bonus of having my mother and father to give me the permission I needed to be the person who gives myself permission to receive.