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A little catch-up in my story;-)

In February 2021 I had been working full time, for just over a month, teaching in the Reception class (with the Lovely Mrs Shawnigan;-) and that was when I started my Compassionate Inquiry studies with Gabor Mate.

The world by that point, was slowly starting to get back to normal after almost a year of covid lockdown. After spending months by myself,

(which hadn’t been nearly as awful as I had imagined it would be)

I found myself really struggling to connect back into the world.

(Like really?

Do I really have to get back out there?)

I had no desire to get out and socialise or meet new people and found myself feeling super hypervigilant around strangers. I remember the first introductory zoom call I had for the Compassionate Inquiry Course, I was anxious as hell. I sat scanning the group screen, frantically searching for the faces that I could trust and those faces that I couldn’t trust.

It was my own desperate attempt to identify the ‘narky’ types earlier on so that I could

hopefully,

(somehow)

avoid……um….. interacting with them?

(lol Like that was ever going to happen).

Up until that point, I had spent months listening to, narcissism expert, Dr Ramani.

(I think I became mildly obsessed )

After my 2020 experience and numerous other painful experiences throughout my life span, I was determined to never again land up in another toxic entanglement with a narcissist.

Thanks to my psychoeducation with my heroine Dr Ramani, I was definitely starting to feel more empowered and I was beginning to feel confident at recognising some of the very typical red flags and behaviours that many narcissistic people can display.

(Red flags that I had been oblivious to for so many years.)

PS I feel the need to add that throughout this whole process, I very sadly,

COMPLETELY

my lifelong love affair with romantic comedies!

As a romantic comedy VETRAN,

this is TRAGIC I tell you!!!!

These days I can barely watch one without wanting to gag at all the red flags oozing off either the protagonist or their designated love interest!!

(But that’s a WHOLE post all on its own:-)

I was by now very cautious of opening myself up to people, too much, too early in the game before I actually really got to know them. I had learnt the hard way how so many narcissistic people can take what you tell them in confidence and then use it against you when they need to. And more often than not, they can be ruthless about it! After years of me ignoring my therapist’s gentle encouragement to ‘protect my heart more‘ I felt like this lesson had finally sunk in.

My vision of ‘compassionate inquiry’ as a safe space where I could start to connect more with people and hopefully start to feel more comfortable in my skin again was slightly shattered in that first session. I was filled with absolute horror when it dawned on me that I was going to have to open up and do ‘mock therapy sessions‘

(ON REAL ISSUES)

with everyone on that screen.

Which no doubt went against every inch of my “Protect your heart” initiative!

Of course, I knew that most of the people on the Compassionate Inquiry Course would be psychologists, coaches or people in similar healing fields. Old me would have been lulled into a safe sense of security by this. I think I spent too many years naively looking up to these types of people, somehow assuming that they had all the answers figured out!

I mean, these are the professionals, right….people trained to HELP!!!!

But now, ‘NEW-NARKY-PROOF’ me is a lot wiser:-)

I am well aware that like most industries, this field is definitely not immune to having narcissistic professionals in it. Since this field is filled with vulnerable people who are looking for support, it makes sense that these PREDATORS would lurk here too,

looking for vulnerable individuals to prey on.

Ok, Ok

I know what you might be thinking….

You are probably thinking that I might be sounding a little bit OMNIOUS at this point in time!

Well, rest assured you would be wrong!

PLUS

mildly paranoid!

and secretly hoarding a shit load of cynicism!

So I was very conscious when I started my Course of how emotionally unsafe I felt.

But I had signed up,

I had paid for it

I loved Gabor Mate’s work

and I was not a quitter!!

My first 6 months doing the compassionate Inquiry and full-time teaching concurrently was pretty intense. The beauty of compassionate inquiry is that it teaches you a very simple therapeutic tool that helps you to start understanding your triggers. Rather than simply reacting and getting upset about things in your daily life

(As we all do!)

it encourages you to dig deeper and to uncover what the underlying emotions and feelings are about each particular trigger.

Nothing in a sense, is random.

If, for example, you are someone who constantly gets highly annoyed and irritated when someone else is late, there is a pretty good chance that this anger links back to something in your childhood. There is an often unconscious reason for why we react the way we do, and Compassionate Inquiry is about bringing all of those ‘somethings’ to the surface. It’s not to say that doing that makes these triggers magically go away, but it definitely helps you to have more compassion and understanding for yourself when it happens. In many cases, over time, the triggers do lessen considerably.

(Well, they did, in my ‘subjective’ experience:-)

Compassionate Inquiry is not a panacea.

It’s simply a tool, designed to make you more aware and conscious of what’s really going on in your life.

But it definitely wasn’t easy in the beginning.

On the one hand, I was back in the school environment that

(as we know)

hasn’t worked out well for me in the past and that is filled with triggers.

But, on the other hand,I was now being forced to actually look at all of these triggers close up.

(In hindsight I think it’s fair to say the universe knew exactly what it was doing!)

But hell, I felt emotionally RAW at times, like all my skin was being pulled off one little piece at a time. For the first time ever I was challenged to analyse and think about my reaction and responses to things, and I really got a bird’s eye view of all the anger and judgments that I had silently carried around in my head….for years.

It wasn’t pretty!

2021 was not a fun year.

But it was definitely a year fill with growth, awareness and compassion.

It was very much the year of me starting to acknowledge all the pent-up anger and grief that had been bubbling underneath the surface for decades..

…and that I then labelled as ‘Anxiety’.

Written 8th of February 2021

I have started my studies

With Gabor Mate

I adore this mans words

More than I can say

I feel like when he talks

I’m listening to my soul

It fills me with gratitude

That I enrolled

Today in his online lecture

Something random occurred

But it engulfed me with sadness

So I have to find the words

At one point he said

With all honesty

“There’s one thing that every

Single child will ALWAYS need

For healthy development

And a happy soul

To grow up feeling

Seen and emotionally whole

Caregivers who are nurturing

Caregiver who are attuned

Who can deal with their stress

Who are in control of their moods”

It was at this point

People started to laugh

Gabor looked up from the podium

He stopped his monograph:

“What is so funny?”

He implored the group

He looked a little confused

Like perhaps he’d been duped

The laughter continued

He again asked for the joke

Finally, someone manned up

And honesty spoke

“Do we have to be “THAT”

All of the time?”

Like the intentions Gabore had set

Were a little too sublime

Gabor looked a bit sad

And it hit me hard

I was a little shocked by the general

Callous disregard

And I will admit I actually

Began to cry

With such intense emotion

(Something had gone awry)

Because I’ve experienced that damage

Of not feeling contained

The emptiness it creates

Those feelings of shame

Billions of people

Struggle every single day

Because they have never been taught

That they ARE simply okay

Damaged, hurt parents

Pass that baton along

Damaged hurt kids

Pick it up and pass it on…

An endless cycle

Of deep core pain

So many people marred

By their own toxic shame

And yet we laugh about parenting

Like it’s such a huge joke

We use humour to mask our fears

We make fun and we poke

Jokes about how we

Yell and we scream

Like none of these behaviours

Will affect our children’s self-esteem

And perhaps if I was married

And I had my own kids

I wouldn’t feel so overly sensitive

Like it’s a personal dig

But that’s not my experience.

That’s not my truth

I have spent 46 years being

An undercover sleuth

As I have struggled and grappled

With how to reparent me

How to fill that huge gap

In my own self-esteem

So from the place where I’m standing

It’s just not funny at all

The whole situation left me feeling

Slightly appalled

But Gabor handle it well

I have to say

So much better than I could have

EVER conveyed

My judgement and sensitivity

Are still so very rife

A colossal, HUGE, trigger

In my own life

Clearly, I still have

A lot to heal

Learning to let go of all this anger

That I constantly feel

But thank you for listening

And allowing the space

For me to sit with these feelings

They just needed to be embraced

Credits

Scary preditor image by Peter Fischer from Pixabay