If you’ve read previous Therapy Thursday posts, you’ve already benefited from the wisdom of my former therapist, Ken.
Today’s Therapy Thursday is from a conversation I had with my friend “R” regarding an important lesson she learned from her therapist several years ago.
We call it “The Power of ‘And'”, and I hope it helps you gain a perspective that allows you acknowledge the hurt and betrayals you’ve experienced while still moving forward, WITH grace and WITHOUT the emotional baggage from those experiences.
AND can be more powerful than ‘or’ or ‘but’.
AND allows you to feel what you feel, yet give grace without acknowledging and discounting past actions.
She summarized what her therapist communicated to her like this:
- Bad things had happened
- people (you and/or someone else) were hurt
- However, because they (the offenders) were family, it was pushed under the rug for a long time
- one person (you) decided it was time to not carry the damage/emotional baggage anymore, so you went to therapy and this was one of the first lessons you learned.
you can be hurt and
you can give them the grace to believe that they have changed, bt that doesn’t discount the fact that you are still hurt and you are still carrying some emotional baggage from it.
They hurt me
AND
they have changed their behavior
AND
I still have pain from the trauma or lasting effects from the event
All of those things can be true at the same time
it allows you t provide grace adn provide hope without pushing away everything that happened.
you can acknowledge that things occurred
Own it with the “and”
you can be excited and terrified about selling your house and moving away and not knowing what lies ahead…
The two do not have to be mutually exclusive.
