Being precise with language is so interesting.
Considering what I’m really trying to say and how to best say it.
Unfortunately, often I’m speaking too fast to be precise. I’m trying to learn to slow down. I think I would enjoy giving myself more time.
Unfortunately, often I use go-to phrases that are harmful, but that I don’t even reconsider. Phrases I may have heard often growing up. Or phrases that I use as shields to protect myself.
When I’m about to share a feeling that I’m still judging myself on, I might say something like “I don’t know what’s wrong with me but…” as an introduction. So someone else doesn’t have to wonder “what’s wrong with her?!” So I don’t have to worry they’ll tell me that something is obviously wrong with me for having the feelings I’m having.
Last week in training I was introduced to a mind-blowing shift in language.
We were urged to ask “what’s happened to them?” instead of “what’s wrong with them?” when working with anyone really.
And my world shifted.
My eyes got watery and my throat ached the way it does when I’m trying to stop myself from crying. It’s a sharp ache, concentrated on a single small point in my throat.
I heard, in a dramatically sudden flash, all the times I’d said out loud or thought to myself “what’s wrong with me?” and it made me so so sad.
It made me sad to realize how deeply I believe there is something wrong with me, and how that belief is supported so easily by the language I use without thinking.
I believe that less now, by the way.
Even less in the last week since this linguistical revelation.
A lot of things have happened to me in my twenty-eight and a half years, some of them wonderful, some of them bad, some sad, some neutral. And they’ve shaped the person I am and the way I behave and the stories I tell myself and the feelings I have. It’s fascinating really to break it down in this way.
I love telling stories, and in telling them I often uncover the stories I’ve been telling myself for months, or years, or for what seems like forever.
I used to tell myself most every day a story about a girl who is broken and abandoned and unlovable and too emotional and much much too needy. That story still comes up, but less often now. It’s a much more complicated story now and I like it that way.
I am emotional and sometimes more needy than other times.
But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that now.
It’s who I am because of the things that have happened to me.
And that’s ok.
tmd 