Leaning into the Words & Learning to Trust

Opening up to others can be so incredibly freeing, but it can also be terrifying.

Believing that someone can hold all of you with love and care is one thing, but actually trusting in it is another.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately, and writing about the concept of being too much or not enough. In that, how difficult it can be to show someone the most tender parts of you…the parts that hold the deepest fears and insecurities.

Since I was little, I have always felt like I was too much. My big feelings and big emotions were always too much. I was the only one in my family who wore their heart on their sleeve. I was always overlooked and brushed aside by my dad, so I felt like I wasn't good enough. As the youngest of four siblings, I was often labeled as a crybaby. While I had moments of physical and emotional outbursts, I learned to conceal my feelings and emotions, and internalize it all. I learned that sharing these things wasn't acceptable or safe; that in sharing them, you would be perceived as weak, whiney, attention seeking, or annoying. My big feelings and emotions continued to grow with me through life, and led me to my biggest passion – writing.

In writing, I found my safe space. I found the place that could hold all of me, all of these feelings and emotions, and the endless words that accompany them. While I did fear sharing them with the world, sharing them with myself wasn't so scary - it was freeing. I wrote voraciously, recounting every detail of my sordid history with trauma. I re-read things over and over, feeling proud of myself in a way I hadn't known before. For the first time, I could see myself. I learned how to accept myself. I learned how to love myself. Through writing, the parts I once considered demons were able to remove their scary masks and reveal their true nature to me. I was able to pinpoint every area in which these parts feel like they're too much or not enough.

I say these parts rather than I, because the I, in this case, is the self. The self is at the core. I view the self as the source of the magic – the radiant guiding light. When the self is able to shine their light directly on an individual part of us, this magic of being seen unfolds. Finally – those things that are always working in the background are brought to the forefront, for their own moment in the spotlight. This can be shocking for these parts because they're so used to being overlooked and ignored, shoved to the back or way deep down where nobody can see or hear them.

Seeing these parts in the light can be overwhelming. Weeping is a common occurrence, as the self can visualize this part as an individual, and see the pain they've been carrying. Tears also come from the part themselves, feeling and releasing the emotional weight they've been carrying by themselves. It can feel heartbreaking to get to the core of a doubt, fear, or insecurity. The things that reside there, within individual parts of ourselves, are deeply painful, and typically filled with sorrow and grief.

These parts have learned to erect thick walls to protect themselves, and prevent themselves from being seen. As we sit with each part, spotlight shining bright on them, through all the cracks, we begin to see light shining back. The seemingly "bad" aspects of this part fade away as we learn how they came to be that way. We begin to see instances of when each individual brick was added – each moment that built the wall. The more light we let through, the more these walls crumble and fall.

This place within is where I learned to love myself. I, on one side of the wall, one part on the other; sitting with them, noticing them, naming them, breathing with them, talking with them. Seeing them through the cracks. I learned to feel the warmth of their light that had been stifled by darkness for so long.

This brings me to the messy middle that I find myself in now. Once we learn to sit with ourselves in these spaces – getting to know why the walls were built, and seeing the negative beliefs that are held by those parts – we come to a crossroads. We have the choice to walk side by side with these parts and make space for them, honoring them and rewiring beliefs, or we return them to the darkness.

I don't know about you, but when I picture physically shoving anyone aside, I'm filled with overwhelming sadness. I wouldn't do that to someone, whether I love them or not, so why would I do it to myself – within myself?  

The messy middle I find myself in is bridging the gap between walking side by side with them within myself, and letting those outside myself see and honor them too – all of them.

As I've moved forward with the irrefusable decision to boldly walk side by side with them, I'm noticing something happening within me. A lingering doubt.

So I turn, and shine the spotlight on them. I sit. I write. And here we are.

As I make space for these parts in my life – having the hard conversations to make ample space, and learning to trust – I feel their hesitancy, their doubt, their disbelief. This comes from a very young part of me, the little girl who needed to keep herself small, as well as the older parts who protect her – the builders and gatekeepers of the wall, so to speak.

For the majority of my life, I kept much of my inner world concealed. As I've learned to share with those closest to me, I've been met with heartwarming acceptance, support, and love. Each have said words that I always needed to hear. I've had measurable corrective experiences to heal the deep seated wounds, but yet, I feel this stirring deep within me. As I shine a light on this part that holds that stirring, I'm realizing that they don't believe it's real.

There is an inherent belief that kind and loving things are said to appease people or keep the peace – they are not always said because there is a truth in them. So while I walk with these parts by my side and open up to others, this part struggles to let the acceptance, support, and love permeate. There is a deep mistrust in the meaning behind the loving words of others. There is a mistrust in the truth of them.

There is always a part of me who questions these words.

Do they actually believe the words they're saying to me? Do they really feel that way? Are they just being kind? Are the words real? If I lean into their words, can I count on them to show up and catch me....or will they vanish from lacking true substance? Are they some sort of illusion - a mirage that will disappear the closer I get?

Part of the wall is still in the way, standing strong. Standing firm. I can scream at it and pound on it as much as I want, begging it to come down, but this old wall won't crack or crumble. It feels impenetrable.

This is the problem I've always had - I believe in love. I believe in the possibility of love. I believe in unconditional love. But, I often don't trust it. I invite it into my life while holding it at arms length. It takes years for me to believe that something is true, and even then I have my doubts. This is a product of being manipulated and abused when I was little, by people I loved and trusted, followed by continued instances throughout life. It's the product of being raised in an environment where expressing feelings wasn't modeled in a healthy manner. It's the product of secret keeping. It's the product of silence. It's the product of fear.

Being made to feel like your thoughts, feelings, experiences, and emotions are too big for the world or aren't important, is truly devastating. Regardless of how long I've known a person, whether I just met them or if they've been in my life for decades, when it comes to believing in the kind or positive things people say to me, when it comes to believing the truth of the love they try to give, I am lacking. Severely.

I've found that in the moment, when being complimented or reassured in some manner, it's hard for me to hear the words. They're like a muted sound that I know I should be able to take in at full volume. I know that hearing them should cause positive emotion…but I can't fully hear them, so I can't grasp them. I can't react to them. They don't permeate. They can't sink in. They fade away just as quickly as they came. I know that this trigger reaction happens, so I've gotten in the habit of recording and taking notes, when able, when being told something positive by another. I record them physically saying the words aloud, so I can listen to them again and again. I write them down, word for word, so I can read them over and over. It's a multi-sensory way of letting the words permeate, on my own time, in my own space.

Sometimes it's really shocking to be complimented out of nowhere, to be told something kind that was unprompted, or to be reassured in some manner. It can be shocking to receive love in this way, whether I'm feeling present and ready for it or caught off guard by it. For the parts who carry the pain, these positive things can be hard to hear. But there's always a part of me who can hear the muted words. Their eyes light up, and they feel a jolt of energy that kickstarts their heart. That's what has drawn me to noting the words for later — following the racing heart of each individual part. Following the crumbs. They know what I need to heal. They know what I need to hear. They know where to lead me. 

I've been with Aspen for eleven years now, and even with her, I have moments where I feel a deep mistrust in the words. I have this mistrust with family and friends alike. No one is the exception. It's almost as if the closer I want to be to a person, the more I question the truth of their words...like they're too good to be true. We've been talking about this recently, how she and I both have this mistrust in the words that people say.

At the core, there's a deep seated mistrust in the belief that I can show up, as my true self, with the most tender parts of myself revealed, and be loved and accepted with them by my side. There is a mistrust in the idea that I am not too much, that someone could love and accept and want all of me. There is a mistrust in the idea that I don't need to conceal certain parts of myself to be more palatable – that I can be held and loved, valued and appreciated, for all that I am.

The thing about this is, you don't have to have a history with capital T trauma for this to resonate. Simply having parents who didn't communicate openly about complex emotions teaches us to withhold and to internalize. As we dive deeper into this topic, Aspen and I have been talking about the ways we each protect one another and shut down, and how we each filter ourselves. In that, I hesitate to show up fully as myself because I fear it's too much for her in one way or another, so I filter myself. She filters herself because she fears that her feelings in response will be too much for me in one way or another. We each want to voice the things that reside in the deepest parts of us, but we're each scared to trigger the other or cause a negative reaction, so we filter to protect one another (and ourselves). Silence doesn't foster connection though; it strengthens the negative beliefs and makes the gap grow wider, making genuine connection less accessible.

It's a perpetual cycle of two people who have been hurt, being guided by a belief that we are too much or not enough, and a fear of adding to that feeling for the other. Don't get me wrong, we love each other fiercely. It's beyond the walls that I can see that wavering trust that resides within each of us, to the tender core. I can see the scared and hurt parts of me that cower in fear. I can see the scared and hurt parts of her that cower in fear.

There's a multitude of things our brain will tell us and ask in this space, but I think it all amounts to : Will they be able to hear my thoughts without something bad happening? Without it all coming crumbling down? Without it ruining the magic of the relationship? Without them leaving?

Whether we're able to tell someone these thoughts or not, when they're not acknowledged and discussed in a wholesome way, it can feel like suffocating. My feelings swell up, and I can feel them flooding me from the inside out. They build and rise, and before I know it I can feel them within every part of me. At times, I feel as if I'm filled to the brim, drowning inside myself. Head bent sideways, fighting to take in the last bits of oxygen that haven't been consumed by the flood.

This is where I am today. Shallow breathing. Little oxygen. Drowning in uncertainty and doubt. Drowning in the belief that I am too much. Drowning in the belief that what I want and need are too much to talk about, too much to ask for, and definitely too much to make physical space for in the world. Sometimes, it all feels like way too much. So I sit within myself, crammed into the smallest spaces with little oxygen, waiting, hoping that someone will relieve the pressure. That someone will rip out the plugs of disbelief, and let it all come pouring out of me, freeing me from the flood.

It's difficult to say how one fixes this habit of suppressing. How does one "get over" the thoughts of someone not being able to receive what resides within us? How do we show up with the things that we fear will result in something bad happening?

None of us know the inner reality of another. None of us know the thoughts and feelings that are expressed and which are suppressed, but it is a thing that we all do. I know that I'm not alone in these concepts of mistrust, and in the disbelief that something bad won't happen. I know I'm not alone in the disbelief that I can be accepted, appreciated, valued, and loved for the very things that I find so difficult to be open and honest about.

Above all, I know to the core that none of us is too much, for the right people. I do believe that people have the ability to see us to the core, and love us with all the lightness and darkness that resides within, and every little thing that we tell ourselves makes us unloveable. But getting there. Ugh. Getting there can feel like drowning.

My wife and I talk about where this comes from, this perpetual cycle of filtering and suppressing out of protection for oneself and others. We realize that it's a deep fear of abandonment. Abandonment can be internal or external in this regard. After being lost for so long and finding myself, doing intense healing work, I have a deep fear of abandoning myself; I refuse to do so. I refuse to shove myself back in the dark. Yet, I also have a deep fear of being abandoned by others. I fear that showing up wholeheartedly as myself is too much, and that I won't be accepted for who I truly am.

If we're so deeply fearful of something within us that has the ability to make us feel abandoned, I think the easy (but not so easy) answer to remedying this is learning to love those very things and make space for them — and constantly reminding ourselves that we are never too much or not enough, for the right people.

The scary thing isn't in having to find out who the right people are — that's the good part that sparks joy. It's knowing that some people we thought were right for us, might not actually be. It's knowing that when we do say the thing or ask the question, knowing that they might not lean in with love. It might change the relationship in a way we feared. At the end of the day, many words aren't true, but that doesn't mean we cut ourselves off from the opportunity of finding those that are.

And so, I ask myself the question that continues to come up again and again along my healing journey: how do I move through this? How do I learn to trust?

I'm met with the answer that comes up again and again : I love myself fiercely, and advocate for myself and my needs. I continue to have autonomy and agency. I continue making space. I continue leaning into discomfort.

It's so hard, but it's okay. You're not too much. You are enough.

You deserve space in this world to breathe, to be, and to thrive.

You are worthy of being held and loved, wholeheartedly.

You are worthy of being held and loved, wholeheartedly.

You are worthy of being held and loved, wholeheartedly.

The more we love and accept ourselves, the easier is it to show up in truth with others. When we're able to love and accept ourselves, all the fears begin to fade away. The fear of being too much; the fear of not being enough; the fear of something bad happening; the fear of being abandoned. It will all fade away.

Sending reassurance, compassion, and warmth to anyone this resonates with.

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