The Righteous one

I started reading a book that was recommended to me by a friend, Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott, PhD, which is all about facing your own shadow in order to create change in your life (a forewarning that your husbands/partners may get excited by the title and then be very disappointed). This is all work I’m very familiar with and what I help clients navigate, but this time it hit me a little differently. This time I peeled back another unconscious layer to find my own righteousness. Ouch. Oh, how the mighty do fall…

This past week at my son’s school we had curriculum night and as I was walking to my son’s classroom with another parent I passed a woman who lives in my neighborhood in the hallway. She's known to have RBF (resting____face) and let’s just say she doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I said hello to be nice and was completely ignored. Boy was that triggering. The thoughts then followed, “She’s not nice. She thinks she’s better than everyone else. Gosh, she sucks. I don’t like HER.”

As I sat with my learnings from the book, I could see that I needed this woman to be the “bad guy” so that I could be the “good guy.” I’ve tried time and time again to be “nice” and continue to say hello when it’s not reciprocated. You would have thought that I would have learned by now, but obviously the lesson hadn’t fully landed. I had come to terms with the fact that her coldness/indifference was not at all about me and had decided that her reactions wouldn’t take me out of my heart space. That helped, but not this time, because I think I needed to see the deeper lesson.

Here’s the thing, I don’t HAVE to be the “good guy,” because sometimes it’s right and appropriate to be the “bad guy.” I just don’t give myself the permission to admit it or act upon it, which will always make me “good” and an outside/other “bad.” This allows me to feel better than and righteous. My ego has a flipping heyday with it. Saint Rosalie has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

This work is all about awareness. Once you see something you can’t unsee it. Although, you can continue to do what you’ve always done and get the same result or get really chummy with the part of you that you’re trying to suppress. In my case it’s the “bad guy,” and I have to make it my friend, I have to see it within myself so that I stop projecting that role onto someone else outside of myself. Who knows, maybe once I’ve integrated it all, this woman will no longer trigger me or maybe she’ll say hello to me all on her own. Either way, I’ll be good with it or bad and that’s ok too.  

So, my PSA for this month is for all of you to dig a little deeper the next time you find yourself triggered to see what lies in the depths of your shadow. Bring it to light, relish in it and move on so you don’t have to keep repeating the same story.