[MajestyJo]

Thursday, October 9, 2014

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Self-Disclosure

Learning to gently reveal who we are is how we open ourselves up to love and intimacy in our relationships.

Many of us have hidden under a protective shell, a casing that prevents others from seeing or hurting us. We do not want to be that vulnerable. We do not want to expose our thoughts, feelings, fears, weaknesses, and sometimes our strengths, to others.

We do not want others to see who we really are.

We may be afraid they might judge us, go away, or not like us. We may be uncertain that who we are is okay or exactly how we should reveal ourselves to others.

Being vulnerable can be frightening, especially if we have lived with people who abused, mistreated, manipulated, or did not appreciate us.

Little by little, we learn to take the risk of revealing ourselves. We disclose the real person within to others. We pick safe people, and we begin to disclose bits and pieces about ourselves.

Sometimes, out of fear, we may withhold, thinking that will help the relationship or will help others like us more. That is an illusion. Withholding who we are does not help the other person, the relationship, or us. Withholding is behavior that backfires. For true intimacy and closeness to exist, for us to love ourselves and be content in a relationship, we need to disclose who we are.

That does not mean we tell all to everyone at once. That can be a self-defeating behavior too. We can learn to trust ourselves, about who to tell, when to tell, where to tell, and how much to tell.

To trust that people will love and like us if we are exactly who we are is frightening. But it is the only way we can achieve what we want in relationships. To let go of our need to control others - their opinions, their feelings about us, or the course of the relationship - is the key.

Gently, like a flower, we can learn to open up. Like a flower, we will do that when the sun shines and there is warmth.

Today, I will begin to take the risk of disclosing who I am to someone with whom I feel safe. I will let go of some of my protective devices and risk being vulnerable - even though I may have been taught differently, even though I may have taught myself differently. I will disclose who I am in a way that reflects self-responsibility, self-love, directness, and honesty. God, help me let go of my fears about disclosing who I am to people. Help me accept who I am, and help me let go of my need to be who people want me to be.

This is an affirmation of something I believe in. I don't always look too much into safe, I feel if God puts that person in my path, then they are meant to hear. Who am I to question?

Some people think I am too open, and for some that is okay, but that is the kind of person I am and always have been. I went for a walk with a friend, we sat on a park bench. Someone came over and sat down beside me and started talking to me. I did not know the person, never saw them before, and after the person walked away, my friend said, "How do they find you."

When someone come up after a meeting and says, "I need to hear that, "Why would you want to change?" I am but a channel. It is my story, yet so much of it, I never understood it or recognized the significance of it, certainly not in regards to recovery, so why not let my God give me a little nudge once in a while, as to how it truly went down and the significance of the lessons I learned when I was too dumb to take it all in. It was all there, yet I was too out of it to recognize it for what it was. Hindsight is a great teacher if we are willing to take a wee peek at the past, not go there, but just have a wee look see, so we can learn, and not make the same mistakes in today.

How can I know if I don't know what is there?