Rhubarb

Dealing with people who are not self aware is difficult. Especially if you are trying to become more aware of your inner dialogue and what makes you tick. It's even harder if you share some of what is inside of your brain or your rationale for your actions. In all honesty, people who are recovering or working on themselves are often called crazy because they are being honest about their experiences and reactions. Most people are not honest about their experiences or reactions...most people are flat out not aware of why they do what they do.

My therapist has helped me to separate out emotional Weesa from logical Weesa. By doing this it has helped me to look at my reactions when emotional in a logical light. Taking this approach was a shift for me. It was a way to look at a situation, reaction, etc. from the outside in a way. Oftentimes we react from an emotional perspective and do not even realize this is what is happening.

I'd say it is safe to say that the vast majority of what emotional Weesa thinks or says is batsh*t crazy. It's not rational or logical. The thing is, emotional Weesa takes over from time to time. I'm working at getting better at recognizing when that happens and making myself aware of the underlying cause that makes me react the way that I do. Working through those underlying causes or emotions are in theory what will help to curb emotional Weesa from steering the ship.

What is harmful is when logical Weesa judges harshly what emotional Weesa thinks or feels or how she reacts. That isn't approaching the situation from an understanding perspective. It is calling emotional Weesa and by extension just Weesa crazy...or off base...or any number of harsh judgmental things. Just because there are crazy sounding thoughts going on behind the scenes doesn't make you crazy. The emotional and logical sides of you should balance each other out. But it is important in my opinion to explore those "crazy" thoughts in order to try to make them less frequent.

A word of warning though...if you share these with other people who do not understand how to explore the underlying tapes that play and can often cause anxiety, depression, panic, fear, outbursts, bitchiness, etc...they may label you crazy. Or they may say you are overreacting or to just get over it. Exploring the deeper darker sides of oneself IS how you get over things that are impacting you.

So being judged and labeled in this way just erodes the trust you put in this other person. It is sad when it is someone close to you because close by my definition means there is a level of trust. So what do you do when that trust erodes? Get yourself some Rhubarb I guess...