Stay or Run?

It has been said that the best way to work through your crap is to be in a relationship with someone.  Because then how else are you supposed to see yourself?  How else are you supposed to see your buttons, your blocks, your lovely neuroses?  And of course these buttons are not fuzzy kittens.  More like fuzzy kittens clawing up your leg but your leg doesn't have enough traction so the kittens slide down leaving bloody tracks kind of buttons.

All those buttons suck when they're activated.  When your partner inadvertently pushes it.  And suddenly you freak out.  Whether that's analyzing what they said or certain emotions coming up and then being swallowed by those emotions.  And then memories flash back to when you were a kid and your mom or dad is yelling at you or kids in school are making fun of you or anything else that just exponentially adds to what you're feeling.

When confronted with it, everyone deals with it in their own way.  My way is to retreat.  Pull inward, get quiet and hide.  I think it's more of trying to hide and run away from what I'm feeling.  But then you'd think that if you pull more inward, well you're just putting yourself deeper into that big pile of crap.  However, outwardly expressing how you're feeling is a lot scarier than that big pile of crap.  Sure it's smelly but at least you won't get whacked by an invisible monster constructed by your own mind.

So we can look at it in 2 ways: 1) "Why is this happening, again?!  This sucks.  Why did he/she have to say that?"  And continue to bitch and moan, all the while your button remains in the exact same place and still activated.  Even if you rationalize your feelings or bury it enough or use some other coping mechanism to the point where you feel somewhat "normal" again, most likely that button is still there it just went into latent-mode.  Therefore, the button still exists.  2) It is a perfect time for healing.  When all that crap is staring you right in the face is a great opportunity to move it out.  Otherwise you're still going to hold on to it and then it's just going to repeat itself in a different situation.

If you're in a relationship with someone and these things come up, you may want to run away. Either temporarily or perhaps even breaking up with the person entirely because you don't feel safe.  You start to get overwhelmed by everything and you think it'll just be easier to leave.  However, everything is happening within you so you really can't leave yourself, unless you do it in a drug-related way which I do not think is beneficial.  So if it's with you, you will carry it everywhere - to every relationship, job, crazy family function, whatever.  You can make the decision to either deal with it now or later.  It can be very uncomfortable but just know that it's temporary.  By dealing with it later, you're merely delaying your own healing and growth.  Healing and growth to me is breaking those cycles and patterns we detest and don't want to keep happening as well as creating new, healthy beliefs to operate from.