Sheryl Crow did a song in the mid-90s called “A Change Would Do You Good.” I’m partial to the song even with the abstract lyrics, I’ve applied the course to my life many times.
Change is often good. Change is imperative if we want to grow in our environments, like from Blackberry phones to smartphones. Change is a must if we want to grow in our relationships. Remember we need to be better to do better. If we have compassion and love for ourselves then it will spill into our relationships.
Here’s the thing about change, it can only happen if we choose it. If we choose to stay with things of the past then we will stay with things of the past. But what happens when the past is a trauma that we know we inevitably need to change? It’s not that easy, in fact, it’s hard. Having someone encouraging us to change when all we feel is pure anxiety and fear to do it that way or this way is not going to get us to change. The only thing changing is our breathing while they are talking to us.
I believe it’s why there are so many hands-on learners in the world. We can watch you do something and see ourselves in that role much easier than you telling us how to do it. For those of us exposed to a narcissistic parent, partner, or both, we’ve been trained to do it another way, their way. We’ve been told to wear this, not that, say it this way, not that way, walk like this, not like that. The training of “Do as I say, not as I do.” And when we spend countless hours retraining ourselves, rewiring our brains, and breaking patterns then someone comes along to say “Do it like this, not like that”. If you know you know!
Talking ourselves down off the ladder of anxiety, panic, and fear, telling ourselves over and over again to breathe and this too shall pass all drowns out whatever anyone else is saying to us. We know we cannot allow anyone or anything to discard what we have accomplished in our healing. All those baby steps cannot be erased because one individual is telling us to do it “like this”.
So what do we do? We go back to our happy world of love and compassion for ourselves. We tell ourselves, “it’s MY healing journey and I am healing as I need to heal.” We don’t owe anyone an explanation for what we feel or think. We know fear is a liar and it’s not real but our old programming of over 50 years believes it’s real and is actively reacting to it. I think it’s the one time that we can safely say “A change will NOT do me good.”
Dealing to Healing 