We Can Do Hard Things

I just checked this thing, and I haven't written a blog post in over a month. If that isn't phenomenal avoidance behavior, I don't know what is. 

I've been thinking for weeks how I've wanted to sit down and do this, but every time the thought came to me it became too overwhelming to do. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it was because I didn't know if I had anything to write about, or maybe it was because I had so many things I wanted to write about, and just couldn't decide.

I had an old friend reach out to me last week, and they mainly did because they had told me they read the blog. I haven't talked to them in a good 8 years, and if we're going to be honest, it's really motivated me to write this.

So let's go back a few weeks. My ENTIRE immediate family (when I say immediate family, I am talking about 10 of us) and I took a trip to Disney to celebrate my little sister's graduation from her residency program. When I say I was nervous about this trip, that was an understatement. I don't think the ten of us have ever been together in one setting and it had been about five years since my siblings and I alone were together. If you know all of us or even any of us, we're a family of big personalities and I was super worried about getting all these personalities together for an entire week. 

Long story short, the trip went great and it was really nice to have us together. We had some bickering here and there, but no one killed each other and that's a win in my book. 

After spending so much time together, it was fair to say we all needed a little break, and rightfully so. When you are out of your home space and around a ton of people, family or not, it can be exhausting; and this was no exception.

I tried to be very careful about what I share on here about other people because sometimes they're just not only my stories to tell, so I'm going to be vague in some of this because I think that's fair. 

My brother and I got into an argument a few days after we got back from this trip, in all retrospect, it was really just a miscommunication. I was upset, he was upset, and fighting with a sibling is never fun. In my opinion, I think he could have handled the situation better and I'm sure from his point of view I could have done the same.

I'm the kind of person that when I am upset, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed - I cry. It's just my outlet. I have always been that way, and I probably always will be that way. With this disagreement/miscommunication, you guessed it - I cried. I was really upset and didn't love how the situation was playing out. Let me add to this - the miscommunication my brother and I were having wasn't really due to direct communication he and I were having - which also probably was not helpful. I called my little sister bawling and pretty much yelling. I was explaining to her what had happened and my point of view. I kept saying to her that if he had handled the situation "this that and the other thing" I wouldn't be so angry, it would have been more effective. However, we can't control what other people do and how they do it, we only have control over ourselves. Rachel being Rachel was supportive but didn't really share her opinion about much.

This is the important part... even though I was so worked up and upset about the situation with my brother, the way I approached it with him was unlike how I would have approached it in the past. 

One of the most important things that I took from my IOP therapy was the time we spend in between the stimulus and the response is where we find our freedom. I texted my brother and calmly asked him how he was feeling, and explained how I felt. Not much came out of it, but sometimes that's okay - and time to let things pass is the most effective. 

I called my mom after the whole thing happened as well. She had talked to my brother and heard where he was coming from, and I told her where I was coming from. She had told me both sides were two completely different stories and at the moment I hated that, but as time has passed, I realized both of our stories are true, they are just our own truths. She had also made a great point that maybe we just needed a break from each other because we had just spent so much time together. So maybe this argument wouldn't have happened if we didn't just spend days together on a trip, maybe it would have. Either way, putting yourself in someone else's shoes about how they might be feeling can never be a bad thing when trying to reach a solution.

As my mom and I are finishing up our conversation she had mentioned to me that if this was six months ago, I would have been throwing a tantrum. I would have been screaming, cursing, crying, you name it. It took me a second to realize that I didn't handle this situation in that manner. I mean, I did call Rachel really letting it out, but an outlet is important, and where you put certain energy is important too. If I had reacted that way when talking to my brother, this would have escalated quickly and turned into something it definitely didn't need to. 

So in this situation, the stimulus is the disagreement, and the response is how calmly I had approached it. I took the time in between to calm myself, look at the situations from all sides, and decide the way to handle it so I got the best outcome. 

Not everything that happens needs a response right away. You're entitled to your time to figure out how you want to react and what you want to say (this is also something my therapist and I just talked about this week). Being driven by your emotional mind is something that can almost always hurt you in the long run. Everyone's entitled to their feelings, but how you respond says everything.

So yes, responding in a way that I am not used to and haven't for my entire life is hard. Learning new ways to act, think and react is also really hard. All of this takes a lot of practice and determination, but as my favorite role model Glennon Doyle always says, we can do hard things.