Miserable Comforters vs. Healthy Support

Who do you turn to when you need a friend? A confidante? Encouragement? Love? The answer to this question is important for your life. Who you turn to for comfort makes a huge difference in the path you take and ultimately, your own self concept.

In the Book of Job in the Old Testament, Job is riddled with maladies. He loses his fortune, his family and his health. His wife betrays him. He is miserable. According to the story, God had given the devil free reign to test Job. Once he was covered in boils and sitting in exile, his so-called friends came along to help him out. These so called friends were quick to judge Job and give reasons as to why he was experiencing what he was experiencing, and what he should do to turn things around. Job called these folks "Miserable Comforters." It is a testament to the judgments of people who have no compassion or insight into the plight of another.

We are social beings. We all need to be comforted and supported by those around us. We are hardwired for connection. If we were raised in functional homes, then we likely have an internal working model of healthy external comfort. When we're feeling down, we have someone to turn to, and that someone will not use our weakness to try to control us or put us down. If, on the other hand, we were raised in homes that were dysfunctional, by parents who were also raised in less-than-nurturing environments, we may not know how to be comforted properly. We may be drawn to people who manipulate us when we turn to them for help, or those who use our misfortune to build their own weak sense of self.

The people in your midst are generally at your same level of psychological maturity. If you grew up in a dysfunctional home, you were not likely able to mature psychologically or emotionally. If you are immature or undeveloped, when you're an adult, you're likely to be attracted to people who are at your same level, or worse--you may be attracted to people who exploit those with lower-level functioning. This is what happened to me.

Along my healing journey, I found that as I grow, I also have to replace people in my life who used to comfort me with people who comfort me properly. Some of the people I turned to in the past supported my fragmented identity and my low self esteem. The truth is, who we turn to for comfort says much about our level of healing. The more healthy a person is, the less they need support, and the more adept they are at seeking out support that will gently support their authentic truth.

Here are the qualities you want to avoid in your external comforters:

• Tells you what to do. 
• Criticizes you.
• Shares your issues with other people.
• Reminds you of past mistakes.
• Reminds you of how bad things are.
• Tries to manipulate you and/or exploit you.
• Gloats in your weakness.
• Tells you to "get over it."
• Acts like your needs for comfort are a burden.
• Makes you feel worse.
• Kicks you when you're down.
• Makes you feel guilty or ashamed for needing comfort.
• Compares you to other people.
• Tries to solve your problems.
• Wishy-washy. One way one day, another way the next.
• Flaky - Not dependable.
• Negative and pessimistic in the area you need comfort. 
• Overly helpful and smothering.
• Focused on their own problems.
• Envious.
• Speaks in cliches, antidotes, platitudes.
• Know it all.
• Rigid and legalistic.
• Needs answers and definition of circumstances (to maintain semblance of control).

Why do people do these things? All sorts of reasons. If you turn to someone who has a low self esteem and poor self worth, then they will do all sorts of things that may seem like comfort, but leave you feeling worse than before. If you turn to someone for support who is insecure, he or she may use your weakness to their own advantage by feeling better than you for not having your same problem. Oftentimes, this kind of "support" is covert. You don't know it is happening because it's subconscious and subtle. This is something you must be aware of. It's important as you grow and heal that you steer clear of this uncomfortable comfort. It's important that you find people to support you who truly value you as a unique individual.

Here are the qualities you want to seek out in your external comforters:

• Consistent advice.
• Feels good about themselves so they can support you. 
• On your side.
• Trustworthy.
• Available and accessible.
• Validates your reality.
• Accepts you for who you are.
• Has empathy.
• Has space in their heart for you.
• Encourages your growth and change for the better.
• Cheers you on when you encounter difficult roads in life.
• Stays on your side, even when it seems like you're surpassing them.
• Takes up for you against outside opposition.
• Sticks by your side.
• Takes what you say at face value.
• Open and flexible.
• Empathetic.
• Expects you to handle your own life well.
• Believes the best in you.
• Trusts the process of life, and trusts other people.
• Gives you time to share without rushing you.
• Allows you to process without interruption.
• Leaves things open without having to come to resolution to feel safe.
• Lets you be who you are without judging you.
• Does not try to offer a quick-fix. 
• Positive mindset.

The qualities of a good comforter, or a good friend, are qualities that one possesses who is a whole person. Only a whole person can give you the comfort that you need to maintain a positive sense of self. You need people around you who are willing to let you be who you are, where you are, wherever that place is for you today. You need people who will encourage you, be on your side and nudge you to your highest good. You need people who are healthy so that they can lead you in the healthiest ways. Nobody is perfect. The key is to find comforters who love themselves enough to love you right.

You Need Comforters!!!

Who you choose as your comforters and supporters in this life makes a huge difference in how your life goes. If you choose no one, then you're going to have a very rough time. If you do not seek out any comforters, any support, and if you try to do everything on your own, then you are likely in bad shape. You may cut yourself or be suicidal. If so, I encourage you to get help--get help fast.

If you have supporters in your life who are actually tearing you down, it's time to reevaluate your relationships. Perhaps you need to distance yourself from people who make you feel worse after turning to them for comfort. Maybe you need to seek out people who are a healthy match for your new found self love that you've acquired along your healing journey.

How to Tell if Your Comforters are Uncomfortable

One of the difficult things for me when I was going through this aspect of my healing journey, is determining who to trust. Who to turn to? The answer is more difficult than I wanted it to be. I went through a lot of friends who were incapable of being there for me. I went through a husband or two. I went through therapists. It was very difficult to learn how to trust the right people. It was hard to let go of people I cared about, but who were harming me psychologically. I had to be strong in so many cases. I learned so much along the way.

One way to know if you are being comforted and supported properly is the way that you feel. Your gut is the best indicator of the quality of support you're being given. Your intuition is your internal guidance system that tells you whether what you're experiencing is for your highest good, and whether it is not. So many of us ignore ourselves. This is a problem! You need to be tuned in to yourself like a hawk if you want to live effectively... but that's another article. For this article, let's just say, trust your gut. If you feel like you're being harmed when you seek comfort from a friend, family member, spouse, clergy, therapist... then chances are very good that you are. Trust yourself and protect yourself.

How Miserable Comforters Are

Consider how you feel when you're speaking to this person. Do you feel any of the following ways? If so, then you may want to distance yourself quickly and find some other person to help and support you. Don't keep pouring yourself out to someone who cannot help you.

• As though life is hopeless, you might as well give up and stay negative.
• As though nothing ever works out.
• As though you're not good enough to be heard.
• As though whatever you're needing is too much of a burden.
• As though whatever solutions you've found are never going to work.
• As though you don't know what you're talking about.
• As though you should feel some other way.
• As though you are ridiculous for feeling badly or needing comfort.
• As though they're doing you a favor by listening to you.
• As though they feel superior to you in your weakness.
• As though they know all the answers.
• As though you should be somewhere else, somewhere better in your life.
• As though whatever you're going through is not that big of a deal.
• Like crabs in a bucket. If they can't get out, neither can you. 
• They criticize you.

If someone whom you turn to for comfort displays the attitudes and behaviors of the list above, RUN from that person. Don't walk. RUN! You cannot possibly be comforted by someone who invalidates you, makes you feel inferior and kicks you when you're down. These are not the type of people you need in your life. As a fellow wounded soul on this healing journey, it's crucial that you get away from these "miserable comforters" and find people who are truly on your side.

How Healthy Supporters Are
Healthy people have the inner-capacity to allow you to be who you are in that moment without trying to change you. They are whole people who do not rely on external circumstances to make them feel good about themselves. They don't need to manipulate, one-up you or take anything from you. They are simply alive, happy, positive (for the most part) and they understand that we people need each other to survive and to thrive. These are the people you want in your corner. Here's how they are:

• They encourage you to seek your own solutions.
• They believe the best for you, and the best in others, and the best in life.
• They offer suggestions, but don't shove solutions down your throat.
• They're empathetic to your plight.
• They believe whatever you're going through is a big deal; they take you seriously.
• They give you time and space to express yourself.
• They don't try to take over your life, they simply allow you to be who you are.
• They make you feel good, cared for and encouraged.
• They don't try to make the conversation about them and their problems.
• They remind you of your victories.

 You can add to this list. I'd love to hear what you think.... feel free to give me more ways in the comment section below.

The moral of this article is that we all need good supporters to help us along the way. It is okay to need support, we were created to need support and to support one another. Unfortunately, some things go astray when we were raised in dysfunction (most of us). We may have a tendency to seek out comforters that we are used to, not people who are actually good for us. We may be covered in unhealthy advice from people who are insecure and who do not love themselves and could not possibly love us. It is crucial for us, as growing, healing people who are on the journey to loving ourselves, to distance ourselves from miserable comforters and find people with our best interests at heart. Good luck in your journey!&

Emotional Tunnel Vision

Emotional Tunnel vision in my life is when you focus on one thing without considering all the options. It's an obsession of sorts, when you focus too heavily on one person, one love, one issue, one solution, one problem, one way out.

Tunnel vision is a way that you sabotage yourself by over focusing on one detail of whatever it is you're focused on to detriment of all the other potentialities. Over-focusing on one thing can cause you to make mistakes in judgment.

If you were mistreated or abused as a child, you may have the tendency to become over-involved, emotionally over-invested in people and outcomes that healthy people can easily get over. Children who are maltreated get triggered into "fight or flight" mode easily. When the human body is in fight or flight mode, the mind becomes intensely focused on the thing that is a potential source of danger. The brain doesn't give up this fight or flight mechanism easily. As an adult, you carry the wounds of childhood with you, and this can include becoming triggered and over concerned about things that are not in your control.

Tunnel vision is when you focus on things outside of your control in an obsessive-fashion, to the detriment of all your options. You feel like this or that HAS TO HAPPEN in order for you to feel good, safe or secure... so you focus all your energies on this one thing while forgetting who you really are, and many times forgetting what other things are really important to you.

Tunnel vision can be considered to be a cognitive bias as well, when one focuses only one the negative of the situation while ignoring all the positives. It is the process of focusing on only one thing instead of remaining open minded. Paying too much attention to the details of a scenario you want to happen in your life, while not considering the big picture.

In the legal world of the judge and jury, tunnel vision is said to distort the perception of the evidence. It's a term for when the legal system distorts the evidence to suit their original leanings.

It's important that you remove your defenses and to keep the big picture in view when dealing with your own life. You don't want to limit yourself by thinking, feeling and acting on limited data--you want to operate from reality--which includes a multitude of options.

Many times what we think HAS TO HAPPEN is not what life has in store for us. We don't know the future, we can't say definitively what is the best path for us. We have to trust that life is unfolding precisely the way that it should and take our minds off the obsessions of what we think needs to happen, and be open to all the things in the world that may be ours.

Tunnel vision can get you stuck, and lead you away from your Highest Good. Take a step back, a deep breath and a broad view if you want to experience all that life has to offer. There are many roads to happiness... let yours unfold naturally with your eyes wide open.

When Vision Becomes Tunnel Vision - Psychology Today

Sometimes our minds are limited to seeing and understanding what our greatest outcome can be so we become resistant to any other way than how we see it. When we let go of attachments to an outcome, we allow room for things to unfold far beyond what we could have ever imagined it to be. Let go and allow the best to flow. 

 

-Kat Zaghi

You Can't Flow if You're Frozen

Walking by a fountain today in McKinney, Texas, I saw this 1/2 frozen fountain. This thought hit me:

You can't flow if you're frozen.

I wondered what this fountain was signaling to me for my life. In a way, it is an answer to a question that I've been asking. What blocks me from allowing goodness to flow into my life???

It's true! You can't allow good things to come into your life if you're operating system is plagued by false beliefs that are out of alignment with the truth of who you are or still left over from your past. You can't receive the goodness that life has to offer if you are carrying frozen feelings that you have yet to face.

If you have frozen feelings stuck in your heart's chambers, then the fountain of your life cannot express its full potential. The outflow of love, grace, beauty, mercy, peace, joy will be distorted, much like the photo of the partially frozen fountain to the right. 

You see, you are responsible for what is coming to you. If you like how your life is--I mean, really feel incredible peace, joy, contentment and elation--then you are in the right place. If you feel that you're in a struggle to get the results that you want and to feel good inside, then your negative emotions are a signal. Negative emotions are an indicator that something in your belief system is out-of-alignment with your truth. You've got some junk in your trunk.

So the key is to allow your feelings to thaw out and release the energy of the past that is blocking the goodness from flowing in your life. Blocking you from giving. Blocking you from receiving. Distorting your view of reality. Distorting your view of yourself.

If you want to live, truly live, then you must thaw out. Let yourself heal.

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Here's a piece that sums it up well: 

When emotions go unexpressed, they freeze in time. What this means is that we often respond to a present day situation with a backlog of stored frozen emotions from our past. This is inappropriate, obviously, but that doesn't mean the emotions are lying. All it means is that in order to be able to respond and feel truly in the present with all of our resources, we need to heal all the old trapped, frozen emotions we have locked up in the attic. 

Our Pathway Home - Lies About Feelings

Don't Force It

You can't force life. You are not in control. Trying to make something happen when it's not happening is a lesson in futility. Blaming yourself, wondering where you went wrong, blaming others, feeling like crap, feeling less-than because something didn't work as planned is taking on more responsibility than you have. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes things don't work out. Trying to force things to happen the way you want it to leads to a big, huge mess.

I know you want things to work out your way. I know you want to be in a relationship, or you want to succeed in that industry, or you want to get that job or make that friend, but sometimes the answer is no. You have zero control of the cause and effect of things outside of yourself. You only have control of you. The sooner you learn to let go and let life flow, the faster you'll be to your next good moment.

Realize when things are not going your way, sometimes that means that something better is out there for you. It doesn't mean that all is lost. Tune into the lesson in every situation. It is the lessons we learn when we stay open to life that take us higher and guide us to the next step.

Forcing things just screws your life up. When you stay longer than you're supposed to stay, when you mold yourself into something you're not, when you let go of your truth to fit into some scenario that's not your own, you become a fake person... just a flake of your true self.

When you try to get people to change, win people over, make the world realize that you're correct, try to get people to understand, get approval before you continue or do anything that involves manipulating and controlling how others think or feel about you or anything, you are forcing things that are not yours to force. You are weaving a web to trap yourself in. No need! Just release, let go, let things flow. Don't force. Trust that the God of your understanding is leading you to your Highest Good. 

Your Highest Good

What is best for you is not always the most comfortable. What is best for you, in fact, sometimes hurts. No matter what, it's important to realize that life is guiding you to your Highest Good. It is up to you to follow that guidance, though many times we fight it.

Defining your Highest Good is not easy, and it's a concept that unfolds as you embrace it. The key is to embrace it and learn to trust that life is on your side. God is on your side. Events ARE ON YOUR SIDE. Everything that happens in your life is FOR YOUR BENEFIT, believe it or not. We're dwelling in a giant classroom. This planet is a college of sorts where we are learning to be who we are. We are learning techniques that takes us somewhere--where? I'm not ready to talk about that one yet. For now, let's examine your Highest Good.

Growing up in a dysfunctional environment like I did, it is difficult to ascertain that life is working out for your highest good. It's easy to become a victim. It's easy to blame others and situations for your negative outlook. Who can blame you? If you've been hurt, it's natural to withdraw. When you've been conditioned to expect bad things to occur, you may not have that sense of trust that things will work out for your good. You will expect the worst.

It's healthy to believe that things will work out for your highest good. People who are blessed to grow up in a healthy home environment naturally believe in their highest good. They EXPECT to get their needs met. They EXPECT to experience life in good terms. They have no doubt that things will work out and this belief becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

We get what we expect.

Trusting in your Highest Good is an exercise in gratitude. 

Your Highest Good is something you must learn to expect no matter how you were raised. It is in your power to rise above your original programming from your family origin. It's in your power to change your thoughts and your beliefs. You can start taking steps today to release yourself from a negative outlook and begin expecting life to turn out your way. It may take work and it may be challenging, but if you're dedicated, you can trust life to bring you more good than you've ever imagined.

What Happens When You Don't Trust Your Highest Good?

When you do not trust that things are working toward your highest good, it causes you to react to life with the expectation of failure. You see circumstances as strikes against you instead of opportunities for learning. You become ungrateful, instead of grateful for all things. You miss the lesson in the mistakes you make because you're too busy focusing on your dumb luck.

When you trust in your highest good, you can take the things that happen to you and turn them around for your benefit. If you experience a crappy relationship, you can use that experience as a lesson rather than a curse. You can swallow what happens to you as a step in the right direction--no matter what happens to you.

Trusting that you are being led to your highest good is liberating. It means that YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL. It means that YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY. It means that no matter what, you are heading in the right direction. Nothing can happen to you that you can't use for your journey; in fact, everything that happens to you is happening for a reason. You're either getting ahead, or you're learning for your next step.

There is a verse in the Bible that says, "All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes." Romans 8:28 This is a truth we can rely on. We can rely on God or our Higher Power to lead us and guide us to our Highest Good. Life is not against you. Life is for you. Things are not happening to you, no. You are WAY MORE IMPORTANT than that.

Knowing that life is for you, knowing that the universe is leading you to your Highest Good is liberating. It means you do not have to control. It means you do not have to manipulate or have an agenda. It means you don't need to sob or lose heart when someone walks out of your life. It means that good is right around the corner. You don't have to cling to today--you can let go and enjoy the ride. You can let go and look forward to tomorrow knowing that whatever happens--good or bad--will be in your best interest, and you can handle whatever comes your way.

You, my friend, are being divinely led whether you choose to realize it or not. You don't have to grab, cling, manipulate or control life. Everything outside of you is out of your control. All you and I must do is to TRUST LIFE to do what it needs to do to bring us where we're supposed to go. TRUST GOD to lead you and guide you and to take care of you--even if that means teaching you a lesson that hurts.
You are a valuable being--worth a lot. You are meant to be on this planet--you are not forgotten. You have a purpose on this earth, and that purpose will be worked out, if you relax and trust in your HIGHEST GOOD.

Control vs. Loving Action

Today, put two sticky notes wherever you are that say: "What am I trying to control or avoid?" and "What is the loving action toward myself - what is in my highest good?" Whenever you feel any stress, ask these questions and allow the answers to come through you from your higher Self.
Are you aware of how you treat yourself that causes some of your stress?

Dr. Margaret Paul, Inner Bonding

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This week, be on the lookout for the overt and subtle ways you try to control your feelings and control others feelings and actions. Take all judgment off being controlling so you can learn. How do you avoid your feelings? How do you try to get others to like you or do what you want? While the wounded self believes controlling bring safety, it actually causes much distress within yourself and within relationships, so noticing it gives you the opportunity to be loving to yourself and others rather than controlling.  

Dr. Margaret Paul, Inner Bonding

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Anger at others is often a projection of some way you are not taking loving care of yourself. Use your anger to learn, not to avoid.

 

Dr. Margaret Paul, Inner Bonding

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