Discovery

 

Discovery

What is the most astonishing and rewarding discovery for you?

For me, it is the moment when I discover something totally new and unfamiliar about myself. 

And nowadays, I figured out the two-sided aspects of one of my strong suits.

More than average, I am willing and able to catch others' feelings and thought,
which is literally reading the room.

That made it way easier for me to care for others, especially students,

and to sympathize with people so that I can listen to them and give my shoulder to them.

But I had considered myself a turbulent person who quickly gets moody, 

especially triggered by others' remarks and attitudes toward me. 

I have wondered why it happens to me and strived for finding explanations for it

through self-help books, psychology, advice from people, and trials and errors based on them.

But things did not go evidently well whenever I tried to get it right, 

which might be obvious because I was not being that kind to myself but pushy or discouraged.

And one day, I got an opportunity to get to know myself professionally and mechanically.

Thanks to the conversations I have had, I figured out that my strong suit and weakness are deeply intertwined along with the experiences of my childhood. 

What I describe below is what I realized.

When I was a child,

I was not able to share my honest feelings with others.

In particular, although I needed to deliver my negative emotions, 

such as anxiety, disappointment, anger, frustration, embarrassment, loneliness, sadness, or unworthy,

I could not have the courage but was so involved in reading and studying adults' feelings and minds.

My father was impossible to reach for even a minor help.

My grandmother was always on my father's side.

My mother was having difficulties in living her life so I do not want to burden her with mine.

My friends were too unstable and shallow to have deep conversations continuously.

But I was born with the temperament of being attentive and sensitive to others' feelings and minds

with the desire of having close relationships. 

Therefore, I could not pay attention to my feelings, particularly negative ones, without considering honest and genuine communication to deliver them soundly. 

I was feeling unexplained, heavy, and frustrated 

whenever I changed my attitude to the opposite

in front of people who I care for and love the most.

When negative feelings arose, 

I tend to be cold, blunt, and defensive excessively

so sometimes, it had been hard to fix the misunderstandings and listen to each other peacefully.

The background difficulties behind that fixed bad habit are...

first, I have not learned and trained myself enough to articulate and share my negative feelings with others.

Second, I have had unconscious anxiety and fear in expressing my honest unfavorable feelings,

being afraid of burdening others, being abandoned or judged, and hurting others. 

Third, I have not had many successful experiences in sharing negative feelings

because my ways to express them were distorted and the reactions from my beloved people were sometimes pretty heart-breaking, such as crying, misunderstanding, and too much concern about me. 

With those valuable and life-changing reflections,

I have decided to become more attentive to my own feelings, emotions, minds, and thoughts 

more than I have done to others.

Also, whenever I try to guess what others feel or think as a habit,

I will first stop, observe my mind, and question if it is just my guess or true. 

After this reflection, if possible, I have determined to try to communicate with the one

with 'I-message' to deliver my feelings in a genuine and considering way,

which is far from insulting, blaming, or being absorbed with my negative feelings and judgments.

To my surprise, it already worked so well!

It truly affected my relationship, mood of the day, and attitude toward others and myself, notably.

This journey has been just about a week so far.

I cannot help but look forward to further discoveries about myself,

which I might have overlooked and felt like a dead end,

and also will be life-changing moments as I realize and fulfill them.