HOW TO BE YOURSELF, EVEN WHEN IT'S TERRIFYING

Have you ever seen cartoons from the 1980's where...there is a villain character who constantly tries to steal the power of the hero? They are usually sitting in some dark tower somewhere, obsessing about how to get power and looking at the one they feel has the most while cooking up a plan to steal it. The fairy-tale of Snow White also comes to mind, but there are literally endless examples of this dynamic in our collective storytelling consciousness. ​

While I don't consider or need myself to be the 'hero', I was on the receiving end of this  phenomenon  often in my life. It usually goes something like...people project very intensely on me in a negative way. This could be about how I dress, the type of person they consider me to be, my looks - anything. They go out of their way to actively tell me and anyone who is listening what a so-and-so I am and try and drum up support for their perspective. And then...after some period of time, they actually imitate exactly what they have accused me of. They will buy the same shoes I was wearing. They will "come out" as a Witch after calling me one (which by the way I have never called myself), they will adopt whatever personal philosophy they think I have and hold a party to announce it. The really weird part is that they act is if it was 'suddenly all their idea' and that they have discovered some great new thing. 

I used to get pretty hurt by this behaviour because...it just seems so unnecessary and it has been painful to be on the receiving end of someone else's projected hatred and disgust. Kind of a "hey, what gives?" loop that has surfaced off and on during my life. Why can't we live in a world where everyone is happy and does their thing and supports others to do the same? Ah yes, Earth, I so often forget what an "interesting place" this is...
I also used to take it very personally because I didn't yet truly embrace my own worth and so it was all-too-easy for someone else to come in and blow up my sense of self. It was shocking to realise at a certain point that I was literally the 'pathway of personal denial' for people simply by breathing and doing me.  I mean if it takes hating someone you barely know to open a door to yourself, that is...really intense. Then it got even weirder as I realised that for a long time I had felt like I was supposed to apologise for it and that I should be invisible in myself until "the entire world" felt secure in their own nature before I just got out there and did my thing. Lauren's inner voice of un-deserving and self-sabotage went something like: Why should I be in my own power if other people aren't?  That doesn't seem fair. I will sit on the side-lines and wait for everyone to find themselves and be happy! Yay!

And...then I did a lot of work on myself, had some lightbulbs go off and remembered that in all those cartoons and fairytales I read, the person being the huge annoying copycat jerk was actually just someone so twisted up in their own self-denial that the lunacy of hating people you don't actually know and attempting to 'steal' their power  was like...all they had left in life. Yeah. AND that the hero usually had some inner work to do to embrace their own qualities and that the villain-hero dynamic, once played out, usually worked out pretty well for the latter once they got into their groove. I mean, I can appreciate that.

Also, if you re-watch The Wizard of Oz I think you'll notice (as I eventually did) that Dorothy threw a bucked of cold water on the Wicked Witch of the West (her nemesis and voice of doubt) and told her to get a freaking grip. Then went home with her special shoes where rainbows and song spouted eternally from her cupid's bow lips. We'll get to Miss Gulch later in this post. 

The fact is, many people out there are desperately unhappy and we don't grow up in a culture that teaches us how to just sit with our stuff and let the pain show us the way forward. We live in a "specialness" culture that encourages us to take a pill, go shopping, buy a self-help book and watch TV shows about people we imagine ourselves to be. We aren't given the skills anymore to look around our dark tower of self-denial and go "whoa, so...I may need to tidy this up...maybe move to a cottage by the sea with some fresh air...diffuse some essential oils...brush the spiders out of my hair..."

Worse, if we aren't "special" we have failed. If we aren't admired, liked, living in wealth, with good health, a career, people to love us and more happy days than sad, we are doing life wrong. When I reflect back on some of the most powerful and deeply authentic moments in my life, I can honestly say I was alone,  had basically nothing and wondered what the point was of even being here anymore. In short, there was no b.s. left, just me - and that's when the magic happens (aka acceptance of what is). I also realised that by fully feeling the pain it causes to be the 'projectee', it opened up the door for bigger love, compassion and self-acceptance of myself, you know, the hero's journey, which in the end I decided was a good thing. So...thank you, everyone out there who projected your demon cooties on me! It turned out to be kind of useful... 

There's only one you in the whole Universe. It sounds stupid, but it's actually true. No matter how many other people out there are baking cupcakes, no one is ever going to bake yours. And if it turns out you hate baking (your spouse, your identity, your job, your reflection in the mirror), maybe now is a good time to start figuring out what does bring you somewhere. You can start by sitting in your own dark tower, simply feeling all the rotten stuff you haven't wanted to deal with and seeing what that pain is trying so desperately to tell you.

I imagine that Ms. Gulch, the original villain in The Wizard of Oz was probably a lesbian who had no room in her culture to be accepted as she was, intensely smart with no real opportunities to use her brain and possibly very into athletics in a culture where it was already kind of weird to see a woman on a bicycle.  My guess is that if she sat in her house and cried it out, it would have dawned on her that it was time to buy a one-way ticket to San Francisco and go find out what her heart was telling her instead of torturing everyone else in her lame, small potato town. I really hope she did. 

If you'd like to start taking stock of your life in a new and interesting way, download a free copy of my workbook: The Seven Keys To Your Well-Being!