Adjusting to Reality: Self-doubt as Self-sacrifice

Over the weekend a very scary thing happened.  My family was at our annual indoor water park/hotel Christmas celebration and while on one of the rides, Rowan, who was just over the height limit, let go of one of the handles on the float and flipped off.  She held on with her other hand and Forrest remarked after that he’d never known my hand could move that fast to grab her arm.  He held on as we pulled her back on to finish the slide, safe but shaken. 

The funny thing is, I’m in therapy right now to deal with my anxiety and my homework this week has to do with the fact that I basically believe the world is a maliciously dangerous place trying to kill me and my children. (I may or may have not told them that cars in parking lots want children to die and so they must always be vigilant.  I am not always my best self.)  Here it was!  The world is trying to kill my kid!  They said it was safe!  She fell off!  The bad thing happened!

Except it didn’t.  Yeah, she fell off.  But she’s okay and even excited about the story she gets to tell her friends.  Because even though my catastrophic thinking came up with all the things that could go wrong, when it came down to it, even a really bad thing didn’t hurt her.

What does this have to do with connection, community and self-sacrifice? Sometimes self-sacrifice means letting ourselves be changed by our experiences.  I would like to still see the world as so, so dangerous.  And in a self-protective stance, I absolutely could see that and decide we don’t go on rides like that any more.  It would be more emotionally comfortable.

But that’s not connection building.  That’s not strengthening our bond as a family or Rowan’s trust in herself.  Over and over again in community, we are brought into situations that are uncomfortable, threatening or even hurtful.  We can make the choice to be changed by them.  I’m not saying you give in to every demand and every moment like that, but we can go through life pretending like those moments never happened.  Or, even worse, using them to bolster our own self image and cast anyone who threatens that as an enemy.

Self-sacrifice can look like self-doubt.  Am I really in the right?  Could I have done that better?  Why would they act that way?  What’s going on that I can’t see?  And then, on the other side, trust yourself.  Forgive yourself.  Allow yourself time and space to be changed but not destroyed by that self-doubt.

At the water park, after calming down, Rowan, my dad and I went on another, slightly calmer water slide.  Did I make sure she held on?  Yes.  Did I put my legs on hers just to double check? Yes.  Was I scared?  No.  Now you may think I was crazy.  Then it’s not your lesson to learn.  What is out there for you?  The self-sacrifice is in allowing the truth of reality to wash over you.  How can you build connections by looking at the world in a new way today?