143. Why Does It Have To Be So Hard

  Hello. Hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. How are you? Thank you for being. With me today. Thank you for sharing this podcast. Thank you for growing the numbers. I'm continually hearing from so many of you new listeners that are, I'm cracking up because you guys are like binging. You're like starting from the beginning and binging the whole podcast.

I love it. I do the same thing with some of my favorite podcast. thank you for the messages. I am so, so glad that this is validating so many of you. I think that's the biggest message that I get from people that write in just how, just how validating it is to know that they are not crazy, first of all, and that this kind of divorce that we're having, that we're experiencing given betrayal, given abusive behaviors and communication that hid the betrayal.

given additional abuse that has happened in the relationship outside, in addition to those abusive behaviors that hid their acting out behaviors,

and whether you left or not having this kind of divorce, where if you were the one to initiate it. I can almost guarantee the abusive behaviors increased post-divorce or the confusion around who this person is increased after the divorce. This is not a normal kind of divorce, so I am very, very glad that this is validating.

This is helping those of you who haven't been able to put words or a language to what you're experiencing, that was something that was really. Beneficial and really helpful for me in my journey is once I started to study and learn and get educated, having a language to describe my experience was deeply validating.

So thank you for sharing your words. It absolutely makes it worth it. I've refused to monopolize this podcast to make money off of it. and have those dumb commercials. So I want everyone to have access to this kind of hope, this kind of information

so that you know, like I say at the end of every podcast, so that you know that no matter what, you can rebuild your life you can start creating your life.

Today we're talking about hard. Why. Why, why, why, why is it so hard? and how many of you had these types of thoughts? Why is it so hard? why does this suck so bad? I am so frustrated with all of this. I am so done healing. Why does healing? Have to be so hard. Why does divorce have to be so hard? Why does post-divorce?

There's so much hard in this journey

and one of the things I hear the most around hard. Is, why does this take so long? Why does this take so long to heal from? Why does this take so long to get through? Why does this take so long to recover? Please, please, please let go of a timeline or any kind of timeline around your healing.

Like just stop. Just stop it. it is just mean. It is not nice. To your heart, to your body, to your brain that has been under such an extreme amount of stress for so long, some of you decades, please do not give yourself a timeline around. 'cause what I hear is like, why is it still so hard? It should be easier by now I completely get it.

It's not like I haven't ever thought this. And I know that it never helped. It never helped me move through. once I shifted my thinking around hard in general, it was a game changer. And that's what I wanna help you do today,

because when we're thinking I should be healed by now, or I should be over this, or I should be able to let it go, Shouldn't be this activated or this triggered still, guess what you are. so, yes, you should be. What do I mean by that? Stop arguing with reality. It just compounds the intensity of all of this.

You are still dealing with complex grief and trying to still make sense of what you thought was real, still putting pieces together what actually was real, and then trying to navigate what is even possible to be real for you in the future.

All the while still having to get up and keep doing the basics of life. can we first just agree to give yourself a break? I see so many of you in the hustle of this work. Slow down, breathe. Now let's unpack this a little bit further. So like me, my brain loves the learning part of healing.

Like all of you that are binging my podcast, you know like right, you're soaking up the knowledge, you're learning, it feels so good, and you find comfort and even energy. Control in being able to understand the why, like, why they did it, why they're doing it, and why they won't stop trying to figure things out.

In your mind is a way to stay safe as well as feeds a little bit of that control part for you as well. it's this idea that if I know things, then I'm not gonna let this happen again. Perhaps. I think that's what my brain likes to say. Let me know all the things. Lemme learn all the things because I'm gonna make sure that this never freaking happens again.

So along with the thoughts of why is this so hard, it shouldn't be. I also see the brain go to justifying immediately after with what they quote. No, this might sound like, why does this have to be so hard? Well, I guess that's just life, or I guess sometimes good things come from hard.

If you've ever found yourself saying, maybe this is just how life is, I want to pause right here with you, because that phrase holds so much. I often hear this being said with, with like a sigh after, like, like, uh, well maybe this is just how life is. There's like a quiet grief underneath that Part of you that is starting to wonder if you should stop trying to change things, stop trying to be happy, stop trying to create your life or hope for more.

it's really important to get curious about what's underneath some of these phrases that you might be telling yourself. Perhaps there's a, this belief that. If you want peace or if you want ease, that might be naive or selfish. This may be where comparative thoughts come in like, well, it could be worse, or, my situation isn't as bad as so and so's.

I hear that one a lot. I hear a lot of comparative brains

as a way to minimize. Their own pain really getting ourself out of the uncomfortable or a trauma response might be showing up here. there's this part that has been taught to tolerate hardship because familiar suffering feels safer than unfamiliar hope. This was my favorite line that I used for years, and I genuinely like genuinely believed this when I would say.

Will, I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. Again, I honestly believe that

this is keeping me in a trauma response. Of course, I'm gonna be let down. Of course, bad things are gonna happen to me or something along those lines when I am believing that that's my law in life, or that's just what I'm gonna. I'm just gonna focus on that or expect that underneath these thoughts could also be some confusion around acceptance and apathy. Sometimes we feel like in order to accept the reality of everything, we just kinda have to lay down and let go of all of our agency and choice, we need to reframe that, where this is what's happening. This is the reality. And I may not like it, but I can meet it with awareness and choice. This is grounded. This is present, this is, uh, connected to your agency. Remember, acceptance is actually strength. It is not weakness. It's not relinquish, it's not apathy.

it allows us to actually stop fighting reality. So that we can then begin responding and choosing differently. This is why my three pillars of healing are accept awareness, acceptance, and agency. many times I see my clients wanting to go to the doing, how can I do this? How can I do different, how can I fix this?

How can I make this go away? We're bypassing acceptance altogether, and so the perpetuation of hard is going to continue because we're bypassing this really, really important pillar of healing.

Because apathy is, this is just how life is, so why bother trying it? It's very flat. It's frozen. It's, uh, it's dissociated, honestly, numb. All of you know what numbing out looks like. This is, this is apathy.

And I just wanna validate why we can get stuck here because of the abusive behaviors that happen when you've been betrayed, and then emotionally and psychologically abusive dynamics happen like the gaslighting. you were gaslit into accepting Intolerable behavior as normal or your fault. You were told to forgive and move on without any space to process. Oftentimes, many, many of you were rewarded for remaining quiet, compliant or tolerant even when these behaviors were hurting you.

And so now when you say you're accepting, what's often really happening is that emotional resignation. you don't wanna hope because hope feels unsafe. You don't wanna push because pushing led to punishment and you don't wanna feel. Because feeling too much made you break down. I know I'm kind of going off on this acceptance thing, but it's so big y'all.

It's so big.

Just know that acceptance, honors reality and holds power. Apathy avoids reality and drains your power. So yes. Life is full of contrast. It is the 50 50 in everything. Joy, pain, light, dark, comfort, discomfort. That is part of being a human. Hard isn't your whole story, just because hard is part of your life doesn't mean that you're supposed to live only in survival mode.

And this is where so many of you get stuck. I wanna offer another way to reframe hard so that you don't actually get stuck in the loop of it because you can't outrun it, but you can stop looping in it. Hard things happen, then the brain tries to make sense of all the hard. But if you believe that life is only hard for you, or that your heart is proof that you are doing something wrong, then it can create a loop of pain.

On top of more pain. the loop is gonna sound like, why is it always me? What's wrong with me? Or, and I, I hear this a lot with you, with spirituals, not the spirituality is bad. but those of you that like to spiritually bypass. You might be thinking, what lesson am I not learning fast enough?

Or why is God mad at me or trying to punish me or teach me that? It is still always so hard. We really have to be careful not to try and

use our spirituality or even doctrines and principles of spirituality against ourselves. That is never helpful You are not going to outsmart hard. You're not going to alize it away. You're not going to learn so much that hard stops visiting you. Life is hard because life is life, when you fight this, we start to over-function.

We read all the books. We listen to all the podcasts. We pray harder. We blame ourselves. And it still hurts. Despite all of those things,

you cannot outrun, outthink, outlearn or out righteous the hard of life. I just want you to let that land not as a discouragement, but. Let that release from your shoulders, the burden that you're carrying, that it's not supposed to be this way. It is because of reality, and it is because we're human. When we stop making hard means something about us, intrinsically like our worth or our value, our lovability, or gosh, just our humanness.

We can release. Additional suffering that we are not intended to experience, because heart isn't a punishment. It's not because you failed. It's not even unique just to you. Hopefully you're picking up on that by listening to this podcast and hearing so many women's stories that you're not alone, I'm not trying to invalidate your pain, we've gotta stay anchored in the reality that you're not cursed, you're not alone, you're human.

Sometimes where I see this really take a turn in an unhealthy direction is when we believe that heart is always going to happen to just me, and so I'm just gonna brace for it. Like I was saying before, that mantra that I truly live by, I'd rather just expect disappointment. Be pleasantly surprised.

So I'm just gonna be disappointed beforehand. That is not a way to live. That is a powerless way to live your life, and I absolutely.

Experience confirmation bias, like my brain was constantly looking for what it believed, and so will yours. When you've been betrayed, when you've experienced abuse, your nervous system is going to scan for danger constantly. That's what's gonna keep you living in this survival loop, even when you're out of the actual danger. we need agency to move. we need to have this internal call to action. What can I control? I can only control it. What's in my bubble? I can't control what happens to me, but I can absolutely shift and control how I relate or handle hard. maybe instead of this is happening to me, try reframing it.

Like this is something that I'm walking through, but I am not powerless here instead of. I cannot handle one more hard thing. Gosh dang. If I had a penny for every time I heard this one, and every time I thought this one, right, I would, I would walk into my parents' house and be like, I don't think I can handle one more hard thing.

Like, there's no way that I can handle one more hard thing. I actually gave this analogy to my, my mom one day. I was like, you know, I don't think I can handle one more hard thing, but I'm feeling like I'm hanging over the side of a cliff by my fingernails for so long, I'm realizing that my fingernails are just growing and they're just growing and growing and growing until. Before I know it, my feet are touching the floor,

and I actually went home and wrote on a piece of paper and stuck it on my fridge for my kids to see. and I wrote on that paper, we can do hard things shifting from I can't handle another dang hard thing to, I've done hard before. I can do hard things and actually a little while later I ripped that one up and I wrote, we are doing hard things that stayed on my, on our fridge, in my apartment the whole time.

 I was talking to my daughter on my lunch break the other day,

and she was telling me that she used the phrase, we can do hard things to my little two and a half year old granddaughter Who is in this stage of dressing herself. She wants to be big and she wants to dress herself and pick out her own clothes and put on her own shirt. Well, in the attempt of putting on her own shirt, she got stuck in her own shirt and as she is having an absolute meltdown, upset that she is stuck in her shirt and can't get her arm through the right hole in her shirt, My daughter, McKenna said that she told Maddie, I know Maddie, it is so hard, but we can do hard things. then she said that Maddie kept saying over and over as she's trying to struggle through getting her shirt on. Yeah, we can do hard things. I can do hard things.

It was absolutely adorable to hear, but it also reinforced what I am trying to offer here is that

we are here, higher self, spiritual beings, having a human experience in human bodies. And part of that means we are going to experience hard, we're going to experience the 50 50 of life, the 50% negative in the 50% positive from the moment.

We are born, we experience hard, as I'm listening to McKenna, describe how hard it was for this little 2-year-old, two and a half year old to put on her shirt. it just put it in perspective too, that her hardest apart in that moment was putting on a shirt.

Right. According to her and her little brain, and her little world, and her little body, her hardest of heart was putting on a t-shirt. And how, as we go through life and go through each stage, I mean, gosh, middle school, right? How the hardest of hearts in middle school is walking through the lunch line perhaps, or sitting alone,

realizing that you have the wrong shoes. Every phase of life we're going to experience the absolute hardest of hearts. But if we can remind ourself and shift our thinking into, I can do hard things. I am doing hard things, we can keep walking forward with more empowerment,

more choice, more ability to create the life that we want despite the hard. Right now your hardest of hards is probably navigating the divorce papers, figuring out the financial part of it, trying to collect all of the finances and put that together. Maybe it's coming up with a parenting plan. Maybe the hardest of hard for you right now is imagining 50% time away from your kids.

That feels probably absolutely impossible, hard right now where some of you are on the other side of that. And are starting to make the most of the time that your children are with their father. Maybe the hardest of hard for you right now is getting in a shower,

maybe it's waking up in the morning because a part of you doesn't wanna wake up.

Which leads me to something that I want to mention even briefly, I can't talk about this topic and answer this question, this title of the episode. Why? Why does it have to be so hard? Because I know that I experienced this going through my incredibly hard, and I know that many of you go through this as well in the middle of your incredibly hard sometimes. Often when life feels unbearably hard, when the weight of all of it just keeps piling on and piling on, it is not uncommon for a part of you to whisper that the only way out of this incredibly hard is to not be here.

This part is not evil. It's overwhelmed and it believes that it's protecting you. It's trying to escape the unbearable. And if you've had those thoughts, I just want you to know that you're not broken. You're not alone. I know you feel it. I promise you who you are. Intrinsically, your soul is not broken.

This is your central nervous system crying out for relief. And there are ways to find it. Start with a breath. Please reach out to someone safe. And do not stay isolated in this place. If those thoughts have moved into planning or intent, then please don't try to navigate this alone. Please text or call 9 8 8. Or if you're in the us, please reach out to someone safe and trained. There is nothing weak about asking for help when things are so unbearably hard that it brings out this part of you.

This isn't you. It is a part of you. In Internal Family Systems modality, we call it a firefighter part.

there is actually deep strength in saying, I don't wanna do this alone, you don't have to.

Hard is real. And your hard is real. Please do not compare. To anybody else's heart.

  The hard things that we experience in life as a human does not get to define who we are or what's possible. You don't have to fight it. You don't have to perform your way out of it. You don't have to pretend that it doesn't impact you, but you also don't have to stay stuck in it. You can learn to meet hard with awareness instead of assumption with compassion instead of collapse, and with agency instead of avoidance.

A few things to consider practicing this week. Ask yourself the following questions. What are you making hard mean about you? is there a belief underneath here? Like, I'm not strong enough, or, see, this is proof that I'm not healed yet.

Can you challenge that with hard things? Don't mean I'm failing, they mean I'm living. Ask yourself, am I confusing tolerance with resilience? because tolerating suffering isn't the same thing as being strong. True resilience includes rest. It includes boundaries. For all of you that don't like boundaries, resilience includes boundaries, it includes asking for help.

Ask yourself, is my central nervous system stuck in hard, is going to come mode. I'm just gonna expect to be disappointed. I'm just gonna expect hard things to always happen. Notice if you're bracing, waiting, living in that hyper vigilance, it is a trauma response.

And getting stuck here prevents your healing. ask yourself, what would I do differently to if I believed that peace was possible for me? then the last question to ask yourself is what kind of. Hard. Do I wanna choose? Now, this one might throw some of you off because yes, choosing to do hard things shifts the energy of all of it.

There's hard. That comes from abandoning yourself, rejecting reality, and then there's hard that comes from standing in your truth. I know a lot of you are still holding on to what happened to you in secrecy. I know some of you are still trying to fight to be heard. Stand in your truth. Doesn't mean you have to open your mouth yet.

When people around you don't see what you went through, when people around you are judging maybe your decision to divorce because he's still looking like the nice guy over there, abandoning yourself is going to drain you. Standing in your truth is going to grow you. I hope that you know that you're not alone in the hard.

I hope you know that you're not powerless in it, that when you meet hard with, all parts of you, with your higher self,

 you get to choose what parts 📍 you carry forward and what parts you let go.

Remember as always, you are the chooser in your life and you get to create the life that you want despite the hard and because of hard, because you can take care everybody.

Hey, don't forget to register for the free live q and a that I hold the first Thursday of every month. This is a place for you to come and feel supported by other women. I teach a concept or tool at the beginning of every live session, and then we open it up to questions. Women do such a good job at validating each other as well, so register for that link in the show notes, or go to amiewoolsey.com live q and a support the first Thursday of every month.

And for those of you that might be afraid of what that next step looks like in a relationship, maybe you're navigating a new relationship or in one either way. If you are not dating yourself first, then the odds of repeating the same unhealthy or destructive patterns in the next relationship are a lot higher.

Come and join me in this Dating from Within workshop June 12th, 13th and 14th. You don't wanna miss it. It is also so much fun. the link for that in the show notes or amiewoolsey.com.

I will see you there.

I was born to fly and

Today will be the day. The day it

in.

Today will be the day.

I was made to dream that anything can be my,

Today will be the day it all

in.

Today will be the day.