My two year old is scared of band aids. He will fuss and fight if you try to put a band aid on his boo boo. I thought it was kind of strange, most kids want band aids for the tiniest scratch, but not this kid. I mentioned it at the doctor’s office to the nurse who was pricking his finger for a test and she said her two year old is the same way. She said she thought it was because she associates the band aid with pain. It totally makes sense. Gavin doesn’t realize that the band aid is helping, instead he thinks it’s what is causing the boo boo to hurt. I think sometimes we are like that. Sometimes the thing that will ultimately help us, we reject because we think it’s making the pain worse. I see this with things like counseling. When I suggest people start counseling to help with their emotional pain they usually resist. They are too busy or it costs too much or it’s not convenient. What they are really saying is they are afraid of the counseling hurting more than the emotional pain they are experiencing. And it probably will at least at first.

Tomorrow I’m starting counseling again. I’m working through some things in my life and I realized I need to deal with some stuff in my past. I will confess I am not looking forward to it. Especially those first few sessions where you have to tell your story, it’s hard. It feels safer just leave all that stuff buried deep in my memory than to deal with any of it. But if I don’t, nothing changes. I will continue to deal with the same issues and have those issues effect others in my life. So many people who have experienced trauma in their lives think that they can just bury it and it won’t effect them anymore. It’s not true. There’s a term in mental health called “leakage”. It’s when those emotions that have been buried and tightly guarded suddenly leak out, usually in a stressful situation. In my own life this usually looks like me yelling at my kids when they get on my nerves. That’s my clue that I have stuff I need to deal with. We normally only allow leakage with those we love most, but it can happen in other situations.

Counseling is hard, but it’s like cleaning a wound. You can do nothing about a wound and it will eventually get infected and cause way more damage to those healthy parts around it. Or you can gently clean it and put a band aid on it and it will heal. Is it easier to pretend we don’t have a wound, or that was “all in the past”? Yes. But eventually that wound becomes infected and infects your whole life and those around you. You can never be your best self with old wounds. You will never trust people, just because of those who hurt you so deeply in the past. That will effect your relationships for the rest of your life if you don’t do the hard work of dealing with it. I am the first to admit I have trust issues. I am convinced people will leave me eventually, and I have good reasons from my past experiences to believe that. I have to work hard to dispel that belief and do some serious internal work to deal with it or I will never have close relationships. Some people think they prefer to be isolated and never trust, but that is no way to live. Its easier, until you go through something hard and you look around and no one is there. We are so quick to let people in to a certain point and then we throw up walls around our hearts. People can feel that. They back away slowly, and ironically their experience with you is that you aren’t safe. If you don’t trust others, how can they find you trustworthy? I can’t be a safe person for others if I refuse to be vulnerable with them. Vulnerability takes tremendous courage, especially if you have been deeply hurt. That doesn’t mean you share everything with everyone. We should be wise about whom we share with. There is an acronym that Brene Brown shares about trust that I will share here. It’s been tremendously helpful for me in learning how to trust and how to be trustworthy in relationships.

BOUNDARIES: Setting boundaries is making clear what’s okay and what’s not
okay, and why.
RELIABILITY: You do what you say you’ll do. At work, this means staying aware
of your competencies and limitations so you don’t overpromise and are able to
deliver on commitments and balance competing priorities.
ACCOUNTABILITY: You own your mistakes, apologize, and make amends.
VAULT: You don’t share information or experiences that are not yours to share.
I need to know that my confidences are kept, and that you’re not sharing with me
any information about other people that should be confidential.
INTEGRITY: Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what’s right over what’s
fun, fast, or easy; and practicing your values, not just professing them.
NONJUDGMENT: I can ask for what I need, and you can ask for what you need. We
can talk about how we feel without judgment.
GENEROSITY: Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions,
words, and actions of others.

Let’s not be afraid of band aids. They are here to help us get better. If we don’t choose to deal with our past and present issues they will just continue to cause problems in our relationships with others. If you don’t have any close relationships with people, you should ask yourself if you might have trauma in your life that you haven’t dealt with. Consider counseling to help deal with your issues. Be brave along with me.