Journal #9
PROMPT: Your journal for this week will take some of the material from last week and apply it to the material from Mindset. Guy Winch listed 7 Common Psychological Injuries we sustain in life in his Talk at Google:
• Failure
• Rejection
• Guilt
• Loneliness
• Brooding and Rumination
• Loss and Trauma
• Bouts of Low-Self Esteem
For this journal, reflect on the following prompt:
Which injuries from the list above have you sustained in the last few weeks or months? How did you heal/administer first aid? If you didn’t, in the future, how can you? How might approaching your psychological injuries with a growth mindset help you heal?
In the last couple months, I experienced several of these in a situation with someone in my life. I saw tension in the relationship but thought that there was still a team mindset trying to solve problems together even when we disagreed. But I misjudged the relationship and the other person was hurt and angry. Out of that came many harsh words about my character, intelligence, and worth. Through this I experienced rejection, guilt, loneliness, and low-self-esteem. I felt rejection when I was told that this person didn’t think they could ever get past things enough to be around me. I experienced guilt because, as with every situation, there were things I could have done differently. While I wasn’t being intentionally hurtful, I know that I can be very direct and stubborn sometimes and I felt guilt looking back on that. The loneliness came because the relationship that I thought was there was lost. The respect and trust I had in them was broken. Not only that, but this person is a person of influence in our social circle and I felt like I might get pushed out completely. The low-self-esteem followed the painful conversation. It took me a couple weeks to be able to weed out the messages that had more to be said about that person than myself and be able to take an honest look at the things that were said that I needed to work on.
While I have been able to honestly own and come to terms with the things I need to work on in myself, the healing process is not fully complete. My “first-aid” over the past few weeks has consisted of verbally processing with my husband, spending time trying to separate the truth from the lies, and trying to figure out what I can learn from it. I tried to give myself time to truly feel whatever emotions I was feeling, which is not something I’m used to doing. Through the counseling and self-work I have been doing over the past few years, I have learned that in order to truly move through psychological damage and learn from it is to take time to honestly feel it first. By taking the time to feel it, I was able to shorten the time feeling the psychological injuries. I was able to move though the guilt, loneliness, and low-self esteem much faster than I have been able to in the past. That being said, I’m still working on moving though the feeling of rejection. Because of the specific circumstances I have to learn to rebuild a relationship with this person. I am struggling to do so because of the personal nature of the rejection. They were able to blow off steam and get all of their energy towards me out, and now they are acting as if everything is fine. Where I am stuck is trying to engage with this person, even as an acquaintance, without being cold and completely shutting them out. Logically I’m trying to apply the growth mindset not only to myself (looking at what can be learned from this situation), but to this person as well. If I am able to process though the pain surrounding our relationship, honestly look at myself, and move through it they might be able to as well. That being said, I am also determined to maintain healthy boundaries (at least for a time) because of the emotionally abusive nature of the recent encounter.
All that to say, this situation is one where I was deeply hurt, and am trying to process through it. The fact that I have to have some form of a relationship with this person has forced me into more of a growth mindset than I would have had if we didn’t have to interact. I know there is a lot to learn about myself through this process. I have already learned a lot and will continue pushing into what pieces I can own and work on, and what pieces are not true and I need to let go of.
• Failure
• Rejection
• Guilt
• Loneliness
• Brooding and Rumination
• Loss and Trauma
• Bouts of Low-Self Esteem
For this journal, reflect on the following prompt:
Which injuries from the list above have you sustained in the last few weeks or months? How did you heal/administer first aid? If you didn’t, in the future, how can you? How might approaching your psychological injuries with a growth mindset help you heal?
In the last couple months, I experienced several of these in a situation with someone in my life. I saw tension in the relationship but thought that there was still a team mindset trying to solve problems together even when we disagreed. But I misjudged the relationship and the other person was hurt and angry. Out of that came many harsh words about my character, intelligence, and worth. Through this I experienced rejection, guilt, loneliness, and low-self-esteem. I felt rejection when I was told that this person didn’t think they could ever get past things enough to be around me. I experienced guilt because, as with every situation, there were things I could have done differently. While I wasn’t being intentionally hurtful, I know that I can be very direct and stubborn sometimes and I felt guilt looking back on that. The loneliness came because the relationship that I thought was there was lost. The respect and trust I had in them was broken. Not only that, but this person is a person of influence in our social circle and I felt like I might get pushed out completely. The low-self-esteem followed the painful conversation. It took me a couple weeks to be able to weed out the messages that had more to be said about that person than myself and be able to take an honest look at the things that were said that I needed to work on.
While I have been able to honestly own and come to terms with the things I need to work on in myself, the healing process is not fully complete. My “first-aid” over the past few weeks has consisted of verbally processing with my husband, spending time trying to separate the truth from the lies, and trying to figure out what I can learn from it. I tried to give myself time to truly feel whatever emotions I was feeling, which is not something I’m used to doing. Through the counseling and self-work I have been doing over the past few years, I have learned that in order to truly move through psychological damage and learn from it is to take time to honestly feel it first. By taking the time to feel it, I was able to shorten the time feeling the psychological injuries. I was able to move though the guilt, loneliness, and low-self esteem much faster than I have been able to in the past. That being said, I’m still working on moving though the feeling of rejection. Because of the specific circumstances I have to learn to rebuild a relationship with this person. I am struggling to do so because of the personal nature of the rejection. They were able to blow off steam and get all of their energy towards me out, and now they are acting as if everything is fine. Where I am stuck is trying to engage with this person, even as an acquaintance, without being cold and completely shutting them out. Logically I’m trying to apply the growth mindset not only to myself (looking at what can be learned from this situation), but to this person as well. If I am able to process though the pain surrounding our relationship, honestly look at myself, and move through it they might be able to as well. That being said, I am also determined to maintain healthy boundaries (at least for a time) because of the emotionally abusive nature of the recent encounter.
All that to say, this situation is one where I was deeply hurt, and am trying to process through it. The fact that I have to have some form of a relationship with this person has forced me into more of a growth mindset than I would have had if we didn’t have to interact. I know there is a lot to learn about myself through this process. I have already learned a lot and will continue pushing into what pieces I can own and work on, and what pieces are not true and I need to let go of.
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