Understanding AS Avoidance

Elaine @thewebrecluse

August 18 2023 8:23am

Just because you understand something, doesn’t mean you have to agree with it.

Understanding someone doesn’t mean you have to endure them especially if their presence, attitude, or behavior is harmful to your peace.

We’re pushed to understand the awful behavior of others sometimes to the detriment of our well-being. This starts often with our families.

We devote more time to understanding WHY someone behaves badly than we do on HOW that behavior is affecting us.

There can be understanding and there can be grace held for people and there can be tons of internal work done on our part to have empathy as well … but there needs to be BALANCE in this regard.

You must have understanding, grace, and empathy for YOURSELF as well.

You. Come. First.

And maybe that is a difficult concept for many to subscribe to. Maybe it sounds too selfish or too egocentric.

It’s neither.

It’s selfNESS.

Selfness is something you do in service to those around you.

Having boundaries, protecting your peace, limiting who has access to your mental, physical, and spiritual space, it’s all about selfNESS.

You don’t have to ENDURE that which diminishes you.

This starts, for many, with our own families.

You learn to endure terrible treatment, bad attitudes, or what is basically indentured servitude by making excuses for, and trying to understand why, people behave in negative ways towards you.

This TYPE of understanding is a coping mechanism. It’s a way of avoiding dealing with difficult truths, unchangeable circumstances, and avoiding confrontation.

It’s where all the responsibility is on you to ACCEPT them, but not on them TO CHANGE.

If you were practicing #stoicism, I’d say this is a great foundation to attaining ascension. But that Stoic apatheia comes with a mind free of passions (uncontrolled emotions like anger) and most people don’t endure and “understand” bad people with a stoic level of mental peace.

They “understand” such people to try and disguise how they truly feel about how that person treats them or others. They bury their feelings instead of addressing or acting upon them.

They internalize the negativity.

Internalizing other people’s negativity in this kind of “understanding” is not empathy or sympathy – its avoidance. It’s avoiding confrontation, pushback, and uncomfortableness. It’s even avoiding recognizing your own worth.

You don’t have to endure bad people. You don’t have to endure unhealthy people who take your life energy from you and keep you from being your best self for those who matter most.

You can understand WHY people do, but you don’t have to submit yourself to WHAT they do.

And it doesn’t take much to traumatize the mind, body, and spirit.

The more you endure and internalize negativity, the more you accept other people’s terrible and unhealthy treatment of you and others … the more scars you’re willingly accepting that don’t even BELONG to you … and the more you are INVITING trauma into your body and mental space.

Why would you choose that for yourself?

Value yourself more.