Have you ever realized that the people we open up to the most are sometimes strangers that we feel we will never see again?
We open up about our past, current situation, hopes, and dreams. And the funny thing is that we feel less judged by strangers than by the people closest to us. But why is that?
I feel we have created preestablished assumptions of what others expect of us. Or maybe it is because we think that we have to continue acting that way because we acted a certain way when we first met them. And because of that reason, I believe that we sometimes also distance ourselves from some of our friends or feel the urge to meet new people. I don’t know if it is the feeling of wanting to meet new people to experience new things or if it is because we want to let go of the past and find a part of ourselves that we feel is missing that we have yet to discover?
I feel like a good example of opening up about all of our problems to strangers is when we have a therapist or psychologist. When we first meet a new person, we know nothing about them; we may want to get to know them more or want them to get to know us. In this case, the therapist or psychologist is there for us, not the other way around. And because we are entirely focused on ourselves, we (in a way) feel pressured to discover and heal parts of us that have been hurting for so long. And when we speak or express ourselves in any way, we release and realize what we (truly) feel. But therapists and psychologists are strangers. They are people we know nothing about but their name and maybe their background. We start talking because we have the prejudice that that is what we do in therapy sessions. However, what has happened previously during therapy sessions is that I have a filter and feel the need to repeat the whole story of what I have gone through even though I have repeated it many times. Regardless of repeating the story, having the filter makes me feel as though they will react in the same way a stranger or a friend if I were to say what I was going through. I might be wrong. But, I must say that sometimes repeating the story a few too many times (to yourself or someone else) helps you realize things you might have missed the first time. The first scenario that comes to mind with this situation of going over and over again is playing sudoku. Because even though we see the numbers and checked all the empty boxes and completed as much as we could even though it is still unresolved. We must go over the nine main boxes and the nine columns and rows to see what we are not looking at. What is the pattern that we must change, and if we can play around with the other numbers we are given to complete the game?
So maybe talking to strangers about your problem - or just expressing what you are going through - is the same as playing sudoku. You may need patience and tolerance to look at the details instead of always looking at the bigger picture. It may be that we have been so focused on a situation that has been causing us discomfort that we have yet to realize the detail of the bigger scheme causing an imbalance in how we feel.
So I invite you, as hard as it may be, to try and go over whatever is causing you discomfort, check over the rows, columns and boxes of your sudoku game, and be patient with yourself. Because just like a plant or a flower, it doesn’t grow overnight; it takes time, so it grows out to look beautiful. It is all part of your journey and growth. Just take a step back and observe.
Z.
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