“𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨.”
“𝘐 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨.”
The statement above is often shared by some of my international clients who are living and working in a different culture to their own. On the one hand those experiences can be an opportunity for growth. However, on the other hand, depending on your childhood, they can also feel like rubbing salt on an open wound. A repetition of what was endured before.
As a black child growing up in Lebanon, I looked different, not only from members of the society at large but also from members in my own nuclear family. I faced racism which further drove the message that I did not belong. No matter how hard I tried the message that I did not fit in persisted.
As an adult I ended up leading an international life and I took my inner need to belong everywhere I went. I found myself having to repeatedly adapt and try to fit in within groups in different countries and different cultures. My efforts and hard work to fit in and belong sometimes left me emotionally exhausted. Having to constantly adapt to those changing environments meant that I no longer knew who I was. The most painful was witnessing my children grappling with their own sense of belonging.
The reality can be further complicated if you find yourself in multicultural groups, whether in a family setting or at work. What are the rules around belonging in such systems, and who defines them?
Our sense of belonging starts at birth in the families that we are born into. We unconsciously carry those early experiences within us and they impact the rest of our lives. The feeling of not belonging might be old and gets re-enforced by present day experiences where you are treated like an outsider; where you get the message, “That’s not how things are done here.”
So, you adapt, perhaps even over-adapt, a pattern of behaviour that you learnt as a child, and in doing so you lose your authentic self in the process.
In the past, experiences that left me feeling like an outsider, caused me a lot of pain. After my years of therapy and re-training to become a coach and counsellor, I gained amazing insights into my personal journey and integrated a wealth of knowledge that helped resolve those deep patterns and dynamics from my childhood.
My personal experience, combined with my learnings, creates a great resource. This allows me to be a coach and counsellor who can support my international clients to explore, and become aware, of the connection between their painful childhood experiences, and the pain and lack of belonging they are experiencing in the present. Sometimes that awareness on its own can bring relief, and in some cases perhaps more deep work and healing might be necessary.
We can’t change what happened to us, however we can choose what to do with what happened. We can choose to sit in pain or turn pain into purpose.
What Out-dated Story Are You Still Living By Today?
What out-dated story are you still living by today?
Are you aware of it, and it’s impacts on your life?
Would you like to bring it to your awareness?
After all, you can’t change what you are not aware exists in the first place.
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
- Patrick Rothfuss, American author.
Those who know me might also know that I am mixed. My mum was from Ghana and my dad from Lebanon. I was the intersection between an African and an Arab, a Catholic and a Muslim. I was baptised as a baby then when a toddler was raised in a Muslim household.
My parents divorced before I was two years old. The circumstances then meant that I was shuffled around between carers and homes until I arrived, in the sixties, at the doorsteps of my Lebanese grandmother in Tripoli, Lebanon.
Not many people looked like me in those days. I was one of two black pupils in the whole school. The result was being subjected to discrimination and racism during the most impressionable years of my life. My brown skin became a reason to dislike me, reject me, call me names, poke fun at me, ignore me, or treat me with total inconsideration.
It is no wonder that the combination of the unsettled early years and having to face those biases led me to make the decision that I was not good enough, and that I needed to try hard to earn people’s love.
When you tell yourself a story long enough, you believe it and it impacts all your life choices.
That was the story that I lived by for most of my teen and young adult years and it did negatively impact my personal and professional life. I experienced a crisis in my thirties, had a breakdown, and got myself some much needed help in the form of coaching and counselling. That was the moment when things started to change.
It was only then, in those therapeutic sessions, that I started to bring aspects of this old, out-dated story into my awareness. I started challenging its truth, and questioned its validity. Only then life began to slowly change, and I started first to love myself and then allow the love of others to flow into my life. Only then I began to experience joy and fulfilment, which spread around me and engulfed everyone in my world.
“There is a surrendering to your story and then a knowing that you don’t have to stay in your story.”
- Colette Baron-Reid, Intuitive Counsellor
I observe a similar, yet unique experience, in my clients. I see how many of them are also still living according to an old, out-dated story. I witness how they carry heavily within them the limiting decisions and beliefs that they formed decades ago. The story that brought some comfort years ago is now the cause of so much discomfort because it is thwarting their chances of a happy and successful life.
The out-dated story could be stopping you from going after that promotion, or acing that interview, from speaking up and sharing your ideas during work meetings, or starting a relationship. It could be the reason you focus on the needs of others and neglect your own. The reason you can’t say no and try hard to meet the demands of others. The reason you are afraid to show your emotions and your vulnerability. The reason you strive for perfection and fear making mistakes.
My clients and I work together so they can become fully aware of the old story. This allows them to re-examine those decisions, and choose when and how to let this old story go, make new choices and live according to a changed and more authentic story.
What about you?
Are you still holding on to an out-dated story?
Would you like to bring it to your awareness?
Let’s talk.
Are you ready to let your authentic self back in?
I grew up in an environment that conveyed the message to me that born as I was, I am not good enough.
As a result I worked hard to be, and do, what was expected of me in order to become good enough and accepted. Through that I was not being authentic. According to Gabor Maté, when we are faced with a choice between authenticity and attachment we will always choose attachment.
“We stray from being authentic to seeking acceptance. We let go of authenticity in order to stay connected.”
- Gabor Maté, Canadian physician & author
In time this lack of authenticity became exhausting and I no longer recognised who I was. I crashed.
I got some help in the form of coaching, counselling and trauma therapy. It was transformational and motivated me to study and qualify in the very psychological concepts that supported my change. The crash indirectly brought an ending to this inauthentic life and from the ashes emerged the authentic me. What looked like a negative experience lead to a positive outcome as I found my courage to re-connect with and bring to the world the real me.
Do you find yourself doing one or more of the following:
Trying hard to fit with others’ expectations of you?
Focusing on others’ needs and neglecting your own?
Hiding your true emotions under a mask that permanently says, “I am fine”?
Putting in enormous efforts to be the perfect person in every role you occupy in life?
Hurrying up through life to reach an end that always seems to elude you?
If you are, then like me once upon a time, you have lost touch with your authentic self.
Are you ready to open the gate and let your authentic self back in?
Let’s talk