Doing things, particularly when we don’t want to, can be hard. Sometimes, doing nothing, so things stay as they are, can be equally hard. This is your invitation to choose your hard.

Take what you need

I’m writing this from my perspective of my own personal growth journey over the last 7 years. It is specific to me. That said, I’d put money on you recognising yourself in some of what you’re going to read. I also bet that what I talk about may apply to other areas of your life; I know it does mine. Please take from this what you find useful and leave the rest.

Hard Knock

In January 2017 I lost a lot of the sight in my right eye. There was a very real risk that I would lose all the sight and, as the doctors didn’t really know what had happened, they couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t happen to my left eye too. To say I was scared would be a huge understatement.

Over the next 4 months or so, I had several injections in my eye and most of the sight I’d lost returned. Yeah! Not all of it, but my eyes have adapted now and I barely notice it. My left eye has, so far, been unaffected.

It could have been just a hard period in my life, as I coped with the worry and the medical procedures, until everything was back to relative normality. That isn’t what happened.

The eyesight loss had started something that couldn’t be stopped.

Hard stop

Back then, and for several years after, I called it a breakdown. Now I describe it as a cracking open and an unravelling. Like my heart opened to reveal a massive ball of wool made up of lots of different coloured balls of wool, all mixed up together. The ball had begun to unravel separating the colours.

At the time, it felt like I had no choice but to confront a lot of the feelings I had raging inside me. Those feelings had festered (and I really mean festered) for many years. I was 47 and I had spent years saying to myself, and everyone else in my life, that I was okay.

• Yes, my childhood hadn’t been great but I was okay.

• Yes, I worked really hard in my job, to the point of burnout, but I was okay.

• Yes, I had a series of disastrous relationships in my 20s and 30s, but I was okay.

• Yes, I had a husband and children and on the face of it I was okay.

• Yes, I had a good career so I must be okay.

• Yes, I lived in a nice house in a nice part of Bristol and anyone else would be happy with that, so I was okay.

Hard reality

In reality, I was far from okay. I was bitter and full of resentment and angry a lot of the time. I was crippled with self-doubt and chronic low self-esteem. I thought I was broken. I felt so guilty; I felt that I “should” be okay and I wasn’t.

When I thought I was going to lose my sight, I realised that I had spent my life pleasing others, putting them first (and consequently me last), meeting their needs, sometimes before they even knew they had a need. I feel the pain of that version of myself as I type this.

I also realised that if I lost my sight, life as I knew it would be over. My next thought was “Who is going to want me around if I can’t be useful and helpful?”. That was such a hard time.

Hard Choice

I found a therapist and over the next 3 years I worked through a lot of the feelings that were still with me from things that happened in my childhood. I have written about those things in my memoir that you can find HERE. I have also written about the process of writing the book HERE.

That is one of my big examples of “choose your hard”. It was hard going through therapy, talking about things that happened, feeling my feelings around those things that happened and learning how all that was still with me in my body and driving a lot of my behaviour.

It was also hard living with all those feelings in my body and ignoring them, as I had done for years. The feelings just got bigger and stronger and made me angry and frustrated. They drove a lot of my behaviour and it wasn’t pretty.

Losing my sight was the tipping point where the hard of working through it was less hard than the hard of not doing it.

As I write, I realise I have many other examples and I’d like to share some with you:

• the hard of staying in touch with my alcoholic mother whose highs and lows were my highs and lows and never knowing what would happen next OR the hard of being estranged from her and missing being part of my birth family

• the hard of being in a bigger body and the extra effort that takes as well as the shame that comes with it OR the hard of eating nothing but shakes and bars for 4 months to lose a lot of weight (my journey with this is a whole other story!)

• the hard of being unfit OR the hard of working to get fitter

• the hard of losing friends over misunderstandings OR the hard of having difficult conversations

• the hard of putting everyone else first and the resentment that eventually creates OR the hard of the discomfort you feel as you make changes and put yourself first

• the hard of starting a new job Or the hard of staying in a job you hate

• the hard of sticking with something that is tough OR the hard of letting go of the opportunity to work through the tough to what is on the other side (as well as the hard of the uncertainty of what that might be!)

Choose your hard

So remember, when you are faced with something hard, there is always a payoff for not choosing the hard thing.

Staying still, not making changes or keeping the peace - whatever your reason for deciding to not do something, there is often a hard thing that comes with that decision too.

Are you choosing short term comfort now over long term gain? Are you choosing certainty now in the short term because that’s what your nervous system needs over long term uncertainty that will leave you dysregulated?

There is no wrong or right. Choose your hard!

Further information

You can hear the writer talk more about being an HSP on the HSP Connection Podcast which she co-hosts with Robbie Leigh. There is also an HSP Connection Community where we meet twice a month to embrace our superpower. If you’d like to know more, contact Philippa.