Over the past few years, I began to wonder who I was. The events that were swirling around me began to overwhelm me. Work had become disingenuous, and my relationship with even my own family began to suffer.
I didn’t even know if my life had meaning any more.
Something had to change…but I didn’t know where to begin.
Then a small glimmer occurred to me. I realized that I had become preoccupied with the bombardment of opinions that surrounded the social media landscape. It altered my emotional state, and caused a depressing outlook to permeate my being.
But I knew deep inside that that wasn’t who I was. Or who I am.
I needed to do something about it.
I began to realize that I couldn’t really change anything about what I was going on in the world around me. It was too far away from my personal space. And unless I could immediately impact the broader decisions being made on personal or local level, none of the rest really mattered.
The greater world around me was going to go along swimmingly as planned by others over whom I had no influence.
I made a decision.
Politics, following random feeds from social media, and ideologies of others are no longer of any concern to me. I disconnected from the major social platforms and Google services, leaving time for myself to choose what I wanted to intellectually consume.
In doing so, my perspective on life changed.
It calmed my inner turmoil down. No longer was I driven to concern and worry about things that weren’t affecting my family and me. Instead, I turned my focus towards something I could work on.
Myself.
If I didn’t figure out what was going on in my personal life, I knew there would be no way to reach out to others who were broken. And I knew there were a lot of hurting people around me.
But I had to fix me first.
So many times I was told I was rude, not a team player, too detailed, too “critical”, an “odd duck”, didn’t fit it. My mother was concerned because, as a little girl, I didn’t seem to be able to relate to other little children. A brief experience in nursery school only traumatized me and caused me to retreat further into myself.
I didn’t have any friends like anyone else. Those at work thought I was too weird or negative to hang around. I was mocked, made fun of, and rejected by my peers.
Only my managers saw my skill potential, but kept trying to make me someone I was not in order to “fit in” with the other employees.
I couldn’t understand why people disliked me so much.
What I saw of myself – someone who really cared about others, did my absolute best at my job, was detailed and methodical with everything I did – never seemed to be appreciated by anyone else. I went above and beyond at my work, but rarely was rewarded for my efforts in front of my team members.
So I decided that if something was that wrong with me, I needed to find out what it was.
Instead, I was always remained an outsider; a loner; an island by myself that no one understood or cared about. Worse, even in a crowded room, I always felt alone.
None of these things should any human being ever have to endure.
So I decided that if something was that wrong with me, I needed to find out what it was. The world around me said it was all my fault. The Church said I was an unmitigated sinner who never learns to climb the tower of sanctity.
Feeling like my life was worthless led me on a long, unexpected journey to self-discovery. The path it lead me down was surprising. And became the road toward the goal of healing.
So I began the journey, following the guidance of that which lay dormant deep within myself.
Then an opportunity to try a different path opened up.
Several years before I retired, a manager at my work offered each of us an opportunity to participate in an interesting program that identified individual’s strengths. Unlike the Meyers-Briggs test and the like which focuses on skills, this actual went through the unchangeable characteristics that is intrinsic to the make-up of each person.
QUOTE: “Strengths science answers questions about what’s right with people rather than what’s wrong with them.”
-Don Clifton
Out of over 70 people, I was the only one who not only took him up on the offer, but went even further.
After taking the test and paying for the full report, much of it revealed who I was in a way that I’d not seen before in any other type of personality test. But I wanted a deeper dive into what it all meant.
I found out that my sister had just had a Clifton Strengthfinder’s coach interviewed on her radio program. I contacted the coach and signed up. It was worth every penny spent!!
Not only did I find out what each of those points in the report meant, but I also discovered that this program revealed that the strengths and the order of those particular strengths, was something that occurred only once in over four trillion people!
For the first time in my life, I was able to see the positive aspects of my personality. I didn’t need to apologize for being who I was anymore. It was freeing!
I wasn’t broken the way others viewed me. I was designed to be just the way I am. And that was okay.
But it didn’t stop there.
The journey continued about three years later. I quit a job and career that I had worked at over the course of 30 years. Corporate life and the lies they perpetrated to their people was not only meaningless, it was demeaning.
As many who work at such places, know there is no such thing as “work-life balance”.
As many who work at such places, know there is no such thing as “work-life balance”. In the company’s viewpoint, it is okay to have a life – but only after you have given the majority of your time and energy to the company. The words have become just a tagline to make the company heads and HR department feel good about themselves.
The trauma that remained took a full two years to get over. Everything I did was still linked to the habits of staying on a timed schedule, and deadline driven. It was difficult to relax and actually begin to enjoy life.
I began to let a lot of that frustration and angst out by starting a blog site. While the initial blogs posts were focused on issues that confront many people in the modern world, the push to try to meet deadlines, a preconceived number of posts, and find materials was taking its toll.
I realized that I was trying to continue working as I had over my lifetime. Setting deadlines and reaching the recommendations of others who wrote their own blogs began to wear on me.
The stress was killing my joy of doing something new.
So I decided to let it go.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, I had another breakthrough on my personal journey.
After one of my grandsons showed signs of Autism, I decided to do a deep dive on what that actually was. (Spoiler alert, it isn’t “Rain Man”!)
I discovered something interesting. Autistic people look like and act just like everyone else! Their cognitive abilities range from low to high, just like typical people. And their physical differences, can be extremely fit and fully functional to visibly disabled. Put personalities in the mix and it colors their visible presentation like everyone else.
They don’t all look like the little white boy in the corner who can’t communicate, or those who run around flapping their hands. That demeaning stereotype should disappear from our mental imagery completely!
But the differences between a typical individual and someone on the Autism Spectrum shows up in their characteristics, not in what they look like. It is difficult for an Autistic to understand how to interact with others. They are often mistakenly told they are rude or over sensitive.
..the differences between a typical individual and someone on the Autism Spectrum shows up in their characteristics…not in what they look like.
Very often they are misunderstood when they try to explain something, or don’t understand what is being told to them, especially if it contains subtleties. They perceive the world as black and white. There are no shades of gray when it comes to thinking and rationalizing.
Autistic people are very logical and detailed, but often miss the nuances of jokes and teasing. Communication, therefore, can be difficult.
In learning about this difference in brain development, I, also, discovered that I fit much of the same criteria. So I took all the online tests available through reputable resources.
And all the checkboxes were ticked off.
So I dug even deeper.
To confirm this self-appraisal, I had an official evaluation done.
And the diagnosis of Autism was confirmed.
But I also have a very high IQ. The feeling of being stupid no longer had power over me. I wasn’t an idiot. I just didn’t see the world like everyone else.
Now all the puzzle pieces fit into place. Now I understood why I was considered “different”, and couldn’t understand why people disliked me.
Now all the puzzle pieces fit into place.
It also explained why I understood so many things, but it took a long time to deep dive into research and comprehension. I needed time to process information to fully understand it or would get hung on even a single, unexplained point and the rest made no sense.
The picture of who I was now made sense.
And it rocked my world.
Suddenly everything that I knew about the world around me changed overnight. No longer could I ignore and mask who I was deep inside. When the environment affected me, I began to recognize the early signs that previously remained disregarded. My personal sphere of influence was now more recognizable and controllable.
This journey is far from over. In fact, it has just begun.
And as the healing from past traumas of rejection and invalidities are being addressed, so too does the door of opportunity open up to reach out to others. Just as I had to go through a journey to recognize who I was, I began to feel I could slowly touch the lives of others in a way I could never do before.
I decided to do something with this discovery.
The rejection and deeply held traumas that have been a part of my life now made sense. And it gave me a greater compassion towards those who were suffering in their own ways, in their own personal worlds.
To the degree I have begun to know myself is the degree in which I can show true appreciation of others.
Taking all these paths of self- discovery led me to realize what my deepest dream was. To reach out to those who are hurting in a way that has left them with a loss of acceptance and dignity. A safe place where those hurting people could gather and discover their dignity and importance in this vast wilderness called Life.
While this process of self-discovery isn’t over yet, what it has brought to me is a greater understanding about myself and those around me. To the degree I have begun to know myself is the degree in which I can show true appreciation of others.
Now I can begin to show mercy towards myself instead of self-loathing. And that proper form of love of self can then expand outward toward those who need to know they, too, are loved.
Conclusion.
That is the purpose of this article. To encourage those who do not see their own self-worth. The world’s perspective on who we are should never affect who we really are inside.
No one should go through the pain of rejection because they are different. And no one needs to loathe themselves because the world doesn’t understand them.
The key is to begin to want to understand yourself. Then the journey to begin that quest will fall into place.
Encourage others. Share your experiences and show how you overcame difficulties in your own life. You can be a light to someone else, as hopefully I have been a candle to someone else who may be still sitting in darkness.
