This past week has shown me so many ups and downs, I am left with scrapped elbows and knees. It’s amazing to think how often our emotions get thrown around, and how little we all have supports when there are billions of people on Earth.
Yet we all suffer. Most of us suffer silently. Even in marriages, partnerships, families, siblings, even best friends at times we feel the need to say we are okay and nothing is the matter because it is easier than to pour open our inner most truths. So we remain suffering.
I changed my job recently, not sure if I posted about that. After seven years of working with a health authority as a pharmacy technician and nearly ten years before that as a community pharmacy tech, I’ve hung up my hat with those legal drugs and moved on.
I now work as a coordinator for family services and the food bank at The Salvation Army. I absolutely fell in love with my job. Then had a rude awakening from a coworker/peer/friend, the other day during a meeting. She pointed out that I said a politically incorrect word, which is now looked down on in our society to say ‘addicted.’ Now it is something like, ‘person with a drug use disorder.’
Even though I went through addiction for years as a teen/young adult and I came out the other end sober, I’m told I cannot use this . Not everyone does, and not everyone wants to be near any of ‘those people’ with addiction. Yes, okay, maybe I don’t always know the proper ways to say things, but I certainly always speak from my heart with love and kindness at the route of it. I don’t want to be mean or cruel. I know we are all suffering enough as it is.
So anyway, this girl then goes on to berate me in front of the rest of the leadership team saying I should under go sensitivity training and that if I am to be the face of our organization, I have to be educated on correct terms.
Yes, I probably do. Because even in my writings my brain often tells me that ‘this’ word fits when it really doesn’t, but that’s what an editor is for, is it not? 🙂
The point of the story, is that I was so hurt, embarrassed and upset that I cried for the first time in my new job. Silently with the door closed during my lunch. Because I felt truly embarrassed and hurt that it was pointed out that I was speaking ‘heartless.’
The truth is my heart is so big it hurts.
The honest to goodness meaning of Gaslighting is feeling bad twice. The first time you feel sad because someone said something mean to you, you tried to stand up for yourself and you were kicked down even further. Maybe they manipulated the situation, maybe they caught you off guard, but either way, you then felt like you were in the wrong for being sad or mad. Then that person treats you like you did something wrong, although they wronged you in the first place by being mean.
This is gaslighting.
It’s an emotional manipulation that people in all forms are using these days. With jokes, mocks, name calling, and even in correcting someone in front of a group of peers.
It all hurts. It’s all nasty and I wish everyone were just a little bit nicer.
It would make every day go by easier.
So just be kind, it feels better, for everyone.
NR
