Walk a mile in their shoes...The power of perspectives

When you separate from your partner, especially if that partner has some narcissistic tendencies, it can be really hard to rediscover yourself amongst all the lies, all the arguments, all the drama. I’ve certainly been there. Then a funny thing happened. I was on a training course, learning to do what I do (more about that here). We were asked to have a kind of ‘virtual conversation’ with someone we hadn’t been getting along with. Seeing an opportunity for some self-work, I chose my soon to be ex-husband. As I got the opportunity to speak to him without fear of his anger or frustration, for the first time I bought my truth to the conversation. Little did I know, the next step was to hear this as I fully embodied being HIM.
                As I stood there, looking back at myself, a wave of confusion came over me. I felt sadness. I felt frustration and I felt totally blocked from thinking up any creative solutions, let alone an adequate answer. It was the first time I had ever truly walked in his shoes.
                There is great power in taking a third neutral position. It’s even more powerful if you are facilitated to do so by a coach or therapist. That’s where we went next in this training exercise, and as I stood looking at my ex and myself, observing the frustration, seeing the hurt, a fresh insight just popped into my head. A totally new piece of wisdom, as I said to us both ‘you are both children of your families, and it was always going to be very hard to marry those two different ways. You didn’t know that at the time you were trying to work things out, so you need to be kind to yourselves now’.
                The simple fact is, no-one wants to be an arse. People’s behaviours are a result of various things- how they were bought up, their experiences to date, any lessons they received about how the world works, that they took on at a subconscious level and now operate from. When we, as women, step away from seeing ourselves as a victim, and instead start to recognise the larger patterns at play, we gain a huge amount of our personal power back. Because, and you might want to take a note of this- the person with the most amount of flexibility in any given situation is the one with the most power. And that, my friend, can be you.