You know how an owl poops out little pellets that are full of bones and fur and stuff? I have an emotional owl pellet that is ready for a little gawk.
I woke up this morning with a message “you still take on too much” and I was like REALLY? Because I feel like the problem with this world is that people don’t take enough responsibility and I try not to be that person. But apparently my guides best advice is that overcompensating is not the solution.
On the last day of my volunteering at the Democrats table at the County Fair earlier last month, there was this lady that immediately put me on edge to the extent that I physically moved away to not be sitting next to her. Not sure why. She was just quietly crocheting, but my hackles were raised.
It was unbearably hot and humid. I didn’t have a lot of extra brain power to manage my energy around her peppering me with passive-aggressive put-downs disguised as “friendly conversational questions.” When I definitively shut her down, she acted offended that I was offended. How was she supposed to know she was being a bully? I used 80% of my self-control to be the bigger person and not to dress her down, and another 20% of my self-control not to cry. I spent another 20 minutes trying to make sure that whoever was in charge knew that I was leaving, although I probably should have just left.
THEN I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what the f happened, because that escalated quickly. How could I, a master of patience, let this person i will hopefully never meet again get under my skin?
(I don’t frequently put myself in situations where people who don’t deserve access to me have access to me.)
But anyway this morning that experience came up again as I heard the message “you still take on too much” and then I played the whole thing again, and what I realized is I AM SO ALLERGIC to the vibes of a covert narcissist that I moved away from her before she started picking on me. She might have even started picking on me because she could tell that I had clocked her.
So… that experience, where I was trying to fix being “too sensitive”? I wasn’t being too sensitive.
I can feel so safe that I can spot that behavior from a mile away. I can let that experience go, knowing for sure that the only thing that was being asked of me in that situation was to trust myself and not be so hard on myself for how I responded to someone who was being a pest.
Because owls are experts at sensing in the dark.
Enjoy!