Rabbi Esther Azar MSW
  • My Path
    • The Toolbox
  • Blogs
    • Rereading Torah
    • In My Experience...
    • Teachings
  • tIR
    • Trauma Informed Rabbinics
  • Services
  • Artwork
  • Meditations
    • Release The Balloon
    • Election Eve: Growing a Seed of Justice

Whose Rejecting Me?

8/27/2010

1 Comment

 
Do you know, that I spend most of my waking hours reminding myself, that we are the same.  I overheard this conversation the other day.

                “I invited you to the party  the other day and you didn’t answer.”

                “Oh, you really wanted to me to come, I thought you were just being nice.”

               “Being nice, what do you mean I asked if  you would come, and you didn’t respond. 

               “I didn’t think you really wanted me to come.”

               “That’s crazy, why would I invite you if I didn’t want you  to come? I thought you didn’t want to hang out with me. I felt bad.”

I sat there dumbfounded, as I usually do when I am reminded that we are all the same. Here I am, with 2 very cool people, that I would love to have lunch with any day and they both made up stories about how the other person really didn’t want to spend time with them. Again I am reminded of my own stories of rejection.

                I have 2 friends, one that I love to hang out with and the other who loves to hang out with me. I notice that I reject them both equally. The one I love to hang out with, is constantly rejected because I don’t believe that she would ever want to hang out with me, so I reject her first.  While spending time together, I will quickly mention that I am not sure if I can drive her home later. The truth is,  I would love to drive her home but the fear that she doesn’t want to spend time with me comes up and so I fix it for her. I set it up so that she doesn’t have to go with me if she doesn’t want to. I send out mixed messages. I don’t want to spend time with her when in reality the truth is I love being with her.

 The other, the one who loves to hang out with me gets rejected because I feel like they are coming on to strong and I need to “protect” myself from their love. You see, in the past I was rejected by this person and so now I build a wall to protect myself from being hurt again.  If I accept the love he is showing me in the moment then I might get wrapped back up into a relationship where I will ultimately feel rejected again . So I put up a wall so that I don’t “get hurt”. A wall that I believe will protect me, but at the same time keeps me from experiencing the love in the moment.

Imagine for a moment, that I let all of that go. If the fear dissipated, I could just love people and they could love me back. And when and if I am feeling rejected I can remind myself of the truth, that we are all the same. They are not rejecting me rather they are rejecting a part of  themselves.
1 Comment
you know who
8/27/2010 11:27:34 am

Alright! out with it! Who's who in this little story??
And very touched by the gratitude page (and not only by the obvious) is that new?

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Rabbi Esther Azar

    Archives

    May 2020
    April 2020
    June 2019
    January 2012
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010

    Categories

    All
    Appearences
    Beingness
    Compassion
    Confidence
    Control
    Cults
    Dating
    Dieting
    Ego
    Expectations
    Facing Fear
    Fear
    Fitting In
    Friendship
    Honesty
    Insecurities
    Judgement
    Letting Go
    Love
    Perception
    Possibilities
    Presence
    Self-judgement
    Similarities
    Strengths
    Truth
    Unhappiness
    Vulnerability
    Wanting Approval
    Weight Loss

    RSS Feed

esther@estherazar.com
www.traumainformedrabbinics.org
  • My Path
    • The Toolbox
  • Blogs
    • Rereading Torah
    • In My Experience...
    • Teachings
  • tIR
    • Trauma Informed Rabbinics
  • Services
  • Artwork
  • Meditations
    • Release The Balloon
    • Election Eve: Growing a Seed of Justice