Approach Tenderly

Because Everyone is Carrying Something

Hello ♡,

I am coming to you fresh (well actually tired) from a multi-day therapy training. We were learning to help guide clients who are struggling with anxiety through an intensive experience to help them heal. And well, just like therapists would and should, you kind of do all the “therapy stuff” on yourself first...It’s essential to know what a client would experience, and to understand how to serve them well, and so we practiced each exercise on each other.

Let me just go ahead and say this: There were a lot of tears. The vulnerable kind. The painful kind. The grateful, moved, and surprised kind. The loving kind. The “weeping with those who weep” kind. And I cried many of them.

True, we are all therapists and deep feelers, but there was something more. The humanity in the room was palpable, in large part because we were making the space for it - a privilege of a training of course.

But I kept thinking, this is the same humanity happening on a bus, in grocery store, in a classroom, or even in an extended network of friends or family - we just don’t have access to each other like this usually. And so it can be easy to forget.

We were all wearing our “presentable” selves at first at the training. Polite hellos. Awkward laughs. Some, of course, are very relaxed and open to start. Myself? Truthfully I am a bit wary at first sometimes, even a bit hesitant to open up - a combination of my introversion and guardedness and just tiredness from the week. I don’t love this about myself, and it can look like a tad bit of cynicism and suspicion about those around me. It’s part of my “Pain Cycle” (how I can act when I am not rooted in my truth) one of the teachings of the model we used and I am trained in: Restoration Therapy.

Summary: I wasn’t the most friendly person at the table.

When we started to open up (and yes I did open up, starting with admitting my guardedness), something powerful shifted. The “presentable” selves were not cast aside, they were filled in - like color filling a painting. The person across the table, or across the room, was no longer just a new face but a whole, complex, layered, and frankly beautiful human. It was like watching a still black and white drawing turn into a 3 dimensional, colorful, moving painting. The stories, the pain, the laughter and quick wit filled in the faces that were strangers moments before. People are really stunning when you stop to see them.

And here’s the thing - they are always that stunning, we may be just too tired or hurting ourselves to stop and see. I forget, when I am tired or in my guarded state, how much tenderness each person deserves, and how much each person carries. They are always deserving of tenderness in our approach to them, whether we are privileged to know their story or not. And they are all, us included, carrying something. Everyone is carrying something. You are too.

Maybe you are less guarded than me and you always have your heart open and tender to those around you that you need to engage with. But just in case you have your own stuff like me that can cause you to withhold your natural tenderness in a protective way, here’s a reminder for us:

There are moments to guard yourself of course, many in fact. But oftentimes our guardedness can prevent us from seeing the person, and all they might be carrying, in front of us. It doesn’t have to be risky, or include unhealthy boundaries, to be tender (that’s where we can get confused). You don’t have to disclose or make yourself too vulnerable to just be tender to the person in front of you. It is more like acknowledging there is likely something about them you don’t know that deserves your compassion. You may never know what it is in most normal circumstances, but it doesn’t make it any less true. And I have to say, it takes a lot less energy to move from this place than side eyeing everyone.

I have never regretted tenderness in my approach to myself or others.

(But sometimes I need to be reminded.)

It feels organizing to me to think about approaching others with tenderness.

So what is a tender approach for you and me today? A tender approach might assume the best about someone else - that they are doing their best with what they are carrying today. It might assume the best about you - that you are doing the best you can with what you are carrying today. It might assume there are many many layers of life, pain, responsibilities, hardships, and disappointments they are carrying that you can’t see. And, this includes you too ♡.

I’ll leave us with one of my favorite quotes:

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

―Brad Meltzer

With tenderness,

Monica

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Things to Share…

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