The Process to Recovering from Judge Activation
Yesterday I had the great joy of celebrating my two daughters and my niece. My elder daughter graduated from high school, my younger from junior high, and my niece from college. We had a lovely gathering at our home where several of our closest family and friends joined us. It was a beautiful summer day, and all was well except for one thing, my mom chose not to attend.
My mom, as many of us often do, measures her value only based on what she can do or accomplish. As she is now 87 and can’t do many of the things she used to, she often considers herself worthless. This angers me beyond what words can express. To know my mom is to know love, kindness, compassion, loyalty, sincerity, strength, courage. She IS this. She does not have to DO anything. So, when she told me she would not come to her granddaughters’ graduation celebration because she thought she would only be a burden, I was livid. I was angry at my mom for believing that she was being noble by not attending. I was angry because she was giving up an opportunity to spend time with the family she always says she wants to spend more time with. I was angry because she was being selfish by making the moment about herself when it was meant to be about her granddaughters. And I was angry because her love for me and my kids was not “enough” for her to put her self-pity aside.
I share this moment from my own life as an illustration of how our “judge” of others can be triggered, and to speak to the process of recovering and working towards finding a gift or opportunity.
Our “judge” of others is the voice in our head that criticizes others and points out all the things that are “wrong” with them. It is a harsh and extremist voice. It may make us feel “superior” for a period, but eventually activates the voice of our own self-judge. It clouds our mind and makes our heart feel heavy. And if the trigger is strong making the voice particularly loud, it is tough to quiet our mind and reset. This has been the case for me in this situation. Although I have been working to build my mental fitness over the last few years, I find that recovering from triggers by my closest family members usually takes more time and effort than when I’m triggered by others. I believe that this is true for everyone as we tend to give greater value to the opinion of the people we love most.
Over the last 30 hours, I have been working on quieting and resetting my mind. I have had to repeatedly practice *PQ reps to disengage from the very loud voice of the judge. It has not been easy. It hasn’t been until the last few hours that I have been able to settle my mind long enough for a bit of sage wisdom to come through. It isn’t completely clear, but what I do know is that to get to the other side of recovery and find a gift or opportunity in this situation I must allow space for acceptance, grace, and forgiveness. To achieve transformation there always needs to be acceptance first. Many erroneously believe that acceptance means condoning. It does not. Acceptance means understanding what the reality is now and choosing to be at peace with it. So, I continue this process asking myself, “What must I accept?” I will need to ponder this further, but initial thoughts are: I need to accept my mom is aging, I need to accept that yesterday’s moment has passed, I need to accept that I can’t make my mom love herself, I need to accept that it’s not my job to make her love herself, I need to accept that my mom will always feel like she is not spending enough time with us, and I need to accept that I can’t control anyone or anything outside of myself, amongst others. After I complete the acceptance step, I will need to contemplate how I can show my mom and myself grace for being perfectly imperfect human beings, and I will then need to practice forgiveness both towards my mom and myself.
I suspect that this process will take me a few days or even longer. It needs to be given time, and I need to be patient with myself. Again, the purpose here is not to supply all the details of this situation and particular journey. It is to provide insight on what happens when our judge is triggered, and how we can attain clarity and peace by doing *PQ reps to quiet our mind and engage the sage areas of our brain to access our deeper wisdom.
*For those of you who are unfamiliar with PQ reps, please refer to my earliest posts about positive intelligence or read, Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine.
