Hear and Believe Yourself to Build Healthy Community

As human beings, we’ll never have all the information. Facts are important, but neither more nor less important than emotions and opinions. I stand by my educated opinion that humans need connection. The better connection I have with myself, the better I’m able to connect with other people. The more healthy connection I have with other people, the more healthy connection I develop with myself. Facts can create context for connection, but the connection itself is an emotional experience.

Relationships can be really hard. Few people live in small communities anymore. Technology has simultaneously expanded our borders and diminished our attention spans. Sometimes there’s so much noise that it can be hard to even hear yourself, let alone believe yourself. We can still be intentional about checking in with ourselves to build the kinds of relationships that we need.

I believe that all living creatures have an innate ability to know when something is or isn’t right for us. Sadly, we can’t always change the hard situations we find ourselves in…. but sometimes we can. If you don’t already have safe and comfortable relationships that feed your spirit, you may need to go outside your comfort zone to develop healthy community. Your nervous system knows what is good and right for you. In a world that almost seems designed to overwhelm and distract, it can be easy to dismiss our own discomfort and push through anyway. Sometimes this is healthy and helpful, but not when it comes to choosing who I’m going to be in relationship with. If something feels uncomfortable for me, that’s because it is. I need to believe myself. If something feels shocking to me, that because it’s shocking. I don’t mean that these experiences are objectively shocking or uncomfortable. What I mean is that we can’t use objectivity to choose personal relationships. We need to choose relationships based on how we feel, and we can’t do that if we don’t listen to ourselves.

If you’re working on building your social support network, take a pause the next time you experience some discomfort in a relationship. Are you able to acknowledge your own discomfort? Do you believe that voice in your head or feeling in your body that says, ‘that wasn’t okay’? We’re talking about subjective experience here. It’s not about blaming or judging the other person, necessarily. They may not have done anything “wrong,” but what they did or failed to do may still be wrong for you. Often, we have conflicting voices in our heads. One part of self may feel hurt, scared, or angry, while another part says that we shouldn’t feel how we feel. We’re too sensitive, paranoid, needy, etc. These are important voices too, with great potential to be helpful. The thing is, every part of self makes up who we are as one whole person. So if what I’m experiencing is wrong for one part of me, that’s real and valid and deserves attention. How you feel in a relationship is every bit as important as what is or isn’t actually happening in the relationship.

Becoming able to hear and believe ourselves is only one step in developing a healthy social support network. I may also need to put work into hearing and believing the people that I’m in relationship with. I may need to put time and energy into finding people that are a fit for me. And there’s risk involved in opening up to knowing someone new or knowing someone in a new way. It may be wonderful and it may not be a good experience at all. It may be mostly good, and still be hard. You deserve love and connection. Listen to yourself. Hear yourself. And believe yourself. Pain is a part of life; peace, joy, and fulfillment can be too.