The Moxie to Tell the Truth

The Moxie to Tell the Truth

Honesty takes strength of character. Honesty requires understanding that sometimes you will be rejected by your peers. Honesty says that you know and respect yourself enough to live by your rules and no one else’s code of ethics. What you might not know is that honesty is the key to unlocking the fear of abandonment.

My entire life I have lived by one basic code of ethics: Don’t hurt anyone if you can avoid it.

This primal modality is based on anxious attachment. In an anxious attached person, the prime reason for any behavior is fear of abandonment. So, as a child of a broken family in which my mother left my father when I was eight, and I didn’t see her again until I was fifteen, my worst fear has always been rejection. As a good coping skill, I learned to get people to like me. How I did that was to make them right in almost every situation. I fought for their righteousness. I stayed steadfast in friendships that rarely honored me and mostly always honored someone who needed adulation. I picked friends who were either narcissistic or avoidantly attached, which kept me chasing them all the time.

When you live by this kind of ideal, you tend to grow up with a poor self-image. Now most people who know me would think that this description would be just the opposite of who I am. You may be right in some ways, but when it comes to relationships, I almost always had put myself last.

As a result, a concurrent anger has built up as relationships have come and gone, and I have been left feeling as if I have done all the right things, yet still have been left alone—abandoned once again, just like the past. The fear of what could take place from my childhood, the fear that made me act in a way that clung to friendships and act adoringly and clingy, was the exact thing that probably pushed people away. If it didn’t push them away, it certain made me push a number of old relationships away in the last few months as I have gotten stronger.

Honestly, when I look back at my life, I don’t have regrets. I see life from a compassionate observer perspective. I don’t deny that the choices I had made in the past were not the best. But I also don’t blame myself for developing a character that was superimposed upon me. I didn’t ask to be born into my family. I didn’t ask to be abused sexually. I didn’t ask to grow up dirt poor. These attributes of my life are what made my life’s lessons so difficult and also interestingly beautiful.

Actually, when I look back at my life, I’m amazed that I’m standing and successful at what I do. I have family members who barely make it financially each month. I have family members who have been through and may still be in addiction. This same familial upbringing wrought much more than one anxiously attached young man. It brought with it many different psychoses in many different forms.

But strength of character and truth has been the essence of my existence for the past few weeks. It has made me wear a mantle of protection, which after proper diagnosis, I realize is self-caring. And when you are taking proper of yourself, you are no longer living in abandonment.

Many things have come crashing down on my life over the past few months. But I have stayed steadfast in my belief that there is a divine presence, perfectly prepared to pave a pathway to recreate me over and over again until I am glowing in spiritual love and light. This takes practice. This spiritual walk takes the assurance that every fall and every mishap in our lives is divinely inspired and made to develop us into stronger and more perfect individuals.

“What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger!” We’ve heard it sung. We believe it! We know it to be true. And so it is!

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Bo Sebastian is a Hypnotherapist and Life & Health Coach, available for private sessions to QUIT SMOKING, Lose Weight, New Lap-Band Hypnosis for Weight Loss, CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR LIFE! at 615-400-2334 or www.bosebastian.com.

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