Latest / Thinking Out Loud | Kimberly / Does Impact Matter? | Thinking Out Loud
Transcript
- Kimberly: Does impact matter? I hear people saying you decide how the impact affects you. I hear people saying Impact is important, if not more important than intention. I want to treat impact like this idea on inviting someone over. Someone comes to your house, they bring food, they make you laugh, they say they genuinely care about you. While they're there, they break something, spill something, or maybe they leave a mess behind. metaphorical or literal. If you say anything about it bothering you, you might hear defensiveness. Why'd you have to ruin it? After everything I've done for you Was just an accident. You should be grateful. I even bothered to come over. Here's my question. Does the food still matter if you have to clean up the mess? More importantly, does the fact that they met well change the impact they had on you? We sometimes confuse acknowledging someone's intention while ignoring their impact. Maybe impact isn't an accusation. Maybe it's information. Information on what we're willing to tolerate. Welcome back to Thinking Out Loud. Hi, it's me Kimberly. Before we begin, a quick note. This podcast is for reflection and conversation, not professional advice. Take what resonates and leave the rest. Here we slow down and we explore life's great areas, Especially in relationships and behavior patterns we can observe and reflect on. I am not here to tell you what to think. I am here to offer framework that helps you understand your relationships, strengthen your thinking, and hold space for complexity. Let's get to thinking out loud. I think impact is important. if we truly care about the people in our lives, people we claim we're close to, I think we should be willing to self-reflect. I think we should, to a point, care about other people's comfort. for me, I often find myself doing this with my girls. Self-reflection has forced me to confront something I didn't realize I was caring for so long. Childism. Childism is the prejudice, discrimination, or devaluing of a child simply because they're a child. The assumption that their feelings, needs, voices, or autonomy matters less than those of adults. it's hard because it happens everywhere. It's so subtle. Did I ever consciously think children mattered less? Absolutely not. No. Or as Dr. Evil would say. How about no? Did my behaviors always communicate that? Unfortunately, no. I had a lot from my own upbringing that I had to untangle. I had to process it. I had to find the words for what happened to me. I had to call abuse for what it was. I had to face something that was uncomfortable. Kimberly, just because you're not as bad as the people who hurt you doesn't automatically mean you're doing better. Ouch. That realization stung. Honestly, that can make it even more confusing. Sometimes we think the only measure of whether we've changed is whether we're doing something as bad as what was done to us. That's a really low bar. I don't want to build my parenting around the question: Am I hurting my child as badly as I was hurt? I want to ask something much harder. What are my children actually experiencing from me? That's what had made me look back at my own childhood differently. I didn't realize how much I grew up feeling like I was beneath other people. It wasn't always said, at least not out loud. Not here though. We do our thinking out loud here. Breaking through the fourth wall. or is that just for characters in movies? Anyway. I was punished for making common, very human mistakes. Sometimes the punishment didn't even make sense. Not to me at least. You broke my door because you had big feelings and now I have to pay for it to get fixed. When my feelings were hurt, I could get mocked. I used to say it was funny how I was sad about something and this person threw themselves on the stair and said, Poor Kimberly, her life is unfair I was given a whole theatrical performance about how my feelings didn't matter and how silly I was for even having them because they were making fun of me instead of hitting me, I was supposed to be grateful, I was supposed to applaud, I was supposed to remember this story as funny, thanks for not hitting me. I should laugh, right? If I didn't, I was sensitive. Part of being honest about my own growth means being willing to talk about the uncomfortable parts, not only about what happened to me, what I learned from it, what I carried forward, and what I'm still trying to untangle. I'm rebuilding myself. I'm parenting two wonderful little girls, and I honestly see every family member in my children. I see the hurt and I see the pain. I didn't have language for it until recently, which is childism. I knew it was wrong. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I didn't have the capacity to be the leader I needed to be when I stayed in harmful relationships that were impacting me and causing harm for my girls as a result. I'm rebuilding the person I was while I was surviving harmful dynamics. What does Thriving Kimberly even look like? Does she have horns? Is she truly the villain? Or capes? No capes. I'm learning that surviving something doesn't automatically mean I've healed from it. Because impact matters. My body feels it. I can feel the impact to this day of relationships that were harmful for me. Even when those relationships are no longer part of my life, I can have reacted to something that reminds me of what happened. I can suddenly wonder, are my friends mad at me? Even though those relationships have nothing to do with the people who hurt me, I remember what it felt like to have people turn my friends against me. That experience haunts me. No amount of therapy, EMDR, or talk therapy can fix it. I had to rebuild through experiences. Complex PTSD is just that. It's complex. even though the environments are different, even though the people are different, my body still remembers aka the body keeps the score. for me, that stress doesn't only exist in my thoughts. It affects my nervous system. It affects my physical health. It contributed to my body feeling like it was constantly under threat. That's impact. I think sometimes we make the mistake of believing that if something happened in the past it should stay in the past or we're holding our grudge, right? That's great in theory. our bodies don't always experience time the way a calendar does. sometimes yesterday is still showing up today. It wasn't healed. It wasn't processed. Our body still thinks it's a threat. And that's why I think impact matters. here's where I want to be careful. Impact doesn't get to define you. No queen or king or dragon, whatever you want to be. It doesn't get to tell you what happens next because of what happened yesterday. You get to decide that. I've heard someone say that if you've hit rock bottom, you can always keep digging. You can get that pix axe and keep digging. I'm tired of this grandpa. Well that's too dang bad. You keep digging. It's when you decide to stop that life starts to change. You can actually start climbing out of the hole. I think there's something to that. I didn't realize how used to digging I had become. I thought I was healing. Sometimes I was simply getting better at surviving the decay. I was used to running on fumes. I was used to being hyper-vigilant. I was used to believing that suffering was what life was supposed to feel like. Eventually I had to ask myself, what if I don't have to live like this anymore? That question has changed how I think about relationships too. I remember visiting someone I cared about after they had begged me for years to visit. I went it was a hard trip. I was asked, Why did they do that? I have no idea why they did that, Kimberly. I took that question literal and I gave my opinion. I was yelled at For it. You think I would learn my lesson the first three times it happened in the same visit. No. I was told, I wish you got along with so and so, and I remember thinking, Yeah, me too. Then I was told to stop talking about it while the conversation continued to be brought up again, and they kept talking about it. When I finally opened up about what was happening, my best friend did what I think best friends should do. She told me, Kimberly, this isn't okay. You need to stick up for yourself. And I told her the truth. I was not safe enough to feel what I was feeling at that moment. I was gonna crumble. I wasn't safe enough to process it. I wasn't in an environment where I could process it. because you cannot have a productive conversation with someone who attacks you for having having an opinion. You cannot reason someone into treating you well when they are being cruel. casually cruel I might add. That's an important distinction. I can understand someone is the way they are. I can understand their pain. I can have compassion for their history. I can still recognize I don't feel safe here. Danger, danger, danger. Where's the exit? Those things don't exist at the same time. I remember eventually getting to the airport. And almost having a meltdown when I was told the plane was full. I didn't know that was a thing. So that was new to me. At that point, I just wanted to go home. I cried. I bawled. I felt embarrassed because I had held everything together for so long and I was so close to getting home. Just need to get on that plane. And then one more thing happened. Maybe that wasn't me being dramatic. Maybe that was my nervous system finally saying, I have had enough. That's what I mean when I say impact matters. It matters when your routines are constantly being disrupted. It matters when you have to worry about your dog eating something dangerous. it matters when your child becomes overtired and the repair takes days or weeks. It matters when every interaction leaves you dysregulated. It matters when conversations make you afraid to speak honestly. So you choose the latter and least resistant. Yes, I believe we need people who challenge us. I don't want relationships where everyone agrees with me. That sounds boring. Being challenged isn't the same thing as being unsafe. Someone can disagree with me while still respecting me. Someone can tell me something I don't want to hear without making me afraid to speak. Someone can challenge my thinking while still respecting my nervous system. Your feelings matter. Your safety matters. Your home matters. Your peace matters. You should have somewhere you can exist without constantly performing, defending, explaining, or preparing for the next thing to go wrong. There is another side to this. the impact other people have had on me does not justify me passing the pain forward. That's where my work with childism comes in. I believe my daughter's nervous systems matter. I believe the little people around me are entitled to feel safe. Sometimes that means prioritizing their safety over my need to be right. Sometimes it means stopping and asking, what did my behavior teach this child about themselves? what did they experience from me? could I have been kinder? What impact did I have? If impact matters when someone hurts me, then it has to matter when I'm the one doing the hurting. That's uncomfortable. Maybe that's the point. Impact isn't a weapon. It isn't proof that someone is irredeemable. It isn't a sentence. It is information. We can choose to do with that information is where change benefits. Back to my point about inviting someone over. One person can come over and make a mess. Okay, people make mistakes. Maybe they didn't realize they were doing it. Maybe they genuinely didn't know. Maybe something happened that neither of you expected. So the mess itself isn't necessarily the entire story. What happened when you pointed it out? Because I think it's okay to have limits. It's okay to have standards. Heck, it's okay to even have rules. You can say, please leave by four. Take off your shoes. Please don't feed the dog that. Don't go into that room. Please don't smoke in my house. I'm not comfortable talking about that here. These aren't necessarily controlling behaviors. Sometimes they're simply the conditions someone needs in order to feel comfortable in their own home, their own space. You're allowed to have standards for the space you're responsible for. You're also allowed to have consequences when those boundaries aren't respected. Sometimes the consequences simply you don't get invited over anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean you hate the person. doesn't mean you have to be hated if you're the one not getting invited. It doesn't mean they're evil. It doesn't mean the relationship has to end. Maybe you meet at their house. Maybe you meet at the restaurant. Maybe you go for a walk. Maybe you find a setting where the expectation and responsibilities are different because sometimes the problem isn't that someone is a terrible person. Sometimes you're just not compatible in that. environment. Some people want to be comfortable in your home without considering that their comfort might be coming at your expense. They want to relax. They want to leave their stuff everywhere. They want to ignore the The rules. They want to stay longer than you ask. Maybe to them, it's not a big deal. You're the one who has to live with the consequences after they leave. Sometimes people genuinely don't care. Sometimes they know exactly what they're doing. Sometimes it's more complicated than that. Sometimes you're looking at a power dynamic. Because not every relationship has equal responsibility. A parent and a child don't have the same responsibility. A boss and an employee don't have the same power. A caregiver and the person receiving care does not have the same vulnerability. A therapist and a client don't have the same roles. A landlord and a tenant don't have the same control over the environment. Even within friendships, families, romantic relationships, people have very different levels of dependency, vulnerability, resources, or ability to leave. when some people say we're equals, some believe that that means equal responsibility, we sometimes miss something important. Equality does not mean pretending power doesn't exist. Sometimes one person has more responsibility because the other person is more vulnerable. Sometimes people take advantage of that imbalance. They test boundaries. How much will you let me get away with? Am I your special person? Can I do whatever I want? Will you say something? Will you forgive me? Will you keep inviting me back? Sometimes the person doing it doesn't even consciously think of it as manipulation. They may genuinely believe they're entitled to what they're asking for. Someone not recognizing the harm they're causing does not make the impact disappear. If you're stuck in a dynamic like that, I truly hope you find a way out because it is. It is exhausting to live a life where someone constantly rains on your parade. where every boundary becomes an argument where you literally cannot say no without them throwing a tantrum and saying, I'll never come over and visit again. where every request becomes a negotiation that you don't get to decide how the negotiation goes. Where you have to explain why your comfort matters too. This is where I think looking at a pattern becomes important. one bad moment doesn't necessarily tell you everything. So let's look at the difference between accident and pattern. An accident is I didn't realize I that that I'm sorry. A pattern is I've been told this bothers you and instead of reflecting and making the change, I just keep doing it. Not the same thing. Mistakes and dismissal. A mistake I messed up. Dismissal is. Why are you making such a big deal about it? Those aren't the same things either. Impact and repair. Impact is this hurt you. Repair is okay. What can I do differently? Repair doesn't always mean fixing everything. Sometimes repair is simply acknowledging what happened and changing the behavior going on forward. Feedback and defensiveness. Feedback is, hey. When you do this, it is affecting me this way. Defensiveness is well, you do this. Now maybe that's worth talking about too. It doesn't actually answer the original concern. Finally, support versus control. Support is do you want help? Control is I've decided what you need and I'm going to do it whether you want me to or not. Those look very similar from the outside sometimes. Consent matters. If I'm struggling and you offer to help clean my house, that's support. If I say no and you decide you're cleaning it anyways because you know better than I do, that becomes control. That's important because sometimes we use the word help to describe behaviors that other people never actually asked for. Yes, impact is information. Impact is not automatically proof of intention. someone hurting you doesn't necessarily mean they're intended to hurt you. Someone violating a boundary doesn't automatically tell you everything about their character. You don't have to prove that someone had bad intentions before you're allowed to acknowledge that something hurt you. You can say, I don't know why you did that. I don't know if You meant to, I don't know if you understand why this affects me. I know it has affected me. I think that's enough information to start paying attention. Which brings me to the harder question. does every negative impact mean someone doesn't belong in our lives? I've been told I'm negative. Usually it's been by people who casually make comments about someone's appearance, their smell, their finances, their capabilities, and somehow I'm the negative one. I had to ask myself why am I seen as negative? I think part of the answer is I don't usually speak in absolutes, at least not as my default. I tend to see different angles, I tend to ask questions, I tend to notice the parts of the conversation that might be getting left out. sometimes that means I say things people don't necessarily want to hear. I remember hearing someone say something along the lines as, see, America It's so great. People said so during the Olympics. People want to live here, and I agree. America is great in a lot of ways. I also think two things can be true. People can be grateful to live here and still have legitimate concerns about the country. People can admire something about America and still struggle with health care, child care, education, housing, wages, discrimination, or the cost of living. When we respond to those concerns, With well find cheaper daycare. Where? Stop buying that avocado toast. avocados aren't suddenly the reason housing and children care cost so much. Stop getting Starbucks every day. Okay, maybe someone should invest wisely in things that matter to them, and maybe that is getting Starbucks every day. Giving up coffee doesn't suddenly make food, shelter, health care, or education affordable. That's what bothers me. Not that people offer solutions, I guess, if we call those solutions, it's that sometimes a solution is offered in a way that dismisses the person who is struggling and misses the mark and misses the point. I've noticed this noise around people expressing concerns and being told they're too sensitive. they're weak. thin skinned. They're creating problems. They're using buzzwords. They're looking for something to be offended by. I don't understand why we have to belittle someone simply because they're experiencing life differently than we do. Why mock someone because they look different? Why mock someone because they have different preferences and priorities? why assume someone isn't trying hard enough simply because their life doesn't look like yours? Yes, maybe that makes me negative. If being negative means I notice when people are hurting, then I'll take the label. I care about people whose struggles aren't convenient for the rest of us to acknowledge. I think there's something important about that. You don't have to relate to someone's struggles before you care about their struggles. You don't have to understand someone's experiences perfectly before you treat them with dignity. You don't have to agree with someone to recognize that their experience is real because impact matters here too. The way we talk about people has an impact. The way we dismiss people have an impact. The way we make someone feel ashamed for needing help has an impact. sometimes doing the right thing means caring about the impact even when we don't. don't personally understand why it matters so much to someone else. there's another part of this that I think is even harder. What do we do when the person in front of us is difficult? What do we do when they're the person who keeps making the mess? What do we do when they're the person who has hurt us? I don't think the answer is we have to keep inviting them to our house. Boundaries still matter. Distance can be necessary. Sometimes someone shouldn't have access to you. I also don't think someone's difficult behavior means they're no longer human. sometimes doing the right things when we have the capacity for it is showing someone something different than what we've learned. Not by rescuing them, not by tolerating abuse, not by sacrificing your safety. Definitely not by making yourself responsible for changing them. Sometimes simply being kind matters. Patience matters. Refusing to humiliate someone matters. Showing someone what respect looks like matters. Some people have never been shown another way to exist in a relationship. They may not change immediately. They might not even understand what they're doing at first, and that's okay. You don't have to force the lesson. You can simply live it. Sometimes people need to experience something different at their own pace before they're ready to recognize that they want something different. I think about the Scrooges of the world. If someone is bitter, angry, selfish, or difficult, why would you want to show them compassion? what happens if the only thing difficult people ever experience is more cruelty? What happens if every mistake is met with humiliation? every boundary with rejection, every disagreement with contempt. I'm not saying we should reward harmful behavior. I'm saying impact matters even when the person making the impact is difficult to love. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is refuse to become cruel simply because someone else has been cruel. We can say you cannot treat me that way. I don't have to hate you. We can say you don't get access to me anymore. And also, I hope you become healthier. we can protect ourselves without dehumanizing someone else. Ultimately, I don't think impact is only about asking, What did this person do to me? I think it's also asking, what am I doing to the people around me? That's where this comes full circle for me Because I can look at what happened to me and say it hurt me. I can recognize the impact, I can set boundaries around it, I can decide that I don't want to live that way anymore. I also have to ask, what impact am I having? What are my daughters experiencing from me? What is my husband experiencing from me? What do my friends experience when they're around me? what do I communicate when I'm frustrated? What do I communicate when I'm wrong? If I believe impact matters, I can't only use that principle when someone else hurts me. It has to matter when I'm the one holding the mess. Maybe that's the uncomfortable part of all of this. Impact is information. it can tell us where a relationship isn't working. It can tell us where we need to repair. Sometimes it can tell us where we need to change. Information isn't a sentence, it doesn't decide who you are, it doesn't decide who someone else is either. It certainly doesn't have to decide what happens next. We get to decide what we do with the information. Back to the question. Does impact matter? I think it does. Impact is information. It can tell us when something hurts. It can tell us when a boundary is needed. It can tell us when a relationship isn't working. It can tell us when something needs to be repaired. Sometimes it can tell us that we need to change. I don't think impact is a weapon. It's not a sentence. It doesn't automatically tell us someone's intentions. it doesn't tell us that someone is irredeemable. It doesn't mean every person who has hurt us needs to be removed from our lives. Sometimes we need boundaries, distance, a change in the environment, repair. Sometimes we need to take an uncomfortable look at ourselves. if impact matters when someone hurts me, then it has to matter when I'm the one holding the mess. I don't want to only ask, what did they do to me? I also want to be brave enough to ask, what am I doing to the people around me? I can acknowledge what happened to me without using it as permission to hurt someone else. I can understand why someone hurt me without deciding that I have to become them. I can protect my peace without taking away someone else's humanity. I can recognize that someone has impacted me without allowing the impact to decide who I become. maybe that's the part I've been learning the most. What happens to us matters. It doesn't have to be the end of the story. We get to decide what we do with what happened. We get to decide what we tolerate. We get to decide who gets invited to our homes, literally and metaphorically. We get to decide what kind of person we want to be when we're the one holding the mess. I want to leave you with this. If impact Is information? What is yours telling you? what are you doing with it? Maybe it's telling you that a boundary is needed. Maybe it's telling you that something needs to be repaired. Maybe it's telling you it's time to let something go. Maybe it's telling you that someone else's behavior isn't yours to carry. Or maybe It's telling you that there's something you need to look at in yourself. You don't have to have the answers immediately. You can start by listening. whether you leave a comment, send me a message, or simply sit with that question yourself. I hope this conversation stays with you. Thank you for slowing down and thinking out loud with me. Until next time, take care of yourself. Remember, impact matters. It doesn't have to define you. Sometimes it's simply information about where to look. See you in the next episode.