I’ve been the woman sitting on the plush couch, tissue in one hand and hot green tea in the other, telling a mental health professional, “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve lost myself.”
My identity crisis was birthed by postpartum depression. As a new mama with a four-week-old baby boy, I felt overwhelming sadness and loneliness despite my newfound joy and worth in loving my wrinkly little blessing. By God’s grace, these heavy feelings were an easy-to-identify chemical and hormonal imbalance, treatable through therapy and medication.
However, when you lose yourself while loving difficult people, it often doesn’t come with a nameable diagnosis because the problems can’t be solved through scientific resources. Of course, this doesn’t belittle postpartum depression—it’s a deep, dark hole I pray that I never endure again. However, when the other party isn’t an innocent creature but a conscientious adult choosing to interact with you disrespectfully, things get muddy.
How to navigate these relationships isn’t spelled out on a prescription, and the healing involves multiple parties whom you can’t control with swaddles or pacifiers.
So, how do you love difficult people without losing yourself? And how can you take your healing into this Valentine’s Day season to find more joy?
1. Identifying Space for Personal Growth
One of my favorite things about my husband is his gentle, respectful way of playing the devil’s advocate. Even when he fully believes that I am right in a relational dilemma, he tries to see the other person’s perspective and share ways that I may or may not have hurt, offended, or disregarded them.
Indeed, this doesn’t relate to relationships where one party is malicious and abusive. Still, when a relationship is simply difficult or awkward between family, friends, or coworkers, it never hurts to do some self-reflection.
This fosters humility and helps you identify areas for growth. Meanwhile, as you search yourself, anger can’t control the situation. The flesh can’t react to an emotional high. After all, it’s so much harder to feel anger or frustration towards someone when you understand where you could be at fault too. Humility leaves less room for finger-pointing and more room for self-actualization.
I often think of this in the same way as forgiving someone who has conscientiously hurt me. I forgive them because I’m called to, of course, but in that calling, I discover that forgiving the offender is God’s way of granting me freedom from the pain they caused. It works the same way here.
When a relationship feels tense or strained, especially if there hasn’t been an individual, cataclysmic disagreement that can be easily identified and worked through, recognizing where you might not be bringing your best self to the relationship grants you the freedom to grow as a believer.
It’s not about giving someone an out or a free pass when they have wronged you. It’s about using a situation that hurt you to still grow as a person. Growing in the fruit of the Spirit will always leave you with a more accurate understanding of your purpose and identity. You won’t lose who you are but find more of who God made you to be, regardless of the unhealthy people who come and go.
2. Mapping Out Your Capacity
If this difficult person is a parent, sibling, or family friend with whom you have no choice but to interact regularly, things get trickier. By default, love gets tested. This is when it’s essential to map out your capacity.
Take note of how long your patience lasts while around them. Recognize which topics of conversation always end in awkwardness and/or arguments. These bits of information naturally create boundaries to protect an already delicate relationship that you feel led to maintain.
In the Garland household, we have a few people we must interact with but consistently feel are disregarding us. It often feels like a one-way street with these individuals. Thus, being around them feels like a chore, like an uphill battle.
So, to keep from losing ourselves, and, let’s be honest, our witness, we’ve developed a code phrase. It’s an easy one that can fit into all sorts of conversations and lets the other person know we only have a few more minutes of patience left.
From here, we steer the conversation towards the need to leave soon. In this way, no one is offended or starting arguments, but my husband and I have protected ourselves from losing our patience and acting out of character.
If you don’t recognize your capacity and establish boundaries, you subject yourself to situations that will naturally bring out the flesh. This makes it too easy to lose yourself to habitual anger, bitterness, and resentment.
3. Choosing and Creating Joy
As a young college woman with a broken heart, and even as a mama fighting through postpartum depression, I had to remind myself that no other human being can establish and maintain joy in my heart. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, an attribute we must work to cultivate in our hearts. In John 15:16, Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.”
Thus, joy is not only a choice but a practice. It demands our participation.
This might look like showing up for a new Bible study, investing more time in healthy mentors, and finding fun, meaningful ways to express our love and appreciation for those who healthily show up for us, no matter the season. This might mean walking away from abusive, toxic relationships and putting yourself out there to find new, healthy relationships.
Remember, the first gift God gave to Adam was Eve. God recognized Adam’s loneliness and didn’t want him living in isolation: “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’” (Genesis 2:18).
We are no different. We need other people in our lives, life-giving, encouraging people, who will respectfully challenge us to grow, but support and love us when we aren’t at our best. God has created these people for us. They are out there, but we must play our part in establishing, investing in, and sustaining these relationships to the best of our abilities.
Pursue the Spirit’s gift of joy, and in that pursuit, let God add wonderful people to your life.
Finding Yourself This Valentine’s Day
In today’s culture, “finding yourself” is most often rooted in moral relativism—the idea that if you do what feels best for you, you’ll discover your purpose. But fulfillment was never meant to be an inward, isolated gift. It was meant to be bigger than you. It was created to share.
Thus, we find ourselves, keep ourselves, and even return to ourselves when we commit to personal growth in Christ. By this, we fortify our humility, protect our hearts from what’s unhealthy, and discover that joy is a beautiful gift we can share with others each day.
This Valentine’s Day, if you’ve lost yourself, know that God hasn’t lost you. He hasn’t misplaced your worth or accidentally thrown your purpose in the trash. He’s simply waiting to be your shield, your glory, and the lifter of your head (Psalm 3:3), to be the one who safeguards your peace, protects your heart, and blesses you with rich, godly relationships.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fizkes
