What Is Owning Your Shit?

Owning your shit means setting your pride aside and being blatantly honest with yourself, being accountable and taking full responsibility not only for the choices that you make but the consequences that come along with those choices without justifying, rationalizing, blame shifting or using self delusion to pacify your own conscious. We are extremely apt at talking about what So and So did to us and how what So and So did to us impacted our lives, hindered us from doing this or that BUT often we neglect to admit what WE contributed to our own situation. Owning our role does not take away from what the other person did but we can only control our actions. Focusing on our part is potent medicine because we are able to concentrate on that which we have the power to change: ourselves and our actions.

Only when we let go of our inner victim can we truly extract the lessons to be learned from our experiences. In being forthright and truthful, then and only then can positive change and personal growth occur. If you can't confront the hard naked truth about yourself, your choices and their consequences, then you're not truly taking ownership of your shit. When we fail to own our shit we don't just fail to be true to others, we fail to be true to ourselves and that is a failure that is certain to lead us down the path of destruction that we have walked at least one too many times already.

For me, the failure to be true to myself was the first betrayal on the destructive path I once walked, from there it was a treacherous downward spiral, until I finally got REAL with myself, and then was able to focus on positives. Owning my shit allows me to steer clear of the path of self destruction. Owning my shit also helps me learn to love the person I see when I look into the mirror.

I am now aware of the things to look for in a truly repentant partner. If my partner isn’t owning anything and is putting it all on me or others or putting it on everyone but himself and his selfish or insensitive decision, then he is not truly repentant and owning his own shit.

If he says something that hurts my feelings, and then gets MAD at me and tells me I am over-reacting instead of listening to the WHY it hurt, and then processing that, and sincerely apologizing, then he not only hurts me, but he damages my spirit. It isn't right for someone to judge someone else's feelings.  You can't say to someone “that shouldn't hurt you" or "you are hurt too much by that.”  What they feel is what they feel and if you love someone you listen to why they feel hurt and try to be empathetic to it.  Don’t make them justify their feelings.  Accept THAT they feel the way that they feel.

When you don’t own your shit and continue to hurt your partner or to minimize their feelings or blame them for feeling hurt, then you cause them to eventually turn away from you.  They will have an aha moment such as this:

“I am no longer going to tell you that "you don't get it" , or that "you don't understand", or you are "clueless," BECAUSE the reality is you DO get it, you DO understand it, and you AREN’T clueless.  It’s just that your version of what you should do or of how you should treat me and how I should or do react are just completely DIFFERENT.   YOU CAN believe you aren't wrong or hurtful, that you are justified, and that I am selfish, over reactive or hypersensitive or whatever........but WHAT I AM TELLING YOU is that your way of treating me and your way of reacting to me when I am hurt DOESN'T MEET MY EMOTIONAL NEEDS.  It’s OK if that is how you are going to behave and that is how you feel but IT ISN'T GOING TO WORK FOR A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US AND CERTAINLY WILL MAKE ME NOT WANT TO BUILD MY LIFE AROUND YOU.

When you interact with somebody that does not own their own shit, it can make life very difficult.  For me,  I can be POLITE and CORDIAL, but I can never give my heart or give myself COMPLETELY over to someone that regards me so little.  I am left vulnerable to being hurt again, and that is not ok with me.  If they keep telling me that they never want to see me hurting, especially if it is THEM that hurt me, that they never mean to or want to hurt me, yet still do, I feel lied to.  I want to say: “Then… why do you?  Why don’t you stop yourself?  When I TELL YOU that you are hurting me why do you still continue doing the very things I tell you hurts me?

I feel used and taken for granted when the cycle repeats. 

In any relationships we are a part of, it is very important that we own our own shit.  We have an obligation to ourselves to be a part of healthy relationships and that means that our partners also own their own shit just as we should our own.  When that is missing, we aren’t living in integrity with ourselves or with others. 

Do YOU own your own shit?

For more information or to schedule a complimentary session, please contact me at Deborah@LifehealingSolutions.com

or phone me at (970) 599-1109

Copyright 2009