Risk the relationship.

Say the scary-honest thing, even if it might mean disappointing (or losing) someone else

I don’t like disappointing people.

I don’t.

I was raised in a codependent household and, by default, tend to take on other people’s emotions and make it my job to manage them. This makes me highly perceptive to slight shifts in other people’s moods and opinions, in a way that sends my anxiety into overdrive.

I think even if I wasn’t raised in a dynamic that nurtured this, I would still be someone who trends toward spending a lot (too much!) of time thinking about how my actions and words impact others.

And for many years of my life, I constricted my behavior and expression well beyond the confines of healthy consideration and into the territory of self-erasure.

I made myself small and as palatable-as-possible for what I imagined others wanted to consume.

When my natural exuberance and big feels seeped out from the seams of my facade, I’d burn inside with shame.

No!! I’d scold myself.

You’re being too much!! If they see just how much you are, they’ll abandon you! No one can handle all of this.

Of course, what I really meant, is I couldn’t handle of all me, so I was actively rejecting and abandoning the parts of myself I judged as “bad” or “less than” in the hopes of receiving momentary approval from someone else.

This is the work of shame.

Shame is the most intensely painful experience — it tells us that we are innately bad, separate from and unworthy of love, and because I didn’t have language for it then, I didn’t know any better than to believe that that was the truth.

I know better now.

Now, as I’ve done the work to build a deeper and more loving friendship with all of myself, self-rejection has fallen to the wayside. In its place, what has emerged is a willingness to be rejected by others in the name of staying true to myself.

Now, this doesn’t mean I want to or enjoy being rejected by others. It’s just that I know it’s the price I must pay for being a committed friend to myself.

Sometimes it’s harder than others — especially in core relationships like in my marriage, my art, my close friends and collaborators, and in my creative business. The tendency there is to be extra-precious, extra care-full, and the old impulse to not want to be Risk the Relationship by being totally, shamelessly, authentically me arises.

But I am writing this to remind us all that it is good to Risk the Relationship.

Healthy relationships — one in which both parties are showing up fully and honestly as themselves — require risk.

There is so much I can say about this — risking the relationship in romantic partnerships! Risking the relationship in coaching dynamics! Risking the relationship in creative dynamic or business endeavors — on and on.

But on the most basic level, a willingness to risk the relationship goes something like this:

A friend hurts my feelings, and in that moment, I have a choice:

I could brush it aside and act like it doesn’t matter, rejecting and abandoning myself in the process, internalizing the pain and resentment, shaming myself for how I feel.

Or I could “risk the relationship,” and tell them how I feel. And it’s a “risk” because in telling them how I feel, I open myself up to criticism and rejection, right?

They might respond negatively!

They might take offense at my emotion and respond defensively or cruelly. They might respond by saying the “right” thing in the moment but then go behind my back and talk shit to other people about me being too sensitive. They might change how they show to our dynamic. They might make passive aggressive comments about my sensitivity.

Of course, in all these situations, the quality of the relationship would be revealed — I would see they are not an emotionally safe person for me, and with that information, I could pull away knowing I had honored us both with my honesty. It would hurt, but at least then, I would know.

It’s all these negative possibilities that, for so long, kept me from risking relationships if I could help it!!

But by not risking the relationship, you know what I missed out on? The other half of what might happen. Because you know what?

This person may very well respond with understanding and kindness.

In fact, in 9 times out of 10 in my adult life where I have “risked the relationship” and told a beloved or a friend how I really felt, I was met with kindness and understanding in return. Not always, but mostly, people proved themselves to be compassion, caring, respectful and capable of accountability.

And in each of those exchanges, I am left feeling more safe both in the relationship and also in myself!! Because I know now that not only can I trust me with me, but I can trust this friend with me too.

And you know what else? It signals to the other person that they’re safe in this dynamic as well. Because emotional risk goes both ways — they now have permission (if they needed it) to show up more honestly, more wholly, to be vulnerable and met with empathy.

The relationship becomes one where both parties are able to be more of who they are. And isn’t this the world we want to inhabit?! isn’t this the world we want to build?

By risking the relationship, sure, we open ourselves up to rejection, sure, but we also open ourselves up to intimacy, to more safety, and to more love. There cannot be one without the other.

And listen, I’m not saying this is easy if your default is to fawn and people please. Just about every time I have ever “risked” the relationship by being honest, I have found the front-end of the experience to be deeply difficult and unmooring.

Depending on the honest-truth I was sharing and the person I was sharing it with… the experience has been, at times, terrifying.

It can take me days (and in the more extreme instances, sometimes even weeks and months!!) to steady my resolve, to get used to what it is that I feel or want, and to be softly, steadily, open myself up to being seen in it by someone else.

Oftentimes in these instances, when I name how I feel, my voice shakes. My heart quickens in my chest, and my hands and arms start to tremble. The animal of my body who knows relational trauma, feels like I am actively putting myself in harm’s way, and that part of me feels like we’re about to die.

But then we don’t, and what happens instead, is we expand. We get to hold more love. More safety. More of me!!!

And I can think of no better gift to give and to receive.

So risk the relationship!

Let the experience return more of you home to yourself.

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hi! I’m ashley, and I help highly sensitive, perfectionist-prone artists meet more of yourself and your art (both the “good” and the “bad”!) with increasing love and kindness so you can courageously “risk the relationship” to create the art/ business/ life you want.

my creative coaching program, the bad grl* art club, (*gender neutral) opens for applications this June and begins again in August.

learn more & apply here!