For years I searched for the pearl necklace hanging around my neck. Every pair of eyes that looked at me saw the sparkle of that pearl. Very few told me the truth. And I didn’t believe those who did. Although I sought confirmation, the compliments I received didn’t seem genuine to me. I accepted my beauty as accidental or out of the speaker’s politeness. I assumed it was a reflection. Did it have a short-term healing effect? Yes, it did.
Perhaps my real intention was to be convinced. Who could convince me? I thought reality was a threshold opened between the lips of a transparent and gentle soul. And so it was, but was that gentle soul anyone other than myself?
With my fragile life, the most solid and genuine compassion that little girl needed was certainly found in my chest. It took me a childhood and a youth to learn this. After all, awareness is insufficient. One must go right through the pain. I always looked not at where I fell, but at where I rose from.
I reinforced Rumi’s words, “You think of yourself as a small being, yet the greatest universe is hidden within you.”
The Wings Of Self-Discovery
Using my reflexes, I learned to fly, fluttering my wings. Not having to say “I am here” lightened my wings so much. I saw the space I occupied first. My eyes shone first. I accepted my light. I saw my dark walls. I gave up my need to be convinced and began to believe. I carried so much love in my heart and avoided giving even a little to myself. That was the real mistake. I didn’t want to accept myself; I wanted to be content with myself in every way. This wasn’t just a declaration of peace, of course; it was simultaneously a ceremony of my soul settling back into its own corner.
This unique state, which we call “unconditional positive acceptance” in psychology, turned out to be not reflected in the mirrors of others, but in the depths of my own eyes. Growing up, while hoping for a stranger’s hand to caress my hair, I realized that my capacity for “emotional regulation” was actually locked away in my mind.
Because I knew my own aching wounds best, I had found the source to heal them myself. That desire to be “seen,” which cost me my childhood and the springtime of my youth, was nothing more than a cry for help whispered by that little girl.
The greatest healing a heart can give itself is to give itself the approval it craves from the outside world, through the compassion of its inner voice.
The Architecture Of Resilience
Looking at those dark walls within me, I learned this concept: “psychological resilience.” I was, it turned out, a stranger at the door of my own house, waiting for approval and permission to enter.
This shackle, called “external approval focus,” had always condemned me to the “yes”s that would fall from people’s lips. But that pearl necklace wasn’t a symbolic object hanging around my neck; it was a “defense mechanism” that my soul had created by filtering itself through its own perspective. Searching in foreign lands, I lost the oyster within me.
Did jewelers determine the value of a pearl?
Who wrote these rules? Couldn’t a person value themselves? Would I find my oyster the moment I abandoned these memorized clichés? Yes.
Some renunciations liberate. The crowded court of my mind had dispersed. The innocent little girl had been acquitted.
Now I know that the compassion she needed wasn’t in the arms of caregivers or other people. One had to cultivate it in the laboratory of self-awareness. Not like a stranger, but by putting down the magnifying glass and stepping back a few steps to look at oneself from a striking perspective.
Instead of “identifying” with pain and suffering, it was right to greet it like a teacher.
That was precisely “radical acceptance”!
Is it about making peace with my flaws? No! It’s about seeing that what we call flaws are unique patterns that improve our survival skills. Being self-satisfied was an illusion; Because the reasons for satisfaction are variable, whereas “self-compassion” is a fixed ground.
Transforming The Mind’s Landscape
This transformation began not only in my heart, which I carry on my left side, but also in the rigid “cognitive schemas” of my mind. How?
For a long time, core beliefs like “inadequacy” or “need for approval” were like masks playing with my perception of reality. I rejected every compliment I was expected to accept, falling into the trap of “invalidating the positive” because of that harsh critic in my brain.
But today, I see that what passes through my mind are just “thoughts,” that they don’t have to be my destiny, that they aren’t bound by the principle of absolute validity. They are just fleeting “thoughts.”
I catch each one and, choosing to control my mind for a few seconds, I filter it through a logical lens. A “compassionate” logical filter is quite useful in this regard.
Searching for the pearl necklace outside was essentially an illusion of “selective perception” that our minds are accustomed to.
Looking back today, I realize that these cognitive distortions can be transformed through “reframing.”
The self-perception of that little girl, my greatest friend who lives inside me, is now independent of the outside world. She accepts them, but she has learned to maintain her boundaries. None of the feedback is immediately accepted anymore. If you’ve become too accustomed to wandering the noisy corridors of your mind, rest assured you’ll find a way to calm your inner voice somewhere inside!
Perhaps what you need to tell yourself is this:
I’m not late, nor am I early.
Eventually, I will arrive where I need to be.
Because I was always the home I was searching for.