She Stayed — And That Changed Something in Me

There’s a part of me that I’ve never liked.

The one that rises up when I feel unsafe.
The one that subtly — or silently — tries to dismantle the character of others.
It doesn’t speak with words, but it shows in my body language.
It’s the part of me that says, “If I can’t feel secure, I’ll make sure you don’t seem worthy either.”

I don’t like that part.
But I’m starting to understand it.

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That part didn’t come out of nowhere.
It’s my mother’s.
I watched her use it all my life — discrediting others, tearing people down to protect herself.
Not because she was evil, but because she didn’t know how to hold her own pain.
And so she made it about them. And I learned that. I absorbed it.

And now, when I spiral — especially around authority figures, or people I admire — I find myself doing the same thing in my head.
Even when I don’t want to.

It’s shameful.
It makes me feel fake.
But it’s also a survival pattern. And I see that now.

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Recently, I went through something that triggered this part hard.
I spiraled about not getting into the Level 4 course. I felt left out, unseen, maybe even judged.
And somewhere in the middle of that, my mind started to twist it:
Maybe the tutors were cold. Maybe they didn’t like me. Maybe they were playing games.

I didn’t say it out loud. But I felt it. I carried it in my nervous system.

And then I sat with my therapist — still in that spiral.
Defensive. Raw. Wound wide open.

And she didn’t flinch.
She didn’t correct me.
She didn’t dismantle me like I feared she might.

She stayed.

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That changed something in me.

I’d never been met like that before — not in my spiral.
Not when the part I hate was showing.
But she stayed anyway. And I believed she meant it.

It made me realize:
This part of me doesn’t need to be destroyed.
It needs to be seen and held, just like I was.

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I still don’t love that I inherited that way of protecting myself.
But I do feel less ashamed now.
Because if someone could stay with me when I couldn’t even stay with myself,
then maybe that part isn’t as dangerous as I thought.
Maybe it’s just scared.

And maybe now, for the first time,
it can learn a new way to be.

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