I once had a best friend who I'm no longer best friends with. There are a lot of factors that play into why we're not friends anymore, but one of them was how we used to fight. She didn't respect me enough to defend me, or to watch how she said certain things. It seemed she was always hurting my feelings and not even trying to hide it. This led to feeling like I was always doing everything wrong... which in turn, made her feel like she was doing everything wrong. It was hard for me and her to tell each other anything because we felt this way. I know, I don't understand why we were best friends if we were destroying each other. But it wasn't just her I felt this way with. I felt this way in general. Anytime someone presented an issue to me, it felt like I was just failing left and right..... but sadly, this didn't even happen often enough for me to be constantly failing. 

However, this all changed when my then best friend told me something.  It cut so deep that I couldn't help but swallow and digest it. But I will say this, it helped my friendships so much. It also helped the way I entered into the world and looked at it. It taught me to stop holding back from things I love.... and to accept that sometimes things are the way they're going to be. I'm still learning this process.... but that's where it all started. I'm betting you're wondering what she said. It's probably the simplest sentence, but it was the most profound.. and it was simply something to the effect of, "stop thinking that my intention is to hurt you". 

I didn't walk around carrying the baggage of thinking everyone is out to hurt me, but that's what my problem was. I couldn't accept constructiveness because I was doing it wrong. Friends couldn't be honest with me because I was doing it wrong. Things weren't happening because I was doing it wrong. It opened my eyes to see that I was playing victim with every sincere intention. 

Sometimes, this mentality likes to creep up.... but I have a better handle on it. Hearing the hard truths is never easy to swallow right away, but I'm able to. When we can approach the world knowing that it's not everyone's intent to hurt us, it really does have a great affect on everything. It helps your relationships... it helps your passions.. It helps you get over your fears a lot more than you probably could think. People will fail.... yes. That's inevitable. But when you start to understand that not every intention is to harm..... that can be the very place healing from this mentality can begin.