Strength is so hard. I’m thinking over the people in my life who struck me as imperturbable, who didn’t care about criticism and never seemed to get hurt, and realizing that many (all?) of them had sealed off negative emotions in response to trauma, in a TBKTS mild PTSD way

They really didn’t feel the hurt other people did at insults and misunderstandings—but the cost of that was so high. It took a huge toll on their bodies and their capacity to be happy. They hurt *more*, not less

Was thinking about this because, when I get criticism I disagree with, and even have good reason to disregard, I find it so hard not to be knocked off kilter by it; I mentally perseverate on it for hours, maybe days, justifying myself

And this isn’t even a “need to get better taking criticism” thing—I’m really good at taking good advice and pretty good at taking good criticism. But part of that is recognizing that a lot of advice/criticism isn’t helpful or doesn’t understand the situation

And the problem is, even when I recognize criticism as unhelpful (=\\= malicious btw) I still get waves of self doubt and question myself *a lot.* And the people I knew with covered trauma weren’t impacted that way, and I envied them that

I really do think that a fully mature version of me isn’t as bothered by this, but the solution doesn’t seem to be truncating the part of me that *is* bothered. Still discovering what maturity looks like here

One theory: that my emotions are misbehaving not because they are too sensitive, but because my perceptions+beliefs are wrong, and are causing me to *interpret* certain events in such a way that I am bothered by those events

This implies that maturity mostly means wisdom: perceiving the world rightly and believing (not just declaratively but functionally) what is true. Then my emotions will naturally be appropriate and I’ll be *grateful* for their sensitivity

Jesus has this—he is moved in his heart to pity, to weep, to scorn, to anger. It’s just that he’s so wise that these emotions are actually good guides to what needs to be done

This suggests that the real problem here is that on some level I need human validation. Do you ever outgrow that? Should you? Did Jesus? When people told him he was crazy, did he think, “oh crap, what if I am?”