This Is What Hard Situations Do to Us

“I gotta tell ya, Sarah, I’m coming into our session heated.”

This was how my client entered the Zoom room.

She went on to explain a situation that happened at her daughter’s high school involving her daughter and a teacher who didn’t help as she should have.

She was pissed and had a case for why.

But underneath the anger, I could see something else she couldn’t.

Fear.

I let her talk. And then, gently, I asked:

What’s the fear underneath this?

She paused. And then she said:

I thought I did everything right. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe the problem is me. Should I have done something differently to avoid this?

There it was.

Not just fear about her daughter. Fear about herself.

This is what hard situations can do to us. Something happens that we couldn’t control, and instead of landing on this is hard, we make it mean something about us.

A hard situation is not evidence that you did anything wrong. But it will always reveal how you see yourself.

Do you see yourself as the problem? The one who tries so hard and still fucks up? 

What if you were able to meet the fear and how you see yourself differently when life hands you hard situations?

We can meet it with self-criticism. I should have known. I should have done more. What is wrong with me?

Or we can meet it with compassion. This is hard. I can’t predict everything. Life is sometimes painful, but I am okay. We’ll figure this out.

One loop feeds itself back to pain. The other takes a different path, returning you to yourself.

Here’s the practice:

Take a difficult situation. Pause. Name it. What is the fear? Just that question. You don’t need to fix it or understand it fully. Just name what’s actually happening.

Step back. Ask: Who am I believing myself to be? Just notice.

What else might be true? We’re not trying to push positivity. This is like looking at it from a different angle.

For example, maybe this situation says nothing about my worth. Maybe the people I love are more resilient than I’m giving them credit for. Maybe my job right now is to be present, not to have prevented this.

Meet it with compassion. You know how to meet others with compassion. Turn that toward yourself. You’re human. What would compassion say? Perhaps it’s: You’ve had so much on your plate. This is a lot for anyone. 

That’s where my client landed by the end of our session.

She had ideas for next steps with the school situation, but the deeper transformation was seeing herself differently.

She was no longer blaming herself or seeing herself as the problem, but meeting her heart with the same tenderness and compassion she’d give to her daughter.

It was an identity shift. Not a solution to the situation. A different relationship with herself inside of it.

This is how we return to ourselves when we feel like we’re lost the thread.

With love,
Sarah

P.S. Learning to meet fear with compassion instead of self-criticism is one of the core pieces of work inside A Return to Self, my self-paced program for women ready to stop going through the motions and come back to themselves. If any part of this resonated, it was made for you. A Return to Self — $297

I write regularly about aliveness, fear, and the inner choices that shape our lives. Get the next one in your inbox.