Hi there, my name is Piper Harris, and welcome to the Rebuild Your Ruins, a Piper Harris coaching podcast. On today's episode, we're going to talk about how glossing over causes a lot of pain. We'll discuss the ins and outs of radical acceptance and offer listeners an opportunity to discover how we can lean into discomfort and come out on the other side of change. Wow, y'all. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I can't believe it's October 26th. And as I look back over the podcasts, I have not posted one since January of this year. I apologize. It's been a long time. I could give you every excuse in the book, but here's the the real deal. The reason why I haven't been recording uh podcasts. School has been insane. I am finally in the final stages of my master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. I cannot wait to be done. Woohoo! And then I began working for a practice here in Atlanta, Georgia. And I've been seeing clients full time as a graduate student mental health counselor and have just absolutely loved my work. But with that, I haven't had the bandwidth to do a podcast, even though I would have these just twinges of gosh, I miss doing that. And oh, I just missed it. But I just couldn't, you know, get the get the energy up. But it was funny today. I um have this odd schedule. The flu is running through our area, and so a lot of my clients had to cancel sessions. And so it's afforded me some extra time at home, which I've been gloriously loving because I started a project about six weeks ago. I decided that I was going to refinish my kitchen cabinets. My family and I, we we moved about seven months ago or so and into an older home. And so these cabinets are the original dark wood built in 1979. Nothing was done to these cabinets. I'm telling you, these people didn't even clean the cabinets. And it has just been driving me nuts. And so we had a quick break over fall break, our family, and I thought, I'm gonna paint these cabinets, I'm gonna get this done. Well, I was great. Saturday came around, you know, fall break really commenced on that Saturday. I had so much energy. I got my kiddo involved. We put the primer on, we took the doors off, we cleaned the doors. I mean, we went to town. And then Sunday came and I was utterly exhausted. I recognized in that moment that, oh no, I started a project that I don't know if I can complete this. I thought, nope, I'm gonna push through. I'm gonna push through and I push through. So I'm going to enlist my sons. Yes, it's fall break, but we're doing a staycation, and you know what? They can help me paint. They're old enough, they can do this. And so I had this grand idea. We got the cabinet doors, we got the framing painted, you know, or got the primer on, got the cabinet doors out to the garage, everything's cleared out. I handed the boys rollers and paintbrushes and said, Go to town. Make sure you don't put it on too thick, thick. Make sure there's no drips, make sure there's no hair from the garage, whatever it was. And I trusted them to do it because in that moment I recognized I bit off more than I could chew. I was so tired. How in the world was I gonna finish this project? So, fast forward to today. I have been staring at a kitchen with no doors and no drawers for over a month. And I have to tell you, I still worry when people come into my house. It doesn't matter if they're friends or close, you know, close friends or family. I just think, oh my gosh, this is so tacky. But I just haven't had the bandwidth, the time, the energy to finish these cabinets. But inevitably, I have the family coming over this week to celebrate my son. And I just thought to myself, I can't have my mother in my house again and her seeing no cabinet doors. I know that's stupid, isn't it? I'm a grown woman. I will be 44 years old this year and or this coming year, and I'm still worried about what my mom thinks. So there is nothing like worrying about mom coming over and seeing the doors off again to finish a project. So I decided this weekend I would pick up that paintbrush again and I would really push through that this was, you know, a project I started and I had to get it done. So I started this weekend. Today is Wednesday, and I started this weekend, and I went out to the garage and I'm looking at the cabinet doors, and I think, whoa, these are an utter disaster. What was I thinking asking my sons to do this? Now, listen, they did the best they could, maybe kind of, but there were just bubbles everywhere and like dog hair that was in the garage that had like stuck to the surface, and there's drips, and they were a disaster. But in my mind, I'm thinking, I don't care. I gotta get this done. I have this beautiful paint that needs to go on them, and I just I gotta get it done. So I just focused. I got the kitchen it, you know, the foundational part of the cabinetry, you know, hang up the doors on, got that painted, got it, and it's just beautiful, y'all. I mean, no more of that crummy brown. It just was so pretty. It brightened up my kitchen, it gave this old home some life. And so I thought to myself, okay, I'm gonna get out in that garage and I'm gonna start putting coats on these doors. So I went out there and I'm like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna get coats of paint on there, and I have just been pushing through. And I did a lot. I did two coats of this beautiful color, which let me tell you, it's gorgeous and it's not cheap, but I know it's really good cabinet paint because this is not the first time that I've refinished cabinets. I've learned my lesson. So pay a little bit more for quality paint, it's gonna look better. So I thought, nope, I'm just gonna get it done. And so I just painted away. I put two coats on one side of these cabinet doors. And this morning I was excited because I have this odd schedule that's just kind of a gift to me. And I thought, this is great. I have all day. I'll put the last two coats on the back of them, and then I can hang them. And guess what? My mom won't see inside of my cabinets. I was so excited. So I headed out to the garage this morning after I took my boys to school, and we had some rain last night, so I cranked open the garage door because it was just so sunny and beautiful. So I turned on some music and I start going to town on my cabinets. And guess what? I saw all the bubbles, all the drips that I ignored before. And I'm thinking to myself, why did you do that? I was so angry at myself that I put two coats of the expensive paint over the bad paint, all the imperfections, and I just ignored it. I just glossed over it. And now I'm looking at these cabinets, I'm so excited to hang them, and I'm thinking, oh, you think your mom's not going to notice that? Now, listen, my mom's not terrible, but it's just this weird thing that we have with our moms, right? Am I the only one? But I'm angry at myself. I was just looking forward to having this project done, and the beautiful sunshine is shining in on my cabinets on all the imperfections. I was so angry. I can't even tell you how angry I was. And I thought, okay, I can't gloss over this anymore. I can't ignore this anymore. So I found a piece of sandpaper and I sat down and I methodically rubbed out all of the imperfections. Now, again, I had the music going the whole time because typically that really helps me, doesn't it? Like when we have a project, sometimes music maybe not for you, but it helps me. It helps me just at least focus on it, not focus on all the anger I was feeling at myself. So I had the music going the whole time. And as I was working through each of those cabinet doors and just methodically rubbing out the drips and the bubbles and the dog hair was so gross. I'm like, how do my boys do this? I noticed that my irritation with myself, my anger with myself started to wane. I started to notice that although I hated that I had ignored all these imperfections initially, and I was mad at myself for the waste of time and product, I felt a weight lifting off of my shoulders as I just thought, okay, you gotta work through this, Piper. So between the words of the music and like painstakingly holding these cabinets just perfectly up towards the sunlight, I could see that the work had to be done and I could make the cabinets better than when I had first started. But I had to look at the imperfections. I had to look at them. I had to look at those drips and those bubbles, and I had to smooth them out. And it reminded me this morning as I'm sitting there, I'm thinking, you know, this irritation, I'm feeling this lifting of weight off my shoulders. I'm not so angry at myself. I start loving the sunshine that, although it's showing me the imperfections, it's beaming beautiful light in on me. And it started to remind me of how often I think that we all can see, think, feel, or even know that we have work to do. And most of the time, or at least for myself, I just push through. Just push through and think, yeah, you know, it's fine. I'm it's fine. There's so much imperfection that I would prefer to gloss over it. There's so much pain that I would rather just push it aside or push it down. And you know, that holds for a while. It holds for a while that I can just gloss over things and then just keep pushing it down. But then inevitably I start to uh feel bubbles rise in my core, in my soul, like irritability, absent-mindedness, anger, insomnia, headaches. And then comes my drip. See how I'm tying in the paint and the cabinets, and that's when I break and I cry. I'm a crier, y'all. That is when I know I'm at a point where everything has come to the surface, all those imperfections that I was pushing down, and I just start crying. And I wonder to myself, what could be wrong? Which is just absurd, right? I mean, I know I made the choice to gloss over things, and then I ask myself, what's wrong? But after I take time to cry and feel my sadness, feel my pain, whatever it is I'm feeling, I kind of sit there and go, okay, what's actually going on? And ultimately I fall on that I glossed over. I glossed over. Rather than facing those imperfections and the pains, I glossed over and it doesn't work. And so then what I have to do is I have to start all over again. And there's that irritation. Like, why do I do this to myself? Why do I keep doing this? And there's this anger and irritation. But I don't want to go back to the bubbling and the dripping. So it's easier for me to just sit in anger with myself. And then that starts to kind of calm down. I think, okay, Piper, we got to sit down. We got to methodically look at this, shine light on this, and methodically work through what's going on. And I'm wondering if you face something similar in your life. I know my work as a therapist now, I see this a lot. I see a lot of times my clients come in and inevitably they have initial goals, things they want to work on. And then all of a sudden, they see me taking them in a direction where they're like, no, no, no. I mean, I can see them fighting it on the couch. They're like, Piper, I don't want to go there. I have pushed that down, pushed it aside, ignored it, glossed over it for 20 years. I'm not going there. But what I can see as a therapist sitting across the room is we're just scratching the surface. There's all those bubbles and drips and imperfections, those things, those pains that you're carrying. And if we just do the superficial, the the surface level, it's going to bubble up and it's going to constantly come back to you. And it's going to exhibit itself in like the things that I deal with: irritability, absent-mindedness, insomnia, headaches, depression, anxiety, overeating, addictions. It's going to bubble up. And it's hard. I I kind of straddle this line as a therapist of how far can they go? I can see, I can see the thread that I need to pull for them so that we can really excavate what they've glossed over for so many years. But it's this line that I balance of how far, how fast, too far, too fast. And never the intention is to hurt anyone in therapy. But therapy is painful. Now, don't get me wrong, I love therapy. I had my undergrad advisor in 1998 say to me, Piper, if you want to be therapist, go to therapy. And I took him at what he said. I started therapy in 1998. And it's one of those practices where you think, oh, I got it, I got it, I got it. And then inevitably something else comes up and you think, Oh, I glossed over something again. Here I go, going on back. Because here's the thing it's easier to gloss over. It is initially, right? It's easier, it's faster, it's more expedient. But then you crumble. We crumble because we can't maintain pushing things down. So we come into the therapy office saying, okay, I'm I'm gonna kind of work on this thing. Notice that kind of. I'm gonna work kind of on this thing. And then you wonder, why do I feel this way? Why are things not getting better? And sometimes I can see that. And I'll say to my client, what do you truly want out of our time together? And if you really consider that, what will life look like if you start to face that thing that you haven't up to this point? There's no, you know, one size fits all. There's no formulaic approach to therapy. There's not. But I work with my clients towards our goals. We create treatment plans, it's such a clinical word, but that's what we do. And it's just steps, steps to take, you know, towards our healing. But most often, most often, we can't see all of those things, those steps that we need to take. Because the glossing over has this effect of putting layers upon layers upon layers. And it takes a long time to shed light on seeing through all of those layers. So I wonder if you're in the process of glossing over. If there's just something stirring in you, like there, I gotta work on this, but you just keep pushing it aside. What's it doing for you? What is the glossing over and pushing aside doing for you? Are you burned out? Are you angry? Are you so sad it's all you can do to get out of bed? Are you so afraid that you don't know what step to take? Are you so insecure that you struggle to make relationships? What could it be? Or maybe, maybe, you know, maybe what it is is that the glossing over, you gloss over with busyness. That's one of my favorites. Just stay busy, Piper. Just stay busy. And then my anxiety is through the roof. You know, it's interesting. I am currently doing a women's counseling group, and it's really a phenomenal opportunity because what's great about it is um this is for school. It's something that I'm doing through my practicum, but I presented to my clinical director saying, hey, I want to do this thing, and I was scared. The reason being it has a biblical focus. This is for my clients that have proclaimed their Christian faith with me throughout session. But really, what we're doing um is we're taking these concepts from scripture and how does it align with our counseling goals? Or how has religion taught us certain things and how is it colliding with what we're facing with our pain and our trauma and our misery and all of the things that we're trying to uncover in therapy? And it's been a phenomenal group so far. We've only had two sessions, and to see these women discussing how they confront different things in their life, and inevitably, every single one of them is sharing. I've just glossed over things for too long, but I don't know how to step into this fully. I don't know why I keep going back to that, why keep talking to myself this way? It's so hard, isn't it? Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep doing this? And it's just it's a process, it's a process to relearn. It is, it takes so long. Our brain is a lazy, lazy organ, it goes to what we've always practiced. And so to create new habits, new thinking, new patterns has to be practiced day in and day out. But who in the heck wants to practice focusing on their pain? Isn't that the trouble with therapy? Who wants to focus on the pain? And so it's this dance that we do two steps, two steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, ten steps back, because it's such a painful process. And so our brain's like, all right, Piper, looks like you're not really serious about this. So let's go back to what we've always done. Let's gloss over. And then I'm right back into that cycle. I'm right back into that cycle of pushing through, glossing over, not seeing what's going on. And there comes the break. Then I'm angry at myself and I feel weak. And then ultimately I get to the point like Piper, work on this and I start working on it. Then it's too painful, and then I go back to glossing over. Do you hear what happens? Am I the only one? Surely I am not the only one that jumps on that hamster wheel. But here's the thing we were talking about this in group this week. We have to have this radical acceptance of the pain that we're facing, radical acceptance of all the things that you've glossed over, radical acceptance of choices that you've made that you carry shame for, radical acceptance of pain and trauma that has been perpetuated against you. Now, radical acceptance doesn't mean that you're, oh, I'm just fine. That's glossing over. Radical acceptance is committing to how what you value as a human being and accepting that these took took place in your life, the choices you've made, the things that have been done to you, and you radically accept, okay, it happens. This doesn't mean that we have rose-colored glasses on when we're working through these things. What it means is that we embrace when the good is good. And when the bad is there, we observe it. So just like this morning when I went out to that garage, and I was so looking forward to my finally finishing this project. And I opened that garage door, and the sunlight is just, I can't tell you, it was just filtering through. It was just so beautiful as it just came through the giant trees in my front yard. I turned on my music, and there it was. All the ugliness that I just ignored. I got mad first, but what I really should have done was when the bad is bad, I should have okay, observed. Observed how I was feeling. Piper, you're feeling angry with yourself. Piper, you're feeling disappointed with yourself. Piper, holy cow, you've caused so much more work. But I observe it without judgment. I observe it without judgment. And then ultimately, that's what took place with me. And I thought, okay, what's next? I had taken enough time to observe what was going on without judgment. I felt what I was feeling, and then I picked up that sandpaper and I methodically worked on every single cabinet door. And that's exactly what we have to do for ourselves. We can't keep glossing over. And we will, because that's what we do, but when you do and it bubbles down. To the surface. I challenge you. I challenge you to radically accept. Radically accept. This is not saying that you deserve the things that are in your life. None of that. But radically accept that, okay, this is what's going on. This is what's taken place, taken place. I no longer want to gloss over. I'm going to step in. And if it hurts too much or it's too uncomfortable, if that light is shining too much on those things I'm not ready for, okay. Okay. You can accept that and observe that you're feeling that as well. You see, for us to change how our brain reacts, we have to love our brain. We have to love ourselves through the process, but we're so used to chastising ourselves. That's why we gloss over. It's just this ugly cycle. So I challenge you. How can you radically accept that there are things that you need to work on? Radically accept that you have been glossing over things, that you just are avoiding the things that you see, think, feel, or know that you have to work on. Radically accept those and start to walk into them. Hopefully you can do it with a therapist that you trust. Hopefully you're not doing it on your own. But here's the thing: if you're doing it on your own, okay. Good. And when things are good, sit in the good, sit in that sunlight. And when things are bad, and you're like, I can't face this today, okay. Observe and allow yourself that compassion to say, okay, this hurts today. I'm gonna shelf this. I'm not glossing over. I'm not I'm not ignoring this. But okay, today it's good. It's enough. I'm gonna come back to this because I don't want to gloss over. I want to heal. Here's the really funny part. I just came inside and I thought I have to do a podcast. I've missed doing this. I can't believe I'm talking about my cabinets. And before I started, I thought I'm gonna walk outside. I'm gonna go out there because I put another coat of paint on after I rubbed out all those imperfections. And I thought, okay, I'm it's been about 45 minutes. The paint is probably kind of settled. Let me go see how it is or how much work I have to do. Guess what? They're gorgeous. They are gorgeous. And I'm so proud of the work. Even though I flubbed it up and had extra work to do, and my hands are killing me. They're beautiful. And I can't wait to hang them. Not because I don't want my mom to see those cabinet doors not hung, because it's beautiful. I created something beautiful. I did that. I did the hard work. And I have such pride in it. That feels good. So are you gonna keep glossing over? Glossing over all those bubbles and drip marks. That's okay if you do. But if you go back through it and you methodically look at those things and shine the light in those areas that need the shining into, you're going to have a sense of pride when ultimately the product is your health, your healing, your satisfaction, the tools and skills that you gain to move forward. Ah, that's the good stuff right there. And that is the blessing that I get to see with my clients that really dig in. So that's all I have to say today. I've missed you. I've really missed you. I would love to hear from any of you. It's been a long time. Send me a note, send me an email, piper at piperharris.net. Just would love to hear from you. I know it's quiet on my website. I know it's quiet on my podcast, but please know I think about you all the time. I truly, truly do. And if you're local to Georgia, North Georgia, give me a call. I'd love to see you in my practice. So thanks so much for your time today. Have a blessed week. That brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you learned some things that will equip you to continue in rebuilding the ruins of your life. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review us on your podcast listening platform and share this with your friends and family. As always, thanks so much for listening to Rebuild Your Ruins, a Piper Harris Coaching Podcast. I'll talk with you next time.