Mind Your Own Business
The best advice my therapist ever gave me.
The most valuable thing my therapist taught me was to mind my own business. Here’s how that conversation went.
Me (synopsis): Lamenting about something to do with my ex, how he’d been horrible and now was with someone else and probably had been with that person when we were together and why was that happening and who was this woman and what was she like and why were people telling me she looked like me, dressed like me, and so on, and would he do to her what he’d done to me… Something like that. Just a lot of questioning about what had happened and why.
My therapist: Is any of that your business?
So that was pretty jarring. At first, I was like yeah, it is totally my business because he hurt me and he was probably hurting her, or would, and it was wrong and he was awful. But after a little indignation, I realized that she had a valid point, as she often did.
It wasn’t my business. My business at that time in my life was to work through it from my end. My business was healing and moving forward and learning from what I’d been through. My business was the parts of my life that I could actually control.
That question altered how I lived my life, although not immediately. Over time it became a question that mattered in my everyday life. I…
