“I can’t accept that this happened to you. Why did this happen?  You eat healthy all the time…organic foods even. You exercise all the time”. When faced with life’s challenges, some people can’t help but question why things happen to them or question what someone else did to cause misfortune in that person’s life. I ask,”What difference does it make?”

Those comments/questions were actually posed by someone very close to me regarding my breast cancer diagnosis.  I can’t make this stuff up.  There are several different directions that I could take this post because I’ve been mulling over those comments for weeks now. My initial reaction was the title of this post and it continues to be my response.  It’s what I hear in those words that gets under my skin. What my sensitive ears hear are judgment and blame.

I’ve already written a post on managing judgmental people.  You can read it here.  I’ve indicated in previous posts that I am a recovering perfectionist, so as part of my self-care, I work hard to banish the self-ridiculing, over-critical voices in my head. Yet, I can’t help what people say to me. Comments such as those ultimately say more about what the other person is thinking more than anything about me.  And they may get under my skin, but that’s when I work that much harder to manage my reactions.  

When faced with life’s challenges, I do think in some cases, it’s important to examine where things night have gone wrong. However, I would take caution in spending too much time there, especially if it causes you to place blame on yourself and/or others. Someone may even be at fault, but you don’t want to risk not moving on and learning from it by staying in that mental space too long. In other cases, it may not be necessary to spend time figuring out what went wrong. It may not even be possible. For instance, I can’t control my body on a biological/cellular level. Certainly life style factors affect many conditions including cancer, but in other cases it does not. I have a family history of breast cancer in that my mom and my grandmother (my mom’s mother) both had it. Whatever the case, it’s best for me to move forward and take the necessary steps to treat this illness. 

Maintaining a thick skin is not always easy, especially when people attempt to test your boundaries, whether unintentionally or not. I’m assuming that you would even want to develop a thick skin, but it’s my way of establishing a boundary and it works for me. Sometimes you realize that things still seap through the thickness and that’s ok. Take a few deep breaths, think before you respond, and channel your higher self. You’ll get through it.