Are You Holding Yourself Back?

We live in a world where chaos has become more comfortable than the peace that would set us free. From what, you ask? Everything that we’ve dreamt of being free of without even a clue as to how to cast light on this liberation. What if I told you that you are part of the problem? You may feel attacked, maybe feeling that not-so-gentle twist in your gut before defensiveness rushes in. Please, hear me out.

Back in July, I started my healing journey. Before that, I was more than stuck in a whirlpool of trauma, sadness, anger, and most importantly victimhood. A large portion of society is stuck in a cycle of victimhood that restricts us from our full potential. For such a long time I was stuck in that same mindset. As we go through life our view of the world can become distorted to traumas that range from what some may deem insignificant while others may deem severe. Regardless of the severity, your trauma is a very real part of who you are. Though you have every right to feel emotions regarding adversities in your life, it would be quite a disservice to continue to use those same feelings as a crutch to continue a cycle of chaos.

My life has been everything but easy. I’ve gone through many different forms of trauma. For a time (nearly my entire existence) these traumas acted as puppet strings taking me to places, I’d never seen or even longed to go to, bouncing me around like a rag doll, leaving me broken. This brokenness became my entire personality. While the vile occurrences within my life were detrimental to who I was as a person, I was in complete control of how I got out of that lingering doom. If only I had known this many moons ago, I would have ventured much deeper into this healing journey. However, I give myself grace, just as you should.

Be thankful for the lessons you learn through life, otherwise, you may never have come to the conclusions you have. You may have never been able to step into your healing or work to become the version of yourself you’ve always longed to be. Be gracious of these lessons but you must learn to loosen the grips on the darkest parts of your story. Work to re-write it leaving the pages with only what makes you happiest. You will never forget your past, but you don’t have to let it define you any longer.

There are many ways in which we aren’t responsible for the hardships we have gone through. Sometimes we knew better, but every time we deserve to give ourselves compassion. We are all human, learning ourselves with every breath we take. It is okay to feel the emotions of our past while pulling yourself from the victim mindset. I have been working on how I let emotions fester instead of opening my mouth. For a long time, I asked myself the question “Why?” Why are these people doing this to me? Why did this happen to me? Why me? How could someone treat me so horribly?

A lot of the time I lacked the accountability to see where I was part of the problem in these situations. There are several situations where you simply can’t take accountability because some people are downright awful, and you never would have been able to see this pain coming. However, what you transform that pain into is your responsibility. For example, I spent so much time asking why others had done these awful things to me, that I never sat back and analyzed where I became the problem in these situations. Every single time that I swallowed my intuition to please others, I was burying myself deeper into this victim mindset. How could these people keep doing these things to me? But the real questions remained: Why was I allowing it? Why wasn’t I speaking up? Why did I continue to venture back into the same environments that made me sick?

When I started to ask myself these questions life became much clearer to me. While the essence of who I am wasn’t the problem, my actions, behaviors, and mindset most certainly were. Here I had been riddled with anxiety, pain, fear, etc., with little to no action to fix these stagnant parts of who I am. I looked around at what my life was, truly distraught by the sight before me. I had spent so much time blaming everyone around me for who I was as a person. The things I had gone through were terrible. I’m not saying that you must be indestructible. If that were the case, we would all walk around shooting infectious smiles at one another in place of poisonous words and ugly actions. It is okay to feel for as long as you need to but do not stray from the path of healing. It can be a scary place in those woods.