When I started peeling back the layers of my trauma and recognizing the many manifestations of it in my behavior, I was very overwhelmed. There were so many things to work on, I felt like I would never make any progress. My breakthrough came when I realized I could separate out all the different areas for improvement and work on them one at a time. The first area I worked on was one of the most important, positive self talk.
For me, the most important thing to master in healing is positive self talk. Once I started telling myself I’m worthy and good and caring and that I deserve good things in my life, everything started changing for the better.
The dynamic of healing is strange at times. You work so hard and struggle for so long to get better. Hopeful that ultimately there will be a reward for perseverance. At first you strive to have better minutes and then better hours, then better days, weeks, months and ultimately years. You put all of your energy into moving into a new phase, a new you and new outlook on life and most importantly, new behaviors.
New behaviors lead to a new life. More self supportive, more aware of the little things in life that trip you up. More aware of triggers and how to deflect them or feel them and move on. A whole new life. This is the goal, continuous growth. Personally, I’m finding an unforeseen challenge for me as I grow has been that I miss the old me.
This caught me off guard. There were so many times in the last three years where I looked in the mirror and saw a shell of who I believed I was, or wanted to be and thought how desperately I wanted to leave that person behind and move in to a new chapter as a new man. I never thought that as my life began to balance out and blessings started coming my way that I would long for the old me.
I miss the isolating, brooding, miserable person that I was. How could I possibly want that over the positive, healthy, thriving man I have become? I didn’t have to think too hard to realize that the answer is comfort. I spent so many long days finding a comfort zone inside my misery where I felt safe from everything. Today, at times, I still feel the need to retreat to that dark, secluded, yet safe place when I start to get overwhelmed.
I miss that safety because in that place no one could touch me. Not lovingly, not spiritually, not in any way. No hurt, no love, no anything and that was far preferable to the risk of being hurt or taken advantage of again. That “safe” time in my life contained only one, safe emotion, no emotion.
Clearly, retreating within your own misery is not a path to healing, but there are times during the journey when you can’t take any more. You need your safe place so that you can settle frayed nerves and refuel to continue your battle with yourself . Ideally, as you heal and grow you learn new tools to use instead of retreating. New awareness and new behaviors are what finally got me moving in the right direction.
For me the new behaviors started with how I spoke about myself. Not only how I spoke about myself to others or around others but even more importantly, how I spoke about myself to myself. I spent a week writing down everything I told myself during moments of reflection, or solitary moments when I was talking to myself. I especially paid attention to my monologue when something happened. How did I talk to myself internally or externally when I made a mistake or when I was successful.
I was pretty shocked at how much negativity I was brining into my own life even after doing good. I was never good enough, even when accomplishing my own goals. Instead of being proud or gaining confidence, I’d knock myself back down. I was simply never good enough…for me. If you’re not good enough for yourself, you’ll never have the foundation necessary for a serious relationship, romantic or otherwise.
It was time to make that change, to start the process of self love by speaking to myself as if I love myself. This sounds easier than it is because those negative attacks on myself aren’t just words, they come from a place of deep self doubt. They come from the idea that I am a failure and even the good I do will fail eventually. I didn’t only have to change dialogue, I had to change a deep-seated belief that I had about myself; I am a failure.
There is no true peace or real internal happiness without self love. Talking to yourself with kindness and understanding makes all the difference. Being patient with yourself the way you would a partner or your child or any other loved one is the real key to growth. I never realized how insidious my own internal dialogue was until I started to change it.
The process to move past all of the doubt about myself has not been easy. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those times that I have missed the old me was during days when I had put myself in an uncomfortable situation knowing that growth would come from it. Being uncomfortable would make me subconsciously seek a comfort zone, but in this case that comfort zone is what I am battling to get away from.
The desire to revert back to the comfort of the old me still pops up from time to time. Just like the journey of healing that I’m on, it will always be there only maybe lessened over time. When these urges present themselves it’s my new positive self talk that makes the difference. I am confident now and I can stand up to the depression bully because I tell myself that I can, every day.
The new place that I have earned in my healing where I am confident and resolute in who I am will eventually be the new comfort zone that I seek when I need support. I know, however, that the old one will always be there just in case I feel like regressing back to it, of which I have no intention of doing.
Thank you for reading. As always, comments, dialogue are more than welcome. Writing is healing. One Love.
Recovering Through Writing 