Tag: self-destruction

How I’ve Stopped Letting My Unhealed Parents Define My Worth

“Detachment is not about refusing to feel or not caring or turning away from those you love. Detachment is profoundly honest, grounded firmly in the truth of what is.” ~Sharon Salzberg

A few months ago, my father informed me that he’d been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Although he seemed optimistic about the treatment, I knew that hearing such news was not easy.

After a few weeks, I followed up with him. He ignored my message and went silent for a couple of months. Although his slight ghosting was common, it made me feel ignored and dismissed.

In the meantime, I went to India for a couple of months. A few weeks before I returned, he reached out, saying he needed to talk. Although he wasn’t specific, I knew something was happening and immediately agreed to speak to him.

It was Sunday afternoon when he called. After I picked up, I immediately asked about his health. He went on to explain the situation and the next steps of the treatment.

The call took one hour and twenty-six minutes. I learned everything about his health, where he goes hiking, what food he eats after the hike, what time he wakes up, the fun he and his girlfriend have, what his relationships with his students is like, and where he goes dancing every Saturday night.

The only thing he knew about me was that my trip to India was great. He didn’t ask me what I did there or why I even decided to take such a radical step.

Right after the call, somewhat discouraged because of his lack of interest, I received a call from my mom.

Since my parents are divorced, I must divide these calls and often keep them secret in front of each other.

The call with my mom went pretty much the same way. The only difference was that she repeated things numerous times without realizing it since she is on anti-depressants, often accompanied by alcohol.

After both calls were over, thoughts of unworthiness started hitting me. At first, I judged myself for expecting my father to care about my life and used his health as a justification for his treatment. Then I realized I always made excuses for my parents. It was the way I coped with their behavior.

Although talking to them was more of a duty than anything else, I knew not having contact wouldn’t resolve the issue. However, I didn’t know how to deal with these feelings. It felt as if every phone call with them reminded me how unworthy and unimportant I was to them.

While growing up, my mother struggled with alcohol, and my father abused the entire family. When I began dating, I naturally attracted partners that reflected what I thought of myself: I was unworthy and unlovable.

Although I wasn’t sure how to handle it, I knew there must have been a solution to this emotional torture.

Typically, when I ended my calls with my parents, I would reach for thoughts of unworthiness and inadequacy. However, this Sunday, I chose differently. For the first time, I stopped the self-destructive thoughts in their tracks and asked myself the fundamental question that changed everything: How long will I let my unhealed parents define my worth and how lovable I am?

After sitting in awe for about ten minutes and realizing the healthy step I just took, I asked myself another question: How can I manage these relationships to protect my mental health and, at the same time, maintain a decent relationship with them?

Here is how I decided to move forward.

1. Setting boundaries while finding understanding

I always dreamed of how it would be if my mom didn’t drink. I remember as a fourteen-year-old kneeling by the couch where she lay intoxicated, asking her to please quit drinking. As a child and as an adult, I believed that if she could stop the alcohol abuse, everything would be better. She wasn’t a bad mother but an unhealed mother.

Today, I understand that this may not be possible. Although watching someone I love destroying themselves almost in front of my eyes is painful, after working through my codependency, I understand that it’s impossible to save those who have no desire to change their life.

Therefore, emotional distance for me is inevitable. I decided to use the skills I learned as a recovering codependent when appropriate. If I feel guilty that I moved far away, stopped financially supporting my mom since she drinks, or that I am not there to deal with her alcohol issue, I pause. Then, I forgive myself for such thoughts and remind myself that the only power I hold is the power to heal myself.

If I find myself secretly begging for the love of my father, I reflect on all those loving and close relationships I was able to create with people around me.

Another self-care remedy I use when feeling sad is a loving-kindness meditation to soothe my heart, or I talk with a close friend.

2. Accepting and meeting my parents where they are

Frankly, this has been the hardest thing for me to conquer. For years, the little girl inside me screamed and prayed for my parents to be more present, loving, and caring.

Because I secretly wished for them to change, I couldn’t accept them for who they were. I wanted my father to be more loving and my mom to be the overly caring woman many other mothers are.

When I began accepting that the people who caused my wounding couldn’t heal it, I dropped my unrealistic expectations and let go.

I also realized that instead of healing my wounded inner child, I used her to blame my parents. Therefore, I was stuck in a victim mentality while giving them all the power to define my value.

Today, I understand that expecting change will only lead to disappointment. Frankly, my parents are entitled to be whoever they choose to be. Although it takes greater mental power and maturity, I try to remind myself that this is what their best looks like while considering their unhealed wounds. This realization allows me to be more accepting and less controlled by their behavior. It allows me not to take things too personally.

3. Practicing detachment

Frankly, I felt exuberant when I chose not to allow my parents to define how I felt about myself when we last spoke. It wasn’t anger or arrogance; it was detachment. I remember sitting there with my phone in hand, mentally repeating: “I won’t let you define my worth anymore.” After a couple of weeks of reflecting on this day, I can say that this was the first time I took responsibility for my feelings concerning my parents.

Although this story doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending, it feels empowering, freeing, and unbelievably healing. Breaking the emotional chains from the two most important people in my life is the healthiest decision I could have made.

After my first victory in a years-long battle, I feel optimistic that this is the beginning of immense healing. Although I know that thoughts of unworthiness will creep in when interacting with them in the future, now I understand that I hold in my hands the most powerful tool there is—the power of choice.

May 21, 2023
Abandonment Wounds: How to Heal Them and Feel More at Ease in Relationships

“I always wondered why it was so easy for people to leave. What I should have questioned was why I wanted so badly for them to stay.” ~Samantha King

Do you feel afraid to speak your truth or ask for what you want?

Do you tend to neglect your needs and people-please?

Do you have a hard time being alone?

Have you ever felt panic and/or anxiety when someone significant to you left your life or you felt like they were going to?

If so, please don’t blame yourself for being this way. Most likely it’s coming from an abandonment wound—some type of trauma that happened when you were a child.

Even though relationships can be painful and challenging at times, your difficult feelings likely stem from something deeper; it’s like a part of you got “frozen in time” when you were first wounded and still feels and acts the same way.

When we have abandonment wounds, we may have consistent challenges in relationships, especially significant ones. We may be afraid of conflict, rejection, or being unwanted; because of this, we people-please and self-abandon as a survival strategy.

When we’re in a situation that activates an abandonment wound, we’re not able to think clearly; our fearful and painful emotions flood our system and filter our perceptions, and our old narratives start playing and dictate how we act. We may feel panic, or we may kick, cry, or scream or hold in our feelings like we needed to do when we were children.

When our abandonment wound gets triggered, we automatically fall into a regression, back to the original hurt/wound and ways of reacting, thinking, and feeling. We also default to the meanings we created at the time, when we formed a belief that we weren’t safe if love was taken away.

Abandonment wounds from childhood can stem from physical or emotional abandonment, being ignored or given the silent treatment, having emotionally unavailable parents, or being screamed at or punished for no reason.

When we have abandonment wounds, we may feel that we need to earn love and approval; we may not feel good enough; and we may have our walls up and be unable to receive love because we don’t trust it, which keeps us from being intimate.

We may try to numb our hurt and pain with drugs, alcohol, overeating, or workaholism. We may also hide certain aspects of ourselves that weren’t acceptable when we were young, which creates inner conflict.

So how do our abandonment wounds get started? Let me paint a picture from my personal experience.

When I was in third grade a lady came into our classroom to check our hair for lice. When she entered, my heart raced, and I went into a panic because I was afraid that if I had it and I got sent home, I would be screamed at and punished.

Where did this fear come from? My father would get mad at me if I cried, got angry, got hurt and needed to go to the doctor, or if I accidentally broke anything in the house. Did I do it purposely? No, but I was punished, screamed at, and sent to my room many times, which made me feel abandoned, hurt, and unloved.

When I was ten years old, my parents sent me away to summer camp. I kicked and screamed and told them I didn’t want to go. I was terrified of being away from them.

When I got there, I cried all night and got into fights with the other girls. My third day there, I woke up early and ran away. My counselor found me and tried to hold me, but I kicked, hit her, and tried to get away from her.

I was sent to the director’s office, and he got mad at me. He picked me up, took me out of his office, and put me in front of a flagpole, where I had to stay for six hours until my parents came to get me. When they got there, they put me in the car, screamed at me, and punished me for the rest of the week.

When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia, depression, and anxiety and put in my first treatment center.

When my parents dropped me off, I was in a panic. I was so afraid, and I cried for days. Then, my worst nightmare came true—my doctor told me he was putting me on separation from my parents. I wasn’t allowed to talk to them or see them for a month. All I could think about was how I could get out of there and get home to be with them.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I just wanted my parents to love me, to want to be with me, to treat me like I mattered, but instead I was sent away and locked up.

I started to believe there was something wrong with me, that I was a worthless human being, and I felt a lot of shame. These experiences and many others created a negative self-image and fears of being abandoned.

For over twenty-three years I was in and out of hospitals and treatment centers. I was acting in self-destructive ways and living in a hypervigilant, anxious state. I was constantly focused on what other people thought about me. I replayed conversations in my mind and noticed when someone’s emotional state changed, which made me afraid.

It was a very exhausting way to be. I was depressed, lonely, confused, and suicidal.

There are many experiences that trigger our abandonment wounds, but the one that I’ve found to be the most activating is a breakup.

When we’re in a relationship with someone, we invest part of ourselves in them. When they leave, we feel like that part of ourselves is gone/abandoned. So the real pain is a part of us that’s “missing.” We may believe they’re the source of our love, and when they’re gone, we feel that we lost it.

So the real abandonment wound stems from a disconnection from the love within, which most likely happened when we abandoned ourselves as children attempting to get love and attention from our parents and/or when our parents abandoned us.

When I went through a breakup with someone I was really in love with, it was intense. I went into a panic. I was emotionally attached, and I did everything I could to try to get her back. When she left, I was devastated. I cried for weeks. There were days when I didn’t even get out of bed.

Instead of trying to change how I was feeling, I allowed myself to feel it. I recognized that the feelings were intense not because of the situation only, but because it activated my deeper wounding from childhood. Even though I’ve done years of healing, there were more layers and more parts of me to be seen, heard, cared for, and loved.

The “triggering event” of the breakup wasn’t easy, but it was necessary for me to experience a deeper healing and a deeper and more loving connection with myself.

When we’re caught in a trauma response, like I was, there is no logic. We’re flooded with intense emotions. Sure, we can do deep breathing, and that may help us feel better and relax our nervous system in the moment. But we need to address the original source of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in order to experience a sense of ease internally and a new way of seeing and being.

Healing our abandonment wound is noticing how the past may still be playing in our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s noticing the narratives and patterns that make us want to protect, defend, or run away. It’s helping our inner child feel acknowledged, seen, heard, safe, and loved.

Healing the abandonment wound is not a quick fix; it does take self-awareness and lots of compassion and love. It’s a process of finding and embracing our authenticity, experiencing a sense of ease, and coming home.

Healing doesn’t mean we’ll never be triggered. In fact, our triggers help us see what inside is asking for our love and attention. When we’re triggered, we need to take the focus off the other person or situation and notice what’s going on internally. This helps us understand the beliefs that are creating our feelings.

Beliefs like: I don’t matter, I’m unlovable, I’m afraid, I don’t feel important. These underlying beliefs get masked when we focus on our anger toward the person or what’s happening. By bringing to the light how we’re truly feeling, we can then start working with these parts and help them feel loved and safe.

Those of us with abandonment wounds often become people-pleasers, and some people may say people-pleasing is manipulation. Can we have a little more compassion? People-pleasing is a survival mechanism; it’s something we felt we needed to do as children in order to be loved and safe, and it’s not such an easy pattern to break.

Our system gets “trained,” and when we try to do something new, like honoring our needs or speaking our truth, that fearful part inside gets afraid and puts on the brakes.

Healing is a process of kindness and compassion. Our parts that have been hurt and traumatized, they’re fragile; they need to be cared for, loved, and nurtured.

Healing is also about allowing ourselves to have fun, create from our authentic expression, follow what feels right to us, honor our heartfelt desires and needs, and find and do what makes us happy.

There are many paths to healing. Find what works for you. For me, talk therapy and cognitive work never helped because the energy of anxiety and abandonment was held in my body.

I was only able to heal my deepest wound when I began working with my inner child and helping the parts of myself that were in conflict for survival reasons make peace with each other. As a result, I became more kind, compassionate, and loving and started to feel at peace internally.

Healing takes time, and you are so worth it, but please know that you are beautiful, valuable, and lovable as you are, even with your wounds and scars.

March 20, 2023
How I Started Appreciating My Life Instead of Wanting to End It
“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

Few things have the power to totally transform one’s life as gratitude. Gratitude is the wellspring of happiness and the foundation of love. It is also the anchor of true faith and genuine humility. Without gratitude, the toxic stew of bitterness, jealousy, and regret boils over inside each of us.

I would know. As a teenager and as a young man, I lived life without gratitude and experienced the terrible pain of doing so.

Outwardly, I appeared to be a friendly, happy, and gracious person. I could make any person laugh and I was loyal to my friends through thick and thin. However, beneath the surface an intense fire raged within me.

Despite receiving boundless love and attention from my wonderful family, I was inwardly resentful about my adoption as a child. For many years, three bitter questions ran on repeat in my mind:
- Why did my birth mother give me up for adoption when I was only months old?
- Why did I try so desperately hard to win acceptance from others when it was clear that I just didn’t fit in anywhere?
- Why did I have to experience the pain and confusion of not truly belonging?
As I allowed these questions to dominate my thoughts, I began to experience a range of negative and unpleasant emotions as a result. Among the worst of these feelings was that I came to see myself as a victim of circumstance. Of course, as I would later realize, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. Far from being a victim of circumstance, I was a blessed recipient of grace. But at the time I couldn’t see that.

Eventually, my sense of resentment at being adopted contributed to destructive behaviors like heavy drinking.

Throughout the entirety of my early adulthood, I filled my desperate need for belonging with endless partying and a hedonistic lifestyle. During those years, I found myself in many unhealthy romantic relationships with women, partook in too many destructive nights of drinking to count, and frequently got into brushes with police.

During that difficult time in my life, I also seriously contemplated suicide. I even got to the point where I meticulously planned how I would carry it out: through overdosing on pills and alcohol. And I even purchased both the bottle of booze and pills for the act.

Had it not been for the last-second torturous thoughts of inflicting such an emotional toll on my family, I am quite certain that I would have followed through on taking my own life.

On into adulthood, my own refusal to put in the long hours on myself and address my adoption led me in a downward spiral. I was fired from several full-time teaching jobs, continued to battle with alcohol abuse, frequently lashed out in fits of anger at others, and I restlessly moved from one place or another every year or two believing that a change in location would somehow translate into my finally finding a semblance of inner peace.

For the better part of my twenties and early thirties, my mind’s demons continued to get the best of me. This cycle of discontent persisted until a dramatic turning point happened in my life. While on a trip to Maui, Hawaii, with family, I experienced an unforgettable moment of healing while hiking in the transcendent beauty of that mystical island.

On the third or fourth day of the trip, I found myself wandering alone on a little trail that unexpectedly led to the edge of a breathtaking cliff overlooking the crystal blue ocean. While standing there, I felt so overwhelmed with joy that I instantly tore off all my clothes and let out a great big primal yell! For the first time since childhood, I felt undulating waves of peace wash over me.

Today, when I reflect on what I truly felt in that moment, I recognize it was gratitude. I felt pure gratitude to be alive. And I felt pure gratitude to finally know that I was a part of something infinitely greater than my mind could ever comprehend. While standing there in awe of the Earth’s glorious wonder, I also experienced overflowing feelings of gratitude for my adoption.

Suddenly, everything about my adoption made perfect sense.

It was my destiny to be adopted into the family I was. It was also an incomprehensibly high and selfless act of love for my birth mother to give me up for adoption, knowing that I would have more doors opened to me in America. And of course, it was also an incomprehensibly high and selfless act of love for my adoptive mother to endure horrific physical abuse and an exhausting legal battle just to get me out of Greece.

In that moment, I feel like I was catapulted into a higher realm of consciousness, where the boundary dissolved between who it was that thought they were the knower and the subject they thought was being known. In that moment, there was no me. There was no birth mother. There was no adoptive mother and father. We were all just one perfect expression of love.

The point of this somewhat long-winded story is that no spiritual breakthrough for me would have even been possible without the power of gratitude. For it was at the root of that profound glimpse of reality I experienced in that indescribably perfect moment. Since that life-altering day, I have tried to make gratitude the cornerstone of the inner walk that I do on myself.

Each evening just before going to bed I make it a point to write down at least two things that I was grateful for from that day. The idea of starting a gratitude journal may sound cliché to some, but it has helped me navigate life with more gratitude. Since starting the journal, I also feel like I am starting to have greater appreciation for those blessings that I used to take for granted, like good health and access to clean water, air, and food.

From my own experience with the adoption, I have come to believe that one of the greatest benefits from starting a gratitude journal is that it helps pull us out of our own egoic way of thinking that sees ourselves as victims of circumstance.

When we consciously set out to cultivate gratitude in our day-to-day lives, we come to see the ample opportunities for personal growth that emerge out of our trying life experiences.

Now, whenever I hear someone complain that they are a victim of this or that circumstance, I listen quietly with an open heart to their predicament. But when they finish telling their story and ask me for my thoughts and advice, I reply with the following questions:

But what are you grateful for? And what are the lessons that you learned through your adversity?

Gratitude profoundly transforms our relationship with suffering. When we acknowledge the feelings of gratitude within us, we come to re-perceive even the worst events in our lives as grist for the mill.

It is not at all necessary for you to travel to some faraway paradise like Hawaii to cultivate gratitude. We all have the innate capacity to experience this same profound sense of gratitude where we are now in this moment.
March 19, 2023
The Unconscious Vows We Make to Ourselves So the World Can’t Hurt Us

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ~Jonathan Safron Foer

Are you aware that we all make unconscious vows early on, and they become our internal blueprint for life? These vows dictate who we can be and are often deeply engrained.

Our vows are attached to a deeper need we’re trying to meet—the need for love, acceptance, safety, connection, and security. They’re not bad or wrong, and neither are we for having them; they come from a smart part of us that’s trying to help us feel safe.

Vows are more than a belief; vows are a “never again” thing or “this is the only way to be because my survival is at stake.”

What is a vow, you may ask? Well, let me paint a picture for you.

When I was a little girl, I was teased for being fat, stupid, and ugly. Soon enough, I started blaming my body for being hurt and teased. I thought that because I was “fat, stupid, and ugly” there was something wrong with me, and that was why I didn’t have any friends.

At age thirteen my doctor told me to go on a diet, and that’s when I started to believe that I was a “defect” because I was fat. At that point I made a vow: “I will never be fat again.”

I started cutting back on my food, I became a maniac exerciser, and being thin became the only thing that mattered

Then, at age fifteen, I entered my first hospital for anorexia, and for over twenty-three years I was in therapy and numerous hospitals and treatment centers. No matter how much weight I gained in these programs, when I left, I went right back to losing weight by limiting my food intake and exercising excessively because I’d vowed to myself “I’ll never be fat again.”

The process of gaining weight only added to the trauma and fears I was already experiencing. Instead of being compassionate and understanding and helping me offer love to the parts of myself that were hurting, staffers “punished” me when I didn’t eat my whole tray of food by taking away my privileges and upping my meds.

When we experience trauma like I did as a child, it’s not what happened to us that stays with us; it’s the vows we made and what we concluded it meant about ourselves, others, and life in general that stay.

We concluded who we needed to be in order to be loved and accepted by our family, and that became our unconscious blueprint that started dictating our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

“I will never be fat again because if I am I won’t be loved and accepted” was a trauma response, which turned into a vow that carried a lot of fear and anxiety. I used undereating and compulsive exercising as survival tools, and I would not let go of this pattern no matter how much anyone told me I needed to.

If I couldn’t exercise, especially after I ate, my heart would race and I would panic, sweat, and shake. Those symptoms were my body signaling to me that I needed to exercise so I wouldn’t get fat

This was the only way I knew how to be. I was living in a trance, an automatic conditioned response. And no matter how much conscious effort I exerted to change my habitual ways, something inside would bring me back to limiting my food intake and exercising excessively.

When we’re forced to let go of our survival mechanisms without healing the inner affliction, it feels like jumping out of an airplane with no parachute; it’s scary and overwhelming. This was why I became suicidal, too, especially when I perceived I was getting fat again; I would rather leave my body than be traumatized and teased.

Eating disorders, addictions, depression, anxiety, pain, or illness are often symptoms showing us where our energy is frozen in time, where we’re carrying deep wounds and holding onto vows we made from traumatic or painful experiences.

When someone is anxious or depressed, it may be because they’re not living their truth, and this may be because they feel they’re not allowed to. They may think they need to meet everyone else’s expectations, because if they don’t, they may be punished and/or abandoned.

They may use food, drugs, smoking, or drinking as a way to find ease with what they’re feeling and experiencing. They may be using a substance to numb the pain stemming from traumatic experiences or from the idea of not being “perfect” or not feeling “good enough.”

Why is it hard for some people to love themselves and ask for what they want and need? Because, if you’re like me, you may have been screamed at or called selfish for doing these things when you were a child, so you may have made the unconscious vow “I’m not allowed to ask for anything or take care of or love myself.”

The habits and behaviors we can’t stop engaging in, no matter how hard we try and how destructive or limiting they may be, are meeting a need. The goal isn’t to override our impulses and change the behavior; instead, a better approach is to understand why they exist in the first place and help that part of ourselves feel loved and safe.

No matter how many affirmations we say or how much mindset work we do, our survival mechanisms and vows are more powerful, so a part of us will resist change even if it’s healthy.

Often, when I’m working with a client who struggles with addiction, anxiety, depression, and/or loving themselves and allowing themselves to have fun, when we go inside and find the root cause, it’s because of a vow they made when they were little, when they were either being screamed at, teased, left alone, or punished.

They concluded that they were bad or wrong for being true to themselves, asking for things, or wanting to be held and loved. They learned that having needs and acting naturally wasn’t okay, so they started suppressing that energy, which created their symptoms as adults.

“I don’t need anyone; I’m fine alone” may be a vow and a way to protect ourselves from being hurt again. The challenge with this is that, as humans, we need approval and validation; we need love and caring. This is healthy and what helps us thrive and survive as human beings.

When trauma gets stored in our body, we feel unsafe. Until we resolve it and reconnect with a feeling of safety in the area(s) where we were traumatized, we’ll remain in a constant state of fight/flight/freeze, be hypersensitive and overreactive, take everything personally, and seek potential threats, which makes it difficult to move on from the initial occurrence.

So, how do we see what vows are dictating our life journey?

We can notice our unconscious vows by being with the parts of ourselves that are afraid. They often come as feelings or symptoms in the body. For instance, I would panic, sweat, and shake if I couldn’t exercise, especially after I ate.

When I sat with this part of myself with unconditional love and acceptance and a desire to understand where it originated, instead of using exercise to run away, it communicated to me why it was afraid. It brought me back to where it all began and said, “If I’m fat I’ll be teased, abandoned, and rejected, and I want to be loved and accepted.”

Healing is about releasing that pent up energy that’s stored in the body and making peace with ourselves and our traumas.

Healing is about reminding our bodies that the painful/traumatic event(s) are no longer happening; it’s learning how to comfort ourselves when we’re afraid and learning emotional regulation.

Healing is about getting clear about where the hurt is coming from; otherwise, we’ll spend our time going over the details and continuously get triggered because we never get to the real source.

Healing is not about forcing; it’s about accepting what’s happening. It’s a kind, gentle, and loving approach. We’re working with tender parts that have been traumatized and hurt. These parts don’t need to be pushed or told how to be. They need compassion; they need to be seen, heard, loved, and accepted; they need our loving attention so they can feel safe and at ease.

They’ve been hiding; in a sense they’ve been disconnected. When we acknowledge them and bring them into our hearts, we experience a loving integration. When we experience a loving integration we experience a true homecoming, and in that we experience a sense of inner peace. Then we more naturally start taking loving care of ourselves and making healthy choices.

May 29, 2022
Why I Now Love That I’m Different After Hating It for Years

“Only recently have I realized that being different is not something you want to hide or squelch or suppress.” ~Amy Gerstler

I grew up during the traditional times of the sixties and seventies. Dad went out to work and earned the family income, while Mom worked at home raising their children. We were a family of seven. My brother was the first-born and he was followed by four sisters. I was the middle child.

I did not quite know where I belonged. I oscillated between my older two and younger two siblings, feeling like the third wheel no matter where I was.

I was the one in my family that was “different.” I was uncomfortable in groups, emotionally sensitive, intolerant of loud noises, and did not find most jokes funny. Especially when the jokes were at the expense of someone else. Oftentimes that someone else was me.

Yes, I was the proverbial black sheep. I stood on the fringes of my own family, a microcosm of the bigger world.

Life felt hard and lonely. I felt isolated and misunderstood. Too frequently I wondered what was wrong with me and why I did not quite fit. Others appeared to be content with the status quo. I never was. Others didn’t questions the inequities I saw in life. I did. Others did not seem to notice the suffering of others. I epitomized it.

Being different did not exactly make me the popular one. In fact, quite the opposite. Who knew what to do with my awkwardness? I sure didn’t.

As a result, I was depressed a good part of my life. That was not something that was identified or talked about then. Too often it still isn’t. A disconnected life and feelings of loneliness and isolation will lead to depression, among other things.

I hit my teens and did what too many do: I looked for ways to be comfortably numb. My choice was alcohol. It gave me an opportunity to “fit in” or at the very least, not care about the fact that I did not. I rebelled. I self-destructed. For years.

As life will have it, I grew up, feeling my way in the dark, wondering when the lights would go on. I turned inward looking for the comfort I could not find from the world. I hid my pain and lostness. At times, I prayed that I would get cancer and die.

A heroic exit was not to be my path.

Do you know what I am talking about?

Maybe you feel what I have felt. Maybe you know the pain of chronic isolation and what it means to be different in a culture that prefers sameness. Do you wonder if you will ever be okay? Do you wonder if you will ever fit?

Well, let me tell you:

First of all, you fit. You have always fit. You belong. You have always belonged. You are needed—more than you know. These are truisms.

Others do not have to think you belong in order for you to know you do. Others do not have to treat you as insider in order for you to know you are.

Knowing, intellectually, that you belong is one thing. Feeling like you belong, now that is an entirely different thing. That is an inside job. In other words, that is your work to do.

So, I did what I had to do to bring change, in order to get the life I wanted. I stepped up to the challenges in my life, which came through my work world and my personal relationships.

I often ran into conflict with authority figures, changing jobs frequently. I didn’t know how to let others close to me. I was afraid of being rejected, so I used anger and avoidance to distance those that mattered to me the most. I was not happy, content, or at peace. I felt that more often than not.

So, I faced my pain and hurt instead of numbing it.

As I got more honest with myself, I began to consider that maybe there was nothing wrong with me. Maybe there was something wrong with the world or the system that wants to tell me there is something wrong with me.

So, I began to view myself through different eyes. I began to make some noise. I got out of the bleachers and stepped into the ring. I chose to participate in life as I was, not as others thought I should be. I started to push up against the boundaries that others had set.

Yes, I faced rejection. I dealt with disapproval. It was hard. Really hard. It hurt. I cried. I stomped my feet. I cried again. I gave myself permission to feel angry.

In spite of the internal chaos, in spite of the hurt, in spite of my turmoil, I would do it all again.

When we are trying to make changes, when we are owning our own lives, when we bump up against the expectations of others, it frequently gets messy before it gets better.

DO IT ANYWAY! Because it does get better. For every person who rejects you, another will embrace you. But you can only meet those people if you first embrace yourself. Because you need to accept yourself to be able to put yourself out there.

When you feel afraid to move forward, move anyway.

When you want to quit because it feels too hard, rest. Do something nice for yourself. Then get back up and keep moving.

There is light. Even when you can’t yet see it.

There is hope. Even when you can’t find it.

There is love. Even when you can’t feel it.

Work at finding your voice by getting quiet and paying attention to your feelings and inner nudges. Learn to trust yourself by acknowledging that only you know what is true and best for you. Know your worth by recognizing your intrinsic value as a unique person with an abundance of admirable qualities.

Start caring more about approving of yourself than waiting for others to approve of you. Own your life and take responsibility for your well-being and happiness. No one can do that for you.

Figure out how to forgive yourself for the mistakes you will inevitably make. Learn how to love yourself more than anyone could ever love you.

Accept yourself—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Then get about changing the ugly as best you can.

This is what I have done. This is the hard work that brings transformation.

In the process of all of this I made a phenomenal discovery…

ME!!

What a discovery! I have gifts to bring to the world. Gifts that will leave this world better than I found it.

When I was younger, I didn’t like how sensitive I was to the energies around me, how I felt things to the core of my being, and how I hurt when I saw someone else hurting.

Those around me seemed playful and fun, though, I could see the hurt in them. Life did not feel playful and fun to me. It felt serious. People were hurting. Why didn’t anyone other than me notice?

I was hurting. Why didn’t anyone notice?

I gravitated to the heavier side of life, fully identified with the suffering around me.

I wanted to be anything other than what I was.

I now understand these qualities to be empathy and intuition. Two things the world greatly needs.

I learned to trust those qualities. They led me down a road I could never have imagined. I now have a thriving counseling practice, helping others to heal. I get to watch them discover their gifts. Better than that, I get to watch them go from hating who they are to loving and embracing who they are.

Then they go out and find ways to help others do the same.

But this story is not just about me. It is also about you.

There is nothing wrong with you. You are amazing and beautiful, just as you are. Flaws and imperfections included.

Don’t change yourself for a world that wants to tell you who you are.

You tell the world who you are. Let’s change this place together and allow difference to be the norm, because our beauty is in our diversity.

I invite you to take the journey inward to self-discovery. Then bring what you’ve learned and share it.

Bring who you are and let’s change this world, one person at a time.

March 10, 2021