“Even if you’re on the right track, you will get run over if you don’t move.” -unknown-
Life can be so devastating sometimes. For some of us, it has seemed like life just keeps handing us terrible set backs, over and over. We struggle and work at it, finally start moving, and then all the sudden down we go again. After awhile, it begins to seem useless to try anymore.
But the human spirit is resilient, and truly cannot be kept down for long, so we keep trying. By some miracle, eventually things begin to look different and we start to feel like we might have a chance again.
This, typically, is when all the voices in our minds that have been witness to everything we have done and everything that has been done to us, begin to give their opinions. They influence our emotions, try to convince us to remain where we are.
“You will never amount to anything really, you know that right?”
“You dont deserve to be happy, remember what you’ve done.”
“You let somebody treat you that way before, how can you trust yourself to pick someone who wont treat you that way now?”
“You cant trust anyone, everyone will let you down in the worst way.”
“You were with someone like this before, you will be alright.”
“You cant expect too much from them, at least you arent being hurt anymore.”
“You will never be good enough.”
We can combat those voices. It is hard. Really hard. But if we want to move forward, we have to.
Our traumas betray us, mind, body and spirit, much like those who inflicted the trauma. We react in ways that dont make sense to us, and create a space within us that is always doubting and second guessing our every move.
We find a new partner, our bodies reject them or we settle for someone we dont really care for because they wanted us. We find a new partner who is just like the old partner, but doesnt lie about it. We get a raise or promotion, we feel we have to quit because we will be fired anyway. We buy a house or a car we have been saving for, and we panic. We eat lunch somewhere we have eaten a million times, and suddenly cant stand it anymore. We suddenly lose the ability to complete tasks we have done for years. Simple things dont add up. We tell the truth, but ends up being a fractured story because our brains remembered it through the lens of survival. We hear the voices of the people who hurt us, screaming, every thing we have now come to accept as truth.
How do we move forward? With all the complexities of the traumas many of us have experienced, how do we know if we are on the right track or moving at all?
This is the question that we must wrestle with in order to begin to heal. These are the things we will be diving into over the next few days.
Survival? You got that piece down. You are a survivor after all. Thriving, though, that is what I want for you, to learn to thrive.
I believe that we can not only learn to thrive, but truly begin thriving. We have made it this far on our own, let us go the distance together.
Until next time,
Rachel
athrivingwarrior 