Do you find yourself changing? Are you different than you were a few months ago, a few years ago? As we journey through healing, especially emotional and trauma healing, we can go through periods of uncertainty. The present, the past, and the future can seem a bit foggy. We want to keep growing. To build a new identity, not based on fear or shame or illness. What’s it going to be like, though? How do I even get there? I don’t know yet what I’m supposed to be.
Some things we may come across are:
Relationships: You might start to realize that your friendships, romantic partners, and other relationships you chose in the past were chosen because of the particular trauma patterns that you had learned. You had attracted these people into relationship, because at the time, that is the level you were at and what you thought you needed. But as you are growing and warming up and becoming more connected to your emotions and what you need and want to move towards, you might find that these relationships are not good for you. You might see more and more clearly that they are not what you need. They are not going to help you to grow. At the same time, you may be just starting to get a sense of what you do actually need. What you do want. So, you want to move beyond these past relationships, but you have not formed new relationships to move forward with yet. You want to leave the side of the divide you were on and move forward to what you know will be more supportive, but it feels like a heavy fog. You can’t see clearly what is up ahead.
Boundaries: You may feel an increased need to set stronger, healthier boundaries. Maybe even a need to speak with those who have hurt you or crossed your boundaries in the past when you did not have the capacity to speak up and say no. Or maybe you needed help and support in the past and never spoke up to ask for it, and now you are realizing the hurt and the anger and the sadness that this created. If you decide to speak with someone, whether that is your parents or friends or spouse or partner or whoever, it can feel scary. The uncertainty of not knowing how they will react. Will they fully listen to you? Will they even care? What if they get angry when I speak up? What if they reject me? Then what do I do?
Identifying with Addiction, Illness, Victim, Shame, Fear: If you are struggling with addiction, illness, past abuses, neglects, and hurts, you may have built some of your identity upon these things. Especially if you have been dealing with these things for years or decades, you may have adapted your lifestyle around this identity. Your thinking might start out with “I’m having trouble with my impulse control.” “I’m not feeling so well.” “Bad things were done to me in the past.” Over time, this might turn into “I’m an addict. It’s just who I am.” “I am chronically ill. I might always be this way.” “I’m a victim. Nobody is ever there to help me.” The distance lessens from being able to observe your experience more from the outside and still have some hope, to being identified with it and feeling discouraged and that it will always be this way. Likewise, if you have always been replaying a shame message of “I’m not good enough and nobody loves me” in the background, you are identifying with the shame. If you are always feeling anxious and the need to control yourself and everything around you, you have some identity created around the control and anxiety.
I would recommend starting small. Can you start to share some pieces of what you are learning with some of the friends and family you feel safer with? Can you find some small ways to start to express your boundaries, needs, and desires, to people you are in relationship with? Can you start to understand why you identify the way you do with some compassion and kindness? Can you create some distance between you as a person, and what emotions you may be experiencing and behaviors you may be engaging in? The language we speak to ourselves and to others can be important. Can you hear the difference between saying, “I am experiencing these difficulties, “I have these tendencies“, “My body is feeling …”, “some bad things were done to me” compared to “I am sick and fatigued”, “I am an addict and will always be”, “The world has failed me so many times. Nobody has been through what I’ve been through. They just don’t understand.”
As we start to feel better and build greater capacity and balance of our nervous system and emotions, we may want to keep walking through the fog toward the solid ground ahead. However part of us is still connected to our current identity as well. These thoughts, patterns, behaviors, and beliefs of what we have learned to adapt to to get through our life. This can be really difficult. It takes time. As more and more safety is built in our body and more and more positive resources are created in our life, we can take a step forward. Then another step. Then another. Our pathway forward, this bridge that we are on, becomes clearer. The land up ahead comes more in to view. Some objects and details start to come into focus.
