WHY IT'S SUCH A STRUGGLE TO STAY IN OUR OWN LANE

“I seem to be in the wrong lane."

“I don’t know where my path is.”

“I’m on someone else’s path.”

I have heard people say these things over and over, to which I respond, “If you are not on your own life path, whose path are you on?”

Of course we are on our own life path, we just sometimes swerve over the line into oncoming traffic.  And, that can lead to all kinds of adventure as we detour into addictive self-defeating choices of validation.  

“It’s not my fault.  They were in my way.”

“I never saw it coming.”

“It just happened.  No reason at all.”

People.  We love to blame things away, don’t we?  

We have no idea why we became excessively overweight, why we can’t go to sleep at night without drinking a full bottle of wine, or why we shame, blame, and judge pretty much everyone we know.

At the root of addiction, is a search for personal validation.  

If you believe this to be true, as I do, it presents us with an opportunity for conscious awareness in making our life choices and why we choose the ones we do.  

The truth is, in one way or another, every single one of us struggles to be validated.  In fact, in our humanness, we are a full-on social study in addictive struggle.

Our attempt to determine and define our validation of self, is based on, in part, the belief system we have grown up in.  In these formidable years, there have been many opinions posed as fact, lies served as truth.  But how would we know that until we have stepped far enough away to see a bigger picture?  

Maybe you were taught that you were not strong enough or smart enough to survive beyond your original family unit, that the world was full of people waiting to take advantage of you, or that money was evil and you should live your life in lack.  

Maybe you believed that what mattered to you, mattered to no one else.  Maybe you did not feel validated for your individual beliefs because they were different from the herd.  

We have measured our acceptance and understanding of our own personal experience by how we see ourselves in comparison to others.   

Unfortunately, if we are coming from a place of fear and personal trauma, this is a prime place for judgement to grow.  If fear slams the door on what it means to self-validate, we are on a slippery slope of judgement, toward ourselves and others.  

Enter addiction.  

The fear of invalidation from others keeps us stuck in addictive self-sabotage.  And with that, we are driving a continuous unconscious figure eight of pain.  

When we are not able to look at our own base truth, we often swerve into the lane of someone else’s perceived truth.  For the purpose of what?  Validating ourselves by someone else’s standards?  

We ask ourselves:

How can I validate myself when others invalidate me?  

If I believe they know more than I do, then their rejection of me and my ideas must be valid, right?  

Does that mean I am wrong and unworthy?  

When we have a clearer understanding of the validation issues we began with and why, it is easier to heal forward with tools in how to shift out of the self-defeating, non-validating addictive behaviors.  

Do we reach outside ourselves for things we perceive as momentarily self-soothing? 

Or, do we bring awareness to the inside of our own vehicle, recognizing that our self-worth is solely based on who we believe ourselves to be and why.

Putting our eyes on the road ahead of us, as we learn to self-validate, will not only bring an awareness to how we create our own trajectory, but also keep us out of the lane of other unconscious drivers.

THAT EMBARRASSING LIFE EVENT THAT HANGS WITH YOU FOR DECADES

It’s that spirit shattering moment.   We try to avoid it.  It happens anyway.  

Those defining moments in life that trigger our body to flush with embarrassment and our computer brain to erase all files but one: you are the most stupid person to ever walk the earth. 

It’s in that internalized shame and blame kind of moment that our embarrassment flares so brightly, it projects a Roman rocket glow clear into the next zip-code area.  Then we feel it boomerang back and do a nose dive into the pit of our gut, where it burrows deep into our cellular body, until our next “one spark away from human combustion” moment.

So, in the context of vanishing acts, here’s one of those moments that I witnessed first hand.  

My husband and I were standing in the box office line at Foxwoods Casino, waiting to purchase Criss Angel tickets, when the whole thing erupted.

For ten minutes, I had watched three kids playing a weave and duck game of tag around red velvet ropes and divider poles that were as tall as they were.  Two moms stood nearby, eyes glued to their cell phones, oblivious to the combustible drama about to take place.  

Then, with an ear splitting metallic crash, one pole did a heavy floor bounce and roll.  For just a second, the expansive lobby area went into total silence.  A tiny girl stood in full view as the obvious offender.  

One mom, cell phone still in hand, screeched out across the silent crowd,  “REALLY? REALLY?” 

A big, stern-faced security guard, with both hands in his pockets, looked straight down over the little brunette’s head, asking, “Was it you?”  

And in that shame and blame, “I’m gonna wet my pants” moment, I’m pretty sure that little lady was praying for a disappearing act that would have Criss Angel himself cheering with astonishment.

In the moment of that girl’s fear, my own “I want to disappear” moment came racing back from its decades old hiding place.  

That day, my mother was standing at the meat counter in Burgess Market, and behind her I was playing with a row of tiny spice boxes.  The next thing I knew, the boxes were on the floor and a big tall man, with his hands on his hips and his tongue making a tsking sound, gruffly instructed me to pick them up.  

Maybe he really wasn’t big or gruff, and maybe the security guard at Foxwoods really didn’t mean to scare that little girl, and maybe our mothers should have been paying better attention, but that’s another blog.  

Point being, those defining moments, whether in childhood or adulthood, can hang with us forever.  

What matters most is how we choose to define them, and allow them to define us.  

Will we download these experiences into our cells as a searing shameful judgement, or a lighter laughable moment, the kind that make great storytelling.  


 

HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS? OR ANYONE, FOR THAT MATTER?

Bottom line.  We all, at one time or another, have had an issue with forgiveness.  

And, with every forgiveness story beginning, there will be a gradual emotional ending.  

How that emotion affects you may come with peace, or it may smack you upside the head with a huge, “What the hell was I thinking?  I can’t forgive you.  I take it back.  I hate you.”

Because once we are a bit removed from the initial smack, and our eyes start to focus, we realize that there is way more to the act of forgiveness than just saying the words, I forgive you..

This was my story.  Maybe it’s your story too.  

When the truth was told, I sat stunned listening to my dying father admit to the family secrets, as my mother tried to shut him up.  And, even though she never stopped the abuse that lasted all my growing up years, I, in my adult body and my child mind, believed I must forgive them both.  

But how do you forgive parents who don’t protect you?

For the next few years, I was on a hamster wheel, mistakenly thinking I was getting somewhere with the anger and blame running in my head.  And, like the hamster, I ran the loop because that was all I knew.  

The truth is, I had never actually been off the loop.  

The fear and shame loop was all that had existed in that deep place of childhood wounding.  It was a limited belief in a repeated story.  A story that I didn’t know could have optional endings.

But my husband did.  He was that brave hand reaching out for mine, waiting for me to reach back. He never gave up on me, even though I bit that hand several times before grabbing it.

After all, that loop was my safe place.  Or was it?

“Why do you keep obsessing on it?” he would ask me.

“I’m not obsessing.  I’m trying to figure it out.”  I would tell him.

“But, honey, you keep saying the same thing over and over and nothing changes.”

As Jack Kornfield says, we become loyal to our stories in rerun.

As long as we are running on that continual fear and shame loop, we are not able to safely access healthy adult coping skills.  

So, if this is your story, as it was mine, here are some thoughts on how keeping ourselves stuck in the forgiveness issue of our wounding, plays against us:

LIMITING BELIEFS ABOUT FORGIVENESS THAT KEEP US STUCK

1. They are to blame that my life is so miserable.

2. I resent that he/she never said he/she was sorry.

3. My power is gone.

4. They ruined my life.

5. They don’t deserve my forgiveness.

HOW LIMITING BELIEFS ABOUT FORGIVENESS AFFECT US  

1. Keeps us in a perpetual cycle of suffering.

2. Illness manifests in our physical and emotional bodies.

3. Keeps us stuck in the lack mindset.

4. Inhibits abundance from coming into our lives.

5. Emotional wounds from the past play out in our current relationships.

Bringing emotional peace to your forgiveness story is your own responsibility.  

Waiting for your parents, or anyone else for that matter, to release you from that loop of anger, blame, fear, and shame has no more healing effects than a smack upside the head.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO "FIX ME"?

Her back was hunched with her arms folded over her chest, and both elbows leaning on the edge of my desk.  Mascara ran down her thirty-something face.  “I’m a hot mess, sick of being sick,”  she screamed into her arms.  Then she sat up taller, stared across at me, and said it,  “So...how long will it take you to fix me?”
 

I leaned back into my chair and said, “I don’t fix anyone.  I’m just running along side you, passing you healing tools.”
 

“Great,”  she said re-actively, “Can’t you give me an estimate?”  Then she slumped down into her chair and cried harder.
 

“How long did it take you to learn to ski?”,  I ask.
 

ONE MOGUL, ONE BUMP AT A TIME
 

If you have been through trauma, and who hasn’t in one degree or another, there are many questions you have asked yourself:
 

Why am I always sick?

Why do people judge me?

Why doesn’t any of this make sense?
 

Over your lifetime, you have accumulated a variety of thoughts and emotions in regard to the trauma, that you were not sure how to decipher.  And as a result, often times these life experiences broke intofragmented memories.  Then, they buried into hidden places of your physical and emotional body, where they laid in wait for re-discovery.  
 

But, here’s the truth,  without process and elimination, these fragments have become stuck in your unconscious filing system.  These compartments of life are labeled with synonyms of fear, such as:  blame, shame, judgement, anger, addiction.
 

Let’s think about what your body physically processes and eliminates as toxins each day.  Have you ever said to yourself,  “Gosh, I don’t have the time to deal with all this “crap” right now, so I think I’ll just file it into a compartment and deal with it later.”
 

Okay, so that’s a bit graphic, but my point is, if we don’t eliminate and detox food waste, we are creating a septic environment in our body.  So why would emotions be any different?
 

Because you can’t see them?

Because they’re easier to ignore?

Because we convince ourselves we made them up?

No wonder you’re sick.  Why wouldn’t you be?
 

When we are unable to safely look at our truth, we grab for things that will anesthetize us from the pieces of our trauma that we do remember.  Drugs, alcohol, food...pick your poison.  And of course that brings need for more detoxing.  Ugh, there seems to be no end.
 

SO LET’S GET BACK TO THE “FIX ME” QUESTION
 

Are you waiting for others to fix you?  

Are you hoping they’ll notice you’re in need of being fixed?

Are you wishing they would, because you just don’t know how to do it yourself?
 

Our society has manifested a toxic victim vibration environment.  Millions of people waiting for the validation of being diagnosed and fixed, crying out for help and attention at every turn.
 

And here’s the worst part, when it’s us, most often, we don’t even realize it.
 

When we ask to be recognized for the pain we are in, isn’t that exactly what did not happen in our childhood? We were not heard.  We were not validated.  
 

When a child does not have the words to tell you what pains him, what does the do?  They cry, the scream, they throw a fit.  As adults, we often seek out attention in childish ways, because it is the only way our child-self knows how.  We blame, we shame, we self-judge, we get angry, we self-medicate.
 

In respect of our limited understanding of our childhood trauma facts, of course we cry and scream.  We are still that child, emotionally stuck in the time-warp of trauma.  
 

As adults, until we learn to sooth ourselves in a healthy, personally respectful way, we will be in constant reactive search for other people or things to do it for us.  And when these people or things don’t meet our expectation, and they never will because without a truthful look at who we honestly believe ourselves to be and why, it is not possible.  
 

It’s just our hard truth.  We have not yet acquired the tools to do so.  In fact, we weren’t even aware tools were necessary or available, because this was the only normal we knew to exist.  We have rocketed down the slope, arms flailing, and screaming for people to get out of the way because we just didn’t know how else to maneuver the bumps.  
 

People are often judgmental of the seemingly, childish attention seeking tactics some adults go to, to be heard. But how can you blame and shame someone for not having something they were not conscious they needed to begin with?
 

Someone once asked me, “Why is it people who have been traumatized, do such crazy things to get attention?”
 

“Why wouldn’t they?  It makes total sense to me.”