On Mending

                You don’t have to heal.

                Let me say that again…you don’t have to heal. 

You can absolutely continue to look at the emotional wound, trauma, addiction, breakup, neglect, or dysfunction in your life and sit in it.  Forever, if you want to.  You can continue to tell the story of why your life is miserable, why you can’t move forward, and why other people should have acted differently towards you.  You can chalk another heartbreak up to the fact that “people suck” and choose to continue to numb out that painful feeling with another bottle of wine, pint of ice cream, or six-hour Netflix binge.  You can spend an entire evening replaying the events of your past few years and assigning blame to the major players, who, with their selfish and destructive intrusion, have robbed you of achieving your full potential.  You can choose to ooze bitterness out of your every pore because life and people and circumstances have royally screwed you over.

                You absolutely get to choose to do that.

                But what if you didn’t?

                What if, instead of continuing to evaluate your life through the filter of your trauma or adverse experiences, you chose to mend them, like a sock with a gaping hole in the toe?

                The thing is, we all have a metaphorical “hole in our sock” at some point in life.  Maybe we were born into poverty, go through a divorce, or face a medical diagnosis that “doesn’t look good”.  Some of us might have lost a child, either to death or rejection once they became an adult.  Conversely, the rejection we have experienced might have come at the hands of a parent, who by all accounts, is supposed to love us…and because of their own personal demons, was unable to do so in a healthy or consistent way.  Maybe we have been saddled with an addiction that we cannot seem to shake no matter what we have tried.

                I feel like we have all experienced something that needs mending….but we do have a choice whether to heal that hole in our life or continue to carry it around like a backpack with rocks in it.  “Mending”, as far as this community is concerned, just means continuing to choose to do the emotional work to heal, on a daily basis.

                So, why take this journey toward healing?  Why not just accept your “lot in life” and do your best with what other people and circumstances have dumped on you?

“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll continue to bleed on people who didn’t cut you”- Unknown

                People who are not mending continue to cause harm to those around them, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally.  They perpetuate cycles of abuse, neglect, addiction, and lay waste to the relationships in their lives.  They are distant, cold, or abusive parents….or go to the other side of the continuum and show enmeshment and codependency with their children.  Either way, they’re bleeding on those who didn’t cut them.  They don’t realize they are hamstringing the next generation by not mending these wounds themselves. 

                If you’re in a relationship and you’re bringing your unhealed emotional wounds…be prepared for a bumpy ride.  Expecting another person to carry things never meant for them to carry, or put up with your toxic behavior (that is coming from a place that needs mended) is a recipe for disaster.  I wonder how many relationships could have thrived, not just survived, if mending was done on the part of both partners.  So many people just don’t know that they have the option to heal.  They consider happiness, security, and peace just something that “isn’t for them”.

                Employees who aren’t mending are a poison to their work environment.  Continually bringing drama and upheaval to those around them, they are also bleeding on those who didn’t cut them.  This becomes especially bad for all involved when those employees are in positions of authority and who are creating a culture that is mentally taxing and overwhelming, creating a ripple effect that is felt all the way from CEO to custodian.

                Here’s what people who are not mending look like:

                -resentful and bitter because they were dealt a “raw deal”

                -heartbroken and fixated on their ex who chose another path

-compulsive spenders, exercisers, gamblers, substance users, and those addicted to the emotional rush of being in a new relationship (with no intention of seeing it through)

-insomniacs who can’t shut off the hamster wheel of crippling anxiety

-burned-out employees who spend their lunch break face-down in fast food in order to escape the reality that they hate their lives

-singles who just know that happiness is just the next “right swipe” away

-young adult children who blame their parents for everything that is going wrong in their lives

This list is by no means exhaustive…it encompasses most of us, because most of us are not mending.  I think we are just trying to get through today, through the next meeting, through the next season, through the next emotional valley.  We don’t realize that there is an alternative.  That alternative is mending...choosing to do the emotional work to heal.

So, let’s say you’re ready.  You realize you don’t want to continue to tread water emotionally in your life and you’re ready to heal.  What now?

I’m glad you asked.

Mending looks different for each person because the “hole in our sock” is never the same.  For some, intensive psychotherapy would be incredibly beneficial.  For others, medication or a change in diet might be just the thing to get them started down this road.  Some people need to consciously start to form healthier connections in their lives to replace the toxic ones they are leaving behind.

I feel that while the entire mending journey looks different from person to person, there are some steps each of us can take to reach a better understanding of our self-worth, capacity for emotional safety, and potential.  I use the acronym SELF to describe what the first stage of this change can look like, and some benchmarks to know that we are on the right path.   Achieving success in these four areas can show us that we are indeed ready to start mending in the ways we need to do so.

  S – Silence the Voices

We have all been given messages about our worthiness, either directly or indirectly, from people in our past.  Maybe your father told you explicitly that you could never be as great as your brother, or just never gave you any tasks at home because he assumed you couldn’t do them.  Sometimes we receive messages about our worthiness when we ask out the cute boy in class and he tells us he’d “rather date his dog” than go out with us (I won’t use all personal examples, but that one stung pretty good).

Silencing the voices means taking back the authority about our worthiness from people who had no business having it in the first place.  We are worthy, we have always been worthy, and we will always be worthy of having the life, love, and level of emotional connection we desire.  Once we can start to believe that, our lives start to change.

E – Erase the Tapes

Thoughts about ourselves play on a loop in our head like a cassette tape from the ‘80’s.  On that tape are either healthy, supportive, and self-compassionate messages or detrimental, mean, and critical ones.  We get to choose.  Erasing those “tapes” and writing something emotionally nourishing can make a remarkable change to our capacity to mend.  No one would want someone following them around every day telling them how awful they are…but seem to have no problem when those intrinsic self-talk tapes sound that way.

Getting rid of the internal “drill sergeant” and finding our internal “best friend” is crucial, especially when making the choices it takes to mend.  We aren’t going to do it all right the first time, and having a safe place to land emotionally (even in our own minds) makes all the difference.

L – Lose the Comparison

We are inundated with Instagram images of people and families who seem to have it all together.  I call this the “Picture on the Mantle” phenomenon.  Have you ever walked into someone’s house and they had a huge picture on their mantle, with everyone in matching white shirts and khaki shorts and they were all sunkissed and enjoying a moment on a beautiful beach somewhere?   Can I tell you what they were probably doing right before this picture was taken?  Complaining, arguing, grumbling about where they had to stand, or what they’d rather be doing?  Nobody puts THAT picture on their mantle.

Losing the comparison sometimes means getting back in your own lane and not keeping up with the Joneses, who, let’s be honest, are also a mess.  It can also mean letting go of the comparison or pressure to be something you used to be, or someone else feels like you should be.  It is calling your reality what it truly is…so we know where we need to truly mend.

F – Find Your Emotional Safety

Physical safety is something we are all pretty familiar with, but emotional safety can be a lot harder to attain.  I feel it is imperative to understand that our emotional safety has to be found within.  When we outsource our emotional safety to others, there is always a chance that they will disappoint us, reject us, or let us down.  When we are able to understand that inside of us lives a place where we can be emotionally safe and take care of ourselves in the ways we need to, there is a great freedom and ability to heal.

This inner knowing, or anchor, or compass (or another visual representation that speaks to you individually), reminds us that we will be okay no matter what.  When we can truly believe that, we are one step closer to living in our fullest potential and creating the life we have always wanted.

I will be elaborating more on the SELF steps as we continue on this journey together.

I’ll say it one more time….you don’t have to heal.  I do, however, believe and know that you can be on a mending journey and your quality of life can be so much better than it is today.

 -Krystal Shipps, LPC