We all have a story. A place from which we arrived.
Within this frame, we can trace and seek understanding as to why our life script has played out the way it has. Yes, somewhere it all makes sense. No one is crazy to themselves. Within our individual context, there is meaning, albeit mostly unconscious. Our behaviors, choices, pathways and feelings did not develop in a vacuum.
What I love about this classical analytic frame is that it offers compassion. We do what w…e do for a reason. And often this reason is sheer survival. Without taking on a certain role, behavior, substance or choice, we just may not have made it. We had to adapt somehow, some way, as a coping skill through the daunting pain.
And thankfully, it worked. We did it. We fucking survived. A blow-out party is in order. Invite the masses. You are nothing but a super-star.
But once the dishes are put away, the cake eaten and the candles blown out, it is time to wish our once so helpful coping skills good riddens. They have served their much needed purpose and we do not need them anymore. In fact, they are in the way at this point. Holding me back. Limiting my progress toward the bigger and better me.
For, I am an adult now. Even an empowered one, if I choose. I can peel off my victim cape and seek different choices, behaviors and pathways that are healthier for the me who is now. I can do the things now that I could not do when I was young, dependent and innocent.
I know that this is not an easy liberation. Our younger self tremors with the same ole’ idea that my survival skills of yester year are still necessary. Like a newly freed prisoner, we just do not know the life we can have outside the walls that we not only know so well, but erected in good stead.
But trust me on this one. Your story does not have to be over via mindless repetition which is now just plain self-sabotage. There is more in you. A promised land for the taking. All yours. Waiting for you to discover.
I read this and instantly felt empathy and compassion for an avoidant I know. This is entirely true.