Demystify yourself.

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” ~Camus

Since birth, you have done your absolute best to make sense of and adapt to this life on earth.  You have wrestled with those enormous questions:  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Is there a purpose?  You’ve adapted to the spoken and unspoken rules of your family, just as you’ve learned to compensate for certain needs that went unmet. The external world with its judgments and expectations also had a powerful effect on you, not to mention any trauma you may have suffered along the way.

In strategic response to all of this, you developed coping mechanisms, defenses and beliefs about reality all of which helped you navigate the most challenging aspects of life.  As a child, those beliefs and defenses were the best you could come up with and, in many respects, they did their job well.  However, you have come a long way and it will be helpful for the adult you to distinguish between which of these patterned responses and behaviors are supportive and which are limiting.

In a similar sense, you have unconsciously created a somewhat cohesive life story.  This narrative is comprised of various memories, wishes, fears, thoughts and beliefs about who you are and how you do.  If you feel into this narrative a bit deeper, you may find that it’s laced with fear-based distortions like:  “If I open my heart, then I will get hurt,”  “I don’t try that because I was never good at it,” “Either my needs or the needs of the other can be satisfied; never both,” “Conflict is not to be trusted,” or “Conflict is not to be trusted.”  What you think is linked to what shows up around the bend.  By increasing your awareness of these distortions (and allowing that awareness to impact the way you live your life),  you can make the conscious choice to edit them and, in turn, release self-imposed constrictions.  Then, you can re-script your life story accordingly making room for more optimism, confidence, aliveness and—in essence—more of your self.

Life is beautiful yet it entails some amount of suffering.  Our wounds hold gems.  Paradoxically, the places we struggle hold the most potential for growth and healing.  The challenge, then, is to reframe our suffering as an opportunity for transformation.  I don’t mean this in a vague, figurative sort of way.  In my own life, I have noticed the most challenging times offer more than pain and contraction.  They provide an opportunity to heal and to move deeper into relationship with others, as well as with myself.  By re-activating old pain and trauma that I couldn’t manage as a child, suffering sets the stage for the adult me to dress those wounds with care; to recover those aspects of myself previously lost in the struggle and, alas, to become more whole.

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