My client conversation one afternoon last week was with a 20-year-old man grappling with academic and life decisions, stress, and fear.
The next morning, I met with a 65+ client leveling up her professional performance and personal experience: her honoring of self and other, her love of self and other, and her relationships.
The common thread between these two very different people is their humanity: each and every one of us experienced traumas (Greek for 'wound' or 'hurt') at a very young age, and much of how we show up in the rest of our lives is in reaction to some perceived deficiency in ourselves.
"Whether we recognize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world." - Dr. Gabor Maté
It's a perceived deficiency, pressed into our bodies, our cells, our organs, our hearts, and our minds. When we get that we're not actually deficient, something else becomes possible.
We seek acknowledgment, acceptance, love, admiration, and validation from others in thousands of ways to somehow prove to ourselves: Yes, I'm lovable, I'm enough, I'm safe, I'm not alone.
And in the very next moment after getting evidence that we're lovable, that we're enough, that we're not really alone, we begin seeking more evidence for it, to answer the seemingly perpetual and truly unanswerable questions:
"Do you love me?"
"Am I enough?"
"Am I doing this right?"
"Am I safe?"
"Am I okay?"
And no set of circumstances will ever satisfy those lines of questioning, because the future is always an unknown.
So those questions pop back up again and again, and we go back at it, seeking approval, validation, safety, again and again, in relationship upon relationship, job upon job, year upon year.
Happiness, like fear, is an inside job. It simply can't be built solely on circumstances, especially the elusive yet ever-sought perfect circumstances, the holy grail of human craving, at best a house of cards built upon any instability of our own inner life.
The healing of personal and generational trauma begins right here, right now, with the person seeing with your eyes. As I heal mine and you heal yours, the past is healed and forgiven, and the future is given its best chance to thrive.
It's no one else's responsibility than our own, because this important healing is an inside job.
Much Love. ❤️
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