Self love pathway - Series Pt2: If you know better, you can do better.

I began healing because of a man…..

To say I was interested in him was a complete understatement - looking back now I can confidently say that I was delusional about the whole thing, but this delulu behaviour is not foreign to me.. It was a pattern I later had to break - I had been delulu about A LOT of men. 

What started as the wrong reason to start healing, ended up leading me to exactly what i’d needed all along - healing the relationship with myself. (side note… I also ended up meeting the best man i've ever known and am now in an amazingly healthy relationship)

I thought that by healing myself - because obviously something was wrong with me - that he would all of a sudden fall madly in love with me. At least, that's how I saw it in my mind.

I will say that this “situationship” did make me start to think about my own actions, values & beliefs I had within myself, in relationships and with men. I had become so tired of the same-old scenario when it came to romantic relationships that it FORCED me to look within. I started asking myself more questions like: Had I really created all this myself? Was my delusion the reason I was so unhappy? Was I projecting my own insecurities and fears onto these men expecting them to somehow fix me?

The answer was - Yes, Absolutely. 

Realising this felt so overwhelming, and I really didn't know where to go from here. Where do you start healing a lifetime of beliefs and behaviours? 

I began searching back through my old journals. I've been journaling since i was pre-teen. It was always my therapy and in this moment I thanked God that I'd basically been recording my “neurotic” behaviours without knowing it would serve me greatly at the age of 31. 

I didn't have all my journals with me at the time, but the last few years worth was enough for me to see patterns in friendships, relationships; my beliefs became glaringly obvious - I truly didnt feel worthy or deserving of unconditional love.

Reflecting (by journaling) back on some of these experiences, I had NO idea what it felt like to be truly loved, and it started with the way I was treating myself.  I’d accepted breadcrumbs from these men that could obviously see that I was really just searching for attention and validation. 

My dad was absent in childhood and I became aware of the fact that I had convinced myself when I was only 6 years old that his absence in my life was my fault. I admitted to myself (and felt this to my very core) that I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I cried for 7 hours straight.

This was the most painful but powerful day in my life because it burst my psyche wide open. It was the missing puzzle piece to all of my relationship patterns - literally everything changed for me from this point. 

This sparked a long and deep personal evaluation mission. I dissected all of my past relationships, came face to face with the parts I played in those that had failed & were sometimes toxic - and i made another admission - Sometimes I WAS THE TOXIC ONE. I’d been emotionally and mentally abusive, manipulated, lied, shut down emotionally, refused to communicate effectively - I didn't know how to communicate well in relationships however, I had to be accountable for the fact that I’d never made an effort to learn this skill either.

 I’d also only had similar relationships around me to compare my own experiences to. Very few people that I knew were in happy and healthy relationships but from that day, I decided to look at those that did display healthier behaviours - what were they doing that was so different to what i had done? What healthy beliefs and behaviours did I already have? A great exercise that opened my eyes once again to my own internal system & external reality.

Self awareness was a skill I had to cultivate with practice, and still is today. Some parts of this process were difficult to face, but it was so very worth it and imperative to the development of a healthy relationship with myself. It’s hard to love yourself if you don’t know yourself. When you know more, you know better and when you know better you can do better.

Next -  Self Forgiveness.