You Can’t Heal What You Keep Pretending Doesn’t Hurt.
You’ve been hurt. And you’ve also been taught to pretend nothing can hurt you. That person did what they did and you’re fine. You walked away, or you didn’t. But you don’t admit, even to yourself, that it hurt you.
The problem with not admitting it is that you can’t heal what you won’t admit hurt. You can’t go see a doctor for a wound if you’re pretending there is no wound. Hell, you can’t even clean it with peroxide while you’re pretending it’s not real.
You know what happens then? It festers and gets infected. Before long, the pain of it is making it hard to focus, you might be walking with a limp, and you might have a fever. Your loved ones will ask what’s wrong, and you just keep saying “Nothing. I’m fine.”
To someone watching, they’ll either know you’re lying. Or, they won’t have a clue that something happened to you. The second one is more dangerous. If someone you care about sees you behaving differently, and they can see no explanation for it, they’ll make assumptions.
The assumption might be that you’re being a jerk for no reason. Or, that you’re shutting them out. Or, they did something wrong and you’re just not telling them.
More than what happens with other people, this wound is festering inside you. It’s causing big problems in your life. Not only on the inside, but stretching out to the outside. When does the pain become too much?
Admit It Hurts
It’s the hardest part of any healing journey, looking down and taking stock of the injury. When you’re pretending it’s not real, there’s still a chance it didn’t happen, a chance it might go away.
Once you look down, it becomes real. The pain is real, having to deal with the wound and heal it is real. Having to face the fact that someone gave you this wound is also very real.
That space between getting the injury and facing the injury is like a fuzzy dream. And that seems better than pain sometimes. But the truth is, it’s not.
The fact of the matter is that an untreated wound is much more painful than one you work on. A life lived ignoring the festering is much worse than a life that you can have once the injury is healed.
That’s what you need to focus on, not the pain of dealing with it, but the joy of having put it behind you.
What does that look like in a real-life situation?
Let’s use the example of cheating. Someone you loved deeply cheated on you. You have been betrayed, your trust shattered, and your whole world turned upside down. But you’re not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing you cry. Let him think he never meant a thing to you. You’ll show him.
So you move out and move on with your life. You tell yourself you’re better off without him. And you are. But you don’t really believe it. Instead, you secretly believe you aren’t good enough, lovable enough, pretty enough, to get someone’s loyalty. You secretly begin to think it’s your fault it happened.
You date other people. And the relationships are a mess. You get jealous, suspicious, and angry. They don’t understand this behavior. They thought everything was going fine. You lash out, and the relationships end badly. And you feel confirmation of the secret beliefs you’ve been having. They grow bigger.
Things continue to get worse. You can’t seem to have a healthy relationship. There must not be any good guys left. Or, you must not be good enough for them.
If you continue this way, the pattern will continue this way. You’ll date and break up, over and over again. The only way to fix it is to face it.
Admit It to You
I’m not about to tell you you have to track down the ex who cheated on you and cry to him about all the ways he hurt you. You can if you want. But that’s not really all that important.
The person who needs your admission is you. You need to face the fact that you’ve been hurt. You need to admit it to yourself. Bring it out of the dark and take a good look at it.
Things won’t ever get better until you do. And honestly, the idea of doing this is much scarier than the doing of it. In hiding the wounds from yourself, you turn them into big, scary monsters. Instead of what they really are, bad things that happened, but that you lived through.
You lived through it. The worst part of it was that it happened. It can’t hurt you anymore unless you continue to hide it away within your own soul. You’ve brought it in close, refusing to let it go. You’ve trapped the monster.
It’s time to set it free.
You can do this in several ways. There are two ways I find work best. You can write it all out. Write down everything that happened and how it made you feel. Or, you can tell someone you trust. Tell the story, cry, and let it out.
Either way, you’re ripping the Band-Aid off and letting the story come out. You will feel sadness, pain, but also relief from finally admitting it happened. You’re finally allowing the monster off of your soul, and it’s taking a single step away, giving you some space and perspective.
Then The Healing Can Begin
Once that initial thing is done, you’ll see the healing begin. The information will start to find you. You’ll see it come up in the videos you scroll on social media. Someone you know will have a similar experience, and the two of you might talk about it. You might get a message from a stranger.
There’ll be a book in your path you’ll feel called to. You’ll buy it and read it. It will give you even more perspective. And while all this is happening, you’ll be starting to feel a little better. You’ll feel as though you’re taking your power back. You’re taking your life back. LIke magic, once you admit that it hurt, the ways to heal just find you.
Maybe you’re still doing some dating. You’ll see the quality of any relationships start to improve. There’ll still be some bumps in the road, but you’ll see it wasn’t as bad as it was.
Then come the challenges. Challenges are the real healers. Anytime something gets in your way or seems like a bad thing, I want you to imagine it coming into your life with a bow on it. Because it’s a gift.
You can learn all the information you want on a subject. But until you put it into practice, it’s just information. When you get the chance to use the information, when you overcome the challenge, that’s when it becomes wisdom. That’s when you find the most healing.
In sticking with the cheating analogy, that might mean you date another man who cheats on you. At first, you might be tempted to think, after all this work you did, after all the trying, you’re still in this spot. But what’s actually happening is the universe giving you the chance to get real healing.
By hurting you more? Not really. By showing you the real truth. And that truth is that people will do what they do, it doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough. This time, when you leave, you will have the opportunity to change how you feel about it.
Yes, he cheated. But you’re going to be okay. It did hurt. You’re not going back to hiding your monsters. You’re facing it right away. But you also remember how you’ve survived this before. You come out of this one still loving yourself. You come out of this one knowing that wasn’t the guy for you. Good guys still exist, the universe just wanted to make sure you valued yourself enough to let go of the people not meant for you.
And so you move forward faster this time. With less pain. While facing the truth of what happened and knowing the reality of it not being your fault.
The Truth Sets You Free
Good old honesty saves the day. It’s funny that the thing that’s weakening you is the key to gaining more strength. You just have to get to the other side of it.
You won’t get the challenge over and over. No need to worry about that. Once you’ve used your knowledge to get through that lesson, it becomes wisdom. You grow. And as you grow, the type of guy you’re attracted to grows too.
Once a lesson has truly been learned, you won’t need to keep repeating it.
And the lesson in this scenario is to be honest with yourself. You can get through anything by facing it. You won’t get through anything by pretending it’s not there.
You can’t fool your soul. You just delay the blessings. So start moving towards the blessings.
I love you, and I hope this helped.
For more from me:
If you want to check out the Podcast I co-host, go here:
Growing Up for Adults on Spotify
For my favorite books and health and wellness products, go here:
And check out the books I authored here:
How to Be Friends with Your Ex
Thanks so much for reading today. I love you and want all the best for you.
