Life is Wonky so Don't Blame Yourself
Hello fellow Souls!
Nobody walks a perfectly straight road, lined with gold.
Sometimes the fork in our road is pleasant and easy to travel. But life is full of crisscrossing or intersecting paths, twists and turns, and ups and downs.
But please don’t “crucify” or blame yourself for what you do to yourself, or for the state of the world, or for someone else’s unhappiness. Don’t get angry with yourself for not being perfect.
Why we Blame ourselves
The Ross Center says that we tend to blame ourselves for wrong things happening for the following reasons.
1) We don’t have the capacity to see the flaws and wounds of our caregivers when we’re young. So we blame ourselves for things associated with us which they don’t like.
2) When a traumatic event occurs, we are hard wired to respond rapidly on an unconscious level. Unknowingly, our nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for potential danger. When the alarm goes off, we assess the situation with a rapid fire response: “Do I escape, fight or hide?” Because we are not aware of this near instantaneous assessment, it often leaves one thinking that more could have been done.
3) Self blame is a survival response. By blaming ourselves, we maintain the perception that we’re still in control of the situation and ultimately safe even when we’re not. You expect to feel safe, so sometimes pretend to be so, while blaming yourself for things going wrong.
Lessons that I Learned
My personal recovery from trauma stemmed from all of the above and taught me the following.
1. Self-responsibility doesn’t mean that you are responsible for everything that happens to others or for the choices that others make about how they feel or what they think.
2. It can be hard to observe someone seeming to struggle. However, you have to look after your own mental health.
3. If your road is not straightforward it does not mean that you have failed.
4. You must give yourself the appreciation that you deserve for being the best you can at any point of “time.”
5. You need to accept that you don’t need to be perfect or to do things perfectly and that nothing is perfect.
6. What someone says or does may not be entirely personal.
7. You must embrace the possibility of positive change, rather than focus on what you have done or haven’t done which you think is or was wrong.
Trauma at a Young age represses your Spirit
When I was a child, several of us in my adoptive family were abused and I took on responsibility for this. At eleven years old my mind literally decided that if I hadn’t done X then Y wouldn’t have happened or because I did A that’s why B happened.
Along with blaming myself for what happened, I felt that I wasn’t good enough because my parents criticized me and treated me as an older person, not as a child whom needed love and understanding.
Feeling that I was fully responsible for the outcomes from interaction with anyone put tremendous pressure upon me.
I did not see that my life was “wonky” or out of shape and that I was managing the best I could.
It pained me to see or to think about anyone, especially those whom I cared about, being unhappy or unwell. I led a stress-filled life for decades, frightened of being who I really was, and was, in turn, unhappy and unwell myself.
I saw all my roads as seemingly never-ending twists and turns, icy mountains, dangerous volcanoes, choking jungles, broken, fragile ladders to nowhere, pits of fire, taunting ghosts of fleeting happiness adrift, lurid carousel rides to nightmares, flights of fancy, and the very occasional glorious straight smooth road laid before me, ready for a hesitant tripping down the light fandango.
Connection to Source and Soul helped me
In early 2017 I was on my way to work and I stared at the train tracks, thinking that nobody loved me and that I may as well just end my life.
But spirituality or a strong connection to Source or God has always been my strongest support system. Just for a moment my inner critic took a rein-check and instead, a loving voice said to me, “some people will miss you.”
And I knew that voice was mine. I learned that we have Souls or eternal parts of the Spirit of Source (or God), that gives us intuition and guides us to love ourselves and to unify the Cosmos. My Soul whispered to me when I needed it, to have the self-love to keep on living.
My slow journey to reclaim my power used all my reserves of digging deep, knowing that the flame at the core of me was burning bright and strong.
This core is my FAITH in the origins of everything as Source, an infinite field of power or will, wisdom or intelligence, and love or the capacity to unify.
The magical day came when I was feeling at my lowest, when I realized that I don’t need to be perfect and that I wasn’t responsible for everyone else.
My life has taught me that the darkest depths of despair are designed by ourselves, at the Soul & collective levels, to light up or spark our perspective and choices of the contrast. We are powerful. We have the capacity to know ourselves and to connect to our Souls & to Source to take the next right step for the evolution of humanity, with compassion or understanding and forgiveness of Self and others.
I learned that nobody walks a perfectly straight road, lined with roses or gold.
Once I accepted that I am a survivor of child abuse, neglect, racism, sexism, and smallism, and that I managed myself along my tortuous pathways to end up as a loving, self-loving, mature, intelligent, and kind person, I stopped crucifying myself.
Everyone has ups and downs and twists and turns.
Courage is a big stepping stone to the fountain of self-love. When you face your unhealthy attachments or co-dependencies arising from trauma, it may cause another hit of mortification (horror and guilt).
You need to dig deep and face truths about your own responsibility for shutting out others or for tending to have unhelpful patterns of thoughts and resultant behaviour. When you discover things that you don’t like about yourself, do not get angry with yourself or blame yourself for not being perfect.
A brave heart can speak to truth and swallow a curative pill. Instead, congratulate yourself for revealing the core motivations of your behaviour and for working upon transforming them.
There is gold in the wishing well at the end of an era of recovery from childhood and earlier trauma. Embrace the potential for growth from your challenges, whether they be past trauma or outer external things that you don’t like.
Everyone is on their Own Wonky path
We tend to blame ourselves for wrong things happening for illogical reasons. And too much self-blame is an outdated survival response. You need to be kind to yourself.
There is “good” and “bad” in everyone is not a cliche, but is true to varying degrees. But that doesn’t mean that you shoud feel responsible and GUILTY over every single thing that you are associated with.
Traumatised people tend to box themselves in or be rigid because they are subconsciously scared of being who they really are. Who you are is someone whose birthright is good health, peace, and love and having your needs met.
In my 53rd year, in 2017, after carrying the weight of guilt or inflated responsibility and self-blame for 42 years, I finally realized that deep down I was more than “good enough.”
But I had not allowed myself to love myself.
Holding space for someone means just being there to help them meet their needs and goals in their way, not yours. You help them their way by being present and offering help and suggesting things intuitively, rather than telling them what to do.
Helping others doesn’t mean always feeling obliged to do what you’re told or analyzing yourself to the nth degree over how much you are to blame for something.
We are all connected, so the “blame” can’t lie with any one person or thing!
You must give yourself the appreciation that you deserve, for being the best you can at any point of time. You need to accept that you don’t need to be perfect or to do things perfectly and that nothing is perfect.
Life is wonky, so don’t crucify or blame yourself.
Honor yourself for being you doing the best you can. Get to know your own character traits and tendencies or patterns of thoughts and behaviour intimately. “Know thyself” is essential so that you understand your typical reactions and can question them as needed.
Going through your past timeline with a counselor or an NLP practitioner may help you unravel the voices in your head that made you feel not good enough.
Connect to your Soul and Source for support
If you’ve been subjected to intense trauma, love yourself enough to give whole-hearted attention to messages and guidance from your Soul and from your spirit team (Angels and Spirit Guides) that steer you to helpful thoughts and feelings and actions.
Your Soul, the eternal spirit within and around you, that connects you to Source and to Angels and Spirit Guides, is here to help you with your life journey.
This happens through nudges, inspiration, synchronicities, messages of support and love, and divine intervention. Pay attention to sudden, strong thoughts, meaningful signs, intuition, and to a repetition of outer happenings that compel you to take a useful or helpful action.
Ask your Guardian Angels and Spirit Guides every day for support and love or guidance on general or specific things.
FEEL yourself as an expanded peaceful, joyful consciousness, which is you and your Soul in partnership. In the mornings you can ask your Soul, “what does my Soul want me to do today?” Then relax and be open to strong messages or signs or thoughts that appear.
This blog, “Soul Connexions” encourages you to see everything as a part of “Divine Source” or “Divine Creation.”
I believe that we are all facets of the diamond of One Unity Consciousness Divine Love, seeking to learn unified ways of being, e.g. to coexist with all life as human beings.
Although “bad” things happen, they are part of the whole. This doesn’t mean letting them happen, of course, but if we are humane, we need to soul-fully deal with unwanted things.
We do this by rising above our challenges and focusing on our blessings and on the “good”. I overcame three major health episodes and a couple of times wanting to shuffle off this mortal coil.
Connecting to my Soul and to Source or the positive potential of an infinite creation were the keys that unlocked the expression of the best version of me.
Focusing on “good” does not mean ignoring the “bad”, of course, but means believing in the potential for unity and refining our coping strategies. It means, on a daily basis, choosing our thoughts and thus our feelings and behaviour and actions, to create peaceful, happy, and healthy living.
Gratitude or appreciation of my many blessings and of the opportunities that both I and humanity have to evolve spiritually, have played a big part in my life too. This sense of gratitude comes from the Soul.
Source is infinite creation, manifesting angelic ambassadors and spirit guides. Spirit Guides are the spirits of those who lived, who are with you now, to guide and support you.
Angels are real. They are pure frequency of Source or God, light-filled (that appear as light or take on shapes) that are intelligent and work with energy to inspire, love, and guide you, if you invoke them or believe in them and invite them to support and guide you.
Once you sense that you are a part of something greater (your Soul and Source), you are better able to manage anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, and all emotions that keep you chained to limiting thoughts and actions.
This is because you have faith that anything is possible and you focus on peace, love, and happiness.
~ Namaste ~ I see the Divine in You
P.S. You can read about my encounters with Angels at the story below!
By Grace Hanna - all rights reserved. No part of this post or the whole of this post can be reproduced or broadcast without permission of the author. Your Likes and Comments will help my articles be more visible, thank you!