What If You’re Not Broken?

Talking about trauma, about grief that touches your soul, is hard. 

I come here to start writing and again and again I leave empty handed,
not because I don’t have words but because sometimes the pain is just too much.
And it’s hard to heal when you keep poking at the wound. 

Regardless, I never want another human to experience the pain I did. 
It is heartrending, soul crushing, and frankly sometimes it knocks the wind right out of me when I think about it.

When Insight Isn’t Enough

I thought I was ready to heal. 
I knew what had happened in my life, I was no stranger to it. 
I knew how it affected me - just look at all of the awful decisions I’ve made.  And yet, I was stuck. 

I could recognize on an intellectual level what happened, why I felt the way that I felt. 
But somehow that made no difference to my lived experience.
I doggedly studied psychology, hoping I would find an answer,
I would find a way out of the hell my life was. 
And yet still, I couldn’t make progress. 

It was like I was a passenger in my own life, the psychological blueprints showing me exactly what I needed to do
and how to “fix” myself, but being totally unable to.  

Why couldn’t I just move forward?

The Missing Piece Was Safety

I thought I’d had all the answers and it was merely a character flaw that I wasn’t getting better. 
But one of the biggest realizations I’ve had is that healing doesn’t start with insight. 

It starts with safety. 

Not just physical, but, and this is the part that I missed, emotional and psychological safety as well.

Psychological safety means feeling secure enough in a group that you feel safe to share ideas, thoughts, and feelings. 
It allows you to take interpersonal risks without fear of punishment, scorn or reproach.
It allows you to exist without feeling the need to brace for something at all times.  

It’s NOT:  no one is yelling at me so I’m safe.
It IS:  the absence of threat in your BODY, not in your environment.

The truth is, I didn’t realize how unsafe I still felt, because I’d been unsafe for so long that it just felt like… life. 
I was trained to be quiet, to obey, to take whatever was handed to me and to be grateful for it, regardless of the physical,
mental or emotional toll it would take on me.

The idea that I did not feel safe as an adult, in my own home, with my own little family that I created, seemed preposterous. 
I certainly was not in any overt danger, but it turns out my nervous system was still responding as if I was.  

I didn’t recognize this was happening until recently, when my frustration began mounting. 
I was doing everything right, the self-help starter pack:
I was in therapy, I was journaling, I was learning all of the right words - attachment wounds, trauma loops, fawn response. 
But I still felt like I was dragging my body through molasses. 
Every step forward felt temporary, and I couldn’t figure out why I kept snapping back into shutdown.  

Letting The Armor Down

I was trying to rebuild myself without ever setting down my armor. 
I was still bracing - for rejection, for judgment, for abandonment, for the other shoe to drop. 
And that bracing told me that I still didn’t feel safe, regardless of present circumstances. 
And it turns out, you can’t heal wounds when you’re in a state of constant emotional flinching.

So if you’re trying - really trying - and still feel stuck, it might not be because you’re doing it wrong. 
It might be because you’re still carrying the armor that once kept you alive. 

That armor isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.  You built it out of necessity, to protect you. 
But healing can’t be done with that armor on.

You don’t have to force your way forward, you don’t have to prove you’re ready. 
You just have to ask yourself - with honesty and gentleness - “Does any part of me still feel in danger?”
Because if the answer is yes, then you don’t need more discipline, you need more safety.

Safety is not the reward for healing.  It’s the precondition.

-A