When making reference to success in any area, you often hear the phrase, "there are Levels to this". Same goes for healing, it's a process. One that comes about by shedding layers of protection that we've built up around our hurt. Layers that have been piled on over the years & maybe for good reason, but also need to be uncovered to bring us to our healed place.
When I think about where I used to be on my own healing journey, it makes me laugh to think that I actually thought I had "arrived", at one point. When really, it was just the beginning for me. I was only just starting to peel back the layers of my own personal onion. I had only shed the first layer, thinking, "WELP! that wasn't so bad!". "See, I can self reflect. I can dig deep". Oh how shallow I was. Looking back now I see how God was so merciful and graciously patient with me in my healing process. He knew how many devastating realizations I could stand at one time and during each season. He's SO good like that. There's no way I could've processed all that hurt at once, especially being at the spiritual and emotional maturity level I was on at the time. Not to say I've arrived now, but at least I can admit that I haven't. I think the difference is now I have enough awareness to know that I haven't arrived, if that makes sense. It's like the more you know, the more you realize how much you actually don't know and didn't know up until knowing. We're always learning and we're always healing. I don't believe this process will ever end until we get to Heaven.
My awakening and self realization started with a toxic relationship finally ending. So what did I do? What any other unhealed person would do. Convince myself that I wasn't the problem and then I got myself into another toxic relationship, and then another and then another. As crazy as that cycle sounds, it was! However, each relationship ending taught me something new about myself. To entertain the levels of toxicity that I was, I had to come to the humble realization that something inside of me was toxic too. I discovered I had issues with self worth, to even tolerate the bad relationships that should've never made it past hello. It didn't stop there, let's keep going, let's keep peeling so to speak. Where did the low self worth even come from? Where did the tolerance for such toxicity come from? Being around too many people who projected their insecurities onto me? Possibly. I did have a very toxic circle at one point. So there's another layer. Ok we're making progress right? Get rid of the toxic circle and problem solved. Nope. Let's keep peeling. Every time we ask more questions and those questions lead to more questions then we're finally starting to make some progress. We're peeling more and more of our onion back. Here's the next question, "Why am I so comfortable in unhealthy environments when I know they're not good for me? How & When did this become normal for me? Who told me this was normal? Keep peeling and once you get down to the root of it, it always goes back to an unhealed inner child wound. A learned behavior, practiced pattern or straight up coping mechanism for what we experienced in childhood. Somewhere and somehow, someone either told you how to feel about yourself and formed your low self worth or their hurtful actions and disregard of your feelings made you rationalize that you couldn't be treated this way IF you truly mattered, so then essentially you believed a lie (planted by the enemy himself) and you deceived yourself. In my case, I had a very invalidating & emotionally absent parent. One who criticized me more than they encouraged me. That set the tone for me never feeling like I was good enough or didn't deserve the best for myself in life. This had me gravitate towards people who would only reinforce that negative belief about myself. I picked people who made me work to earn their love and who never appreciated me or anything I did. Somehow in high school I even had really mean coaches in all of my sports programs and once I started working professionally, I even came across some really harsh and critical bosses that made me question my abilities as a team member and employee and also made me work double time to "prove" myself. They all reinforced a negative belief I had about myself since childhood. See how that works? But back to my parent, I wasn't ever encouraged to aim high. Even if I did, I was shot down very quickly with cutting remarks. Why? because THEY were never encouraged to aim high. THEY didn't think they could do or be better and that was projected onto me, so when I excelled, instead of being happy for me, it made them mad instead. So I began to feel bad for wanting better for myself or excelling at something I was good at. I ended up dulling my own shine so to speak, and I ended up settling for things, all throughout my life. Jobs, friendships, places to live and even romantic relationships that I knew weren't good for me because deep down I thought this was the best I was ever going to get and what I deserved. If I dared to want more, then the "who does she think she is" mentality crept in. What a limiting closed box mindset! The Devil is a Liar. The problem with this dumbing down & settling mindset, is that by accepting situations that aren't good for us, we actually inflict MORE damage causing us to need to HEAL from MORE things in the future. What an awful cycle to be trapped in. What a valuable lesson to learn for what not to do for younger generations. I would never want to project my insecurities onto my child, but that's what happened to me. My parent did it to me and then I ended up with partners who did the same. Anything good I would try to do or be would just highlight the deficiencies in them & I was hated for it.
A huge part of healing is preventative maintenance. Making better choices for ourselves so that we don't have to be hurt in the first place. This also goes for not inflicting pain onto someone else to add to their load of needing to heal in the first place. But that's for a whole other blog post.
Everyone has a Why. Why do they act a certain way, speak a certain way, avoid certain things or people. There is always a reason WHY we do what we do. Keep asking WHY? and we'll keep uncovering another layer. The start, try to figure out what you're feeling at this very moment and work your way backwards. Start at the adult version of you, then work your way backwards towards your childhood. Here's a quick example:
Question Layer 1: What am I feeling? Name the feeling; Fear, anxiety, anger, disappointment, betrayal, rejection, etc
Layer 2: Anxiety! I'm feeling anxious
Question Layer 3: Ok, WHY am I feeling anxious? What just happened? What was my trigger?
Layer 4: I just ended a toxic relationship. I'm going through a breakup
Question Layer 5: This is a good thing you got yourself out of a bad situation. Why the anxiety?
Question Layer 6: Because I'm really afraid. Why am I afraid?
Question Layer 7: I'm afraid of being abandoned. Why am I afraid of being abandoned? Its ok to be abandoned by someone who wasn't good for you or never loved you.
ANSWER Layer 8: It's giving me flashbacks of when I was abandoned (emotionally) as a child by my parent.
Ding ding ding! There it is. The anxiety and fear didn't actually have as much to do with the breakup as we wanted to give it credit for. It's not like it's our first breakup and if we're being honest the person actually wasn't that great. They lost someone great, but we lost someone toxic, which is really a gain. So there must be more. The more is that the breakup is only a trigger. It's highlighting wounds from childhood that were never healed. THAT is the core of this particular onion. The childhood abandonment wound. Being left or abandoned when you're a grown adult who's highly independent shouldn't matter at all because you have the tools and skills to take care of yourself, right? But when that little kid inside isn't healed, oh that abandonment triggers some painful memories & begins to feel devastating and debilitating. This is getting to the core of a matter, the healing core and uncovering our whys down to this layer is crucial for any healing success. But it takes work. This takes time. This takes sitting with yourself and allowing those memories to flood back to be those missing puzzle pieces we're looking for.
“Keep asking WHY? and we'll keep uncovering layers. Each new why is essentially another layer. ”
You determine how far back you want to peel your onion
The 8 layers we just went over are merely an example. Honestly, there could be many sub layers within those 8 layers. I'd venture to say that each and every unhealthy thought pattern we have could essentially be its own onion with a whole new set of layers. Crazy right? That's why it's so important to pray for a renewing of the mind, like we read about in Romans 12:2. It's no wonder we're walking around like a huge stinky mess, emotionally & mentally speaking. We have wounds tucked away so far that are now festering under the surface and ruining our character and causing us to act out in ways that were never meant for us. We're using the copouts saying, "that's just the way I am and this is my personality" when in actuality, this is what you've morphed into to protect those wounds. Until we invite the Holy Spirit in to do the uncovering and truly examine our hearts, He will literally stand outside the walls we've created around our pain until we invite Him in. Which is why I love the following verse in Psalms. It's the best invitation ever.
Psalm 139:23-34 says, "Search me, God, and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting."
Peeling back our own onions takes time & intentionality. These things come about after months or years with a therapist or mentor and a TON of FaceTime with our Heavenly Father. There will be some tears and I think this is ironic, because when you're cooking with a really fresh onion the vapors are so strong, it will make you tear up. But that's ok. Fresh wounds, or even uncovering old wounds will cause some hypersensitivity but it doesn't mean it should be avoided. In fact it's an indicator that even more attention needs to be paid to it.
Lets's keep asking our why's, let's get to the root of our pain so we can finally be done with it and stop going around in circles and repeating the same patterns. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to be a chain breaking, pattern changing, layer peeling conqueror. Don't be afraid of the ugly feelings that come about, that only indicates progress. I'm right here with you Honeys.
Happy Healing,
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