Learning Not to Brace

 I’m beginning to notice another way my little girl has followed me into adulthood.

She braces.

As a child, I learned to anticipate what might happen next. I didn’t always know when something unpleasant was coming, so my body learned to get ready.

Tighten.

Protect.

Prepare.

I didn’t realize how deeply that pattern had become part of me until I began experiencing physical pain.

Today, I catch myself physically tightening my body as though I can protect myself from whatever might hurt next.

My muscles tense.

My body contracts.

I brace for the next sensation.

It makes sense when I think about the little girl I once was.

She learned that danger could come without warning. Her body was trying to protect her the only way it knew how.

But I’m not that little girl anymore.

We don’t have to brace for everything.

We don’t have to tighten against every sensation.

We can notice what is happening without immediately preparing for the worst.

We can soften, even if only a little.

We can breathe.

We can remind the body:

I’m here.

I’m listening.

You don’t have to protect me from everything.

We are safe in this moment.

I don’t expect myself to stop bracing overnight.

After all, this is a pattern my body learned a very long time ago.

But now I can notice it.

And when I notice it, I have a choice.

I can gently let go.

Not because I know exactly what will happen next.

But because I’m learning that I don’t have to meet every moment already prepared for battle.

Maybe safety isn’t always about protecting myself from what might happen.

Maybe sometimes safety is allowing my body to discover that, right now, I can simply be here.

Finding More Parts of Myself

  I was certain that after all these years of doing inner-child work—and teaching it—I knew myself pretty well.

But apparently, I don’t.

Today I discovered another very young part of me.

A part who likes to create negative stories.

She expects the worst.

She looks for what could go wrong.

She imagines the bad things that might happen before they ever do.

I think I’m going to call her the Sabotager.

I remember knowing she was there early in my recovery. I worked with her. I thought I understood her.

And yet, somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that she was gone.

She’s not. She lives in my nervous system.

She still expects bad things to happen because that was her experience as a child.

Bad things did happen.

And when you’re a little girl, you don’t have the ability to understand why.

You just learn to expect them.

So she learned to watch.

To anticipate.

To imagine the worst.

Maybe what I’ve called sabotage was actually her attempt to protect me.

If she could warn me first, maybe I wouldn’t be caught off guard.

But there was a cost.

Those experiences crushed her little spirit.

They stole some of her joy.

And perhaps she has been carrying that expectation of danger all these years.

I’m not angry with her.

I’m beginning to understand her.

She isn’t my enemy.

She’s a very young part of me who learned that the world could hurt her.

And now that I’ve found her again, maybe I can teach her something new:

We don’t have to expect the worst anymore.

We can make room for something else.

Maybe even joy.

Finally Reaching a Bottom

 I remember having thoughts of hurting myself as a child and even as an adult, prior to recovery.

The emotional pain I carried from childhood was so loud that I didn’t know how to escape it.

I tried relationships with men.

I tried drugs and alcohol.

I tried everything I could think of to make the pain go away.

But the pain only got worse.

Eventually, I reached a place where I had to admit something I had never really been willing to admit before:

That my choices to relieve the pain only cost me more pain.

And for the first time, I genuinely asked God for help.

I had prayed before.

I would ask God for help, and then the next day I would go right back to doing what I had always done.

But this time was different.

When I hit my knees, something inside me surrendered.

I didn’t know what was going to happen.

I didn’t know how much my life was about to change.

But somewhere deep inside, I knew it was different this time.

I had finally stopped trying to save myself.

And I believe God threw me a lifeline that day.

I just had to be willing to reach for it.

And I did.

When Punishment Becomes Familiar

 Was punishment used as a way to control you as a child?

It definitely was in our home.

Threats were used to make us behave, even though I didn’t have behavior problems.

And unfortunately, when pain and punishment are familiar, we are likely to grow up and  learn how to use them against ourselves.

That’s what I did as an adult.

I was hard on myself.

I criticized myself.

I expected myself to get things right.

Somehow, I carried the voice of punishment inside me long after I had left childhood behind.

It wasn’t until recovery that my life began to take a different direction.

I began to learn something completely new.

Compassion.

Self-love.

Forgiveness.

I began to understand that I didn’t have to punish myself into becoming a better person.

I could love myself into becoming more whole.

What a different way to live.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts recovery has given me:

Learning that I don’t have to hurt myself to grow.

🌸 ALWAYS FEEL FREE to share in the comment section below.