Sometimes, answering a phone call can be painful.
You learn of a loved one’s passing.
Your child didn’t get accepted into the college of their choice.
You receive confirmation that your company is downsizing.
Live long enough and you’re bound to get calls like these. It’s a part of being human and living in a world where suffering exists.
Sometimes these kinds of calls can leave lasting scars on your interior life. Others likely won’t not know your great fight and perseverance, or how you might have to battle day-by-day just to live above the circumstances that once befell you.
But you know. You’re well aware of your invisible scars.
But did you know that these scars are also a source for the stories you tell yourself?
Like I said in The Stories We Tell Ourselves:
While some suffering results in physical wounds that all the world can see, every painful episode in your life leaves an emotional wound that’s often hidden from view …. Since those inner wounds often take much longer to heal than a broken bone does, we learn to walk with a barely noticeable limp. It’s not perceptible to others, but we know the particular pain points of our souls, those places we shield off from others because, if they ever draw near to it, they may hurt us in the same way we were hurt before. Because that prior wound was so painful or traumatic, we learn ways to prevent our relationships from ever touching that nerve again.
Rather than picking at those invisible scars, I suggest seeking to understand how your past pain may still impact your present decisions. Once you develop an understanding of how those hard circumstances and difficult relationships in your past may still be affecting your life, you can actually gain power over how—or even if—those negative stories will continue to guide your decisions.
In other words, you can move from living life in fear of the what-ifs to living life in faith of the would-could-bes.
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