Have you accepted responsibility for your healing?
I realize that this is a touchy subject.
A common misconception about accepting responsibility for your healing journey and for your growth is that you’re actually somehow justifying the abuse that you went through. It feels like you’re saying that what happened was okay.
While it may feel that way, that’s not true at all.
One of my favorite quotes is “what happened to you is not your fault but healing is your responsibility.”
What that means is that you had no control over what happened to you. It wasn’t ok, you didn’t ask for it, you didn’t deserve it. But, as unfair as it is, healing is your job. Healing, growth, and recovery are things that no one else can do for you.
If I punch you really hard in the arm, there’s nothing that I can do in order to speed up the healing process. Sure, I can say sorry, but that doesn’t impact the pain at all.
Even though I’m the one that punched you, it’s your body’s job to heal and recover from it.
Is it your fault that I decided to up and punch you in the arm? Of course not. But your body still has to do everything it can to heal.
Here’s something to remember: whether I apologize or not has no effect on the rate of healing. Should I apologize? Of course! But whether I do or don’t doesn’t change anything.
Refusing to heal until you get an apology is like punching yourself in the bruise over and over again. It doesn’t affect me, all you’re doing is hurting yourself.
For more information on this, check out this post I did on chasing the apology.
I’m the first to admit that none of this is fair.
It’s not fair that I have to heal from something that someone else did. It’s not right that I’m the one who has to fight through recovery because of something I never asked for.
But unfair or not, the only person I’m hurting by not doing it, is myself. I’m the only one who can make the decision to heal. No one else can do it for me.
Accepting responsibility for your healing doesn’t make what happened ok, it just means that you’re taking your life back.
After I punch you in the arm, you’re going to ask yourself questions. “What do I need to do to make the pain stop? How can I help my body heal? What’s the next step to take here?”
That doesn’t mean that what I did was okay.
It’s just saying that you want to take your life back, that you want to stop surviving and truly live.
That is the thing that I refused to accept for a very, very long time.
I have to make the decision every day to accept responsibility for my healing and take my life back. My brain loves to obsess about how it’s not fair, but it doesn’t change the fact that it needs to be done.
Prefer to watch? Here’s the video!
Working through these things taught me that I don’t have to live in the pain anymore.
This work taught me that this isn’t going to be the rest of my life.
I didn’t have a choice then. I didn’t have a chance to say no, but now I do. Now I have a choice and I’m not going to waste that choice living under the pain of my abuser.
It’s hard to work through this, but it’s also hard not to. Sitting in your victimhood, replaying those moments over and over in your mind, that’s hard. I’d rather go through the hard that’s going to help me find freedom.
Girl, what you went through wasn’t your fault.
You didn’t ask for this. It’s not fair, none of it is.
But you deserve healing, you deserve to finally experience freedom.
You have to make that decision. And I’m not going to sit here and act like it’s an easy decision to make. It is so hard to willingly face your demons. But the hard does not last forever.
I’m still on my journey, but I’ve come so far. I’m able to wear what I want to wear without fear of being criticized. I’m able to experience life without the worry that something will happen to me.
When you choose healing, you’re choosing to take your power back.
You deserve to experience that feeling, you deserve to live life without constantly worrying about what others think or do.
It’s not easy, but you’ve got this!
If you’re ready to finally take your life back, then I’ve got something for you. I created a FREE five day Confidence Course. In less than 15 minutes a day, I share the exact framework I give my clients. This is going to be the perfect foundation for you to build your recovery journey on. Click here to grab your free course!
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