It Happened to You, It's Not Who You Are
Discover more from The LifeWalk
It Happened to You, It's Not Who You Are
Internalizing external events: What not to do.
Something bad happened to you… fired, divorced, cancer, abuse, robbed, bankrupt. These are all terrible things, there is no doubt. We can even use our “survival” of these events to help others and promote awareness. These are some of the positive outcomes of negative events.
When something devastating happens to us, it affects us: physically, emotionally, spiritually. It changes our outlook on life, maybe even our outlook about other people. It may change how we look at ourselves. We become victims and then survivors.
This, I believe, is part of the evolution of the healing process.
All the events of our life are a part of us and in part form who we are, but they are not us.
Everything we do and everything that is done to us becomes a part of us. It’s what makes us who we are. Events may influence how we act, react, or respond in the future. Our opinions, our mindset, our thought processes are affected. All the events of our life are a part of us and in part form who we are, but they are not us.
What sometimes happens, after overcoming the initial pain, is rather than moving through the healing process and moving forward, we internalize either the victim stage of the event itself or the survival aspect of it.
Finding a new job after being fired is a part of who we are. Thriving after beating cancer is a part of who we are. Loving again after a divorce is a part of who we are. But none of these things: victim, survivor, wounded, quitter, are us.
When we internalize and then identify as one aspect of who we are based on something that happened to us, we get stuck in that space. When we repeatedly identify as “divorced”, our energy cannot move forward into a new relationship. The focus is on being divorced. When we repeatedly identify as an abuse survivor, we remain focused on that one aspect of the past and not on the unlimited potential for the future. We begin to form our identity around that one event.
Being a victim is a horrible space to exist in. Being a survivor is certainly to be celebrated. But there is a next step. The next step is to take these two “events” and use them to move forward to become better “whole people”.
Just as your eye color or weight or nationality are all parts of you, you are not any one of them alone. You are a mash up of all those things, plus your personality, your habits, your thoughts, and more.
You are also a mash up of all the events that have occurred throughout your life, past, present, and future. Don’t let just one event define you. You are more than that. Much more.
Get in touch with the beautiful mash up of everything that make you a beautiful YOU! Contact me today to break through the definitions you’ve internalized and move forward into being the multifaceted being you are!