The Search For A Happy Life Goes On

Often we are in nightmare situations, anything from drug addiction, alcoholism, narcissism, etc., because this is what we know best from our own past. Things we grow up with and relationships that were abusive, comprise just a handful of the traumatic situations that affect us later in life. 

The cycle continues, because we don’t think that it’s us…no one ever thinks it’s them. How can this dynamic change if no one ever thinks it’s them? How can we change when we get so angry at each other when one calls the other out on something they did? 

We, as adults that have experienced childhood trauma, keep looking and searching for someone who is not like the person who hurt us, we try to make sure they are not drug addicts or alcoholics, or some other trait that we believe is the problem. But that’s just not what the problem is. As a matter of fact, trying to live that way almost guarantees that we will repeat the negative pattern. Because the problem is not on the outside, it’s on the inside. Until we look and see ourselves more clearly, until we take responsibility for who we have become and our current state of affairs, until we learn what boundaries are and then implement them, we will keep being attracted to the same types of people. If we, as hurt people, refuse to see the negative traits within us that perfectly fit and draw to us the needs of a different type of hurt person, then life will remain the same or get worse. Yes, horrendous things have happened to us. Now we are adults, and the outcome of our lives depends on who we choose to become or what we choose to ignore, if we choose to point the finger away from us or what more aware, more healed human we choose to grow into.

~Janice M. Burke

Image by Kevin Bidwell