It takes many layers of shedding our emotional wounds before we understand the fundamental truth that people's actions and choices, at the end of the day have nothing to do with us and everything to do with them.
Just like the choices and actions we make deep down have a basis in our understanding of ourselves, reality, and all the beliefs we held on to for so long thinking it would work somehow. It never does though, does it?

As children, we don't have the capacity to rationally think things through, so most times to gain a sense of control of the situation we blame ourselves. This follows us into adulthood and it is understandable, right? If the way you treat me is my fault, and I just fix that fault you will treat me better, right? Wrong.

Before we have even done any sort of healing work the pattern we fall into is thinking why does this keep happening to me? We always feel victimized, and please don't get me wrong being a victim is very real many times but I am talking about the kind of victimization we put on ourselves. Like a big wet blanket preventing us from enjoying the little things that make life, life. We get so caught up in these emotions of despair they drown out our inner power to make a different choice. We simply forget we allow things. Again, not to victim blame, but to remind us of the control we do possess in any given situation.

To give an example. Many of us have been mistreated by people many times, people that abuse us, selfish people, or we simply just choose people that are very emotionally unavailable, and these are one-sided and very painful relationships to maintain. I wrote about when this pattern keeps repeating, there can be many reasons but one is that we have suppressed a side of ourselves that keeps getting mirrored. So for example, we keep attracting emotionally unavailable partners, chances are a part of us is emotionally unavailable and is in actuality very afraid to be in i close intimate relationship because we want nothing more to be seen for who we are, but at the same time standing in the way is this adopted shame form our upbringing that keeps echoing how embarrassing those parts are.

Having someone not interested in those parts makes it feel safer. But I do want to add that when this pattern starts to feel very uncomfortable, it is a sign you are ready to shift the belief and heal it. And please let me remind you of one thing. Emotional unavailability does not mean there are no emotions, it means there are many emotions but a huge crippling fear to express them healthily. It is a fear of being seen for who we truly are.

But back to my point. I highlighted a pattern above, and what happens after we are aware of this pattern of always being mistreated? We get to stand in the sacred middle as I just now decided to call it. The sacred middle is where we stop being so emersed by a pattern and start to look at it from a more detached point of view. The mistreatment starts to trigger a little less and makes us start thinking, why in the world am I putting up with this?

Here, it’s crucial to make a choice. Choosing different thoughts about yourself will automatically create different feelings about the situation at hand, and most importantly it will propel us to choose different actions. We start growing and expanding. We might decide to approach the person differently, to talk about things in a more vulnerable way, to express all of ourselves. But one thing I know for sure, this process will make the people in our lives either grow with us or we will simply grow apart. It hurts like hell, but there is no other way if we want to be truly happy. If you ask for your needs to be met if you ask for someone to consider you and they still choose not to, it might be time to start thinking about leaving the situation.

Staying somewhere we cannot be seen and appreciated, even if it worked for us in the past, is not only keeping us stuck in a painful pattern creating suffering and reinforcing the belief we are not worthy of real love, it also enables the other person and stunts their own growth.
Changing something so ingrained in us and created to keep us safe is very scary. But staying with this wet blanket of invincibility and not making any changes will hurt a lot more, trust me.