Half of the battle towards personal transformation is in knowing where we are damaged.
This damage can have occurred due to any number of circumstances:
An innate character flaw (nature).
A family history of dysfunctional relational modeling (nurture).
Mishandling of short or long term stress.
Past experiences that continue to haunt us because of our role either as instigator, participant, or victim.
We can unpack this damage by retracing our steps from the current negative feeling, emotion or thought, to what came before it, and what came before that, until we get to the source.
For me, I could not do this on my own in my secular years because I actually did not know I needed to, and when I began to realize that I needed to, I was too afraid to face myself or to take the blinders off regarding loved ones.
With God as our unconditional guide, however, we will not be led astray through the maelstrom of personal discovery, and he will keep his guardrails secure around us if we let him.
We can begin by objectively acknowledging and accepting that damage has been done, that it resides in us, and that that is the only damage we have any power to address. By trying to fix the damage in others at the same time, or in place of ourselves, we wind up right back where we started: stuck.
The first thing to do when dissecting inner damage under our now unbiased microscope, is to accurately assess whether the damage is still indeed happening. It could be that the damage exists only in the form of ruminations. This is damage that could have healed long ago if it had not been perpetuated by our sucking on it like a pacifier.
Other times, what we see is that a personal character flaw that we’ve known about for years has continued to perpetuate because we let it. In that case, all subsequent damage has been, and continues to be, self-inflicted. This realization alone is enough to fix that one!
Another observation may be that someone from our past damaged us due to their thoughtless words or behaviors.
But if that person is no longer in our life, or if that person no longer has the position of authority in our life, then any damage they have already done, or could possibly incur, is now really null and void.
In other words, since they have no position in our life, why would anything they say or do have any position in our life?
When we agree with and incorporate the objective truth that a certain person or persons have no power over us, and yet we still continue to over-rule that truth with a false appointment of control over us, we are giving them permission to what they have no right to.
Again, self-inflected.
Many more observations can come of facing into inner damage. The key is to center ourselves in the actual context, and see circumstances, past and present, as they really are, and stop filtering them through a lens of damage.
And this lens of damage will find and see offense everywhere. It will sabotage healthy or potentially healthy relationships, not to mention keep inner peace and a blissful conscience well out of reach.
Cutting the cord to a damaged worldview, on the other hand, will open the floodgates of gratitude, positive realities, and abundant life experiences.
As we view life through a motivation of open-minded reality, we see that there is much more to let go of, be joyful about and that is going well in life than there ever was when we saw everything through our damaged sense of self.
Everything that had ceased to exist outside of the damage we so earnestly focused on can now come into view, and we can relish all of it, as if for the first time, as a wonder, a miracle and an absolute marvel.
This is our new normal, our new context and our new way of being: undamaged.
Copyright Barb Harwood
