Where does one start, when trying to unlearn years of unbeknown trauma. It's been a minute and I can now atleast decipher the difference between the lies about me and the truths that I hold forever within.
After remaining in an emotionally toxic and verbally abusive relationship for too many of my young adult years, I had unwittingly developed a new kind of self doubt.
It's not my own inner voice that runs through my head when I begin to feel negatively about myself, but it's the voice of another. It's the voice of the one that taught me that not only should I not love the person that I am, but no one possibly could.
Sometimes I slip up and I fall back into believing that it's all true for a second. I will feel undeserving, undesirable and unwelcome. It's a working progress, yet I have come a long way with building my inner strength.
I never want anyone to ever feel untruths about themselves, because of the seeds that have been planted by another.
The 10 top lies that I'm still trying to unlearn, in order to remember who I am and continue grow as a person.
1) I am an inconvenience.
In reality I will never be inconvenient for anyone that actually deserves what it is that I bring to the table. If anyone were to ever want to make me feel this way again in the future, they're just proving to me, that they are not the one to have a seat and dine.
2) Everyone hates me.
Sure. Some people probably do but that's their issue, not mine. My vibe attracts my tribe and I choose to surround myself with people that want to lift me up.
3) It's always my fault.
I'm not going to lie, it's incredibly hard to stop saying that "I'm sorry" when anything ever goes wrong, no matter how small. I have been conditioned to believe that every error and every problem, comes back to something that I have done and that in some way it's always my fault.
4) I'm responsible for the happiness of those around me.
In the past when I've been hurt the perpetrator has always had a prepared reasoning. It was always reflected back to how the affection, compliments and over all attention that I should have been providing was in some way lacking. This one overlaps with #3. For a long time I felt compelled to please others, always before myself. Slowly I'm learning just how unsustainable this mindset really is.
5) No one can love me.
No one will want me, no one will put up with me.
I'm needy, opinionated, too black and white. I'm ruined, tainted. Plain unlovable.
A lie created purely to keep me down and vulnerable. An attempt to make me return to a life that was strangling and suffocating my very spirit.
I can see right through this strategy now.
6) I'm ugly.
I was told in quite creative ways and it was insinuated often enough, that both inside and out I was not attractive enough.
By means of small take downs, in order to have the upper hand and also by always having the wandering eye.
I'm not a super model, nor am I citizen of the year by any means, but I know that I am a good, loyal and loving human. This alone says alot more for me than the person that put this ugliness in the forefront of my mind.
7) I can't make it on my own.
This one is just laughable now. It was also the easiest to prove wrong to myself. I'm determined. I can do anything I put my mind to. And the best part is, no one can stop me.
8) I'm crazy.
Yeah, crazy good. Next.
9) I am too hard to please.
Similar to #1; being an inconvenience. I know It is not too much to ask for honesty, respect and common human decency. This does not make anyone a difficult person, it's just too much for a narcissist to offer. Again, that's on them.
10) I'm permanently indebted.
Hell no, if anyone should feel that they're owing, it's the person in which took so much, so often and couldn't even and can't even bring themselves to offer basic respect. I don't owe anyone anything. I don't have to listen to the hot-bin-juice, lies that drool from the gaping jaw of a toxic person that never, ever tried to open their eyes or ears when they actually had the chance to.
If you hear a lie so often and in so many formats, you may just start to believe it. Undoing the damage of emotional abuse is harder than healing a visible wound.
At times I'm triggered by the smallest things.
But learning to trust myself and to love myself is empowering. I do have the strength to push passed all of the lies that I was told.
I know who I am.