Iâm in bed but I was thinking about a conversation I had last week and how we talk about doing the work on ourselves. About healing. How we talk about childhood experiences and traumas
And this person was telling me how nothing bad or traumatic happened to them during childhood, so they donât feel like thereâs anything to work on. And it made me think, we tend to associate healing with something dramatic. Big events. Clear trauma. Obvious wounds
But childhood doesnât only shape us through what went wrong. It shapes us through what was normalized. I also want to throw in how big simple experiences and situations are for children, that as adults we see as no big deal at all. I see this a lot with people I know who have children, and notice how they take things we find minuscule very seriously
You donât need a chaotic story to have patterns. You donât need abuse to have blind spots. Sometimes itâs not about what happened to you but about what you learned something was. What you learned conflict looked like. How emotions were handled in your house. What was praised. What was ignored. What felt safe. What didnât
And sometimes the âworkâ isnât about repairing damage. Itâs about becoming conscious
Because even a âgoodâ childhood still installs beliefs. About money. About worth. About how much space youâre allowed to take up. About whether your needs are inconvenient or welcome. Healing isnât only for the broken version of you. Itâs for the unconscious version
So maybe the real question isnât if something bad happened to us but what did we internalize without realizing it
Just like I remember a conversation with someone who has never even been in a relationship⌠but has a lot of triggers around relationships
Thatâs really what made me think about the more recent conversation all together. Because you donât have to experience something directly for it to shape you. You can absorb it. From your parents. From watching other peopleâs dynamics. From what was modeled. From what wasnât modeled
If you grew up watching love feel unstable, distant, emotionally unavailable etc your nervous system still learned something. Even if no one ever hurt you âpersonally.â Even if youâve never dated
You can fear abandonment without ever being abandoned by a partner. You can fear intimacy without ever having experienced it. You can have triggers around commitment without ever committing
Because what youâre reacting to isnât the relationship. Itâs the blueprint. And sometimes the work isnât about unpacking trauma. But asking yourself where you learned something. Especially if youâre not liking the results youâre getting
For me personally, I keep it simple. My baseline is: am I happy? Am I actually getting what I want?
Not what sounds good on paper. Not what looks mature. Not what Iâve learned to tolerate. But what I genuinely want
Because at some point, all the inner work, the childhood conversations, the awareness, it has to translate into real life.
Am I choosing relationships that feel safe?
Am I building a life that feels aligned?
Am I shrinking or expanding?
I donât overcomplicate it
If Iâm constantly triggered, constantly justifying, constantly explaining why something âisnât that badâ âI turned out fineâ âthis is good enoughâ then thatâs information. And if I feel clear and at peace, thatâs information too
The work matters. Awareness matters. But at the end of the day, I just ask myself if it is making me happy & all that or if Iâm repeating something I learned a long time ago
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