Except Me
If you haven’t experienced trauma firsthand, I hope my words give some understanding into the beliefs a trauma survivor has. If you love a survivor, please know they aren’t broken. They may be cracked and misguided; but there is hope. They passionately believe things about themselves and the world that, from another’s perspective, plainly isn’t true. We can’t filter through the worthlessness on our own. Healing is possible with the proper guidance though.
Throughout my life I have always been an externally compassionate person. Despite my trauma-or maybe because of my traumas-I have always been able to see the value in other humans. Every human on the plant has value and worth. It doesn’t matter where you come from, how you behave, what you look like, or what you’ve been through; you have worth. During the process of my healing, I even argued with my therapist about my abusers worth and their need to heal too. I know that probably sounds crazy, but I did. This may be a great quality to have, but I could see everyone else’s value and worth except my own. I was certain I was 100% worthless. Had anyone on the planet told me their story and there were even flecks of my story, I would care. I would tune in and be gentle. I would love them and be compassionate. When it was inside my own skin, I didn’t know how to do that.
It’s astounding what worthlessness can do. With trauma and it’s messaging, there’s this magical shelter of “except me.” As long as it wasn’t my body, everybody has worth- just not me. There’s this blindness, this covering that worthlessness causes. I had to learn that the covering of worthlessness was changing what was true in my head. I had to sift through life’s truths and what came through the filter of worthlessness at me as truth.
The behaviors I exhibited trying to cope with my trauma on my own was self-sabotage at its finest. Why would someone who generally was compassionate with morals start behaving in ways that were the opposite- spiraling their life out of control? Worthlessness. I couldn’t see any other way, any other life, any other worth. I imploded because that’s what I thought I deserved. My normally kind and gentle self to others couldn’t see that my imploding wasn’t only hurting myself. That dome of worthlessness not only blocked the truth about personal worth but gave me blinders to the affect I had on those who loved me.
I had spent a good chunk of my life feeling worthless. It’s what I knew, it was familiar. Numbing my pain, not being self-compassionate and curious, not grieving the hurt was protective of the worthlessness. My healing progressed when I stopped protecting the worthlessness and started acknowledging my own value. I had to ask myself what I believed was truth and how would I see those truths differently if it was anyone else believing it about themselves. Deep down I knew every human has worth. Not except me, but including me. We all have worth! Stop protecting the worthlessness.
“My healing progressed when I stopped protecting the worthlessness and started acknowledging my own value.” -JJ