Being raised in drama, trauma and dysfunction can leave us, as adults, continuing the patterns of pain.

We often don’t know who we are.

We don’t know what we like or what we want for ourselves.

We may feel like a chameleon…always changing to our circumstances and surroundings.

Eager to jump into situations where we are focused on keeping others happy without knowing what might make US happy.

We know we don’t feel right but don’t know how to feel better.

Staying safe and sacrificing “me” to stay safe was how we survived but now we want to do more than survive…we want to learn how to live.

We can begin by recognizing this dynamic of the dysfunction and start taking ownership of how we feel, what we think and what we do.

We are no longer slaves to the past as we begin to consider our future.

We may only have a sense of knowing that we don’t like how we are being treated.

So we begin by asking “what do I like?”

“I know I don’t like feeling like this so what might I like instead?”

We can make a list of things we find pleasure in and purposing to invite more of that into our days.

As we find our sense of self that is separate from those around us we may notice that we start to feel better about ourselves.

Oftentimes this improvement helps us to see that staying with those who continue to berate us is no longer serving us.

This empowers us to continue to ask those questions…

What do I like?

What do I not like?

What do I want?

We begin to see that we no longer have the need to sacrifice ourselves to stay safe.

We begin to dream about what could be as we let go of what was.

We begin to shape ourselves into the person we needed all along.

We begin to smile more.

We laugh more.

We begin to feel freedom from the pain and invite the pleasures that come with knowing who we are and that this is more than who they told us we were.

We begin to hope and trust that we do indeed know what’s best for ”me” as we let go of survival and learn how to live.

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