How Past Hurt Negatively Reflects in Your Closest Relationships

Hey! Thank you for making your way here and I hope that at whatever point you are reading this you have set some time aside for yourself, grabbed a hot beverage and are ready to 1. get to know me more and 2. evaluate and feel for yourself.

I have had many thoughts on my heart for a while now and every time that I have felt close to sharing in depth something didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel ready.
Now, I feel ready. I feel ready to share with you DURING the process and not at the end. I feel ready to open up and know that there may be some judgment but also know that there are some of you that are going to read through this and will have needed this. I honestly do what I do for you- the people that read my content with an open heart and mind and dive in when their heart feels they need it most. I do it for the ones that can relate and for the ones who need someone to get real with them so that they feel they are not alone. I know that this blog won’t come without some tears and I also know that the vulnerability hangover is going to be real but here I am. (Thanks Brené Brown)

As many of you know I have been going through a crazy rollercoaster of emotion and each day has had it’s different struggles. I have talked about this a lot but I haven’t really talked about what is going on.

I don’t even know where to start so I am just going to take this back to childhood and we can just go from there.
Growing up I was given a life that I am very thankful for. I was raised on a small farm with lots of property to run around and get dirty, I was blessed with Christian education, and I was also blessed with the opportunity to play competitive sports. While all of that was amazing and great, it really just helped me throw the focus off of the pain that surrounded me. When I was young… very young I got taken advantage of and being the victim I never wanted to tell anyone. I felt as if there was some way that this had to be my fault. I was scared to tell anyone, especially my parents- but there came a time where I felt I had to say something. So that I did. I told my father. His response was similar to “you don’t know what you’re talking about and don’t say such things.” This made me want to run, and run fast. I just wanted to leave anyone and everyone that would possibly say the same thing. I felt betrayed. I felt as if the person that was supposed to be someone that loved me the most in life just didn’t have a care in the world for me.
In reality this was his personality.
I was raised by a narcissistic father who thought (and verbalized) that the world revolved around him and that he knew everything. Google describes a narcissist as someone who promotes selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration. Blaming and Deflecting, Lack of boundaries, and lack of emotional reasoning are also big flags in this personality. This being said I had lived with someone who would emotionally and physically abuse me to the point where I would grow numb and not feel any emotion towards him or the situation but then still at the end of the day, I was told to say I love you and express my love and admiration for him.
This created a pattern in me that I didn’t even know was being made. I numbed myself to  pain and had a very hard time expressing negative emotion. I hated facing my hurt and in that I found myself people pleasing often. I found it way easier to people please because it helped me avoid feeling any negative emotion.
This really started to show in my friendships and relationships as I got older and has brought me to where I am today.

Almost four years ago I met someone that has forever changed my life. We have had many amazing times together but we have also had some of the hardest times of our life together. He has changed my life but he has not changed ME. In the past three years we focussed on how we could change each other by healing the hurt that we so strongly felt from our childhood. We wanted to be each other’s saviour. At the end of the day we were each other’s safe place and where could we heal better than that right? WRONG.

Erick and I have gone through a lot together and this is what I truly wanted to blog on. How past hurt negatively reflects in your closest relationships. I wanted to talk about this with you because I see it happening all around me and especially see it happening within my relationship as I write.
I am not about to dive into Erick’s childhood or what he has gone through in life to make him the way he is today- as that is his story to be told, but I will definitely share on how hurt that has been caused to me in my lifetime has made me the way that I am.
It took us until recently to realize that we ourselves are not the ones that are going to heal each other’s hurt. We can not fix another because… well…. that’s a big job and not one of a spouse. It took us arguing, spending time away from each other, refusing love from another, and so much more to realize this.
Being raised the way I was by someone who would so often hurt me yet expect love in return made me never want to love someone like that again. I would so often tell myself that anyone who had similar anger was more than likely the same person. So when Erick would portray any anger I would automatically shut down and turn numb. Numb to him and numb to the situation. This was not fair to him as I already had unhealed feelings and shutting off towards him was not ok. He so often didn’t know how to get back in. He didn’t know how to give me love that I would receive and he struggled to feel any love from me in return. Now I am not saying that anger is okay, but what i am saying is that because of my unhealed pain I did not fairly love Erick in moments that I could have. This started a viscous cycle. A cycle of who was more hurt in the end and both ends struggling to say I am sorry. We created patterns like this which resulted in the highs being so full of love and and the lows being so low that we would just crumble. There was no consistency in our relationship because we both didn’t know how to love unconditionally. Growing up Erick learned that leaving the problem was the easiest way to solve it. This became such a pattern in our relationship that instead of us dealing with the root problem and solving the hurt we turned away from each other and would even consider leaving each other. We would ignore the love that that we had for each other and just decide that leaving it at that was the easiest way to heal. Then once that decision was made we realized that no healing was ever taking place. We wanted desperately to love and be loved yet when it came down to it we had so much hurt built up in us that we didn’t know how to genuinely love.
It took the past three months of some time apart to really realize that. We finally hit rock bottom and KNEW that there needed to be change. Change for us, and change for our family. We knew that what we had created was far beyond us so we decided that counselling would be the best option for us. We had never made a better decision in our relationship. Counselling has such a stigma to it that the world looks at it like a service that you use only when mentally ill. Which that in itself is just so sad! Counselling is the most beautiful outlet that we can have. Those who work in that field are designed to do that work and are so great at it, but it took us until now to even see that and feel comfort in knowing that. We know that we can be better for ourselves, each other, and our family so why not use outlets that will help serve that goal!
Knowing that we were so broken and that it was beyond us to be able to heal the hurt that had been caused was the hardest yet most powerful step into our healing.
So many people out there are raised in chaos and take full blame. They hide from the pain and they refuse to try and fix it because they think it’s just who they are. It’s not who you are it’s who you have become. It is so fixable and there is such a thing as releasing past hurt so that you feel no pain.

So where are Erick and I at now and what are we doing to break this pattern and create that beautiful life for our family that we have craved so badly?
I myself am debunking all of the childhood pain and hurt with a holistic psychologist. I am taking daily action in my health to free me of the negative patterns.
Erick has implemented new forms of self care including his diet and physical activity in ways he has never tried before.
Together we are seeking counselling. Taking the steps DAILY to love one another and learn how to fall in love all over again. With appropriate boundaries yet no conditions. We are learning how to love in a way that we never thought was possible.

If you are reading this and feel like this in any way relates to you I want to ask you a question. Is what you are going through with your spouse something that originated within your relationship? Is it something that has been caused from the very beginning solely because of you or the other? or.. Is the whirlwind of emotion and hurt just coming up from childhood patterns that have not been addressed or healed?

I also want to challenge you not to run. I know it may seem so much easier to just run away from it all and live in your own head and not talk about how you really feel but trust me love, you are worth so much more than that.
I was always so worried to talk to someone because I felt like I would not know where to begin and I also felt like they wouldn’t understand me. I had felt so belittled in the past when I had opened up to people I felt were close and it really closed me off to being open to the people that are truly meant to help. If you feel like this is you I promise you that taking that step and booking in an appointment to talk to someone will be the most freeing thing you can do for yourself. It will make you feel like you again and it will only better your health. It’s relatable to booking in a personal trainer, don’t think of it as heavy and don’t feel like you are the only one doing it. You are not.

 

 

xx

Kara