I really think that the things you learn as a kid follow you throughout life. You learn what's right and wrong, you learn how to interact with people, you learn how to think about yourself and develop all sorts of opinions. A lot of these things are subconscious; I was never directly told to think that maybe I wasn't good enough or to be a bend-over-backwards people pleaser. Things happen, people treat you certain ways, and suddenly the truths that you surround yourself with are actually not all that true, and your entire outlook on life is skewed.
Everyone has some sort of issue. Most of us have multiple knotted, overlapping issues that we don't even want to acknowledge let alone untangle. This world is fallen and hurtful and putting on a happy face doesn't make it all okay. I've tried that approach and I think what it really does is make you feel isolated and start revolving everything in life around your own problems. It's a defense mechanism, for sure, but I feel like for me at least, to be so woe-is-me all the time was...well, pretty selfish.
I've been trying to root out this stuff in my own life, almost since it started happening. But paradigm shift is tricky. Not impossible, but it's a slow, healing process. I had felt this tension building up in my chest for a while, it was heavy and has annoyed the crap out of me. I didn't want to deal with it, I wanted to cover it up, make it go away. At that point I could even recognize my tendency to focus inwardly and become withdrawn, so I balked against the idea of actually turning to the source of those feelings.
Over time it got harder to ignore and I knew God was telling me that the things in my life that were burdening me wouldn't just disappear if I didn't give them any attention. And He was telling me that I was strong enough, with a little help, to face them head on.
So I sought some people out, amazing Godly women who know when to comfort and when to play hard ball, when to sit and listen, and best of all, how to lead by example. It's been easy in the sense that I'm so ready to get it all out and start piecing things together the right way. It's been hard in the sense that it goes deep deep deep and some of these things are so entwined in me that it hurts and tears and rips to get them out. But I want them out.
God's teaching me more these days about who I am, how I'm wired, why the heck I do some of the things I do or think the way I think, and that being vulnerable, even with the terrifying exposed feeling, is liberating and in the end, it's so much easier to not hide.
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People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them. - George Bernard Shaw
