Damaged Goods

I guess we're all damaged goods if you think about it. Life beats us up pretty hard, and most of us have the emotional battle scars to prove it. Our experiences shape who we are, but they can also limit our ability to live our best lives.

Family dynamics often play a huge role in how we relate to one another. I don't know anyone that was not somehow "screwed up" by their parents. Children don't come with instruction manuals and most parents don't know what they're doing in spite of their best intentions. What we have to understand is that we are all products of our own experiences, and our parents are no exception. They did the best they could with the resources and experience that they had. You can either chose to chalk it up as a learning experience and rise above crazy family dynamics, or you can continue to blame your parents for all of your problems and let negative patterns continue to affect all your relationships. I don't care how dysfunctional your family might have been, you can, with effort, get past it. I believe that letting a negative past continue to control your future is one of the most self-destructive things a person can do to themselves.

Most of us have been wounded by love at one time or another. Our partners disappoint us, leave us, or wind up not being the people that we think they are or want them to be. Yes, we get our hearts ripped out and tossed on the floor- the problem is that most of us never consider picking our heart back up and putting it back in. We walk around empty, fearing vulnerability, and never develop the courage to love again. But why chose to stay broken? Wounds can heal if you just take the time to repair the damage. So how do you go about repairing the emotional trauma that we all experience?

The first step is to identify your triggers. Do you ever find that you overreact to certain circumstances? If so, that's a pretty good indicator that you've got an emotional scar that probably hasn't quite healed. When you find yourself overreacting or feeling hypersensitive about something that someone says or does, stop for a minute. Identify what it is that caused you pain. What was the behavior that brought on that response? Then look back into your emotional history and try to find what kind of similar experiences you may have had. We often overreact because some old wound never properly healed, and until we identify that wound, we are bound to remain stuck repeating unhealthy patterns.

Secondly, you have to understand your role and responsibilities in the original and subsequently similar situations. Did your behavior cause or contribute to the problem? Unless you are able to look critically at yourself and understand how you contribute to your own pain, you will never fully be able to break free from the cycle.

The final step is to let it go. You know that you can't change the past, and hanging on to pain and negative energy only hurts you in the end. It's very important that you learn what you need through every experience and in every relationship. What you don't need to do is hang on to anger or hurt. This process takes a while and isn't always easy, but the more you realize that we are all operating from a place of dysfunction on one level or another, you can come to the understanding that the pain others may have caused you may not have been intentional. People evolve at different rates and operate from different levels of consciousness. Sometimes other people's behavior doesn't have anything to do with you at all, but rather everything to do with their own dysfunctions. As much as you may hate to admit it, you are not the center of the universe, and other people's behavior may have very little to do with you at all.

So yes, we're all damaged goods to some degree. But it's entirely up to you to decide if you want to remain in an entirely broken state, or do the work necessary to repair what has been broken. Hearts and spirits are much more resilient that you realize, and with a conscious approach to your emotional reactions, you can begin to identify your battle wounds and make sure that they are healing properly. You might be surprised to find that most damage can actually be undone.