We are hardwired to crave certainty in our lives. In an article for Entrepreneur, Tony Robbins notes certainty as one of our basic human needs and defines this need as follows:

“The first human need is the need for Certainty. It’s our need to feel in control and to know what’s coming next so we can feel secure. It’s the need for basic comfort, the need to avoid pain and stress, and also to create pleasure. Our need for certainty is a survival mechanism. It affects how much risk we’re willing to take in life—in our jobs, in our investments, and in our relationships. The higher the need for certainty, the less risk you’ll be willing to take or emotionally bear.”

He notes that variety/uncertainty is a basic human need as well. If we were always certain and knew what to expect, we wouldn’t face adversity and grow, or enjoy pleasant surprises. These little deviations that happen to our plans is where we discover things we didn’t know about ourselves.

Here are some things to remember when you fear uncertainty:

1.) Uncertainty is opportunity. When nothing is certain anything is possible. Use this as an opportunity for self-discovery and growing out of your comfort zone.

2.) Change is inevitable but growth is optional. When we least expect it, things can radically change and go off course. What are you going to do about it? Have a mindset that is attached to nothing and open to everything. Maybe what feels like a bad situation is actually one that is preparing you for something great.

3.) Let go of what you cannot control. Stop wasting energy on going over things you cannot control. Instead focus on what you do have control over, which is your response.

4.) Trust that things happen for a reason, even when you can’t see it. Often times we don’t understand the reason or purpose for things happening the way that they do until some time has passed.

5.) Don’t allow uncertainty to fuel your fears. Worrying about what is to come or the unknown is normal but try to catch yourself when you start time traveling and fearing what will happen in the future. Remember that 99% of what we fear doesn’t ever happen.

6.) Remind yourself that you have survived all the uncertainty and changes that have happened in your life so far. Your strength is so much greater than your fear. 

So now I ask you…Are you open to the world and all is possibilities? Are you open to everything and attached to nothing?

Video for Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.

There are times in our lives where we tend to take on responsibility for things that we aren’t responsible for. And for some of us, myself included, we find ourselves in this place more often than not. It’s like we have this automatic response to jump in and start ‘managing’ a situation or trying to control things that we have absolutely no control over. It’s ineffective, yet so instinctual. It’s a maladaptive pattern.

Many of us grew up in families where we felt this responsibility to keep other people happy or that we were responsible for another person’s basic wellness. These feelings become ingrained in us and two things happen. One, we become focused on others more than we are focused on ourselves. Two, our moods and feelings become dependent on people and things outside of us. We lose ourselves in this enmeshment and end up defining our self-worth through outcomes with others we could never truly control.

Here’s the real insidious side of this dynamic: By focusing on things outside of us, we are actually ducking taking real responsibility for ourselves. We become martyrs and feel like we never have time for ourselves. Maybe we wouldn’t even know what we’d do if we didn’t have people to heal, save, control or punish. Maybe we even feel like helping others at the expense of taking care of ourselves is our purpose here.

Let me turn this question to you…Do you feel that it’s another person’s responsibility to heal, save, punish or control you? My guess is you had a knee jerk reaction of hell no. Perhaps it’s insulting to feel like someone has to swoop in and take control of your life? Like you aren’t capable of taking care of yourself?

What about the people you are trying to control? How would you feel if they focused too much energy on being responsible for your wellbeing? Perhaps you feel like that would be a huge burden to those people. If that’s the case, why would you put this burden on yourself?

Here’s the thing about making the decision to be responsible for ourselves. Focusing on and taking responsibility for ourselves actually allows us to affect more influence and change than you’d think. When you start taking complete ownership of your life, people notice. We are doing it for ourselves, but we also become a good example and inspiration to other people. They see us empowered to make the changes we need to make in our life that only we can make, and they start thinking about doing the same for themselves.

It allows us to be supportive of others, rather than responsible. It allows us to empower rather than make someone feel powerless in their own life.

Have you taken on responsibilities for things you can’t control? What steps are you willing to take today to shift the dynamic from control to support?

Video for It is not your responsibility to heal, save, punish or control other people.

Knowing who you are, what you are made of and what you are capable of can make you unstoppable. I’ve seen so many people go through horrific traumas or endure years of abuse and they come out of it all, and you would never know how bad things were because they appear so strong. But what allows us to get through these difficult times and bounce back stronger is resilience. When we are resilient, it doesn’t matter how strong the winds are, we stay there standing strong with roots completely in place, withstanding whatever may come.

Facing challenges allows us to develop our own resiliency. Only in overcoming these challenges can we learn that we actually can overcome them and how incredibly resourceful we are.

Here are some ways you can build your resiliency:

1.) Validate your experience and struggle. What you’re going through is not easy and it’s understandable that you are feeling overwhelmed right now. Anyone would in your shoes.

2.) Identify where you are already resilient. Think back to tough times you have encountered in your past and how you got through them. You already have some resilience.

3.) Change how you look at difficult situations. Difficulties are challenges, nothing more. They aren’t a paralyzing event where you cannot recover from it. This is where you may have to use positive affirmations to get yourself in the right mindset. For me, when I am feeling discouraged, I literally tell myself over and over again that “I got this” and “I haven’t come this far, to only come this far.”

4.) Don’t catastrophize. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed and think the worst in a situation. But let’s face it, catastrophizing is ineffective and does nothing to help you feel like you can handle the situation. If you start catastrophizing, catch yourself and question it. If you lose your job today, are you really never going work again? Know that you are resourceful and that this door closing is so that a better one can open.

5.) Accept that failure happens. Failure is experience and it is going to happen. Don’t be someone who avoids failure at all costs. The experiences we have allow us to grow. Know that what you are going through is an opportunity for you to grow and be open to it.

6.) Know your purpose. You are here for a reason. You matter. Internalizing this can help you feel more grounded and aware that these hurdles in front of you are just challenges you will meet. Even if you feel like you do not have a purpose, I promise you if you dig deep enough you will find one. Sometimes people go through a trauma or battle addiction, get through it and pay it forward to others in an authentic way that really helps people. That is invaluable. Think about drug counselors. Many drug counselors were once addicts. And because of their experience as an addict and a someone in recovery, they can relate to others and reach them in a way someone who wasn’t an addict could.

Think back to times of crisis in your life. What are three ways you have shown your resilience?

Video for When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.

We all want the people around us to love and accept us. It’s a natural human desire. It becomes a problem when we are so focused external validation, that we only feel good when we get it from others. Think about it. If I only feel good about myself when someone else shows me that I am accepted, then I have put the key to my self-worth in that person’s pocket. And if they flat out reject me, I’m pretty screwed.

When I was younger, I needed external validation so much that I chased it, from the all wrong people and for all the wrong reasons. I found it to be incredibly lonely then because I never felt like I was good enough without their validation. The problem with relying on external validation to feel good about yourself is that what you get is never enough. It can never be enough, because the feeling that you are seeking, only comes from inside yourself and is one only you can provide.

When I discovered that, I felt daunted. I had no idea how to actually love and value myself. I seriously wondered if I was even capable of being able to provide that to myself. Maybe somehow other people magically possessed this power, but I did not. But maybe having this power wasn’t as foreign as I had thought.

As a kid I was pretty comfortable in my own skin. I had insecurities like everyone else, but I knew who I was, what I stood for and I actually felt better about standing out than fitting in. I was lucky to have a family that supported individuality and creativity. I knew as a kid, I was born to stand out. That I didn’t need anyone else’s approval to “do me”. 

As a young adult, it was like I had forgotten that part of me. I had become depressed after leaving an abusive relationship and felt lonelier than I had ever felt in my life. As I became more depressed, I lost sight of my value. It was like that super confident girl no longer existed. And I felt like I needed to be so much more than I was to actually be loved, otherwise I would feel alone again. And I never wanted to feel that ever again. I craved acceptance so much, I compromised. A lot. The more I compromised, the more I eroded my self-esteem. And then I needed that external validation.

People live for other people’s acceptance for so many different reasons. If you are one of them, the first thing you need to do is understand why. Why are you outsourcing your self-worth to someone else? Why do they get to determine your value? Were you told that you lacked value as a child from the adults who were supposed to build you up, but instead were unhealthy people and tore you down? Or maybe you were taught that what other people think of you matters more than what you think of yourself?

For me, it was fully realizing that I had given up my power. It didn’t just happen one day where I had this epiphany and my mindset shifted. It was gradual process, over time. It was a series of bad decisions that I had made with serious consequences and wondering how I had made such a mess of things. It was finding ghosts of who I used to be in certain situations and missing her. It was heartbreak and feeling completely unaccepted, unloved and more alone than I have ever felt before – even more than when I was a young adult and I swore I would never allow myself to feel again. It was finally understanding what I deserve and that I was worthy of good things, and always had been.

If you are struggling with knowing your value, here are some things to remember:

• Nothing outside of you can ever take away how you feel about yourself.
• Being real and authentic with yourself, flaws and all – the good, the bad and the ugly and accepting it is the solid foundation of building self-worth.
• Be gentle with yourself. If you spoke to a friend the way you speak to yourself, what would they say?
• Eliminate negative self-talk and focus on positive affirmations.
• Always be improving yourself for you. What are you good at? What are you interested in?
• What other people think of you is none of your business.
• There is only one “you”. You have something that only you can give to this world.
• You are unshakeable and incredibly resourceful.
• When you begin to love yourself, you will tolerate less nonsense.
• Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.
• You owe yourself the love that you give so freely to other people.
• Stop hating the experiences that shaped you.
• The same light you see shining in others is in you, too.

Video for If you live for people’s acceptance, you will die from their rejection.

How is it that so many of us end up in relationships with people who don’t value us and treat us well? The relationship starts off good, we feel elated being with the person and then one day everything shifts. All of a sudden, it’s like we don’t matter to them and we wonder if we ever did.

If this is a pattern you have noticed in your relationships, you need to take an honest look at what you believe to be true about yourself. To break this cycle, you need to dig deep and unearth what kind of childhood conditioning has caused you to gravitate towards people who treat you poorly. The cycle continues because on some level, you believe that the treatment is okay.

So let’s back up for a minute here. Where does this kind of conditioning come from? First, let’s look at what healthy conditioning about the self looks like. In a healthy childhood, the child learns that their thoughts, feelings and preferences are valued and that they matter. They are taught and encouraged to protect themselves with healthy boundaries and to recognize when they are being harmed relationally.

When you have a caregiver struggling with addiction or mental health issues such as narcissism or depression, the child doesn’t learn that their feelings or thoughts are important. The needs of the caregiver often come first, and the child learns that what they think and feel are not important. What this often leads to is conditioning in the child’s mind that they are wrong for having feelings or that their feelings are invalid or less valuable than someone else’s.

In many cases, the child will learn how to anticipate the moods and feelings of their caregiver before they can identify how they feel themselves. They don’t learn how to recognize when someone is harmful to them relationally, because their caregiver often blurs boundaries with them. They learn that mistreatment and not standing up for yourself is normal in relationships.

Here are some beliefs you may have if you find yourself in these relationships often:

• I give people the benefit of the doubt too much or too many second chances.
• I worry about offending my partner if I stand up for myself.
• I have a hard time recognizing when I am being disrespected. Sometimes it takes someone else pointing it out to me.
• When someone hurts me, instead of setting a boundary with them, I feel like I need to prove my worthiness and why they should value me more.
• When someone hurts me, I need them validate me and my feelings by admitting that they were wrong or disrespectful.
• I don’t even know what respect feels like in a relationship.
• I feel guilty when setting boundaries and worry that I am being unfair. Sometimes I even convince myself that by setting the boundary, I am overreacting.
• I would rather put up with shitty treatment than be alone.

So how do we undo this conditioning about how we feel towards ourselves? How do we start recognizing that our thoughts and feelings matter and are just as valuable as anyone else’s?

1.) Be gentle with yourself. We seek out dynamics and relationships that are familiar to us, even if they are unhealthy. Understand and accept that you adapted the way that any child would have and that this kind of conditioning runs deep. It’s going to take time and practice to heal it.

2.) Validate your own feelings as if you would a friend’s. Chances are if a friend came to you with feelings they were having, you would totally get it and validate them. Your feelings are just as valid – show the same compassion you show to others to yourself.

3.) Identify negative and positive reinforcers. Who are the people who you feel good after spending time with? Who recharges your spirit? What about the people who are negative reinforcers? Are you surrounding yourself by others who confirm the negative things you believe about yourself? Limit your time around the negative reinforcers and choose to spend more time with people who treat you well.

4.) Don’t stay in love with potential. You could come up with so many potential ways the person who treats you crappy could choose to behave and make things better. But here’s the thing – they have already chosen to be crappy. Set your boundaries and let them be responsible for not violating them. If they do violate them, know how you will respond and stick to it.

5.) Remember the Law of Effect. We teach people how to treat us. When someone does something disrespectful to you, respond in a way that honors your self respect. This can look like setting boundaries or changing up the way you respond to something. For example, say your partner makes a hurtful comment to you while you are on the way out to dinner with them. Maybe in the past you shrugged it off or brought it up to them and tried to get them to see how hurtful they were. You know how that game goes. You basically argue with them so they see your point and give you external validation and things calm down for a while. Maybe this time, you tell them you’re not feeling up to going out for dinner and you’re just going to go home. And end the night early. Why? Because this teaches someone that if they mistreat you, you won’t spend time with them. They aren’t your only option to have dinner with.

Video for Remove yourself from people who treat you like your time doesn’t matter, like your feelings are worthless or like your soul is replaceable.

What we believe about ourselves influence what we attract. As a matter of fact, our beliefs create a filter in which we see the world. If we believe that we aren’t worthy, our brains will seek out information or “evidence” to push through the filter that validates and confirms what we believe about ourselves. Our brains will purposely seek out people who confirm the negative (or positive) beliefs we have about ourselves.

For those of us who struggle with seeing our own worth, we often will seek constant reassurance from our partner. But ironically, we typically select a partner who has more of an avoidant attachment style.

Think of “attachment style” as a way of relating to others. It’s kind of like a blueprint we develop in early childhood on how to relate to other people, based on how what our relationship was like with our primary caregivers. We carry this blueprint along with us as adults.

There are four attachment styles:

1.) Secure: Feels confident in both their relationships and being alone and independent. Correctly prioritizes their needs and relationships and can draw clear boundaries and can stick to them. 

2.) Anxious – Preoccupied: Feels a constant need for reassurance and affection from their partner. Being alone is intolerable and fears abandonment.

3.) Dismissive – Avoidant: Feels afraid of and incapable of tolerating true intimacy. Usually deprioritizes romantic relationships.

4.) Fearful – Avoidant: Feels afraid of being close to others, but also is afraid of being too distant. They try to suppress their feelings, but their anxiety is so high that they often experience intense emotional responses.

Psychology Today does a fantastic job of breaking down how your attachment style can impact your relationship. You can read it here.

The good news is that it is never too late to create a secure attachment style. How we love people as adults can be healthier than how we learned to attach to others as children. Once you understand your attachment style, you can start to challenge and dismantle faulty beliefs that you may have about yourself and others. You can learn how you may be avoiding closeness with people and overcome it. Or you can develop a healthier interdependence on your relationship, that is mutual and balanced, rather than a unhealthy dependence.

If you feel like you fall into an anxious attachment style, below are some tips on how you can start to break some of the patterns:

• Identify your own vulnerabilities in your relationships.
• Work with a therapist who is educated about attachment theory in adult relationships. This will help you heal and work through the insecurities you are having.
• Get to really know yourself and what kinds of things soothe you when you feel distressed.
• Practice communicating your feelings clearly.
• Learn how to identify your boundaries and express them clearly.
• Be realistic and know that one person cannot possible met every need that you have all of the time.
• Be mindful of jumping to conclusions about your partner or over-reacting. Learn to discern when your insecurities are influencing what has happened and try to stick to the facts rather than just going off your feelings.
• Try to find a partner with a secure attachment style. Experts say that 50% of us have secure attachment styles. It is much easier to confront your own attachment style issues when in a relationship if you are with someone more neutral in their attachment style. There is more intensity and drama with people who are together when one is anxious and one is avoidant.

Video for If you don’t see your own worth, you’ll always choose people who don’t see it, either.

Last week I talked about toxic people and how engaging with them regularly can take a toll on your self-esteem. People who consistently try to make you feel like you are hard to love, are toxic, too. When you love someone, you want to lift them up, encourage them and be their biggest cheerleader – not tear them down and constantly assault their character.

When you love someone, you choose to take on the responsibility of keeping their heart safe. Last month I wrote about about the 10 components of a healthy relationship. I went into depth about what each component looks like, which you can read here. But the truth is, if someone makes you feel like you are hard to love, the relationship is unhealthy. It can be fixed, if that person wants to change and they take consistent action to change it, but honestly, it isn’t easy, and it can take a long time to fix.

So, if we are in a relationship where we feel like we are hard to love, why don’t we just leave it? There can be so many reasons why we stay stuck in this dynamic, but what I have noticed most, is that people who tend to have an anxious attachment style tend to stay stuck in relationships like this.

Someone with an anxious attachment style is already coming from a place of lack – where they don’t feel like they are enough. They are preoccupied with getting reassurance from their partner. So, when you have a partner who acts like a person with this attachment style is hard to love, it activates their anxiety about whether or not they are loved, or if they will be abandoned. Then they start running on their hamster wheel trying to prove their worth to them.

The danger in this dynamic is that the person who is communicating to the other that they are hard to love is also sprinkling in morsels of praise and love. A person with an anxious attachment style craves that the most – so they stay in the relationship, attempting to win over the other person. It becomes toxic fast and a vicious cycle. In a sense, they become addicted to the inconsistent praise and love they get every once in a while, and that keeps them engaged in the dynamic.

How you break the cycle is rediscovering your self-worth and developing more a secure attachment style in your relationships. Below are some tips on how you can start breaking patterns of an anxious attachment style.

• Identify your own vulnerabilities in your relationships.
• Work with a therapist who is educated about attachment theory in adult relationships. This will help you heal and work through the insecurities you are having.
• Get to really know yourself and what kinds of things soothe you when you feel distressed.
• Practice communicating your feelings clearly.
• Learn how to identify your boundaries and express them clearly.
• Be realistic and know that one person cannot possible met every need that you have all of the time.
• Be mindful of jumping to conclusions about your partner or over-reacting. Learn to discern when your insecurities are influencing what has happened and try to stick to the facts rather than just going off your feelings.
• Try to find a partner with a secure attachment style. Experts say that 50% of us have secure attachment styles. It is much easier to confront your own attachment style issues when in a relationship if you are with someone more neutral in their attachment style. There is more intensity and drama with people who are together when one is anxious, and one is avoidant.

Video for Stay away from people who make you feel like you are hard to love.

A few years ago, I volunteered my time as a crisis counselor for an amazing organization. I worked with people from all ages and walks of life. The work I did gave me an intimate look at how many horrific traumas people have gone through, and different stages of the process they were in while dealing with it. I admired their courage to talk about it and release themselves from the burden of carrying it all on their own.

Trauma is not something we choose. It changes us. Whether it’s a one-time event, diagnosis of a chronic or terminal medical illness or ongoing, relentless distress, that trauma, whatever it is, becomes part of us, whether we want it to or not. Sometimes it leaves us very real changes, like physical changes or psychological changes like PTSD or panic disorder. If you have experienced trauma, know that it wasn’t your fault and that you didn’t deserve for it to happen.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” We can’t change what happened to us. But we can change how we respond to it.  

Healing from our trauma allows us to take back our power. We get to choose from that point forward how things are going to go. What we can do in taking back our power becomes limitless. We get to determine what we will do with our experience and how it will shape us going forward. But more so, healing is our responsibility. While we aren’t responsible for what happened to us, we are responsible for healing ourselves.  

Interestingly, researchers have discovered that many people who experience trauma, also experience incredible growth. As in, more than your average person who hasn’t experienced trauma themselves. Called post-traumatic growth, it is defined as “positive psychological change that is experienced as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances.”

In a recent Scientific American article, they list seven areas of growth seen in people who experience high levels of adversity:

• Greater appreciation of life
• Greater appreciation and strengthening of close relationships
• Increased compassion and altruism
• The identification of new possibilities or a purpose in life
• Greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths
• Enhanced spiritual development
• Creative growth

The article is a fantastic read and goes into depth about this topic, in layman’s terms. It highlights different facets of the process and the struggles that one can overcome to get to that place of incredible growth. You can read the full article here.    

While the idea of healing and post-traumatic growth sounds fantastic, it takes time. A lot of time. And it isn’t easy. Sometimes it takes therapy. Working through what wounded you is a gift you can give yourself – a gift you 100% deserve. You were created to live a victorious, extraordinary life.

And if you are struggling right now, know that you are not alone. We all fall sometimes, and it is okay. It’s okay to grieve and be where you are right now – just don’t stay there. In a previous post, I talked about how you can start the healing process. You can read it here.   What change to you choose for yourself?

Video for Trauma creates changes you don’t choose. Healing is about creating change that you do choose.

Additional Resources for Dealing with Trauma

Judith Herman helped shape our understanding and treatment of psychological trauma. Her book, Trauma and Recovery continues to guide many experts. The book has two parts. The first part covers the nature of trauma. As you may have guessed, the second part focuses on the recovery.

Understanding Trauma

To start, Herman discusses the history of how society has understood traumatic disorders. She defines trauma as an affliction of the powerless. Furthermore, she outlines the commonalities between survivors of various forms of trauma. To expand, Herman breaks down the symptoms of trauma in three categories.

The first is hyperarousal. Have you ever had a sense of someone watching you? Then every thing you saw or heard is so much more crisp and clear. That’s hyperarousal. Your senses pick up on everything. In the case of severe trauma, you experience what Herman calls a “persistent expectation of danger”.

The second element is intrusion. Intrusive thoughts are often unwanted and unexpected. For me they take the form of negative self-talk. I will tell myself how much I hate my life. But I don’t feel that. It’s my trauma taking over and intruding on my day to day life. In the case of severe trauma, that traumatic event replays unconsciously.

The final category is constriction. This occurs when a survivor of trauma chooses to block out the pain. These tactics may take the form of addictions or self-harm. In any instance, people in effect surrender to the trauma. They choose not to take action and re-process the harm. Instead, they numb themselves to the pain.

Choosing Recovery

The second part of the book covers recovery. Herman sees this as a restoration of control and power for the survivor. She outlines three stages to recover. First, survivors need to establish safety. Second, the process of remembrance and mourning helps us grieve. This enables us to release negative feelings and integrate what happened to us. Finally we need to reconnect with ordinary life. At its heart, recovery is about getting back to our lives without the hindrance of trauma.

In the book, each stage is thoroughly explained, offering a framework for healing. If you’d like to dig deeper into this book, you can buy it on Amazon here: Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman. This book can serve as a valuable resource for both survivors of trauma and those who support them in their healing journey.

Healing from Being Heard

I have another post on healing that might help if you have experienced trauma.

Please note, the books linked above use affiliate links from Amazon. I only refer books I find useful. If you choose to buy one using the links above, I may receive a small commission. Using these links helps me cover the costs of hosting and maintaining the site. Thanks!