The Beginning of Better

When I ask someone “how’s it going?” and I hear the response “doing ok”, it is the most obvious “I’m not ok” answer ever. It’s like an unsolicited invitation into your soul and all it does is makes me want to dig deeper into what’s going on. I’d rather people be honest and say,

“…you know what…things are hard right now, but I’m doing my best to work through it and everything will be ok”.

Easier said than done.

It’s an answer implying the person has done some introspective work into whatever problem is ailing them. But let’s face it…this type of response requires a boatload of awareness and heaps of humility.

Not everyone shares the same willingness to reveal their vulnerabilities with others. Some of that is a personality trait, but it’s more often a defense mechanism against further pain. It’s ok for this to take time. However, don’t take so much time that you forget your problems are still there…because they don’t magically disappear. “Time heals all wounds” is a misguided belief. Healing is an active process that requires cleansing out the the gunk that still festers in your soul. That hurt you left unattended and forgotten…that doesn’t just leave in time and can cause more issues later if it’s not treated properly now.

Sometimes the pain we hold onto so dearly is a conscience choice rather than a play of ignorance. Holding on to the bitterness can feel like the only sense of justice and validation we have left. What do you do if I let it go? Who do I become? We may think we deserve an ideal restorative moment where our abuser comes begging for forgiveness, graveling at our feet, knowing exactly how we were hurt and owning up to everything that went wrong.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

But I don’t think that is the point

The beginning of better is letting go of your right to be a victim. A victim chooses not to understand their pain and ignore or delay the call for healing, holding on to the pain for dear life in hopes it validates their misfortune. Waiting for something or someone to change out of the blue and not taking care of your own heart is really being a victim in disguise. Reconciliation and forgiveness are not the same. We are not promised to be reconciled to anyone in this life, but forgiveness is freely available and here waiting for you now.

So what is the recipe to better? How can I guide my soul to a place of healing when I don’t even know where to start? If I know I can’t be victim, what can I be?

I’m not going to pretend to have all the answers or the silver bullet that heals your trauma. Healing from the past that haunts your tomorrow isn’t found in a miracle salve. It simply doesn’t exist. There is work in your part in the process, and that is truly where people get hung up. But there are folks who have travelled this road before and trailblazers who have established the path. You are not alone. Let me share my roadmap with you—not so you can follow my path, but so you can begin to see and forge the one that is uniquely yours

Step One – Deep Introspection

It is the deliberate, courageous examination of your inner world—your motives, wounds, beliefs, reactions, and desires—done with honesty, humility, and a willingness to see what is true beneath the surface of your behaviors.

Question – What is truly going on inside of me? Why do I act, think or feel this way?”

I spent many years diving into the “why’s” behind my emotions and actions. I wanted to deeply understand myself to make sure my beliefs aligned with my actions

The art of introspection has long been proven in many psychological circles as a methodology for self-awareness. Think of it as looking through them glass at an aquarium or snorkeling in the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, but instead of floating through water and observing all the cool creatures hidden in the nooks and crannies of the ocean floor, you are sifting through your memories, intentional recollections of things forgotten or buried away. There are multiple angles you can view yourself that often reveal the truths behind the tough questions. Perspective often provides a lens of clarity we don’t have when we live our life in tunnel vision.

We need to do the deep internal discovery work to understand where we need to make adjustments in our thinking, our beliefs, and our relationships. This work often looks like asking ourselves those hard questions, reforming bad habits, and more importantly, bad thinking. We have to weed out the lies we tell ourselves and reinforce the truth behind who we are. This is the starting point, and often is the longest pole in the tent of work that needs meticulous attention to detail.

Step Two – Subjective Extraction

It is the method of intentional drawing out or uprooting faulty reasoning or feeling based on incomplete information. It’s finding the right melody in the collective noise. What are all of the feelings that come to the surface when thinking about a memory or interacting with a person who has hurt you or your beliefs about a certain way things should be done? Extract those feelings from the objective experience itself.

Question – How do I feel about what happened?Is how I feel about what happened aligned to the truth?

When asked about my Dad, it was often associate with anger, frustration, and eventually deep sadness. I couldn’t not find many happy thoughts or memories associated with him.

Think of it like Emotional Jenga…however when you pull out the pieces we intend to put them back together again in places that fit best with the truth. We are extracting subjective emotions out of these memories or current feelings of relationships and rearranging where it makes the most sense. We aren’t not breaking down the tower; We are reshaping the tower to make it new again. Emotions are not inherently bad, they just need to be placed in appropriate ways and expressed in a mature manner to correspond with what really happened.

Step Three – Objective Re-framing

It is the intentional practice of stepping outside your immediate emotional perspective to reinterpret a situation through truth, evidence, and clarity—rather than through distortion, fear, or past wounds.

Question – What actually happened, and how did it affect me? Do I have all the facts?

There were alot of facts I did not know about my Dad. Until I started to understand who he was objectively (without my subjective experience), only then was I able to humanize him.

Revisiting the challenging events or traumatic experiences through an objective lens, putting your subjective feelings aside and acknowledging what is true about what happened is critical. Our memories can be distorted to how we want to remember it, or how our brain protected us in those moments of pain and hurt. This may require asking people for their memories/perspective of those events to capture the whole picture.

Revisiting our snorkeling analogy, imagine you were swimming through the ocean with foggy goggles, not able to truly see the details for what they really are. If swimming with the same lens, you would miss a lot of the beauty the ocean floor provides and would be ignorant of the dangers that could be lurking where you can’t see. Memories can be like foggy pictures that need to be cleaned, treated and sometimes re-framed to see them clearly for what they are, not for how we remember them or how we want them to be.

Once we pull out the subjective Jenga blocks, we replace them with the objective blocks to form the foundations of how we should respond to the trauma. Then we can appropriately re-analyze the emotions we feel and re-evaluate if they are important to still feel, if we still have to validate them, or if we can maturely feel our feelings and know they don’t control our destiny.

Step Four – Active Forgiveness

It is the ongoing practice of releasing an offense, reshaping your heart towards mercy, and choosing actions that align with that release—rather than simply declaring forgiveness once and moving on. It’s a constant choice to not let the trauma of the past dictate the here and now.

Question – Am I just saying I forgive someone or do my actions show I have forgiven them?

Forgiveness is not a one-time action. It is a way of life. It’s a consistent posture of your heart.

Whoever came up with the phrase “forgive and forget” did not consider the active nature of forgiveness…either that or their source of triggers were no longer present. You don’t always get to control when your emotional triggers will be set off or when your boundaries will be pushed by your offenders. We can’t control others, only our responses and actions to others who seek to do harm. Choosing to actively forgive gives you power over your pain, hurt, and unmet expectations.

Step Five – Fullness of Forgiveness

It is the complete movement of the heart—from honest acknowledgment of the wound, to cancelling the debt, to releasing vengeance, to experiencing freedom—so that the hurt no longer holds power over your identity, your reactions, or your future relationships.

Fullness of forgiveness is experienced when the wound becomes a scar—something you can see, but that no longer hurts when touched.

When I came into the fullness of forgiveness, I spoke to my father as if he was right beside me, and told him I forgave him of everything and I no longer let the hurt hold power over me.

Freedom is the key identifier here. You’ve let go any feelings or harboring of ill-will towards your offender or offense. You can start to breathe easy again, without looking over your shoulder for validation or for an opportunity at revenge. You’ve gained back what makes you…you. Scars never truly go away, nor should they. They are reminders of painful events, learnings from them, and evidence of your strength to move past the hurt into something better.

The beginning of better is acknowledging you have to move past the hard things you are still waiting to be paid back, taken back, validated, or proven right and move into a place where nothing is owed, nothing is needed, and where your freedom is restored. You don’t need anyone or anything to do this. It’s ready and waiting for you to accept it. The reward that comes with this is immensely sweet and worth the risk of opening the deep wounds that introspective work exposes.