Why lying to yourself always leads to trauma.
Are you lying to yourself about certain things in your life right now?
If you answered "no" how do you know that isn't part of the lie?
When you remain in a situation that requires you to lie to yourself to make things work, it inevitably leads to trauma. Living out of a lie will eventually cause you to be at war with yourself.
To suppress, ignore or turn off the best and most honest part of a person eventually creates some very real problems in the life of the individual. Ultimately this suppression of natural human response is the cause of trauma.
Trauma is what happens when relationship with yourself gets broken. To constantly turn off or ignore all natural emotions and internal signals is a cruel thing to do. Imagine if you treated another person in this way. When trust and communication become non-existent between the conscious and subconscious, sooner or later this leads to massive internal conflict. The subconscious says I don’t like it…the conscious mind says too bad…
Trauma is not caused by the terrible things we experience, it is caused by suppressing the human response to these terrible things and pretending that you are fine and everything is OK.
Trauma comes from lying to yourself. It violates the relationship between your conscious and subconscious.
If the relationship stays broken, the subconscious has no choice but to finally override and remove the person from the situation all together. Out of the subconscious comes severe sickness, anxiety, depression, weight gain, burnout, or chronic fatigue as way of manifesting the internal trauma and giving a clear way out of the unsustainable situation.
If you stop treating yourself like a human, you eventually lose the ability to function as a human all together.
I don’t care what everyone else is telling you. I don’t care what you are afraid of or what you are pretending not to know. I don’t even care about the costs involved in leaving the situation.
The costs involved in staying are always higher.
Maybe it’s your marriage?
Or it could be your job?
Perhaps it is your circle of friends?
It could even be the church you are a part of or the community group you belong to?
If you have to lie to yourself in order to stay, trauma is coming your way
The aim of the game is to be fully human. The moment we stop growing in our journey, we start dying. It really is that simple.
Grow or die...Your choice.
It is a crucial part of our development as human beings to learn to listen to and trust the wisdom of others.
People who have been there and done that.
People who know what they are talking about.
People to tell you what is right and wrong …Good and bad.
The system is not inherently bad. It is there to teach us important lessons as we grow and develop as human beings so that we are able to proceed to the next level. It is healthy to listen to the instruction and wisdom of others while we are developing our own wisdom. The system teaches us how to live as responsible adults in the real world.
But…There comes a point where in order to keep growing as a human and really find ourselves, we must learn to listen to and trust our own wisdom and step beyond what is safe, known and comfortable.
Thus is ultimately what becoming a fully formed adult is about.
If you stay when it is time to move on, you end up dying.
The very thing that gave you life in one season, my be the thing that is taking life away from you now.
Water can quench your thirst, but also take your last breath. The sun gives vitamin D but also Skin cancer. The same food can provide energy and yet also heart disease.
Just because it was right then, doesn’t guarantee it is right forever. Now it may be the very thing sucking the life out of you and preventing you actually finding yourself.
I’m constantly astounded at people’s capacity to survive in dysfunctional situations that they hate. They complain and cry about how terrible it is, yet get up the next day and do it all again.
The reason this happens is because everyone is lying.
The system is lying…
The powerful yet subtle message of the system is. - You are weaker than you think. Don’t you dare believe you can venture beyond the safety of these walls or you will surely die. You are bad, broken, needy and weak. If you leave the rules and safety of the system and ignore those who really know what’s best for you, it is because you are rebellious and that you can’t handle what’s good for you.
The sad thing is that good people end up believing the lie and selling their soul to the system. They shrivel up and die.
Beautiful, creative, passionate intelligent people stay too long and end up dead.
They invest everything and then lose the ability to respond to life like human beings.
So often people find themselves stuck in situations that they don’t like and don’t agree with, yet they stay for fear of being labelled as arrogant, difficult, rebellious, selfish or independent.
To stay requires you to lie to yourself and to pretend that you are happy, more fulfilled and more content than you really are.
It is to constantly lie to yourself about the quality of your health, relationships, and your life.
It is to lie about what you are really feeling and what you really know to be true.
Now, if you’ve read this far and think this doesn’t apply to you, here are 15 things that show you if you are lying to yourself.
- You always defer to the wisdom of others
- You are swayed by the loudest opinion
- You mask, medicate and avoid emotional and physical pain
- You are sick quite often
- You haven’t had an original thought or idea in a long time
- You feel like you’re in a rut
- You don’t know what you want anymore
- You keep procrastinating about key tasks and putting off important decisions
- You say “I don’t know” a lot
- You try to be positive about everything
- You haven’t openly disagreed with someone in ages
- Everyone likes you
- Anxiety is normal
- You don’t sleep well
- You feel like there is often a battle going on inside you that you struggle to contain.
The beautiful truth is actually that you and I are actually far stronger than we ever believed, and that we do not need the system to survive. It is possible to cut through the lies and continue to grow and flourish as a person.
If you are well practiced at lying to yourself, and are already experiencing trauma, the way to restore your life is to rebuild the relationship with yourself by becoming human again.
It is to face up to the reality of our situations and be honest about the state of play.
It is to learn to listen and trust yourself again rather than giving away all power to the system and dehumanizing yourself.
It is to stop the lie and give yourself permission to go where the life is.