This week, I worked with a woman who is beginning to realign her life.
Not necessarily because she had “got everything wrong.”
But because she has realised that she is not defined by the traumatic and painful events she has experienced, and she is beginning to feel that something needs to change: the way she gives, chooses, positions herself… and, above all, the way she considers her own needs.
Traumatic experiences can leave a deep imprint. They can influence the way we protect ourselves, form attachments, trust, adapt, and sometimes even the directions we take in life.
Some strategies that were essential at one point in our lives can continue to guide our choices long after the danger has passed.
And without even realising it, we can end up building our lives around these adaptations.
We spoke about the subtle mechanisms that can gradually take us away from ourselves: projection, the need for validation, fear of disappointing others, the habit of adapting, taking care of people, carrying too much, sometimes so much that we eventually lose touch with what we actually want.
And this is where the paradox appears.
We can build a life we thought we wanted… and discover that part of that life was also organised around what other people expected from us, or around what we had learned to do in order to feel safe, loved or recognised.
We can be highly independent, capable and generous, and still find it incredibly difficult to say:
This is not/or is no longer good for me.”
Realignment doesn’t mean throwing everything away.
It can simply begin with two questions:
What is truly mine?
and
What am I carrying for other people?
This quote particularly resonated with me in relation to this work:
“𝒀𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒓𝒐𝒍𝒆 𝒊𝒔 𝒏𝒐 𝒍𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒑𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒎𝒔, 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒃𝒖𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒔𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒓𝒚.”
Your role may not be to save, fix, reassure or validate everyone around you.
Maybe it is time to build a life where your needs, boundaries, values and aspirations have a place too.
Because your history may have shaped you.
But it does not have to write the rest of your story.
And sometimes, what we need is not more discipline.
It is less overload.
Less projection.
Less “I should.”
And more connection with ourselves.
Realignment may simply mean beginning to choose from who you are today, rather than from who you had to become to survive yesterday.
If these words resonate with what you are going through, you are welcome to message me.