I Need Me Back

I have often wondered how much of ourselves we leave behind in the moments when life becomes too painful to bear...

There are experiences we cannot fully understand while we are living through them. Sometimes we are too young, too overwhelmed, or simply do not have the words or the support we need. So we find a way to carry on. We turn away from what hurts, put certain feelings aside and learn not to touch the places inside us that feel too difficult to face.

I don't think we always realize what happens in that process. We may continue with our lives, build relationships, work, make plans and become who we believe we need to be. Yet something in us remains connected to an experience we have never quite been able to leave behind.

I find it helpful to imagine pain as a wave that needs to move through us...

When something painful happens, we need space to feel it, to understand it. But when we cannot do that, when the feeling is too overwhelming, we may interrupt that movement. We distance ourselves from it. And in distancing ourselves from the pain, we can also become distant from the part of us that experienced it.

This is where our ways of protecting ourselves begin to take shape...

At first, they may be almost invisible. We learn to anticipate, to control, to avoid situations that make us uncomfortable. We keep ourselves occupied, reach for something that will distract us, fill the silence, or find relief in habits that help us not to feel what is happening underneath. Sometimes protection takes the form of withdrawing. Sometimes it appears as criticism, blame, denial or the need to have everything under control.

These responses are not necessarily conscious decisions. I see them more as ways we have learned to cope, often long before we understood what we were doing. They may have helped us through some moments ... But what once protected us can gradually become a barrier.

The more familiar we become with avoiding certain feelings, the more easily we reach for the same responses whenever discomfort appears. The feeling itself may remain unprocessed, while the ways of keeping it away become stronger and more deeply woven into our everyday lives. It is as if we are holding back a wave that has never had the chance to reach its natural end.

And this is not always obvious. Sometimes we only begin to recognize it through our relationships. A situation in the present can touch something much older. A word, a gesture, a sense of rejection or distance may awaken a feeling that seems much larger than the moment itself. What we are experiencing now may carry the weight of something we have felt long before.

This does not mean that every conflict comes from our past, or that we should overlook what another person does to us. But it can be worth asking whether something in the present has touched a place in us that still needs attention.

I also think about how much energy it takes to keep certain parts of ourselves at a distance. To remain guarded, to anticipate what might hurt us, to suppress a feeling before it has even had the chance to surface. We may become so accustomed to this inner effort that we no longer notice how much of our attention and vitality it occupies.

And perhaps this is the part that affects me most: the parts of ourselves we keep away do not contain only pain...

They hold everything that was there before, and everything that continued to exist alongside that pain. Our spontaneity, curiosity, tenderness, joy, openness, our capacity to love and to trust. These qualities may become harder to reach when so much of us is occupied with protection. We may not have lost them, but we may no longer feel entirely connected to them. We need them back...

This is why I don't see reconnection as an attempt to return to suffering or to force ourselves to relive everything that happened. It is something much more gentle. It begins when I allow myself to notice what I feel instead of immediately turning away. When I can acknowledge sadness, fear, anger or vulnerability without treating them as something that should not exist. When I begin to understand my reactions, recognize the ways I protect myself and slowly make room for what I once had to push aside.

Sometimes this requires time. Sometimes it requires the presence and support of another person. And sometimes it means accepting that I cannot approach every painful experience all at once...

I don't want to reconnect with these parts of myself simply to understand my past. I want to feel more present in my life now. I want to have access not only to the parts of me that learned how to endure, but also to the parts that know how to feel, to love, to be curious, to create and to experience life without constantly holding something back.

... not pain to disappears, or that I become someone who is never hurt again, but that I no longer have to keep parts of myself at a distance in order to live...

I don't need to leave those parts of myself behind. I need them back.