Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Healing from a Painful Past

This whole thing with being healthy kind of amuses me.  So many people choose to live the healthy lifestyle in action, but in truth, they just don't get it.  They eat healthy foods.  They take care of their bodies.  They use green products and try to do their part to care for the Earth.  Unfortunately, they don't really take the time to look at all aspects of their lives.  Often times vital points are forgotten, most noticeably, spirituality and emotional health.

I have to admit, I'm a person that's suffered trauma.  Who isn't these days?  Everyone has some kind of painful emotionally trying baggage of their past.  All to many people claim they've healed from it by just ignoring it, or worse, denying it ever existed.  Instead of taking the steps to recover and become whole again, they simply look to all the things they can control in their lives.

Isn't it funny that health nuts tend to be the most common people to ignore their past rather than dealing with it?  This is also the demographic that seems to have the highest percentage of people who choose to deal with those painful experiences from their past.  It's really one extreme or the other with this group!

On the outside a lot of these people who ignore the painful past tend to look like well adjusted happy individuals on the outside.  They make a good effort to look so put together.  They seem to have the model family, but just a little bit of getting to them reveals the horrible truth.  They're really carrying this painful past with them and aren't really as put together as they seem.

Thankfully, I'm starting to surround myself with those people who really are put together and committed to working pas the things in their own pasts that they wish to change.  It's a beautiful thing, to see the people you care about as healthy and whole individuals.  It's inspirational to pick up and keep on working for change.

The latest convert to this way of thinking is my own partner.  I've known he's been hiding something for a while.  It's started to come between us.  Our relationship got so bad recently that we couldn't even sleep in the same bed together.  We were on the fast track to a break up.  Finally, after talking to my friend over at Otherwise Quite Good, I decided to talk to him, figure out where our problems were, and if we were just pulling on each other to work towards different goals.  If the paths of our lives were going in two different directions, why try anymore?  We needed to figure out where we were going from here.

As it turns out, his past was still haunting him to the point where it was starting to interfere with our happiness.  He didn't want to deal with the baggage he was holding on to because he thought it was too scary for him.  It was intimidating, understandably, and he wasn't sure how to ask for help.  He wasn't sure what the next step was.  All he knew was being broken wasn't working for him, and I was getting too close.  Once someone got beyond the surface, he'd be forced to deal with it, and he didn't think he could.  Getting too close meant he wanted to run away.  We were to the point of being ready to call our relationship off when he confessed what was really bothering him.  He's now decided he's ready to take it one step at a time rather than hiding away from it all and making the hard choice to be alone in life.

It's never an easy road for anyone, but the end result is definitely worth the challenges.  We're going to work through this so we can both be happier and healthier in body, mind, and spirit.  If this road ends with taking different paths in our lives, that's what it will be.  However, we'll at least know what is taking us down different roads is nothing more than our own life path.  It won't be a decision made by the baggage we both carry with us.

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