I was watching a movie last night and the actors had a conversation that stuck with me. They were talking about the external milestones of life. They were discussing buying houses and having babies.
She said, “When is our life going to start?”
He said, “This is our life. We are living it.”
This may seem like an obvious concept. And while I have been aware for quite some time that I am living my life, some of my inner parts were really affected by these statements. I have taken many empowered steps to change my life patterns, but I realized I have been waiting for something. I realized I have always been waiting to officially start my life. This is not a new concept, but it seems to have hit me at a deeper level. So I asked myself what I am waiting for. What is it we are all waiting for? And honestly, there are quite a few things.
- We are waiting for an apology. I know. I know. This is completely futile. But while our adult selves can understand this intellectually, it is an entirely different matter for our inner children. They want our abusers to say they are sorry. They want our original relationships to become something they will never be. They want the love and attention they never received from our abusers or from someone just like our abusers. They want resolution. They want their relationship patterns to be resolved without having to let it all go. And it isn’t coming.
- We are waiting to be released. We have parts who hold contracts. And while I originally thought these parts only held contracts with our abusers in a trauma-bonded way, I now realize that our abuser contracts primed us to take on other contracts. These contracts are disturbingly random. Anyone who ever told us we owe them something is likely to be sitting in our unconscious holding us back. Wow! What a realization that is! I have discovered I am holding contracts with people and I don’t even remember their name. I am waiting for resolution from strangers who don’t remember me. And I know I am not alone.
- We are waiting for permission. We have parts who believe we cannot live life without others. We have parts who don’t understand we are empowered adults who can take whatever action necessary to move our lives forward, to stop our traumatic patterns. We have parts who are waiting for somebody to come along and tell us we can start living. We want another person to give us their approval, to give us the green light. But there is no such person. They aren’t there. Our lives start when we give ourselves permission to start it, to take those empowered steps forward.
- We are waiting for perfection. We have parts who are waiting to be good enough. By good enough, I mean perfect. We have spent our lives being told we are worthless and the people who succeed in life are perfect. Even our abusers were perfect. We were always the problem. We can never have a good life because we are the problem. And so many of our experiences have confirmed this. We have consistently brought people and situations into our lives who continue our childhood patterns. But we have never been the problem. Our abusers were the problem. And now our unconscious beliefs are manifesting and we have to break that pattern. Until we can begin to see ourselves as worthy of a good life, we can’t get started.
- We are waiting for peace. Peace means a lot of things to a lot of parts. It could mean isolation. It could mean internal calm. It could be meeting our goals, finding our calling or seeing our purpose manifest in our lives. It could mean winning a million dollars in the lottery or not having a care in the world. It could be going off grid or living on an island. But when we consider these things to be a predecessor to starting life, it will become another reason we are waiting to take the next step. We might be stuck waiting for that miraculous manifestation to bring peace to our world. But life doesn’t work like that. We have to seek it out. We have to take steps toward it. And it will take time to get there.
We are all getting older as we wait to start life. But on the other side of the two-way mirror, our life is waiting for us to join. We have to take the time to examine what we are waiting for. We have to explore how our unconscious patterns are keeping us stuck through old beliefs and understandings of the world. So ask yourself what you are waiting for. What must happen before you will take an empowered step toward what you want? And why are you giving your power over to it? Ask these questions because it is time to stop waiting.
Waiting for an apology – from a mother, from a father, from foster care families, from an adoptive mother, from an adoptive father – all of whom are dead. Waiting, as you said, for an apology – and a reconciliation that can only now come from me. I work with students and always, I try to be totally there for them – totally present for whatever they choose to share. As if somehow, that will make up for the lack of that in my own childhood. Maybe it is healing, in a way, and maybe, it becomes one trigger after another. I don’t know, but it has been my life work, and I would not change that.
Thank you for helping others in that way Bonnie. It is so hard to give what we never got from others.
Sigh…
So much pain I feel while reading this. I just want to punch somebody or something, I even got in fights with stranger before because of all this pain, and now I am living in isolation by choice, so I cannot hurt anyone.
I feel like no one cares, no one gives a damn about me. And they shouldn’t, I am boring as hell, even in my adventurous dreams I am sitting beside a fire and don’t go anywhere thrilling.
I hope I find some way to start living, finally.
I am so sorry you feel this way. Trauma often makes us feel that we cannot trust anyone and it steals our ability to live life. You are not alone in your struggles. Please know there are others who get it.
Hi Elisabeth. This is a really useful article. Thank you. Your photo of the little boy resonates strongly with me. I have a similar one of myself alone at about three. I have a strong urge to go up to him and give him a big cuddle.
Thank you Peter. It shows how much compassion you have been able to build for yourself.
Thank you I resonate with this article for sure.
Yes, I too have vivid memory of being around 7 or 8. I packed up an old suitcase and headed out the back door. Mission running away. My Mother asked me what I was doing. I told her and as I recall she was very light hearted about what was going on. I was anything but light hearted. I know there was something I wanted to escape and run away from related to my home life. I have compassion for that darling little girl. She need to be reassured that whatever was troubling her could get better and that what she was feeling was worthy of respect and that she continued to be lovable even in the depth of her hurting heart. She need to know that her feelings were important and that she was worthy of being taken seriously because she mattered.
I’m glad I know all these truths now.
Those are brilliant truths. It is so powerful when we can validate ourselves after all these years.
Wow! The clarity you help provide is so appreciated!
#2. is so triggering. For the longest time I would not accept anything from anyone because the thought of ‘owing’ or being in ‘debt’ to anyone was horrifying. I never wanted to feel a sense of obligation to anyone ever again.
Now I am learning to discern when someone offers something ‘freely’ without expectation (few and far between I might add) and I can open myself to accept/receive it.
#5. WOW! again!! Yes, waiting…almost like waiting for permission. Recognizing too, that the lottery, moving to a deserted island, going off grid are all stemming from a ‘fantasy’ that was created by a part that still wishes to be rescued. Realizing that yes, I now need to come back down to earth and take steps to begin my life as I wish to see it….one small step at a time until each step starts to flow into the next and before I know it I will be walking and then maybe dancing my way through life and be IN IT – truly.
🙂 Hugs
Thank you Wendy! Your awareness will definitely help you live in your life in ways you never thought possible.
The word contract stirs up a lot for me, it reminds me of all the oaths and promises that were made of all the betrayals and fear. I wonder sometimes if it will ever change if it will ever be any different then all the chaos inside and the pain that I am facing now. I struggle with knowing what it means to be free, even though my abusers are far away. Yet a remnant remains from those who harmed me that keep trying to establish contact and pull on those wounded places. I have such a hard time separating. Any thoughts?
When I work with clients around this issue, I highly recommend to journal from the parts who are still honoring the contracts. When we acknowledge and accept those parts and how they feel, they begin to let go of those contracts. It takes time and we have to feel the emotions of the past, but it works to finally release the past.
Wow! I can’t thank you enough Elisabeth. You have clarified so many issiues I have alwayw had and never understood. Thank you so much☺💝
Thank you Sandra!
These all resonate with me! Waiting has been a huge theme in my life. I can’t even remember a time when I wasn’t waiting or planning and scheming for the future in the hope that ‘then’ my life would finally start. I work hard at focusing on the day I’m living in but there is still a sense of waiting. Waiting until this ‘parts work’ is finished and I’m ‘fixed’. Until I make enough money. Until I move house. Until my kids have babies. Until … always waiting until 😥
Yes Allanah! There is always something that makes me feel this isn’t it, I am not done. The controller is really strong in these thoughts.
It took this article to help me to realise that I am 60 years old and still waiting! There will be no Prince to come for me.He was really a toad. I must work this out for myself.
Yes! The prince thing was a scam.
I have been waiting to feel like a grown up. I look at women with pretty hair and nail polish and lipstick that match, and pretty clothes and shoes and purse that match, and jewelry! Earrings and a necklace and bracelets!! They look all put together. I feel like a scruffy little kid who just rode her bike up a steep hill and is grinning about that! But when do you feel like a grown up? I pretend to be one, I do grown up things and sometimes I’m surprised when my voice sounds mature, or business-like, matter of fact. Usually I sound apologetic and hesitant. There must be something that happens inside, right? I think when both my parents are dead, I won’t have to act like their little girl daughter any more. Cuz if I act like an adult, it makes them sad. Or mad, too.
Keep working on freeing yourself from that contract with your parents while they are still alive. You can do it with expression from the trifecta (controller, karma kid and love seeker). Believe it or not, so many people feel like they are kids trying to be adults. It isn’t just you or even people with severe trauma. But everyone has certain things they feel less confident about. Outfits and shoes and jewelry are not my forte either.
Wow Elisabeth! This entire article resonates! What an eye opener to read each one, know precisely what it’s message is, somehow acknowledgement is very powerful for me too begin too release the contact(which is an invisible bind).
Whay I’m shocked at is the fact that I lived most of my life with not only these destructive inner parts, but PTSD and never knew! I’m so grateful!
I am so glad it helped Cindy! The acknowledgment is so important for our healing.
I have been resilient (read: hyper vigilant) for a very long time and am just now finding myself in a place in my life at 50 with enough stability to realize just how deeply and profoundly all of these items are affecting me. I’ve been “walking wounded” for quite a while and thinking “this is fine” but I realize now I have to go back and do some of the inner work I stoically avoided in order to survive.
I don’t deny the traumas I witnessed as a child and some especially shattering experiences in adulthood, but even though the most recent of these is easily a decade or more behind me, I live with a perpetually trapped feeling, as though I am waiting for permission to leave, to pursue things, to be, a feeling I hadn’t had before a particular series of events.
I was at one time at my most free, and light as a feather, but the pursuit of a particular love interest ended especially badly, timed with compounded other traumas at the same time (too many, too personal to detail here). Because I was making the largest leap of faith I ever had in my life at the time, the emotional smack down I received makes me think that I’ve internalized an expectation of penalty for pursuing my dreams.
As a child growing up in severe family dysfunction, I saw chronic setbacks all the time. Through tremendous effort I finally broke free of the internalized toxic patterns of codependency and moved on to the state mentioned above, but still longed for something more, something greater. Hopes, dreams, a love interest.
Having been stopped time and time again in my youth by negative family patterns, I felt so wonderful to be free, so it was devastating to have things go wrong again so spectacularly as a consequence outside of that family context as though it were a cosmic message that perhaps I was choosing the wrong path, or didn’t have permission, that I might be cursed.
One time when I was doubling down of my leap of faith, I was going to the airport to pursue my dreams further and the entire eastern seaboard blacked out and my plane couldn’t leave. (many of you will remember when that happened)
I struggle with writers’ block beyond the ordinary where if I so much as think about writing I can almost completely shut down, even though it’s something I desperately dream of doing. This isn’t the typical writers block of not having ideas but an almost pavlovian aversion that is physically debilitating that can actually knock me unconscious at the keyboard if I try to force myself.
I’ve tried quitting and giving up on the notion, but my heart won’t let that go either, so I’m kind of trapped. Either I am too invested, or I end up beating myself up for not being invested enough. I try and I can’t quit, and something is stopping me from follow through either. Needless to say it’s difficult to deal with. It seems so much of my life is shaped around either doing the thing or avoiding it, usually some unsatisfying combination of both.
Any advice on how I might navigate my way out of this web of self-blocking I’ve found myself in would be appreciated. It’s not that I’m not self-aware in a meta-cognitive way, it’s just that it hits me somewhere below the conscious mind and the will, and I’m essentially defenceless against it. It doesn’t help that trust is also a problem woven into it all, so it’s harder to reach out for or accept help and I sometimes wonder if other activities aren’t indeed part of a subconscious avoidance mechanism.
It sounds like your controller is not going to let you write at the moment. The controller runs the mind so in order to get past the controller, you have to bypass them by working on getting into the body. The more grounded you are when you try to write, the less the controller can stop you. I encourage my clients to practice small grounding steps many times per day (since for most of us, we can only hold a grounded state for a minute or two). This builds over time until we can get past the controller for a bit to work on recovery steps like writing. I would be happy to offer a free half hour call to discuss other ideas with you. Just send me an email at beatingtrauma@gmail.com
I’m 66 years old and had an insight that led me to your article. It was the ONLY one that addressed my google search of…‘I just realized I’ve been in a state of ‘waiting’ since I was three years old’. That was the age my mother left me in an orphanage. Isn’t it strange that I just saw it?! I was in a partial meditative state wondering why I’ve been stuck all these years and procrastinate about projects that finishing will propel my life forward for the better. I noticed the way I was sitting and all of a sudden the thought was ‘you’re sitting like you’re waiting for something!’…and whew…epiphany! Now I have to find a way to release myself from that state. Easier said than done. People / articles always say, just do this, or just do that. NOT that easy. There’s a lot of pain. Yours is the first commentary I’ve read that got it exactly right. It was so right it struck at my core and I cried. Thank you.
I am so glad to hear this helped you! Writing from that waiting part can help make a difference as you work through this feeling of being stuck. It will definitely shift things for you.
Wow. I screened shot this entire article. Wow. I have been waiting to live. Until until until I was good enough I was thin enough I stopped smoking I had cured my depression I was married I was divorced. Wow.
I completely understand. I am glad this spoke to you.
I can relate to a lot of this. None of it has stopped from seeking what I want in my life, though. It’s just that, no matter how much I accomplish, I always feel like I have not yet arrived where I want to be. I guess I’m not waiting for life, but waiting for the good life. And it’s in that sense that I can relate to most of what you’ve written here, especially the desire for peace, which never comes. I don’t understand the bit about contracts though. I’m not sure what you mean by a contract.
Thank you Charlotte. A contract is a deal we make with an abuser. It is often meant to keep us quiet or hold us back in life.