There’s Nothing Wrong With You.
How do you feel when you read that statement? What’s your immediate reaction? What enters your mind?
Take a moment, even just 60 seconds, to turn your attention inward and notice how your whole being responds to that statement:
There’s nothing wrong with you.
OK?
Maybe you noticed no response at all. Maybe you noticed a kind of allergic reaction, an agitated internal voice shouting, “Of course there is! Look at this and this and this…” This voice has no problem listing out all the problems in your life and all the ways you are flawed and failing. If your voice is anything like mine, it’s probably had a lot of practice over the years.
But also, perhaps you noticed some part of you that feels relieved by reading this statement, some part that feels recognized, appreciated, validated, that says, “Ah yes, finally someone other than me sees this!” This voice is likely undernourished, maybe so weak it is nearly inaudible.
Let’s be clear: I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong in your life, that you don’t face difficulties that seem insurmountable, at times feeling completely numb or awash in emotions that drown you in their intensity, powerless to control the swirl and surge of painful and damning thoughts that trample out any enjoyment you might derive from life.
I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong, I’m saying there’s nothing wrong with you.
There is a logic to the way we are. We are survivors. Even our most twisted-up, backward, self-defeating thoughts and feelings make perfect sense in light of what we have been through. Often we can’t see the method behind the madness because we are caught in our resistance toward the madness itself: judgments from society, our peers, friends and family, and ultimately ourselves. When we exile the parts of us we find most distasteful, we deny ourselves access to the very informants we need to understand and heal our deepest wounds.
A quote from the recently released movie Joker comes to mind: “The worst part of having a mental illness is people expect you to behave as if you don’t.” While I tend to reject the label “mental illness” to describe the internal struggles many of us experience, the sentiment stands: what we don’t understand we invalidate, criticize, demonize, oppress, kill. We are like a canine veterinarian who, upon seeing a cat for the first time, thinks it’s a hopelessly deformed dog and orders it euthanized.
How’s that voice doing, the first one I mentioned that thinks its life depends on making you believe you’re bad, stupid, and wrong? It might be whispering or shouting or mumbling as you read this; it also might have enlisted the help of other voices to muddy the waters, to tell you that you don’t understand what you’re reading, or that this is just psychobabble and you should probably be doing something more productive with your time. Maybe there are other voices who have joined the chorus, spewing propaganda about any number of things that leave you feeling hopeless, worried, overwhelmed, distracted, and exhausted.
If so, then good.
Because this is where healing begins, with getting to know the parts of ourselves that cannot allow us to rest in our fundamental goodness. They are the guardians of our deepest treasures, protecting us from being consumed by our own wounds and in the process blocking us from the source of our greatest creativity and joy.
For the guardians to relax their defensive positions and allow us safe access to the entirety of our being, our trustworthiness must be demonstrated. There is no violence in trust, only increasing levels of mutual vulnerability, so for the process to begin, we must be willing to make the first gesture of peace. We must lay down our arms. Although this is likely a frightening proposition, there is no short-cut, workaround, or bypass—this is a step we must take consciously.
And as we begin to ramp down our offensive against ourselves, we inevitably begin to notice less projectiles hurtling our way as well. The insults and self-injuries we are accustomed to strangely begin to come less frequently and with less severity. As the fog of war clears, the blue sky is more often visible, striking in its calm intensity.
This is a gradual process, as peace talks often are, so it’s important to maintain a dedicated practice of patience. It’s easy for the process to become sidetracked; when hostility has been the norm for so long, fundamental issues become confused with irrelevant collateral data. So hold your light firm through all parts of the process so that its glow can illuminate all the twists of the path:
There is nothing wrong with you.
