When You Ache Inside, Look Here

Look where you feel it.

When you ache inside, the instinct is to look for something external that is responsible for your ache. The mind is programmed to search externally to protect us from our environment. But this is not a healing instinct; it is a survival instinct only.

The healing instinct is to look deeper within when you ache inside. For example, if you hurt from feeling unloved, the internal question is, how have you refused to show love to yourself? You may have become dependent on external love, acceptance, or affirmation.

The healing instinct is to look deeper within when you ache inside.

Asking or expecting someone to love, accept, or affirm you in a way that you don’t love, accept, or affirm yourself is unlikely to yield long-term happiness. On the other hand, when you fully love, accept, and affirm yourself, the need for others to do so dramatically diminishes — the reality of people loving you long-term increases when you fully love yourself.

The Value of Self-reflection

The ability to self-reflect is a level of maturity that many people never reach. People have come to rely on external stimuli as an exclusive way to live. Lack of external stimuli triggers anxiety for many people, and blaming something external for our pain feels justified. Personal contributions to unfavorable circumstances are ignored.

I often hear people complain about the constant flow of bad people in their lives as if bad people are everywhere. But, if bad people or circumstances show up in your life as a pattern, then you must look at your life scripts that leave open spaces for them to enter.

…following social norms often means personal disappointment.

Many people are born, raised, or traumatized into a script of disempowerment. They were never allowed opportunities as children to develop a sense of power. If we go from being overpowered by parents, then religion, then spouses, self-responsibility grows slower. Meanwhile, following social norms often means personal disappointment.

We have relationships, parenting, education, sexuality, gender, religious, and racial scripts that guide our lives. We combine these scripts into an identity. When you live by scripts that you did not create for yourself, you trust that they work. However, at some point, we have to question the purpose of the scripts we were given, as well as our motivation for maintaining them.

Identity scripts

The mind uses our identity as a shortcut to help us make decisions. I’m Black, female, and heterosexual. My script is to put family above all else, vote democrat, and go to church on Sundays. But, I have made a point to break away from scripts that do not serve me to heal my aches. Life has become more fulfilling, but sometimes mentally exhausting.

Letting go of scripts means making up new patterns as we go along. We build the plane and fly it at the same time. New scrips aren’t always improved, but they are still empowered. The empowerment is in trusting yourself enough to make decisions. When fear is not your motivator, creative solutions flow.

Never a Victim

Joy is an inside job that starts with the belief, “always a creator; never a victim.” To live by that script, you have to pay attention to your actions, thoughts, and beliefs rather than others.

When you don’t slip into a victim mentality, you keep looking for solutions, especially when they don’t come easy. If you allow yourself to be a victim, you cannot create a solution. All you get to do is survive, and life is not good in survival mode.

In survival mode, our actions and mental energy go toward hoping for mercy and trying to change others. You stay at a job you hate for ten years and complain. You settle for a dysfunctional relationship and try to control your partner. You hide your talents and criticize others who use theirs. You give away your power and blame others for abusing your trust.

Anxiety Rising

For some readers, your anxiety has risen just from reading the idea that you are responsible for your emotional state. You are already ruminating in your mind about all of the people who are responsible for your pain. You refuse to accept the idea that they owe you nothing, and you are fully responsible for your healing.

I get it. I’ve been there and thought that. Even when I felt that I had finally released that idea, every hurt put me back in the blame box. I spent years growing into the concept that I could be responsible for healing my pain without blaming myself for my pain.

I had a life script that said: “You broke it, you fix it.” My mind had a particular interpretation that if I take responsibility for fixing something, then I must also take the blame for breaking it. I could not sort out that logic for a long time. If you are feeling a bit anxious reading this, then you may be working with a similar philosophy that doesn’t serve you well.

DIY Heart Renovation

When you stop being a victim, you become a creator. When you ache, you find solace in independence and boldness because you know you will bounce back. How do you know you will bounce back? Because you know that everything you need is inside.

Instead of waiting for something external, you are watching what is internal. You are not dependent on the world to permit you to move forward. You are not looking for answers or wasting time on the rhetorical “why.” You are a creator.

Mistakes don’t send you back to victim mode looking for someone to be angry with or to blame. You let people in your life; you can let them go. You found one job; you can find another; You lose a loved one; you hold onto every shred of joy you once found with them and let it shine through you. You don’t go looking for someone to fix you. If you get stuck in pain, go within.

Mistakes don’t send you back to victim mode looking for someone to be angry with or to blame.

Your severe broken heart may be a perpetual fear of abandonment. You may have to pinpoint your issues of abandonment that existed before your current loss. The idea of looking for a new job may trigger your fear of rejection related to adolescent bullying. Prolonged grief could be the case if you feel unlovable. You believe that you will never be loved again for who you are.

The perpetual aches that just won’t go away or that repeat in a pattern are attention-getters. If all of your attention is directed toward external resources, you will remain stuck.

Someone can help you process, support you in your journey, or be your cheerleader. But, you must go within to do the work. You must ask yourself tough questions and lean into vulnerability to find your strength. Like Dorothy, everything you need is inside.