Healing Before and During Love

“I need to heal before getting involved with anyone.”

My experience with past relationships and talking about my thoughts or feelings, I received excuses, emotional reactions and feeling dismissed.

The mind cannot convince a heavy heart.

What I’m Processing Now

Although I feel like the unhealed me would burden another. The unhealed me is also wiser.

I learnt that the feeling I was carrying in my body through my relationship was screaming for change. Maybe the 10 steps back is a call to start making the real hard choices.

No connection is worth the feeling of walking around with a black sink hole in your chest.

Before Love

When meeting someone new, we will familiarise ourselves and compare. Isn’t it only natural to study your interest based on your experience and curiosities?!

The battle of the heart and the mind: -

The connection is exciting – but our lifestyles are different.

There could be love here - but love alone doesn’t make a relationship sustainable.

The chemistry may be strong – but our values do not align.

I feel seen by them – but I don’t feel supported in whom I’m becoming.

I may like who I am with them – but can I be that person on my own?

What you need to heal before love is where you step into a relationship ready to fully accept love respectfully and equally.

I want to be happy on my own first, before committing myself to anyone.

I don’t want to mold into the other person and eventually realise I’m running some mislead identity.

Don’t love through attachment.

Don’t love because they make you feel good.

Don’t love because they complete you.

Don’t love based off chemistry or connection

Saying ‘I like you’, doesn’t mean you are good for me.

During Love

Love is understanding and respecting the other person’s needs while respecting your own.

I’m not going to stop my dreams to suit another person’s lifestyle.

I’ll need to learn the gentle efforts of both of our experiences of reacting to past traumas and triggers.

I’ll need to learn and establish clearly what a safe space is for each of us.

For example; some people push for an answer or response, when the other person doesn’t even understand it themselves yet or know how to put it into words.

You can love while not being fully healed but heal through being open to the possibility of being loved the right way.

What it Taught Me

The difference between loneliness and solitude.

It has taken me a long time, but the fog is starting to clear on the attachments I was making when I was disconnected from myself. And the more I poured into me, the looser the grip on my attachments.

I understand my body will have withdrawals of connection.

The nervous system will feel unfamiliarity, and I’ll convince myself I’m not safe or feel lost.

But I don’t need to be perfect and healed; I just need to be self-aware. I don’t need to carry the weight of my armor anymore; I just need boundaries. Because someone else’s trauma, is not mine to carry.

It is up to each person to catch and correct.

What is important is that I am somebody that I can trust. Not overthinking and being ok with not having the answers for everything. Trusting my gut enough that every choice I make is the person I am becoming.

Every decision I made in my life was all based off my capacity to understand what I was experiencing at the time.

What I’m Practicing

I’m learning that all my cracks are part of me. I’m not broken, I’m wiser.

I don’t want to shrink to fit someone’s preference or lifestyle.

I am learning to be grateful for what I’ve learnt and how it has built me.

I am strong because of what I have had to keep pushing through.

I am compassionate for still believing in myself through times that felt most difficult.

Practicing discernment over my typical survival instinct of always being hypervigilant is honestly something I am still trying to drill into my brain. Reading helps. So does writing. It is something that has been a part of me for so long. It’s not easy to change old patterns.

There is no comfort here, only growth.

I am choosing from my values and not my wounds. My pain is not the outcome of me; it is part of the growth of who I am becoming.

I watch people’s patterns. Because words and promises are outdated to me.

I am currently building on myself so I can be more confident in keeping my identity while bonding with someone.

Remembering to let love be supportive rather than controlling. Being honest when something isn’t right and not bending against my own values and beliefs.

It’s not easy. But it is necessary to accept what we cannot change, and to focus on what we can - ourselves.

Stay or go, but you cannot change a person of their patterns, and you cannot blame them either. You either accept them or let them go.

It’s not about the certainty of not being hurt anymore, it’s trusting in my own decisions and not losing my identity in the process.