This is my responsibility?

That sucks!

Yes, it very much sucks that other people can cause immense trauma in us. Trauma that stays with us for decades. Trauma that causes auto-immune disorders. Trauma that causes mental health problems. Trauma that is unnecessary in the sense that it was completely man-made. Trauma that had one or several perpetrators.

Then it’s up to us to “fix it”. Then it’s up to us to heal from it. I’m sitting here all grumpy because it’s just so unfair. Yet, we are the only ones who can heal the trauma we’ve experienced. It’s all stored in OUR body, OUR nervous system, OUR brain. We can get help accessing it. We can get help re-filing memories. We can get help processing emotions. Ultimately, it’s up to us though.

That realization is a difficult one. Our sense of justice gets triggered in a major way. How is this fair?

Just how reluctant I am to being responsible for fixing other people’s “mistakes” became apparent to me earlier this week. I had gotten a letter that had insufficient postage on it. Not usually a big deal as the sender gets notified and is asked to pay the missing amount. Then a couple of days later I received a *pay missing postage using this code* card. On it it said that the postal service had been unable to find the sender of the letter, and they were expecting me to pay the difference. Excuse me?!

• The sender didn’t put enough postage on the letter – their responsibility.

• Swiss post delivered the letter – their responsibility.

• They couldn’t find the sender even though it was both on the front and the back of the envelope. I understand time pressure but finding people’s addresses etc. is one of their core responsibilities. Come ON!

Yes, it was only 10 cents, and I could have easily paid it. Of course I could have. BUT every fiber of my being was like “nope, that’s not going to happen”. So instead, I chatted with a chatbot who clearly couldn't handle the passive aggressive “you know what I do when I try to find the sender of a letter? I check the envelope- front and back”. It quickly said that I should probably talk to a real person. Well, duh!

It was resolved very quickly. They took full responsibility, and I don’t have to pay. It’s all good.

I’m telling you this because I think it’s an important example of what we are up against when starting the healing journey – defiance! The realization that it’s our responsibility to figuratively pay those 10 cents whether we want to or not was a big one for me. A bitter pill to swallow.

It took me a long time to get from reading somewhere that it was up to me to heal my trauma and that nobody was coming to safe me to understanding it and getting over the “are you freaking kidding me – I’m NOT doing that as well!”.

And then the healing began. Be gentle with yourselves.