Hello and welcome back to my blog!
I have had anxious attachment issues with every single person I've dated! Regardless of how frequently or infrequently I hear from them...
And I know these issues stem from the story I'm telling myself about myself. Why not rewrite it? Who says I can't??
The week will start on Monday but I'm writing this on Saturday afternoon, and that is how you know I'm serious.
Many scrawlings in my physical journal, this is what some of them say (all relevant I hope):
- The past is not real. Rewrite your story. In fact all your beliefs are things you repeatedly choose to accept as real. If they only exist in your mind why not swap them out for new ones?
- I think this requires being a bit sceptical of your beliefs and asking, is this helpful and working for me?
- I would love to rewrite the beliefs that make me take everything personally. At one point in time, everything was kind of personal. Looking back, I think this is because I was let down when I probably needed protection and support. There was little separating me (practically and in my own mind in the aftermath) from the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the world. But I am going to try and choose to think differently, to move on from that place.
- The world left me with the emotional equivalent of a compromised immune system (this is the story I tell myself). I was left with no lines of defence, bankrupt in a way; people's discretionary actions bulldozed through my hopes and dreams. But this means that you do have an emotional immune system and it can be repaired, right??
- What ran before is not going to run now, I want to rewrite my story. I need a new north star.
- I achieved what I thought would make me happy, but at the same time I am ready to move on.
- I've been conditioned to believe so much of myself is void, or that other people are required to determine what is and isn't. Always seeing myself through the lens of others. No boundaries, no lines of defence. If you're always observing yourself as an object instead of being the subject, where does that mean you are?
- If so much of myself is void, it needs furnishing. Less empty space, and not as much of myself being 'spread thin' to cover all of that empty space.
- I'm not a child anymore, and I'm tired of feeling helpless and hopeless like one actually.
- There is not much left for me in the place I had been drawing from. It was full of fear, anxiety, pessimism, panic, doubt and hypervigilance. It's small, it's bare but I suppose it was all I had for a long time (this is the story I would tell myself). It's time to start from scratch.
- To rewrite the story you're telling yourself about yourself you have to be able to sit with what the story currently is (or something). Most importantly, you have to be the person who can sit with whatever the story is. This is the person who can change it. You have to be able to feel all of it and hold it.
- I want to rewrite what I tell myself about being helpless. I want to embrace my own company, and I want to be able to be there for myself when I need it.
I think I'm due some updated stories, we start on Monday...
Day 1, 22/09/2025 - What Do You Do With a Wounded Person?
Day 1, this is feeling like it's going to be quite hard.
I don't think new stories are completely new, they're things that have roamed through our minds before. What is new is the renewed focus on new stories. And more consistent focus.
Do I belong to myself?... the world makes it hard to belong to yourself.
Stories are associated with an injury, or the bad ones anyways. What do you do with a wounded person?
I want to tell myself new stories about my sacredness. Somewhere sacred you protect, you don't let everything in. You are more discriminatory.
I want to tell myself new stories about hope and happiness. They are not scarce, and I should indulge as much as I want.
And by that same virtue, I can accept people for what they are and accept things for what they are.
I also want to tell myself new stories about my stories... the past isn't real, I look forward and can start afresh whenever I want. I am not loyal to any particular story.
When I think unfavourably of myself, that isn't me. It's a bundle of memories, ideas, stories, and I endeavour to choose different ones. I also can't relate to the second layer up from this; what I think other people think of me, when I think they are thinking bad of me.
A new story I tell myself is: the best way for things to be is as they currently are. How things currently are, is the best way for them to be.
The wounded voice in me says I need to work on mattering to people, why don't I matter?
Mattering should never have been something I felt like I needed to manipulate or negotiate. It's not something you can lose the right to, although my experiences have maybe taught me otherwise.
I was taught that mattering is transient. Where is the stability? I want my new story to have it.
I want to hold someone accountable for making me feel like I don't matter.
I'm angry at someone, I don't know who. Maybe I'm angry at the fact that there's no one specific to blame. When there's no one to blame, everyone is a villain.
I want a new story around this; I don't want to assign malice to people anymore. Not assigning malice helps me to see things so much more clearly. What it appears as is what it is and it won't hurt me.
I have to confront my despair.
What do you do with a wounded person?
Healing is going in a new direction, and the first thing you have to do is pivot. I'm thinking about the order things happen in in my mind; perhaps this is what needs to be corrected, to be healed.
Healing is facing a new direction, it's starting where you are. It's taking one step at a time. Embedding new stories in ways that are most accessible from your current position.
Every new day is something you've never experienced before.
Day 2, 23/09/2025 - I Can't Go Back
What's left back there for me? Nothin.
What will fill the space instead?
I've definitely said "I can't go back" before, but in a different context. "I can't go back" has kept me guarded, on edge, hypervigilant. It has maintained some thinking patterns that I'd rather leave behind. I think in that context it was less of a conscious choice and more acting out of fear.
This time I want it to be a choice, acting from a place of strength and intention.
I can't go back because certain things are just outdated; they were appropriate at one time but now it doesn't work.
Need to close that chapter, tell new stories. Go out and conquer something else. I want to leave behind everything.
I want to tell myself new stories in the present and my past will just have to catch up:
Old story: I have nothing (because I keep focusing on what I don't have)
New story: I am rich and it's easy to see that I am. Not necessarily about money but in other ways.
Everything belongs to itself and I'm not taking on anyone's baggage. Show me how significant you want to be, and I will treat you as such.
All of my life belongs to me, again, I'm not burdening myself with anyone's baggage.
I am no longer confronting the world with a negative balance, like it owes me something. Approaching the world like it owes you something and expecting beyond the limits of what is presented is a form of violence/violation. If you've had violence perpetuated against you, then in turn you may feel like limits are only suggestions rather than hard stops. When I say limits I mean in the context of: people can't give you what they don't have... or you can't (over) think your way to a better solution.
I need to respect the mystery behind what the world presents to me. I need to be at peace with it
My new story is "if I can't go there I don't need to go there." People pushed beyond my limits, people pushed beyond them into what should have sacred. But that cycle ends with me. I forgive the world and I endeavour to take a more non-violent approach.
The most important thing is making a stand against all types of violence. Even the covert violence of 'emotionally invoicing' people, reaching and pushing beyond what people have chosen to share. It ends with me.
Feeling like the world owes you something makes you dependent.
Day 3, 24/09/2025 - A Strongman is Holding On to Some of These Old Stories!!!
I'm in a weird place with this; there's nothing for me back there but I don't know what's ahead of me. It's like a type of limbo. I can't say it feels very good. I'm noticing positive changes though for sure.
A story that part of me does not want to let go of at any cost is that "Things are inherently difficult and severe" .Is thinking like this helping me? I honestly don't know.
I'm not above manually choosing new stories until they're less manual, and something that helps me feel less weird about this is; "How would the person I would like to be approach this?" It just makes the process feel more refreshing, feel easier.
I want to leave behind stories of catastrophising, or the other end of the scale compulsive fantasisation. Both are kind of extreme, and both are essentially a type of distortion. The most important thing they have in common for me though, is that they are putting things where they don't belong
And this is a story I want to leave behind. Forcing beyond limits and putting things where they don't belong... We're so strong, and so easily able to do this when we're out of control, when we get carried away with our emotions.
I want to try and tell myself new stories as a way to disarm this strength, to wear it out somehow.
Like one for example: "there are no villains, there never have been. This is the new story."
Tomorrow I want to think more about what it means to have a sense of humour about things.. I feel like there's more to it than we think, and definitely more to it in this specific context; reinterpreting things in our favour.
Day 4, 25/09/2025 - Comedy and Sticky Tape
New stories: it's all comedy and that means anything can be interpreted as anything. It as in in life. Concepts, beliefs, stories, are pinned to the wall of your life with a single piece of stick tape. More often than not, old sticky tape; there isn't even much justifying where they are.
When things are only held down with a weak piece of tape you can jump higher, you can easily jump to new things.
I'm still thinking about how much of my life belongs to me. The more of your life belongs to you, the more of it you have; the richer you are.
I'm thinking about strength and being strong. About how in my new story I would like to be strong. Strong enough to hold everything in and have it everything belong to me. Strong enough to realise that I don't lose anything, buy having all of my life belong to me. There is some resistance around this idea: a small voice from the back of my mind says I have to have other people involved, but like I said earlier in the week, the world doesn't make it easy to belong to yourself and I think that choosing to requires strength. Be strong enough to realise you lose nothing even though you feel like you might lose everything.
I feel like when I was younger I was very strong, I didn't have a choice? Was disassociating? I did not anticipate I would have to sell so much of myself off as I got older. Selling off parts of yourself, like removing parts of a machine or building means you lose some structural integrity.
I think this is what makes it so hard to know what to let go of and what to hold on to?
Even the stories I want to leave behind are mine. Because it's mine I can decide I just don't relate anymore, and this is a gentle action, for me.
If all of my life belongs to me, I need to stop overestimating how difference people can make to my life. Right??
But what keeps me attached to distributing important parts of my life to people, overestimating their place and what kind of difference they might make, is honestly a physical thing. It is kind of locked into my body. And what the fuck am I meant to about that? Closest thing I came to an answer is acknowledge that it sucks and is painful and just let it purge, let it leave on its own. Let yourself survive it. Your brain needs to see you can survive it and life moves on.
Exercise taught me this...
Maybe this is the painful part of this process. Maybe it's not about avoiding pain but putting it to work, if you're gonna feel it let it be useful. Maybe some of those old stories I subscribed to were a waste of my pain.
Maybe Maybe Maybe - try at your own risk !!!!
I'm tired and bored of not belonging entirely to myself. What do I get out of not belonging entirely to myself? What is the world offering instead? NOTHIN.
A lot of this is realising there's nothing where I thought there was something.
I even want all of my pain to belong to me. Sovereignty over my pain means I don't need anyone to save me from it.
Distributing parts of yourself out also slows you down, is it worth it? Idk.
I don't blame myself for distributing myself to other people. In the same way it's allowing people to reach into my life (although this is seeming like a one sided process), it is also me reaching into other people's lives.
When your boundaries are encroached upon, things start being pressed on an spilling out. They need somewhere to go.
So many times when I write this blog, I feel like I'm refreshing things I knew when I was younger. Some of it a lot younger, some of it around 10 years ago. It seems you do have to sell off parts of yourself to participate in the world as an adult.
Spoken a lot this week about leaving behind the outdated stories, but what to replace them with?
Day 5, 26/09/24 - a big part of our stories is how we manage pain I guess.
You give yourself to people, how could they possibly know what to do with you???
My mum is just a girl and part of why I feel needy is because people also let her down :/
I didn't get much time to write on Friday...
Day 6, 27/09/2025 - I Can't Switch My Brain Off From Anything!!
I wrote in my notes app "letting people in is why I can't switch off from stuff", I do wonder what I meant.
About letting people in, I think it's mainly an issue when it's not reciprocated? Otherwise it's fine, right? Idk...
I'm not sure if I already wrote about it, but rumination, picking apart old wounds, circling back is a lot of not respecting some kind of limit right? There's a wall of some kind, but I still want to proceed further.
I took the experience of people not respecting my own limits, and turned it into a strength maybe. Where there is very clear separation for other people, I created a commonwealth. Where everyone, regardless of who they are matters, and matters a lot. I don't want anyone to feel like they don't matter, I don't want to leave anyone behind.
I feel like I'm going on a tangent a little bit.. so what am I saying here?
When you have a history of people encroaching on your boundaries, seeing your hard stops and interpreting them as mere suggestions, it makes you feel like there's less of you and more of other people. And what does remains of you feels less important. Rumination, circling back, reopening old wounds, approaching what are very clearly hard stops and trying to find an opening somehow, seems like a desperate scramble to still find pieces of yourself in the noise of everyone else.
On day 6 I said to myself rewriting your story means being someone who takes the same components of your life, and combines them together differnetly?
Or becoming someone who would combine the same components of your life, but in a different way. Becoming someone who sees the components of your life and thinks 'I'm going to combine them this way'.
We hear all the time "It's all about changing your perspective" blah blah, but the idea of someone taking the building blocks of your life, and combining them to make a Eiffel tower rather than a pyramid, just lands a bit better with me.
So I do wonder why I keep choosing the same set up...
It's like I am arranging the blocks of my life as a shop that sells discounted food close to it's use by date, but a better set up would be.... I don't know. This is like spiritual architecture.
It's not the blocks themselves but the choosing what to do with them that matters I suppose.
It's a lonely choice, maybe my issue is that I don't fully acknowledge it as one. I'm expecting people to rally around me so I know it's the right choice. But people can't get it right for you. Maybe that's why it's hard for me to drop things and not ruminate. I expect it to be an obvious choice.
When combining components of your life into *whatever*, they each have a level of importance we give them. Or a volume let's say. Some whisper, and some scream. Part of the work of rewriting your story, is adjusting these volumes. It's a decision/choice.
A milestone and burden of being an adult is making decision for myself and by myself.
When you have a history of people encroaching on your boundaries, of violence, and violation it can also distort your sense of urgency. The pouring in of the world's thoughts and feelings can make you feel pressure to act where there is no need.
I want my new story to happen in steps rather than leaps.
Day 7, 28/09/2025 - Conclusion!!!
The week is done, now what?
I definitely get a feel that what I tell myself about myself, is more modular.
You are the architect of your story, and you can put it together in various ways; time will tell what the final 'sculpture' will look like.
But it will be a sculpture, how it will be put together will be by design, a choice I make every day, multiple times a day.
All the stuff I worked on this week, will be my baseline, my foundation; where I start from rather than where I end up.
The urgency and expectations of the world, I will leave with the world. I will try as much as possible to belong entirely to myself.
I'm going to try and stop approaching the world with an empty balance because I belong to myself; I have sovereignty over my pain, my old stories, how I might interpret them, what volume they're at, where they will be placed in the final sculpture of my new story arc. This sovereignty means I have enough, and I have a lot.
If I can't go there, I don't need to go there; I respect unknowns, I respect mystery, I respect what isn't being revealed to me. Cycles of violence and violation end with me.
The person you would like to be, what volumes is she turning up and down? How would she combine the blocks of your life?
How can I remember to be her?
In the easiest way, she is her as a result of small, and important choices, the sweeping impact come later.
And it's something like, a choice is a choice is a choice until longer term and big, sweeping, impressive impact. In fact, you might not even know what that final impact looks like, but you can decide in the moment to choose like how someone from the new story would...
And that's it for this week I think, I've made decent progress with my attachment issues, have a better feel of priorities, and a better feel of what my guiding star will be moving forward.
I don't I've completely uprooted my life and replaced it with a new one, but I've definitely loosened up the soil (or something).
If you got this far, comment an emoji to let me know you did and thanks for reading xoxo.
