“Personal growth is misleading, because it sounds like it’s going to be fun. But if we called it “deliberately making yourself so uncomfortable it’ll feel like you’re dying,” nobody would do it and we’d be totally screwed.” -Emily McDowell; @emilyonlife

(P.S. I selected my blog image to represent this post because to be honest, most of my best self-discovery thoughts come when I am out in the middle of no-where, driving or sitting, listening to music, feeling all the feels).

I spend a lot of time reflecting on my own self-discovery journey. I find myself thinking these very in-depth thoughts a lot in my life. There are so many things that my self-discovery journey has done for me, but one is that is has helped me grow my relationship with myself and with those around me. It’s helped me recognize a lot of the things that I do and I am able to dive and search for reasoning behind the things that I do, both the good and the bad. I want to write this blog for those who want to begin their own self-discovery so that I can share some of my own experiences and thoughts in hope that someone reading this will not feel alone in their own self-discovery journey.

My self-discovery journey has helped me recognize a lot of my insecurities.

Yes, that’s right. I have realized that behind my confident, “fake it until you make it” type of front, I am a very broken, insecure, narcissistic at times, selfish, scared, and lost human being. The thing I’ve come to realize is that recognizing your own feelings of inadequacy within yourself is the easy part. It might seem easy to hide it, but you realize that those broken, lost, scared parts of you will still come out.

People do a lot of things when they are scared, or when they come from a place of hurt. Sometimes becoming narcissistic and selfish are coping mechanisms. My first love broke my heart. He cheated on me. I felt inadequate. I felt like I was not full unless he was a part of my life. (I had to retype this sentence. The original sentence in italics said “he made me feel inadequate. He made me feel like I was not full unless he was part of my life.”) I re-read those sentences and realized that I made myself feel those types of ways. To be honest, I was searching so badly for someone to just see me, to validate me, and to make me feel like I have a purpose in this world. I was young, I was 15 years old. I was lost. I did not know that my own self-worth belonged in my own soul and not in the hands of other people.

I grew up feeling like something was wrong with me, I felt this way for a very long time. I did not know why I was so hard to love. I felt like I was hard to love by a lot of people as I grew up, and some of that might have been my own perceptions but also some of it was the insecurities that people placed on top of me even as a kid. I felt like I was hard to love by my parents. I felt like I was hard to tolerate by my friends. I felt like I was annoying. I felt like a burden on my step-mother who had three children to raise on her own. I just felt like I caused more pain than I did happiness. I just felt like I had something wrong with me. I wanted so badly to change but I did not know how. It was not like just yesterday I started to realize that I had something wrong with me, it is something I’ve sat with my entire life.

All I’ve ever wanted is for someone to see me for who I am and to actually find me to be adequate, and love me for just being…you know…myself. The problem is that I hold myself back from being my full self and I allow my insecurities to push the people away who care about me the most. I get scared to let people in. I realize that I have a lot of things I need to process and work through.

I like to say to myself: “dating me isn’t for the weak.” I think that’s why I navigate towards those people who are motivated, driven, and have used their past trauma and pain to make them resilient and dedicated. I like to think they will be persistent in the pursuit of being with me and will chase me and will value me. I just push them and push them to see how far they will go and eventually, I push people away. I think I struggle on this back and forth between feeling like I deserve someone who will fight for me and will love me for all that I am. The other part of me who thinks I deserve to be unhappy and with someone who does not value me because of the way I’ve used other people in my past.

I have a lot of insecurities. I create a lot of scenarios for myself in my head to be honest. I also know I am very self-aware. My self-discovery journey has helped me see when a situation or life path is not the path for me. I am much more aware of my own personal limits, and sometimes I like to test those limits on purpose to see how far I can push myself. It’s weird. I subconsciously like to push the people who are closest to me the furthest away to see if they’ll come back. I can’t help but wonder if I do that because I’m seeking validation for just being who I am. I just wish I could show people who I am authentically without trying, but the problem is that sometimes I don’t know who I even am.

I feel like there are days that I believe that at my core I am this narcissistic, selfish, controlling, anxious, insecure type of person. It sucks. I have to remind myself that I am not fully doing good for others only to get praise. Hell, I do not even know how to take a full compliment. I had a patient tell me this week, “thank you for all of your care. You were really awesome. You made me feel very comfortable here and I really appreciate it. Once I am better I will even come back to say thank you again.” To be honest, I didn’t even know how to respond. The biggest part of me thought to myself…I’m just doing my job. I did not realize that being open-minded, non-judgmental, and understanding was going above and beyond. I like to leave at the end of the day feeling like I did help make someone’s life or day better. However, I think I have a hard time accepting compliments or taking credit at times because I feel like at my core, helping others is what I was called to do. It just feels natural to be kind. It feels natural to validate someone when they just need someone to listen and make them feel like they’re not alone. It just feels like that’s who I am at my core at the same time. I often wonder if that’s because to be honest, all I want is for someone to validate me and my hot mess of a self the way I validate other people. Or, maybe I am seeking for that validation from myself…for myself.

As I write this out, I am seeing that maybe my core is just you know that word that we all hate to admit that we might be: sensitive. I am sensitive. I feel things so deeply and sometimes it’s exhausting. It is easy to feel defeated when you feel the emotions of others. You try your best to change the world but all you end up doing is hurting people around you. I just feel very conflicted about who I am as a person. Am I kind? Am I caring? Or am I just going through the motions? I think the fact that I even question these things should give me my own sense of validation. I know I have narcissistic tendencies and I’ve developed a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms throughout my life that I need to work through. I know my judgement and mind get clouded sometimes. I become way overly-critical of myself. I tell myself that I deserve to feel sad. My biggest enemy in this world is myself.

(As I’ve proof-read this blog, I’ve noticed I say “I think that I,” or “I feel like I.” The problem here that I am recognizing is that I am not secure in how I feel or in what I think. I second guess myself a lot. I am very insecure in my decision making or in my own feeling of adequacy. I depend a lot on the validation of other people and less on the validation of myself. This creates a lot of problems in my life because my expectations of what I want from someone in comparison to what I will receive are vastly different.  I honestly feel like I expect the bare minimum sometimes. I also know that sometimes people are empty and might not show it, and their version of giving their all and your own version of feeling like they are giving their all might feel vastly different. I’ve come to have more grace and understanding for this. I just wish sometimes that people had this same grace, but I often forget those who have had this grace that I’ve taken such advantage of).  

I think at my core, I have a very tender, very soft, and very kind heart. I get hurt easily sometimes. When I feel hurt or rejected, I lash out. I become angry. I say mean, rude things. I know when I feel exhausted mentally, physically and/or emotionally, I tend to do this a lot. I just second guess who I am a lot of times. Am I really this selfish, non-considerate, narcissistic, condescending human being? I know I have been in the past. Sometimes it feels like that part of me won’t go away.

I have trust issues. I have trouble thinking other people will stick around. I have issues believing that people actually know me or appreciate me for who I am. I have really worked on this. The thing is, I struggle to trust other people. Another lightbulb moment I just had while writing this is that maybe the reason I struggle to fully open up to myself is because I do not fully trust myself. Someone might be wondering…what the heck does that mean? I know for me, I am still healing my relationship and trust with myself from the choices I’ve made throughout the last year. I think I put myself through pain because I feel like I do not deserve to live a life that doesn’t hurt. I feel the pain of everyone else and most of those people do not deserve that pain. I know I’ve made a lot of wrongs in my life and I probably deserve to feel sad or hurt more than others.

There are days in which I feel like I create a lot of my own pain. I feel like there have been times in my life in which I felt very numb, and for some subconscious reason, I force myself to feel pain intentionally, and/or I create conflict in which I know will bring out something painful or emotional in me in order to remind myself that I do still have emotions and feelings.

I was young when I lost my brother and my nephew. I was 12. I lost my grandmother a few short months later. A part of me did not fully understand how to feel the emotions that came when my brother passed away. To be honest, I thought more about how it would affect his two sons. I think I feel such a disconnect from myself and my feelings. I have searched for so long for someone to see me for who I am, but I think I’ve felt forced to be sad in moments I’ve been so emotionless and angry. I am not sure I knew what it felt like to be sad. I became somewhat numb, so I was not sure how to feel much, but I felt confused. I felt like people expected me to feel sad or a certain type of way about it all. I felt like I was in a battle with myself because I truly did not know how to feel the loss but I also was fighting those who expected me to feel a certain way and I was not sure how.

It was not until my other nephew unfortunately took his own life that I came to realize what it meant for someone to fully pass away. I felt a sense of guilt. I felt a sense of obligation. I felt a sense of regret. I felt like I had failed as a person to be honest. I should have been there for him. I wish I could have been less selfish. I wish I could have reached out and checked on him more. I really took advantage of the good life that I lived. I just did not fully understand how much bullying and/or internal thoughts can really affect someone. I think that is a huge reason I have made it such a point in my life to navigate towards the broken people because as a broken person myself, all I could ask for is to meet someone who could just validate and understand me for what I am feeling and for who I am and for all that I’ve been through throughout my lifetime.

I think I have an obligation in my life to give back to the world for all that I have taken. I have just been so blessed and there have been times that I have not felt grateful for the things I’ve been given. I know as a person I have grown so much because I feel grateful. I know I lose sight of the good things I have sometimes but at the end of the day, I know I am so blessed and so fortunate to live the life I have lived. I just have to find ways to heal from my own internal wounds. I have forgiven those who have hurt me in the past. I mean, I guess sometimes I wonder if maybe I have not fully forgiven every single person that I feel needs forgiveness in order for myself to move forward.

To be honest, I had somewhat of a specific intention with what I wanted to write in this blog. I definitely did not write anything that I expected to write. I just actually let my thoughts flow. However, what I did intend to get across is this: recognizing your own insecurities is the easy part. Finding ways to overcome, fix, change, and/or accept them is the hardest part.  I think that’s what makes this blog so unique and close to my soul because these are the things I feel like I hide inside of my mind. I might not have written my intended blog but I think the point I made in this blog is this: self-discovery is hard.

I’m still in this “recognizing my issues” phase in certain areas of my life, I’m in the “finding solutions” phase in other areas of my life,  and I’m also in the “implementing those solutions” phase in other areas of my life. I think I’m at different points of my self-discovery journey in different places of my life right now. I think that’s what I’ve been needing to accept this entire time. I have not fully regressed in my self-discovery journey in this past year, but I have progressed faster and further in different areas. I know I’ve remained stagnant in certain areas as well and I know I’ve regressed in certain areas as well. The regression and staying stagnant are the hardest parts to accept. What I have learned is this: I know each step is hard to process and each step takes a different skill set and learning experience. I will process each step of my past, present and future to come at a different speed and in a different way. I think this is what I’ve been needing to realize for so long.

What I can say personally is that self-work is the hardest work I have ever done in my life, but I know that it will pay off in the end. There is a purpose for this pain. This will make me a better person and it will make me a more graceful person. I am glad I am sharing these thoughts with you, my readers, because I think we all have some things we are feeling that we feel confused or conflicted about. It’s hard to admit things we feel or how we feel about ourselves. It’s  a hard step to take, but I know that I want to make the most out of each and every step on this journey. It’s a step we all take together as a team. Find people who support your journey and want to see you become the person you want to be. Find the team that roots for you, not against you.

Thank you for reading and have a blessed day.