When did I stop saying that I was in self improvement mode? Self improvement gradually morphed into self growth mode, then has now transformed into a path of healing.

To say that we’re on a path of healing acknowledges that there first has to be something broken, something ill, something not well. It’s an act of vulnerability indicating we are not perfect and we are seeking to repair and recover ourselves to become whole again.

It’s a recognition that something happened to me and a recognition that as an outcome of what happened, that I am not expressing my true Self.

How do I know? I see it in the hesitation and the perseverating of decisions, in feelings of guilt when I choose to help myself before I help others, the stifled feelings in my chest when I do things to help my mother at the expense of taking care of myself.

I tend to dismiss the impact of traumatic events that have happened to me, dismissing them as being merely difficult, equalizing my experience as being common with everyone else’s experience, as though it means very little even to me. In effect, I minimize my life by doing this, making it small before it can get big, making it disappear before I can even make impression. It is as though I half expect someone else to want to do that to me, to judge me and my life as inconsequential. So before anyone else can judge me, I take myself out of the running. I default before I even fail. The problem of course is that I also take away the potential of ever succeeding.